[The Sickle and Arrow] A broken weapon, ii.

[Gracen]

1st Fall, 512 A.V. It had been a while, and his mind had played tricks on him, telling him that navigating Kalinor wasn't so very difficult after all. Lies. The heavy tread of his boots stomped down the stairs and into the gathering place of the subterranean city's hunters, clearly not the nimble steps of any Symenestra. His face was slicked with sweat from the effort of navigating the city beyond where human visitors usually went, and carrying a dead mountain goat over his shoulders as a sort of offering. In the wan light of Kalinor's interior, the gold of his hair was tarnished, and his skin took on an unhealthy pallor the sun would have revealed to be false. He did not fit in here, and didn't he know it, though their xenophobia might prove untoward. He had no real problem with their Harvest, even wondered if he ought not have come bearing a slave from Yahebah as an offering of goodwill rather than the goat he had killed so inexpertly above ground. He hefted the goat from off his shoulders and set it down in front of those gathered. "I do not speak Symenos well," he said in Common, "so I will not offend your ears with inelegant attempts." It may have been Common, but it was rather well-spoken Common all the same. "I have come to abide her indefinitely, and I need work." It sounded almost like a challenge; he was not expecting Kalinor to welcome him, but he would live in such a manner none could claim he ought to leave for any reason other than a hatred of his people.