Closed An Eventful Encounter? (Thomas Cosa)

[Belugnir]

22nd of Summer, 517 AV, One Bell Past Noon, Market of Port Silence:

‘’Oi. Oi. For petch sake, is every one of you buggers broken when I need a gods-damn thing from you now?’’, Einar proceeded to sigh, fruitlessly weaving a hand in front of a trader golem’s supposed glassy eye. This was the only stall on the island Ein knew of that could provide him with something along the line of weapons and other armaments. After the two sets of injuries he managed to earn since Summer went underway, the lad had decided to provide himself with at least something that’d remotely resemble a suit of armor. But no. Naturally, some ungodly force, be it a poor alignment of the sodding stars or just the prickly whim of some bugger of a god, Ein wouldn’t get his way without being given cause to pull his hear out first. Gods be damned, this tin can worked and replied just fine a time ago when he purchased a belt of throwing knives from it. What the sodding hell was the problem now? Bah.

The young man gave up after a couple more poor attempts at applying the ancient tongue to his demands. He could literally trip over a decent looking suit of banded mail. It stood right there on a rack, complete with gauntlets too. Just taking and donning the damn thing would be the easiest thing in the world. Only he hazarded that every bloody golem in this square would be up and after his arse if he tried to pull that without making a proper transaction first. Hardly mattered now, as the young man had already made his way into the first shade beside the nearest storehouse wall he could find.

The man hardly had anything on him beside the simplest of clothes. Worn boots, trousers, and a tattered-across-the-back shirt, poorly sewn back together, over which stood strapped a belt, housing six throwing knives. Aside from that he had a pouch hanging from his waist. The clear sound of clinking that came with his every step easily betrayed the bountiful amount of coin he carried inside. Yet something that might draw attention more than the fact that he was apparently rather well provided with coin was the barely subsiding swelling across the left side of the lad’s face, his corresponding eye could still just barely open through a narrow slit, and there was the fact that his hands were warped in makeshift bandages, halfway down the forearm. It was painfully obvious that he had taken at least one bad beating not half a week ago. In fact, this was the first time he got out of bed after his little brawl with that Domagoy prick three days prior.

Seating himself on the ground beside a storehouse's doorstep, Ein would reach for his pocket. Recently he’d made it into a habit to always have a chunk of wood on him for the sake of killing time whenever he wasn’t killing or almost being killed by the innumerable monstrosities of the island. He removed a narrow blade from the belt strapped across his chest and began slowly chipping away at the fist-sized hunk of wood. He wasn’t in the mood to make a trip uphill, back to that shyke-infested Citadel right now. Not in the afternoon summer heat anyway. After another twenty chimes or so he’ll go and check if this supposed quartermaster golem remembered how to sodding function in the meantime.

[Thomas Cosa]

He didn't remember a market. Thomas supposed one could have existed before; he hadn't made a habit of exploring the Citadel during his previous stays. He had kept to his lab, or to Cid's company. It would have been strange to venture back to the Port of Silence for anything other than his departure.

Stranger observed from his left arm. The golem hugged him, his gems sparkling in the daylight. It's head covered his gnosis easily. The lily stayed covered by metal, and would stay hidden, until he left the Citadel. If he left the Citadel.

He cast his magic like a net, the whole of his spell covering the area around him. Thomas would allow Stranger to record the mundane -- he was more interested in what the golem couldn't see.

Thomas saw the trader golems for what they were: bright sparkling wheels of perfectly constructed energy. They waited, balled and coiled, for the right situations, baited with their weighted reactions. He felt the air, the ground, his magic even reached the edges of the shore, wet with salt water.

And then he caught the man. He felt his presence, his being, before he saw him. Thomas already knew he would be taller than him, heavier than him. He already knew he would wear a cross between stubble and beard. He already knew his skin and hair would be uncomfortably dry.

"This is an odd place to be shaping wood," Thomas observed, his spell picking up hints of disappointment. Or was it annoyance? They were both similar yellows, tacky and tar-like, sticking to everything like a heavy glue. Both were difficult to discard. "Or are you a merchant? Is that what you sell? Wood?" He asked, his lips curling into a smile as he caught the hint of magic. It was weak, but stunk closest to his muscles, his hands, his feet. Purple marred him in an ugly way.

He remembered Keene. He wondered if it would be hard to get this man to show him emotion, too.

[Belugnir]

Oh Ein was an emotional fellow, painfully obvious one too. Though that mostly equaled being a sour, hateful prick. It took him a moment to realize that he was being spoken to at first, so he only rose a narrowed gaze to the man after one brief pause. His tone was odd, not quite like that of every other Sunberthian scum that would, no doubt, approach and try to pickpocket the first full purse they saw. Then again, those wizards were mostly daft in the head, worrying more about their sodding magic than their own lives, perhaps they didn’t hold coin in such high regard either. The thought only made Ein more wary of the state of the purse on his hip as he replied. If this prick wasn’t after snatching his coin, what might he want?

‘’Aye it’s an odd place to do anything ploughin’ mundane, ain’ it?’’, something felt… off… about this fellow. It was vague, but his gut told Ein that this pale, skinny bugger knew more about him that he was supposed to, and it unnerved the young man. He had just barely taken notice of the golem that seemed to follow the pale fellow. ‘’And if I was a ploughin’ merchant, I would probably be selling my shyke on any other place, rather than be sittin’ ‘ere, on this good for nothing dunghole of an island.'' Ein had a visible urge to richly spit to the side, though he withheld it for whatever reason.

Ein briefly dropped the wooden chunk in his hand, after just barely preventing himself from slicing off half the length of a finger from his left hand’s collection. ‘’Cheva’s tits…’’, man mumbled as he reached down to pick up the hunk of wood again. It wasn’t often he got to talk with folks who weren’t made of sodding metal plates and wire, and small talk was as good a pastime as any. He gave a brief glance to the golem, then looked the man over, actually giving half a damn to look at him this time around. His standing seemed proud, self-important perhaps, though Ein would bet anything that he could beat the ever-living crap out of this bugger if he was given cause. In honesty, that was the sum of what interested him at the moment, and the relieving conclusion helped him relax a slight bit, thus he decided to humor the man.

‘’Don’t suppose you’d care to tell me who the bugger you are?’’, another narrow wooden ribbon joined many others on the sandy ground beside Ein’s feet.

[Thomas Cosa]

"Not really," Thomas shrugged, "We need the mundane to survive. Someone has to hunt, to fish for us. I suppose wood carving has it's uses besides developing a sub-par golem shell." He watched as his spell spilled into the man's hands, filling every wrinkle and over every callous. He watched as he worked, his cuts practiced and perfect. The stranger worked; something Thomas respected.

He felt the man's stomach knot. He smiled. Suspicion was always easy. It was thick and obvious and red, a gnarled root of warning nestle deeply in the intestine. His magic dived, clutching at the familiar emotion. There were other colors there, collecting in the background of his aura. "Merchants make money here. There wouldn't be --," he paused, his magic piercing a sudden color: bright, boiling white, hot and immediate.

Need, maybe? Urgency? Thomas frowned, confused. He wondered if he'd every be able to categorize the whole of the human experience to colors, to textures, to tastes and smells. "Anyway, if Sahova didn't make it worth their while, the merchants wouldn't come. They come to the Citadel for the same reason they go to Sunberth."

His magic continued to stab at the stranger's aura, clear and bubbly. He was healthy, although there was a strange sour taste to it. Complex and loud and demanding. Interesting.

"Thomas Cosa. I'm a wizard," he watched the strange man's aura especially for a reaction to the last word. It wasn't surprising, they were on Sahova, but Thomas was curious nonetheless. "And who are you? And more importantly, what are you making?" The creation was more significant than the creator, or so he believed. So animation had shown him.

[Belugnir]

Ein hardly cared for the fellow's remarks about woodcarving. Man wasn't tryna make money or have any use for the shyke he carved, it was simply a means to not die of boredom. And his cuts, although a bit practiced, would seem masterful only to a bloke who's never held a carving knife in their life. There was a remark about food and hunting. So this one actually needs to ploughin' eat, eh? Then he's a 'pulser' too, 's much as he looks like a sodding corpse. The uncomfortable feeling in Ein's gut grew by the second, and had begun to get quite irritating, there was a vague doubt at the back of the Sunberthian's mind that this Thomas was trying out some fancy sorcery on him...

''Oh I've seen how it makes it worth their petchin' while.'', he snorted, mixing in the briefest, knowing bit of laughter. He'd met two corpse-merchants bound for Sahova by now. One's own carcass he sold off to the Palsa, and almost ended up being turned into a corpse himself by the second 'merchant'. Einar halfway mumbled the remark into his own chin, speaking it more as a jest for himself than the man in front of him.

So you're a wizard, huh? Would've never ploughin' guessed., had he spoken the words out they'd have been accompanied by the most disgusting amount of sarcasm. Probably every nine and a half out of ten buggers on this sodding island are wizards... Petch sake, I'm a sodding wizard.

''Einar Belugnir. Just your regular Sunberthian motherpetcher who'd like his way off this bloody island. Though I suppose the gods quite like shittin' on me lately, so here I am still. Doing my best not to become a morsel for whatever ungodly abomination your buddies up in that castle see fit to pop into the world for their own pastime.'', he got up to his feet as he spoke, his tone growing juicily cynical along the way, complete with his best parody of a royal bow at the end. ''As for what I'm making, I don't rightly know. And don't rightly give a rat's ass either.'', putting the hiltless blade back into its sheath, Ein idly tossed the wooden shape to Cosa to catch, crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned against the wall of the storehouse behind him. He decided he quite enjoyed having someone who was apparently interested in conversation enough to hear out every vulgarity that he could come up with.

Had Thomas had the most modest excuse for reflexes, he'd have caught the chunk of wood, and had he had the poorest excuse for curiosity he'd get to see in his hands a roughly shaped feminine figurine, caught in what could be the motion of idly walking.

''So, Thomas, care to tell me what's it a ploughin' wizard actually sodding does for a living? When they're not blowing their apprentices and, or themselves up, naturally?'', to be fair, this bugger was the first actually living wizard Ein had met yet.

[Thomas Cosa]

Again a glimmer. His magic squirreled into Einar's aura, strangling the secret glimpsed. He'd swallowed it, the emotion, the action, whatever it had almost been, drowned in a sea of confidence. He wondered if his magic would ever allow him to force it. Or if there existed one that might force any emotion on to whomever he pleased.

"I can't imagine there are many Sunberthians here. Regular or otherwise," Thomas sat down, his magic splitting from Einar, splintering against the floor. Dirt mostly, it seemed. There was faint smell of iron, blood. It was unusual for blood to fall off a slave as they passed through the port to the Citadel. It wouldn't be strange to learn something, or someone, died here, not so long ago. "The ones that linger though, as much as they hate it, do so for a reason."

He let the wooden clump collapsed onto the ground. His magic split again, a third weave spiraling over and under, eating at the information it could find. Thomas felt the rough edges of the curves, the deep brown colors of the long dead wood. He could almost feel the sharpness of the knife against the grain; an echo.

"I wouldn't the monstrosities, as you called them, are the thing you should fear. I would be more afraid of the masters, at least as close we are to the Citadel. The Testing Grounds would be a different story."

He considered the man's question, allowing silence to grow between them. "I suppose it depends on the wizard. I create. Others destroy," Thomas didn't see the world so simply, but it was easier to explain it this way.

[Belugnir]

‘’Oh there’s a bunch, alright. And most of ‘um do have a rather solid reason for staying. Sold their rottin’ hides to the bugger at your… Palsa what’s-it-called, so I imagine they’d find leaving rather troublesome. To agree with you, I don’t imagine they’d like it much. Then there’s me, mostly stayin’ ‘cause the few passin’ merchants are too stubborn to take me along… and ‘cause I’m too stubborn to be eaten by your petchin’ Noktals and Lemekors and gods forbid what not.’’, the sensation of wrongness he felt had faded away. If this bugger was indeed using some magic on him, he had stopped whatever he was doing, or he had actually completed his spell. Yet Ein still didn’t feel endangered, even so, his left hand, firmly tied in bandages across the palm, idly scratched at the pulling handle of a throwing knife upon his chest, and his tongue clapped rather loudly against the back of gritted teeth a couple times. It might have come across as an idle threatening warning, though Ein was, in fact, merely pondering if he should snap at this fellow to try finding out if the bugger was indeed trying to put him under a spell.

‘’I wouldn’t know. Haven’t had a master try eating me alive yet. Haven’t had ‘em try clawing my arse open either.’’, he frowned at the last answer he got. ‘I create, others destroy.’, now that was some textbook cryptic wannabe horseshit right there.

‘’Riiight… I’ve met one of you creators before.’’, he snorted. ‘’Fellow used some good two thousand gold Mizas worth of dead monsters to create a living pile of dung. Almost got us both eaten by the damn thing too.’’, Ein took an odd moment to, in spite of himself, realize that he was being rather needlessly rude. ‘’Naturally, I’m not quite comparing you to that bugger. You, for one, can at least walk straight and talk without muttering like a beaten whore.’’, Oh I’m just a sugar-spoken brownnose. Gods it felt good to let all the pent up desire to slap a whoreson into oblivion out, even if it was just unprovoked jabbing at someone through conversation.‘’So, Thomas. What is it you create?’’, Einar’s gaze darted to the golem again. ‘’Lemme guess, actually. That little fellow is your work?’’, a spark of curiosity did actually light up in his tone, one would hardly need Auristics to notice that much. He wondered if those tin cans could be made into more than stall-keepers and barely cooperative librarians.

[Thomas Cosa]

Thomas laughed suddenly, harsh, like breaking glass, "Too stubborn to be eaten? I'd call that lucky. Or do you usually stay so close to the pier?" he asked, his spell splitting into finer tendrils still. Each poked and prodded at Einar, slicing into his aura, strangling at the visible emotion. Thomas frowned as the man's suspicion detangled and burned up, away, red fading back to nothing.

The animator wasn't a danger, no, but suspicion was key to survival among the nuit. Pity, then, how quickly the stranger seemed to trust. Or at least, to not distrust.

"Well. As a rule, the masters don't eat," he shrugged, not continuing the few masters that still had their hearts. "It's how they use you that's scary. They could completely erase everything that makes you, you. One of the older alchemist managed to force their own will over an already living soul. Made them into a slave, forever. That's what they believed they were, what they are now, I suppose," it didn't matter that both him and Rayage both had added directives to a living soul. That wasn't something Einar needed to know. "And that wasn't a real master, not by any shot. The real ones are especially creative."

He saw the golden spark of curiosity, a crowned halo over the mind. Bright and delicate, a fragile thing that could be nourished or stamped out with the right words. "Right, I design golems. Stranger here is different that the massed produced types you've undoubtedly become familiar with -- and a good deal more intelligent, I'd wager."

"And so are stubborn merchants the only reason you haven't made it off dead man's rock? Or is there something else you're looking for?" He asked, his question pointed and obvious. The purple ink that swirled in his otherwise clear aura didn't come from anything but magic. Which, Thomas wondered, did Einar consider himself? A creator, or a destroyer?

[Belugnir]

Across the window in which the words ‘lucky’ and ‘pier’ were spoken, Einar had developed perhaps the most cynical ‘I am going to stab you in the neck’ sort of smile. Oh yes, lucky. Oh no, I don’t normally stay this close to the pier, normally I watch that sodding wasteland for the sake of pricks like you not being maimed or eaten alive. Then the uneasy feeling came around again, and Ein’s face turned blank, or rather, one displaying a modest frustration. He listened to the man’s talk of the wizard masters. Ein considered himself rather edible, and seeing how the masters, as a rule, didn’t eat, and considering, in addition, the fact that he approximately came into contact with said masters, ahem… never, he was rather content with how that relationship was going. On the other hand, after a moment’s good consideration, being an actual mindless slave sounded almost appealing when compared to… well, the majority of situations that Ein’s life consisted of. At the very least he wouldn’t have the wits to know how short of a stick’s end he was constantly getting if that were the case.

So this one designs golems… what’s ‘design’ mean again…?

He never got to consider the word, for at Cosa’s latest question, Einar felt a sudden, piercing headache, followed by an unexplainable urge to actually put a knife through the fellow. They were both the briefest things, yet indescribably distracting and frustrating none the less. It had nothing to do directly with Cosa poking away at his aura to read the man, but it rose suspicion none the less. Visibly distorted, he rose a hand to his forehead, narrowed his currently single good eye, and shook his head away in irritated confusion. Did he contract some mind boggling disease? Breathe in one of those wit-ruining fumes from below the citadel? Was this twat actually brainwashing him with magic? After a brief while, and with an enforced, rather poor, renovation of his cynical smile, Ein spoke up.

‘’Looking for something more?’’, a snort of laughter ‘’ No, no, it’s just the stubborn merchants. Honestly, if it were up to me, I’d never have anything to do with you lot of sorcerers and warlocks and gods forbid, the things you make… But, but, but. You’ve quite picked my bastarding interest now.’’, he finally pulled a knife from the belt, rather playfully displaying it too. In spite of all his survival instincts, frustration was taking the lad over… a rather common occurrence ever since he came to this bloody island. ‘’You’re going to tell me, right now, what the sodding shyke you’ve been trying to pull with your whorin’ sorcery. And believe you me, I can put this ‘ere knife ‘tween your eyes before a single golem has the time to do a daft thing. So start singing.’’, well… he was certain he’d be able to hit some part of the fellow from this distance. Yes. Yes, that is my thought process after threatening a fuckin’ wizard, and in a square full of their soddin' golems too, not the fact that I can probably end up flayed alive, revived, and then boiled over into a seven-legged, headless monstrosity on account of the deed. Good job, Einar, ye prick, you really did yourself in with this one. Lad was tapping the throwing knife against the fabric falling over the front of his shoulder, one relaxed motion of the wrist and the knife will be set loose, for all the probable inaccuracy of the deed.

‘’Well?’’

[Thomas Cosa]

Doubt. Delicious red and plastic shiny, obvious, but fleeting. It danced quietly, slow on the metal of dagger, faint and faded, because the man hadn't decided anything yet. It clung like sticky grease to his hand and to the old, brown leather handle.

His magic tore it apart.

Fibers now, his spell had stretched itself too thin, cut and dissected and sliced through. Doubt was mealy. Doubt was tough and chewy and it sang whispers and breathy like after sex. It was fantastic to explore, he guessed, because he wasn't the sucker with the knife pointing it at a mage.

And Robin laughed. Cruelly, like breaking ice, like cracking glass, like something so shrill it felt sharp against his ears and it wasn't full or real or heavy with kindness like a true laugh. This wasn't a sound to shared and treasured or remembered. This wasn't a sound between friends.

This was a weapon. He used it, specifically, to belittle and confuse and worry.

Also, he didn't care if he died. Not now. Not here, because they could give him new life as easily as the knife could steal his.

"Do it," Robin smiled, his lips stretched and chapped and they looked like worms on a fishing hook. "Go ahead, stab me and bleed me dry. Cut off an ear or a finger or saw off my leg. You think it'd be that easy?," he snorted, Stranger watching in silence, tightening against his neck. Dying wasn't permanent, but it was painful.

"You don't think you'd be the first? These dried flesh-bags would have me back in a tick and you'd be carted off to gods-know-where. Hai, try it on yourself. You think killing is easy here? Try dying. They'll bring you back and make you wish you hadn't been so stupid to think death was an escape route on the undead isle you flea-bitten washed up piece of burnt cake."

He huffed, but was otherwise silent. His magic touched the callouses on the man's hands and the scars on his body and he was no stranger to violence. "Anywhere else you'd have me pissing my pants, but never on Sahova."

"The only magic I'm using is Auristics so calm your butt, please."