As I made my way ho, my mind worked overti concerning everything that had just happened. The riccen leader had been aware of , but for how long? Surely, he would have known I watched from up in the rafters several nights earlier. Was that whole heist a setup to test and lure in? Did he plan to either eliminate or make his ally from the start? I knew not the answers, but the implications as to how far this all went unsettled . I would leave the repairs and cleaning for later, unless I fancied Chooka biting my head off when I returned ho. I was already half an hour late for our alone ti together, and no doubt she would be worrying.
I made my way quickly from rooftop to rooftop, trying to recover lost ti that I normally would have spent walking. I knew I would not be able to explain away the state of my outfit, but frankly, I fully intended to tell her everything that had gone down. We did not keep secrets between us outside of the things we just cannot tell each other, and tonight offered no reason for to start such a bad habit.
While bounding along from one rooftop to another, I saw a gno in the process of being mugged by an orc. The gno wore a ridiculously large hat, as all gnos I have seen tend to do, this one similar to a sombrero, but far too big for what he would need, as gnos are wont to do. Already late, I hesitated about getting involved. Were it just a shakedown, I would probably have kept going, but the glint of steel in the orc's hand told that a life may be lost just because I wanted to get ho and indulge in companionship.
In no mood for subtlety or manners, I turned around, leaping three stories down to land on the orc's shoulders, the impact driving him into the ground. Reaching down, I grabbed the hand that held the knife, and wrenching horribly upon it, dislocated his shoulder. Not satisfied, and still holding onto his arm, I stomped my foot down at his elbow, bending his arm the wrong way and leaving the thug in a sorry state. He probably would have dropped the knife had my grip on his hand been lax, but as it stood, I was but a hair away from crushing the bones in his hand. The orc roared in pain, but with a jab to the back of his skull, I deftly knocked him out. The gno, eyes wide with terror and wonder, stared at . I stared back for a mont, then nodded, and continued upon my way, not bothering to look back.
I arrived at my ho about forty minutes late. I could see the light from the window, so Chooka was either there, or The Boys learned how to turn lights on. I made my way quietly through the hallways, doing my best not to wake anyone up. As I entered my room, I beheld a displeased Chooka sitting on my bed, with The Boys asleep at the foot of it. Her expression softened, then turned to concern as she examined over.
"By the gods, what happened?" she inquired with rising concern as she rushed over to et . "Your clothes are torn to shreds and there's blood everywhere! Are you alright?"
"Those rchants really don't like it when you finish your contract at the last minute," I joked as I hugged her close. "Well, that is what I would like to say, but the truth is a bit more wild, if you are of mind to hear it."
Assured that I was not going to keel over dead or unconscious, Chooka pulled over to the bed and sat us down together, our bodies facing each other slightly.
"Of course I want to know, tell everything!"
And so I filled her in about everything that had happened that night, sparing no details and sharing what I felt about it all. She listened with concern, her expression alternating between being impressed, worried, and proud.
"And then I opened the door to my ho, and my mistress wanted to know what happened, so I started to fill her in, and this is what I said to her…"
She stopped there, a smile finally creeping upon her face. She pulled over to the washbasin and gingerly started to remove my clothes. With tender care, she washed down with a sponge and she planted a kiss at each of the now clean spots that had been the bloodiest. No scars or signs remained that I had ever been wounded thanks to the quality of my healing Abilities. The washbasin's contents could have been mistaken for blood itself, such was the depth of crimson that reflected back by the ti she finished.
"Those kisses of yours are pretty good," I comnted with playful sincerity. "Now that all my wounds are taken care of, perhaps there are a few more places you could apply your kisses."
"Here?" she asked coyly as she kissed my chest. "What about here?"
She continued working her way down, stopping where her efforts would be best appreciated. We spent an hour more indulging similar desires after the conclusion of that deed, with favors returned with interest back and forth.
And so we slept our last night in the dorms. Bright and early on the following morning, we finalized the sale of the house. It took only one trip to move everything to it, mostly thanks to my pocket dinsion. I experienced a great sapping of my strength when I packed up my hoard. Nausea plagued during the entire transfer process, the intensity of discomfort such that I would probably never move my hoard that way ever again. Chooka noticed, and I assured her that I would feel better once we could unpack it. With haste, we made our way to our new ho with The Boys following closely behind, each head excited to go on a walk to new territory as they sniffed and inspected everything they could while still keeping pace.
Our new ho had two main floors and an attic. The ground floor contained a kitchen and a living area, the upstairs two smaller bedrooms and a master bedroom, and the attic was but one single room under a triangular roof. The walls and the floor of the first floor were mostly stone, with the roof itself being tiled slate, as were most roofs in the city. The backyard contained room for drying clothes, a fully stocked woodpile, a storage shed, and a natural spring that flowed around the house and down a slight hill into the pond. The exterior of the property was lined with a fence as ntioned earlier, but also with trees set back a ways to offer a degree of shade and privacy. The whole estate was but two stone throws wide and three long. Well, not as far as I could throw a stone, that would be absurd, but for what a normal man could muster.
The Boys wasted no ti diving headfirst into the pond. Apparently it was not deep enough for them to completely subrge with necks stretched down, for a stubby tail extended out of the water and wiggled around with fervor. They promptly uprighted themselves and proceeded splashing about and making their claim to it.
I lingered to watch only briefly, for I felt a little green around the gills. I used the smaller bedroom on the wall away from the main gate to the property to be my treasury for my hoard as well as so of my spending funds. I showed it to Chooka, so that she would not grab the wrong coins by mistake. I had placed the money to be spent in a small and locked chest, with each of us having a key to it. I kept most of my spending money in my pocket dinsion, so this was only for Chooka to spend on things needed around the house.
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We had already purchased most of what we would need to furnish and decorate the place, and by noon, Chooka had led around and showed where she wanted everything. I obediently t her demands, as I was not nearly as particular as she was about such aesthetics.
She made lunch, the first of many in our new ho. Chooka was a good cook, and to her credit, there were not many things she was bad at doing. By virtue of her Blessing as a [Courtesan], she had the ability to branch out and beco skilled in any number of tasks that would help keep a lover happy and entertained, and good food and the preparation thereof certainly fell in that category. I was not exactly a slouch at cooking, but I reminded myself at that mont that I would need to study with other cooks if I were to prepare a good surprise dinner for her soti. The harder part would probably involve finding such an opportunity, as she loved doing everything she could around the house. Such is the nature of Blessings, that people beco almost addicted to the fulfillnt of their nature, and homaking was certainly core to hers.
After eating, we checked in on the Boys. They slumbered peacefully, with only their heads resting outside the pond and upon the shoreline, the rest of their body blissfully subrged. The festival would not begin until sundown, and with naught else to do until then, and with our house and new bed not broken in, Chooka and I spent the rest of the afternoon indulging passions that would wake the neighbors were we still in the dorms. With her appetite for such a pasti at least sated long enough for us to enjoy the festivities of the evening, we cleaned and dolled ourselves up.
Chooka wore black boots with red and blue striped stockings that went halfway up her thigh. Garter straps connected her stockings to low-cut shorts that I would have sworn were only slightly longer than her normal underwear. She wore two belts, one red and one blue, each fastened at one hip and hung low on the other, there more for fashion than useful purpose. She also wore a black leather jacket, unbuttoned, with no shirt underneath, along with red fingerless gloves. Naturally, she wore her bracelet, as she never took it off, not even to bathe. Her tail, which was rather thin and hung down almost to the ground, was sheathed in material much like the stocking, with only the last few inches of it hanging out uncovered. She also wore a choker of black leather, about two fingers wide, complete with tal studs.
I wore black pants sowhere between pantaloons and trousers, loose enough to provide comfort, but tight enough to not look ridiculous, which was secured by a yellow belt with black trim. I put on black boots that rose to mid calf, with yellow cloth wrappings over the top of my boots and the bottom of my pants. I also wore a form-fitting, black, long sleeve shirt, over which I wore a black leather jacket with yellow trim and decoration. My brooch took its rightful place on my shirt, but centered just below my neck where one could see it unobscured by the jacket. The jacket could always be lost or taken off for one reason or another, so I aid to wear the brooch in such a way to ensure that it would not be lost, but it would yet remain visible.
Any observer would clearly be able to tell that we each preferred a certain color palette for our outfits. I did not wear any weapons, for I could easily draw them from my pocket dinsion if needed, but Chooka wore a dagger on the outer side of each of her thighs. The daggers quickly disappeared from view, each one and their various straps being enchanted to be invisible when sheathed, which is common for magical daggers. During that ti that they were visible, I could see that each one was as beautiful as it was deadly. The daggers I an, not her thighs, but I guess the description matches both equally well. Given that we normally each wore our gorgets from the Guild, most people would not bat an eye at her walking around ard. Chooka herself was a Silver, sowhere near the middle of the pack for that rating. However, we left our gorgets behind since this was a festival.
And so near sundown, we woke The Boys and headed into the market district of downtown. We wanted The Boys to tag along in part because we never wanted to leave them unattended, and in part because we had not fed them yet that day and wanted them to indulge in festival food. Chooka had instructed to that end, for with a mischievous smile, she had promised that they would co in useful. I had to have a serious conversation with The Boys to behave themselves and to not eat anything unless instructed, with the promise that they would eat their fill. Plato had nodded in understanding, and I trusted him to keep the other two in line as I privately felt pride, wonder, and horror at their intelligence. If I had known just how much those clever rascals could comprehend, I would probably have been able to register them as Adventurers in their own right, for they outpaced seemingly half of the others I had t in terms of intellectual prowess. To be fair, a lot of what The Boys could do was by virtue of my Skills invested in them, but the descriptions of those Skills just never did justice to what they could pull off.
I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to see such large crowds gathered. Well, not that shocked, for the buildup for this festival had been ongoing since at least the day I arrived in town back in early spring. Most people who were not working vital jobs, such as the poor bastards on guard duty on the city walls, were here, ready and eager to engage in rrymaking. More races of man and beast were present than I have the fingers and toes to count on, all of which seed to be getting along rather well, perhaps none more so than the miccen and riccen.
Rumors flowed through the crowd faster than ale. I overheard one miccen speak of a monster half again taller than a man, with black eyes, his body covered in shadow, blood, and torn clothing, that stalked the night to bring evildoers low with his wicked claws. Others spoke of war to the south, and yet more spoke of one [Demon King] or another on the march. A dwarf with a dad bod told what must have been other dads that so monsters were hard to find any more while others seed to be behind every rock and tree, all the while tiny dwarf children ran around them and crawled between their legs. More mundane rumors also spread, like ones about crop failure in cities to the west, or how a local lord was to be wed soon, or how one of the bar wenches was starting to show noticeably that she was in the motherly way. I overheard many rumors, oftentis the sa ones, with each telling proving more embellished than the last.
As the last vestiges of sunlight capitulated to the creeping darkness of night, the crowd had gathered before a stage set up in the market square. Upon the stage, at a very short podium, stood an old gno, wearing an overly large ten-gallon hat and whatever other horrors he may have dredged from the foul recesses of his closet, all of which was colored in the yellows and tans of cheese. Behind him stood a giant platter, with the radius of a man's height, upon which were piled various wedges of fake cheese, each one shining with a tallic hue.
In accordance with tradition, the old gno gave the most dull and boring of speeches, droning on and on, with the history of the festival and the importance of proper cheese curd handling techniques being the only topics even close to interesting. After a few minutes, riccen thieves, well, while most likely actual thieves, but dressed comically so as to exaggerate their craft, would sneak onto the stage and steal these wedges of cheese, with each theft prompting a quiet chant of "cheese" from the crowd. As ti progressed, the application of larceny beca more extravagant, with riccen rappelling down from a tightrope that had been stretched across the square, to ones pretending to be mind controlled thralls retrieving the cheese for their masters. The old gno, for his part, never noticed, and in about ten minutes, the last piece of cheese was stolen, accompanied with everyone cheering "CHEESE" at the top of their lungs.
Thus began the opening ceremony of the festival, with many comnting that this year's speech was particularly boring, a fair improvent from the one five years ago, which had been too upbeat. Chooka had inford that the stolen cheese wedges would be stashed around the festival area throughout the duration of the celebration, and that those who could find these special tokens could redeem them for prizes. Hordes of children surged forth into the streets, each searching high and low for these tokens, with adults chuckling to themselves, each smug in the wisdom that the fake cheese had not been hidden yet.
With The Boys following behind, Chooka took by the hand to lead over to a kiosk that outlined the schedule of events. With excitent bordering on giddiness, she pointed out an event that she wanted us to go to, one that was but an hour away. Intrigued, I promised her we would go, and nearly bouncing along, she pulled from one stall to the next.
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