The funny thing was, to Kelski, it seemed like the knocking had stilled the world. It was as if the area around the twin doors had the same reaction Naska did as she hissed and froze up, as if it were startled. Silence reached out, ricocheted back, and cascade din non-noise all around them. To Kelski it was deafening. The rest wouldn’t have heard anything. Then quietly, ever so quietly, a soft male voice said….
“You may enter.” Kelski froze at the sound of it, glanced around, and nodded to herself.
She took a moment to gather her courage, draw her daggers, and stepped up to the doors once more. Kelski pushed them quietly open, held it then for Naska out of politeness and then walked right through. She looked around, stunned, as a full-fledged workshop much like her own presented itself. Only this one wasn’t standard issue. Everything was cobbled together and made up of things others had discarded. Kelski didn’t know where to look. Everywhere was something different, something unique, and almost astonishing. And the brats….
Oh, she didn’t see them after the initial pushing open the doors and walking in, but for a moment she’d glimpsed them everywhere… on tables, underfoot, walking across beams that held the ceiling together… and all of them huge. Supplies littered tables, were stacked up against walls, and papers including books covered almost every available surface that didn’t house a brat or something equivalent. And as she walked in, the creatures all just seemed to vanish – melting back into the walls, under things, behind things, and generally hiding. Their departure exposed one remaining living thing.
Kelski thought it was a horrid decorative, until it moved, and she saw the horns on the emaciated form. Was it a monster then? She tilted her head, blinked her unusual extra eye, and saw then that it was a very emaciated Eth. She moved closer, daggers still in her hands, but cautious nonetheless. “Hello.” She said softly, moving closer to the creature. She moved one leg at a time in an easy weight-shifting way that brought her close up to him without excitement and with extreme caution.
“You look unwell.” She said, as she got closer, noticing his drooping sunken skin, his painfully high cheekbones, and the fact that he looked….. petch it all to… .she noted the collar then. He had an elaborate slave collar full of precious gemstones encrusting his neck. She knew the sight of one of them readily enough. And attached to that collar was a thick chain he seemed to be dragging around with him. It was a long chain, though she could not tell where it was fastened onto a wall or iron ring with… but it looked heavy and uncomfortable. Coils of it twisted in and out of the pathways through the workshop, making it hard to tell where it ended or began. She hated it immediately.
“I’m Kelski.” She said softly, cautiously, wondering how long this creature had been down here…. and how many brats he had defended or even befriended. She wasn’t sure where the chain ended or how much play it had in it, so she simply stood where he could see her, quietly made to re-sheath her daggers, and got as good look at him as he was getting of her just standing there.
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