Some things were constant across a lot of worlds. The nightlife in a rather seedy town seemed to be one of them.
Well, sort of. Toinette felt like she had stumbled into one of those museums Julius had dragged her to, twice. The level of tech was what Toinette would call ‘boring ass backward’. No electricity, no vehicles, and by extension no televisions and all that jazz. The town was made up of buildings forged of stone, wood, and straw. If Toinette had any care for such things, she would have found the stonework was sublime in its design, more like the buildings had been crafted by hand manipulating clay instead of mining out big rocks and sort of stacking them on each other where they fit. But she didn’t, so she didn’t.
No matter where she went though, some things always tended to catch eyes. And wearing an outfit like the one Toinette had ‘borrowed’ was one of them. It was an outfit designed by someone who might have a little too much obsession with spiders. It covered her body by dint of a lot of crisscrossing leather straps, and didn’t leave much to the imagination - probably because the aforementioned designer didn’t have much of one. Toinette liked it a lot, even though she'd had to do a lot of work to get it to fit her body. There was more Chastity in the world than Toinette.
Unfortunately, it mostly seemed to make the people she were meeting, who tended to top off at ‘rough’, think she was a woman of the night of a different fashion.
“Back off”, she snarled, batting away what felt like the twentieth hand. Okay, maybe this wasn’t the way to fit in. But she didn’t really have much choice in clothing options - it was this or something REALLY incongruous. She picked up her pace and hoped to leave the latest annoyance behind.
Unfortunately, again...in a place like this...there was an extremely dark take on the phrase ‘won’t take no for an answer’, as she rapidly realized she was being followed. And not in a “appreciate the view’ sense.
Suddenly Chastity’s assessment of the state of the town made a little more sense. And unfortunately, Chastity did not stock spare weapons.
Toinette sighed internally. Looks like it was time to cause a scene.
She threw a glance back over her shoulder, to let them know the she knew she was being followed, and then headed into the nearest alleyway. It was cramped and stunk of basically every body fluid a human had to offer, but it'd do. She waited until she heard footsteps behind her.
This could only go one way, and it wasn't theirs. Astra fizzled at her fingertips.
Apparently, they were not so unprepared that they just walked into anything. No. They gleaned she was going to fight, and one whipped a rock at her head with a sling.
She caught it, an alien smirk on her features. The men wondered what had happened in that intervening split second.
“Look,” she said, “you bastards ever read a shitty fantasy novel? 'cause here’s how things go…”
Toinette changed. The men saw her grow taller, become more beautiful, filling out the hastily adjusted outfit. But then her features became thin, fox-like, her body taking strange proportions…
Then there were stars.
Passers-by became aware something was very wrong when an arm, Astra still corroding up the bone and flesh, sailed out of the alleyway and landed jauntily in a fruit merchant's crate of apples.
They rapidly decided it was not their problem, and it would be even more not their problem if they cleared out. Well, at least SOME people had gotten a clue she wasn’t someone to mess with.
There had been a few shocked words from the men. They’d TRIED to defend themselves, one had even made his little axe glow green, but they were too slow and their defenses had proven to be...porous at best. Toinette had caught snatches of words, stuff like ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Skin Weaver’, not that she had any context for such terms. Still, no sense letting a few assholes ruin the night. Assholes were another thing that was constant, after all.
Oh wait, one person was still around. The fruit merchant. He didn’t look scared. In fact, he just looked resigned. He’d clearly seen it all. Yeah, he was definitely old and weathered enough to have seen it all. Would explain why he was doing business in this seedy town at night.
“You just ruined m’whole batch, y’know. What is this shit and why did you have to dump it on my fruit?”
Toinette emerged, back to normal and looking sheepish.
“Uh, sorry. Don't touch that. Unless you want another arm. Which might help you, actually!” He didn't look amused. “Sorry.”
She gingerly lifted the arm from the apples and dropped it on the floor. It hissed in the mud.
“Is everyone like that here?” She asked, for lack of better topics. “I really don't want to spend most of my day murdering people.”
“Why in the nine damnations would you be wandering around in Gaudyns at night wearing THAT then?”
“I like leather.” Toinette shrugged.
“...motherloving Blackbirds...you going to pay for my fruit or am I out three days work?”
“Oh yeah.” Toinette mimed reaching behind her for a purse that she didn't have. When she held her hand out, six gold coins winked up at him. “Uh, will that do? I'm not big on the exchange rates…”
“I swear if these turn into mud when you leave...mrgrgr.” It was clear the old man was basically stuck at taking her at her word. But he accepted the coins.
“They won't!” Toinette was not a trickster. Well, uh, not anymore. Those coins would remain good as real. For a long time. They'd probably revert back to mud in a rich man’s bank account somewhere, at which point nobody would be paying attention to six gold coins
She kept telling herself this as she went down the street again, looking for something or someone to do. There did not appear to be many options. The men had proven themselves to be terrible, and she supposed the only other entertainment here was getting drunk. Which was what had caused this mess in the first place.
She walked on, daring something to interest her.
Well, seedy place or not, that didn’t mean they didn’t have good bars. Or taverns, technically.
The one Toinette found was called the Needling Tooth. Compared to the unpleasant dark menace of the streets, it was lit and noisy. Looks like they did have parties even back at this corner of the world. You just had to look around.
Nice.
Toinette grinned and headed in.
The next few hours were blurry. Despite her previous worry, she drank a whole lot. She found a nice girl called Kamilla. She drank some more. She found another nice girl called Amber and introduced her to Kamilla. She drank a lot more. She danced on a table. She met yet another nice girl called Ellie, who was very interesting and also got along well with Amber and Kamilla. She drank yet more.
She woke up upside down. Her feet were tied together, and the rope used to do it was hung on a meat hook.
“For fuck’s sake,” she groaned.
At least she didn’t have a hangover.
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