Verran Nyote Secumpa's Story

The Goblin Market was an excellent place to have a meal at. One could enjoy flavorful food as well as listen to conversations of others. It was the perfect place to learn about the going ons of Arcadia. However, Verran Nyote Secumpa sat at a table, alone and lost in thought, not paying attention to the bustle around her. Her eyes were glazed over and her nose didn't even twitch at the appetizing aroma coming from meal before her. Not even the shouts of two arguers nearby could startle her from her reverie.

Her mind was on the subject of a broken watch. This wasn't an ordinary watch. Along with telling the time it sent off an alarm whenever it sensed danger to its bearer. The holder of the watch could then pretend that the alarm was something that marked a certain time or told them they had this appointment or whatever. It was really a clever idea. However, this watch had been broken in a scuffle and its owner wanted Verran to fix it.

The minor problem is that a gear is bent. That's not much of a problem, it can be fixed easily. Verran could use her maker's skill to coax the gear back into shape. Her skill could possibly be defined as a type of magic, but she didn't like to think of it that way. Magic could be unpredictable and dangerous but a skill was something that you truly owned and could control. The real problem is the alarm enchantment holder became misshapen. The small nugget of gold that held the alarm enchantment had fallen out of its slot. Now that was silly of the designer to make the enchantment holder gold. While gold would blend in more on the watch it was a generally accepted truth that metal didn't work as well with spells. It was too bendable and eventually wore down as the spell adjusted to it. Especially with gold. The soft metal couldn't trap the magic as well as gem or even silver. The magic entropied too easily as it tried to work for gold let more magic leak out. It was weak. At least the original maker had put a lot of energy behind the enchantment.

"Hey, are you going to eat that or just stare off in the distance? I'll gladly eat it if you won't. I'm hungry." said a werewolf, rudely interupting Verran's thoughts.

Verran looked at the lupine humanoid and, remembering her own hunger, said, "Yes, I'm eating this. Go get your own food."

The werewolf walked off, a disappointed look on his face. Verran turned back to her meal. It was a pie of some sort, beef by the smell. She picked up her fork and knife and cut it open. To her satisfaction it was still warm on the inside despite the fact it took her a while to get down to eating it. The pot pie was wonderful. Inside it tender meet was marinated in gravy and there were plenty of soft, fleshy mushrooms, just the way Verran liked it.

As she ate her ears swiveled from side to side, eavesdropping on conversations.

"Have you heard? Merfolk have come to town. They had some human trouble at the docks. Those low creatures should learn their place and respect the higher beings above them," a naiad was saying. Of course the naiad was talking about merfolk. They were related, after all. "The Pearl Princes is guiding Prince Aearion and Lord Aranhil. Maybe I could meet them! It would be a dream come true." The naiad continued to babble about the merits of the merfolk. Verran promptly lost interest and searched for another conversation to listen to.

The next topic her ears latched onto was much more sinister. "Some human killed a High Elf merchant. He was killed right at the temple district in broad daylight! Have humans no respect for peace? Why can't they stay in their places? But no, they have to maim and kill. It's just wrong. That human should be put to death before it becomes a bad influence to the others." an elf said to a mage.

Verran turned her ears away from the conversation and focused on eating. Looks like Mortalis is becoming more prominent. I just hope they don't find any reason to target me. Verran herself owned no slaves, human or otherwise. She never had. Most Aviopters disliked the concept of slavery; they thought that people should work fully together. Who was happy in a colony where people were miserable? Although Verran didn't like slavery, she didn't think that humans had the right to go around killing people. Things should work together, not against each other.

After finishing her meal Verran made her way back to her home in the Warren. Her home currently doubled as a workshop for she wasn't renting a storefront. It was time to work on the watch. First she opened up the complex mechanism and carefully extracted the broken gear. With a light touch and some mental pushes she set the gear back into its proper shape. When finished with that she inserted it back to its proper place. Now was time for the tricky part. Verran sent a mental probe into the golden enchantment holder and found that the spell was wound up and knotted like a neglected kite string. Probably the result of the twisting of the metal. That was another problem with having gold as an enchantment holder. It distorted easily and thus messed the structure of the spell up. Spells required a strong structure or else they would come apart or get ruined. Verran checked the slot where the enchantment hold would go if it were in the right shape. It was round and slightly oval. This gave her an idea.

Verran rummaged in one of her drawers of items until she found her box of gems. She set it out on her table and opened it. She had a wide variety of semi-precious and precious stones for times when she had to fix a ring that the owner had lost the stone for. Verran usually offered jewelery services cheaper than a professional jeweler, so people who didn't want to spend too much money came to her. The other thing that stones could be used for was holding magic. Crystals had a rigid structure that held magic much better than metals. Not that all metals couldn't cope with all kinds of magic. But how metals could react to magic was generally rather limited. Sure, they could hold magic, but not well.

Verran selected a citrine stone. Citrine was yellow-orange in color and would probably blend in at least somewhat well with the golden color of the watch. She cut and polished the stone, allowing her maker's skill to guide her and help shape the crystal. When it was made into the correct shape she placed it next to the gold enchantment holder. Carefully she eased the tangled spell out of the gold lump and into the citrine stone. She combed the knots and snarls out of the spell and slowly realigned the spell to fit on the hard structure of the gem. When the spell was firmly settled she put the stone into the enchantment holder slot and it fit with a little click! noise of satisfaction. When that was over with Verran felt tired. It wasn't easy to force a spell both into a new home and a more orderly state.

But she couldn't rest, not yet at least. The fixed watch had to be delivered back to its owner. Verran cleaned up her workplace and set out to the home of the Fae Lord Dence. Lord Dence was a prominent Seelie member and the son of one of the dragon summoners. Verran walked down the buisy streets to the garden courts of the Seelie. At Lord Dence's house she a golem made of earth approached her and asked of her business. She told that she was here to return a fixed item and the golem told her to wait until she was asked for and walked into the house. Verran stared after it, suprised to see young plant shoots growing out of its back.

The entrance to the great house was beautiful. Vines grew up the side of building, blooming with large, deep-throated orange flowers. One garden section held petunias with petals that were purple on the inside and white around the rims. In another garden grew tall plants with tiny blue flowers and large fuzzy leaves. The air was sweet with the fragrance of all of the flowers.

The golem returned and called Verran in. "Lord Dence will see you now."

Verran followed the golem through bright, airy halls to the Fae Lord's study. Verran inclined her head to show the respect she deemed necessary to Lord Dence.

"You have finished fixing my watch, yes?" he asked.

"Yes, lord," Verran said and took the watch out of the pocket of her robe and handed it to him. He examined it and nodded.

"You did a good job. I can feel the spell working now better than it ever has before." The Fae Lord paid her and the golem escorted her out.

Outside she stopped at a stall and picked up a pastry and ate it. The lord had paid her well and now she would have the money to last for a while. She wandered over to a bench nearby the spire and sat down to rest a little before she went home.

As Ingwe showed the group around the beautiful scenery of Spire Rock Aranhil quietly spoke to Merilwen. “I’ve wanted to say something to you but things seemed to have been moving swiftly so I felt before I hadn’t the time. Now that we have reached Spire Rock we can rest a little easier. When our business is done, I would much like for you to take us to see where your Aiden abides. If we can examine this crystal that he’s incased in we should have a better idea of what to inquire about in regard to setting him free.” Aranhil smiled as he spoke. He had faith that they would find a way to restore the human Merilwen loved to animation once more.

Merilwen was delighted. “Thank you Lord Aranhil. I will most certainly show the way when our task has concluded.”

During the tour Ingwe took the group to admire the view from atop Spire rock of Arcadia. The Mer people stood in awe of the grand view. Arcadia was indeed a rich land of forests, cities, waters and much more. Prince Aearion looked down to the ground below the Spire and noticed a creature most peculiar seated at a bench and eating a pastry.

“What in Tidus’ name is THAT STRANGE CREATURE BELOW?!” Aearion exclaimed in surprise. He had never seen anything like it. His exclamation made the others jump in surprise.

“My goodness you are one loud prince!” Elemmire the dryad complained. “That, my friend, is an Aviopter. She most certainly would not take kindly to you calling her a ‘strange creature’. They are indeed pretty interesting beings.” Elemmire looked down on the Aviopter with a smile.

“Fortunately that loud and dramatic behavior doesn’t run through all members of the family.” Aranhil snickered a bit. Aearion quickly shot Aranhil an annoyed look as if to tell him to ‘shut up’. Aearion's glare only made Aranhil laugh more. Merilwen had to giggle herself at the Prince's reaction, he could be so dramatic at times she thought.

“Well I am most excited that you are enjoying the many sights of the land Prince Aearion.” Ingwe chuckled. “We should be going to dinner now. There is a small feast that has been prepared for you. Lady Elemmire you are indeed invited as well. You will all meet some of the Seelie council members at dinner.” Ingwe spoke regally. He was quite excited to have his guests about Spire Rock. The three Mer People were quite different from the previous ambassador from the Ocean Kingdom.

“What in Tidus’ name is THAT STRANGE CREATURE BELOW?!” a voice said, sounding startled.

Verran looked up and saw some fish tailed people. They must be the Merfolk! She canted hear ears up to them to hear them better. The one who had spoken was being admonished by a dryad. She grinned in amusement, showing her sharp fangs. Even royalty makes mistakes. Aviopters themselves had no sense of royalty among themselves; rather they had colony leaders. When two or more colonies met the leaders were considered equal to each other and deserved the same amount of respect. When Verran moved to the city of Arcadia one of the things she learned was the concept of one person or family being in charge of all of that species. It didn't seem like the smartest idea. What if this person became deranged or something? And how could one person possibly control hundreds, if not thousands, of people? It would be easier to have smaller groups that respected each other, in Verran's opinion. If someone wished to enlighten her of the benefits of a monarchy across an entire species she would gladly listen. Things worked better when they made sense.

For a moment Verran considered flying up to the place on the Spire where the Merfolk where but then decided that would be rude and dismissed the idea. It was still hard to hold back curiousity, though. To counteract the urgings she started walking back home. On the whim of the moment she took off her cloak and stuffed it into a pocket on her short pants (this pocket was a little bigger on the inside that the out, which was why the cloak fit). After making sure she wouldn't hit anyone, she began extending her hands into wings. For an Aviopter wings were just oversized hands with webbing between them. There was still the same amount of fingers and still the normal bones, except in different shapes. There was a brief period of discomfort as Verran's bones shifted shape, but then it was over with as soon as her arms and hands had become wings.

Verran crouched down and then sprung herself into the air, beating her wings rapidly. She quickly gained altitude. The city was laid out before her with all of its bustle and colors. But now was not the time for watching people. She pointed herself in the direction of the Warren. When she found bugs in the air she snapped them up, enjoying the feeling of their soft insides oozing out of their crunchy exoskeletons. For fun she flew some loops and corkscrews. It never hurt to practice. Far faster than she would walking she arrived at her home. She converted her wings back into hands, for wings were unwieldy on ground. She went to her cave and shut the door, glad to be home.

Sable Greyback thankfully listened without showing any distate for Krel's apparent bad smell. She had a scribe write down his words for as a manticore she lacked the dextereity. It was a good thing that mostly reliable people worked at the Lanterners. Not everyone would be humble enough to admit their shortcomings and hire a scribe to write down things for them. But then again, the ability to accept one's weaknesses had to be a Lanterner job requirement.

"The humans who attacked me were called Torredin, who was the ringleader, Nente, Wavven, Poltas, and I don't remember the others. It happened too fast for me to pay attention to every detail," Krel said. He also told her the section of the sewer the incident happened in before he left. Not that he expected her to know offhand (or paw?) but it might help with an investigation.

He made his way to his home in the Old Quarter and pumped up some water. Although he couldn't smell anything himself, the least he could do for his neighbors was to wash off the sewer stink. Especially since the Festival of Unity was coming up. Nobody would want to unite with a smelly gargoyle, he was sure.

When he was finished with that he grabbed some slightly stale bread from his small pantry and some malachite stones from his collection. He ate the hard bread first, setting his sharp teeth to tearing up the toughness of the dough. It wasn't much of a problem for him. Gargoyles ate rocks, after all. After he ate the bread he popped the stones into his mouth one by one, crunching the first ones up and sucking on the last one to lengthen its dry, sweet-sour flavor.

-----

Verran took out her pet project. She was trying to make a form of entertainment for the Festival of Unity. It consisted of pierced magnetic stones on threads, aligned so they floated away from each other. They were fashioned to look somewhat humanoid, with a center stone from which four limbs and a "neck" stood out.

Although Verran could not manipulate magic into a spell, she could coax magic to take a different form. That was what she planned to do with the spell stones she had. She didn't know the previous purpose of the magic-containing gems in front of her, but knowing that it was manhandled magic was enough for her. It meant she could work with it.

With a special tool she carved a slot in each of the three magnet things for one of the stones. Fitting the gems into their slots, she gently reshaped the magic until it satisfied her.

With luck, she had just created her first golems.

It was the day of the Festival of Unity. Verran hastily shoveled a quick breakfast down her throat, hardly paying attention to the spicy crunch of the centipides or the doughy flavor of her bread. She must be ready soon. She had some golems to test out. Glancing at the golems, she hummed in pride. They lay inert for the time being, but soon enough they would be activated and working. So she hoped.

Finishing her meal, Verran activated the magic inside the golems. They tottered to life, standing shakily, as if in a breeze. To Verran's relief they steadied themselves in half a minute or so.

"Follow me," she directed, walking out of her home. The golems followed her with a waving gait.

Once in the sun the grey-black golems shone with reflected light, the polished stones that made them gaining a glistening sheen. Although Verran wanted to make sure her creations worked, she couldn't help looking at the festivities. Fairies flew about, brightly colored strips of paper streaming out from behind them. An elf juggled knives, deftly preventing himself from being cut while entertaining an audience.

Verran made her way to Spire Rock and set out instructions to the golems. They, along with Verran, were to present random people with pretty stones inscribed with a rune for luck. They also had a tiny amount of magic in them to actually help give the bearer a favorable circumstance. The magic wouldn't do too much and would burn out if too much stress was put on it, but the biggest part of the gift was the stone itself. They were pretty, after all.

Verran approached a man with a crazy-looking grin on his face. He must be really happy about the festival. "Do you want a stone, sir?" she said, holding out a round piece of polished onyx, displaying the luck symbol.

---

Krel was enjoying the festival. He threw away the ill feeling he had from the previous day's near death and rejoiced in the happiness of the festival. It wasn't often that he was out of the sewers and he believed he had a pretty good excuse to do so now. Let the humans stay down there in the sewers, huddling in their unpleasant abode, missing all of the fun. Not the festival would be too fun for them, Krel supposed.

"How'd you get out?" an almost conversational voice said, barely tinged with a hint of surprise and malice.

Krel turned in the direction of the voice and saw Torredin. The human was dressed in garish robes and had a necklace with a large glass pendant at the end of it. Trying to look like some magic user, I bet. "I walked along the bottom and climbed up another passageway," Krel said, using the same story he had told the Lanterner.

"Really? I had a man posted at almost all of the passageways. None of them saw you." Torredin avanced towards Krel, his hand slipping into a pocket.

"Almost doesn't cut it," Krel said, retreating into the crowd. The day had a sour taste now. He wanted to leave before Torredin did something stupid and ruined the festival for other peole, too.

The human tagged along behind him. No matter what he did Krel couldn't shake him. Krel eventually made his way to the Seelie tower and, as he anticipated, Torredin left. "I'll get the Old Quarter Demon on you. Don't think you've escaped," Torredin growled.

Krel hardly noticed the threat. His interest was captured by a large group of werewolves and a strange looking girl. He could tell this girl was not human. She wore a threatening mask and when she spoke her voice had an eerie quality to it. Krel shoved his way to the front of the spectators, curious. Who was this not human girl?

Luthor suddenly realized that he was being spoken to. His smile faded, suspicion immediately taking hold.

"Do you want a stone, sir?"

The creature standing before him was strange; if a bat could breed with a human, it would look like this. Suddenly, the tales from the Goblin Market night scene returned to him. Stories of foul monsters that drank the blood of the living and could shape-shift into a bat. Luthor's hand strayed to the hilt of his cleaver. Still, the being seemed friendly enough, though he was not an expert on the facial expressions of bats. She, since the being's body type and form suggested a female, was holding a small stone in her hand. A simple script character had been engraved on its surface. Luthor took it in his hand and held it up to his face; the taste of iron suddenly crawled across his tongue. It was enchanted, then; probably a simple ward meant as a good luck charm.

Luthor smiled as he eyed it. To be honest, he needed all the luck he could get today. He glanced back at the she-bat.

"How much?" He asked. "Or is this so you can earn some charity points in the afterlife?"

He could feel the brutish power runes that ran down Gram's blade resonant with the simple luck charm.