Wandering and Wondering - [[Open]]

[Persephone]

Immuna had to escape from Assassin's Cove. Quickly. In a way that she felt she would go completely undiscovered. The place had seemed so perfect, and yet so suddenly it had changed. The words “Alms! Alms!” rang through the place as if they were an anthem. People were always begging, but never doing. Never acting. The unbelievable slothfulness of the place always knew the way to evoke a small feeling of disgust deep in Immuna’s gut. People, capable people, were running around begging for hand-outs when they could instead be working for a big take that might actually keep them on their feet for more than a few minutes. Something to bring them out of the dank, dark cesspool that they called The Assassin's Cove and into something far more worth it all. She had to escape it. It was sickening.

Immuna, unlike so many others, worked for her part, conning the people oh so deserving out of the money that she - and these other’s not born to what people call the ‘good’ side - needed (and should rightfully have had). She still had some coin left weighing her down from her last take, something she held onto as if it were her own blood. She knew how the people where she had been acted; she knew how the people there would be at her feet, grubbing her skin up more than it already was grubbed to beg for the few pieces of coin she had stuck tightly at her bosom which seemed to bounce (uncharacteristically) with each well placed step.

Steps were always well-placed at the Assassin's Cove. They had to be well-watched, well planned. There was no telling what smothered the ground at one’s feet - there was no telling who was watching for you to make one fatal move, act in one fatal gait. There was no telling what they would do were they to see such mistakes. The Assassin's Cove was no place for tourists, as such it was a good thing that she was not a tourist and that she knew the rules. She knew the warnings. She was used to everything in The Assassin's Cove, she knew where the cracks on the road were, she knew where the curb dropped to a pothole you had to jump. She knew which wooden staircases would shake under one’s weight and the ones that that were missing completely. She knew that the shoes she was wearing were made for walking there. They were formed of cloth, they were nothing but small cloth boots that provided no protection were to step on a nail (but she knew where all of those were, too). They were perfect for The Assassin's Cove so that you would make no sounds. No squish, no squeak, no tap-tap-tapping. She could hold herself to the shadows the buildings made, and not be seen by a soul.

She knew it all. And she hated it all.

Immuna was so dreadfully sick of that place, truly she was. All of the twists and turns she knew like the escape routes of dungeons. She had been sick of it, but where else could she go? Her name was out there as far as law men went, her name and her face were on wanted posters (though the ones at the Cove were so splashed with mud and many were torn or graffitied on) and if she went elsewhere she knew it would be hard to dodge the cops. It would be hard to escape the prisons, the dungeons. Whatever they had where she would go. There had not seemed to be any place for her to make her great escape to.

It took her so long to finally discover that there was in fact a place. A place that did not seem too small, too cramped for the amount of criminals crowding its dismal walkways. She found the Ruins. They were deserted, no poster with her frowning, sallow face graced the chipping walls. This was a new place she could learn to know. This was a different place she would not be hounded for the only money she had that was tucked away in her bosom.

Here it was easier to blend into shadows, to not be seen by even the sharpest of beggars. Here she she could blend in by falling into the shadows and sitting on the muggy ground just as she began to do now. She knew to hold one’s face down, to allow the shadows caused by the lack of light and by her mop of hair to fall about her face to keep her features hidden as she would watch from her veil of dirty, ragged and unwashed locks. Back at the Cove, were she to sit like this, an old woman (possibly missing some sort of important body part, an arm, an eye...) would come before her shaking her cup. Rattling it by Immuna's head as she begged for those handouts Immuna frowned upon so deeply. The rattle would echo through her brain and Immuna's ragged and slimy face would grant a nasty glower. She would tell the old bag that she had no money, and that she ought to go to a city where people tended to have coin on them. The middle class, the rich. She would tell the woman that they would never give her any - not looking like that - but at least they had some to jangle their pockets when the walked away from her.

She would say it in a far more crude manner, a manner emphasized by hand gestures just as crude as her words. The woman would give Immuna some sort of gesture or word back and then continue to move about asking for the money that none of them had or would give.

Sitting with her head against a cracked wall, body encased in shadows like a warm winter blanket, she wondered why she was thinking about this. Her ragged skirt she wore above torn leggings was no longer wet from sitting in a corner where puddles tended to form, her cloth shoes were not soaked and her hair did not droop from drip-dropping water from above. Why would she think of the Cove when here was so much better?

Her dark eyes flitted from corner to corner, wondering vaguely where the alleys were that would be home to a few rapes every week. The rapes that, every week (like clockwork), forced a little smirk to herself as she saw a struggling girl pulled within a dark alley for a night of... fun. Immuna would mutter the word tourist in a satiric manner, and flex her fingers in mis-matched gloves in a drumming motion as she waited for the scream of penetration.

That must have been why she was thinking of the cove. She finally knew it. Her eyes fell into corners of darkness with mysteries hiding in them, they flew up above her where the sky stretched on past the holes in the roof where she could see the mural that was made of clouds and the sun. It was too quiet here, the realization of that thought ran a cold, angry shiver down her spine which prodded angrily at the skin over her back reminding her she had yet to eat today.

You don't know what you've got 'til its gone... Her own voice echoed through her mind as she closed her sunken eyes to press her head against the wall in a position one might mistake for looking up (assuming they had no knowledge of her eyes' position). Perhaps she was looking up, maybe she was looking up, through her eyelids at something that wasn't completely there.

Something that wasn't Zyneca ruins. Something that was not full of odd contraptions, some of which she was sure were made to kill people; something that did not press down upon her like the weight of the world was being forced upon her spindly shoulders; something that was not full of a mist that seemed heavier than such air ought to be; something without shapes and melodies that pervaded her eyes and haunted her ears.

It did not take long, but she now knew it. She knew the ruins like she had the cove... And she hated it too.

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[Liam]

Stupid, Brainless, Pompous, Idiot, Of, A Man… Liam chanted to himself, his berations snapping through his thoughts in time with his weary footsteps. Save money! he thought bitterly to himself, Don’t bother with a navigator, just steal a map and find it yourself! Can’t be that hard…

“Idiot,” he snarled.

With a heavy sigh, he stopped and peered up at the low ceiling of grey clouds. Did the sun ever shine in this wretched place? He’d been trudging around on this blasted heap of dirt for the better part of two days, and not once had he seen even the merest glimpse of sunshine. The only indication it was actually daytime was the fact he could more or less see the gloopy muck that covered his feet. And the singing wasn’t as frequent.

He shivered as he remembered the sound of the beautifully haunting voices from the previous night. He knew what sort of beast issued sounds like that, and he quickly closed his ears with small bits of fabric torn from the inside of his vest. If he were to fall under the spell of that voice, he knew there would be no reawakening. It was a little sad that he couldn’t listen to the beautiful voice, though.

The most mellifluous, soothing voice in the world couldn’t make up for the lack of civilization, however.

Pulling his foot from the soggy ground with a wet schloop, the thief grimaced and wondered again why he hadn’t just parted with his ill-begotten coin and paid for a navigator to get him to Adea.

He was fairly certain he’d missed his mark.

After crashing his small, stolen craft upon the rocky shores of the Ruins two days ago and resigning to the fact that his little ship would sail no more, he’d set out across the islands in search of another port. There had to be at least one. Even if the miserable place was inhabited terrible, bloodthirsty creatures who would sooner each his face off than look at him, people must surely be somewhere on the island. There was no such thing as a completely uninhabited continent anymore.

At least that’s what he repeated to himself like a prayer as he slogged through the muck. Glaring up ahead of him, he noticed the bones of another crumbled old ruin and decided to take a rest over there and eat some of what he’d brought with him from the shipwreck.

Concentrating on taking each step rather than the distance it was to his temporary shelter, Liam growled at the ground. “Stupid. Bloody. Sodding. Nature,” he panted.

“I. Hate. Nature.”