Scadrial Thread

[+Invocation]

1 hour ago, ZincAboutIt said:

”Does this mean everything is done, then? Will anyone else be using this place as a battleground for your war? We paid for safety; is there anything more your people want from me?”

Lance took a while to answer, still staring out at the mists. He felt stretched. Maybe he'd finally taken on too much. Maybe it would finally catch up with him.  

"I have done," Lance sighed eventually, "what I can. They won't bother you." Hopefully. "But that's as much as I can offer for now. The only step beyond this..." his chest throbbed in time with his heartbeat, as it always did when his thoughts strayed this direction. Oh the things he'd do to protect more people. "The only step beyond this is one that I am not willing to take."

[+ZincAboutIt]

Nerin watched him for a moment, surprised when his face turned pensive, thoughtful. Tired. It was a far sight from his usual smirk, or the towering rage she'd seen him in once or twice before. The expression made him look more human, more real. Nerin sighed, then nodded. "Understood."

The blood on her hands had dried, and was beginning to crack and flake. She knelt down near the edge of the roof and scrubbed her palms along the roofing tiles absently, still watching Lance.

"You're not a Mistborn, are you?" She said softly. "You're something else. You found a way to have more than one Allomantic power."

Nerin let the question hang in the air, still watching him, feeling the rage leak out of her body leaving only the cold behind. She stoked the brass fire within her, sending out a light Soothing towards Lance while knowing it wouldn't work. Still, she sent it. It was nice to feel something, even if it was only the metal burning within her stomach.

@Invocation

[+Invocation]

Lance snorted. "Mistborn? Me? Far from it. Maybe if..." he shook himself free of that melancholic train of thought. "No, I'm not. I didn't find it, either. It found me." For once, he revelled in the sensation Nerin's Soothing gave him, tapping no determination.

"There's always something else out there, you know? Something that will always find us."

What would you give, Mister Rapis, do be able to have more power?

Anything within my means.

A mistake.

@ZincAboutIt

 

Edited January 27, 2020 by Invocation

[+ZincAboutIt]

Nerin laughed a quiet, bitter laugh.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, there is."

She sighed, then tucked her knees up under her chin, still sending out her little Soothing. "I should leave this place," she mused. "There's enough aluminum in the walls to get me a new life somewhere. New Seran, maybe. I always heard it was nice there."

It was an empty dream, but she let it play through the mist for a bit all the same. She looked at Lance, still staring pensively across the way. Nerin rolled her eyes, then patted the roof beside her.

"Keep a lady company, would you? It's tiresome to have a conversation across an alleyway. Besides, I've got a feeling you haven't paid for that balcony room over there."

@Invocation

[+Invocation]

"Running from your problems doesn't get you anywhere except a one-way ticket to Ironeyes," Lance said, hopping over the balcony railing and onto the parlor's roof and lowering himself down beside her. "Not that I have any particular reason to be lecturing about that." He smirked slightly, hoping she missed the grimace moving his leg caused, but still staring out over the mists. "And of course I didn't pay for that room. It's my building."

"Selling that aluminum would be a bad idea, Nerin. All that would do is draw attention to you. Where would you get rid of that much aluminum at? You'd bankrupt half the noble houses in the city trying it. Plus, then what you do? New Seran can be nice, but you'd always be looking over your shoulder. What happens then? When all of this catches up to you just when you forget to check?

"That threat will always be there." Lance mentally chided himself. Who was he to be talking about this? The people he'd known, the things he'd done, they might have told him these things, but he still wasn't beyond doing it again. Why should he lay that weight on Nerin? He should have taken the offer he'd been handed months ago. He'd have been gone, but at least he'd have been beyond all this. The rest didn't come back from that, and he was still feeling the weight. 

He knew he wouldn't have made it back either, but at least he could have tried.

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

Nerin bit her lip at the truth in Lance's words. Of course, selling that much aluminum would be insanity. Besides, she didn't even know if Jeb had owned the building - perhaps it belonged to some nobleman somewhere, and he was just leasing it.

Another debt to pay, with money I don't have. 

She slid her two pins out of her hair, letting the dark strands fall over her face before raking them back with her fingers, trying to work through all the things she had to do, the people who were depending on her, the world that was steadily crumbling around her.

"I know," she said finally, looking up at Lance, feeling as though this would probably be a decent time to begin crying - if she had any tears left. She did not.

"Life is a game, and for a long time, I thought that I could hold my own. I knew what I was; I accepted my place in society. I thought that knowledge gave me power, gave me an edge." She snorted in derision, flicking a piece of gravel off the roof and watching it disappear into the mist. 

"I'm losing this game, Lance." Nerin could hear the frustration in her voice, some of the anger creeping back. "I was never even playing this game. I was just too insignificant to be noticed as a piece, until now. And when your gang wins, everything is going to go back to the way it was - except I'll have no money to pay your tithe, because who wants to visit a parlor where the previous owner was -"

Nerin cut off, feeling a sudden wave of vertigo. She reached out a hand to steady herself, blinking at the dark fog that had crept into the edges of her vision. Breathe, Nerin.

"I have no leverage, Mister Rapis," she said, voice tight, vision still cloudy and dark. "I'm just a whore's daughter with a little Brass. If I can't be useful to your people, what's to stop someone from coming back here and carving me into the floor?"

@Invocation

[+Invocation]

Lance hesitated. "I know. It doesn't feel like you have power enough to do anything. Not having enough money to do the things you want to do. No resources able to lift that melancholy. Your past haunting you forever, weights on your ankle in a sea of things you can't quite handle. Other people directing your every move.

"Never feeling like you're enough.

"I know."

Lance grabbed her shoulders and pulled her into a close hug, acutely aware that she just had a dagger in her hand but deciding to take the risk anyway. "Trust me, I know."

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

Nerin started when Lance abruptly grabbed her shoulders, mouth already half open to scream as she envisioned getting thrown off the roof. Instead, he pulled her close, and Nerin found her cheek pressed against his collarbone as he wrapped his arms around her. There was a moment of disoriented panic as her mind raced to catch up with her body, but she could already feel herself relaxing a little, her spine curving in to accommodate his arms, her neck tilting as she released some of the tension in her shoulders. 

Harmony, how long had it been since someone had held her? Lance was warm and solid, a place of reality and surety in the cool, misty night. He smelled clean and sharp, like a forest in autumn, like pine needles crushed underfoot. She would have expected something darker, more foreboding, like oud wood or black amber. But then again, there was much about Lance that was unexpected. It fit him; he, too, was a tall tree in a wild wind, watching the world from a great height. Nerin breathed deeply, and for a moment she felt truly safe in a way that she hadn't since she was a girl. She pushed her own calm outward, wishing to impart some of this gift back to the man before her, smoothing away sorrow and regret, hesitation and suspicion. Mist churned around her as she did so, making the roof feel like the only piece of existence left in a sea of grey and white.

Her arms followed her body, and she moved slowly, her left arm snaking beneath his mistcoat and around til her hand reached his back, returning the hug. Her right hand slid up the front of Lance's waistcoat; she could hear his heartbeat, strong and even against her shoulder. Nerin wanted to feel it beneath her palm, feel something real, something alive --

Nerin felt her hand graze over something hard and circular, and she paused for a moment, a drop of tension returning. A pocketwatch? But no, there was no pocket on this side of his waistcoat, and this thing felt flush with his ribs, pushed up against them as though pasted on.

Or hammered in. Nerin recalled, suddenly, Brillin's comments earlier that day about Koloss spikes. Pieces of metal that granted the bearer extra power. She traced its outline with two fingers, shocked at its size. Something like this should have killed him outright.

"This is what found you, isn't it?" She whispered, not willing to break away just yet, still maintaining her Soothing for whatever it was worth. Nerin knew she ought to be afraid, but she was so tired of fear.

@Invocation

[+Sorana]

On 25.1.2020 at 1:27 AM, ZincAboutIt said:

"Attayl, Brillin," she spoke into the misty night, her voice still soft and even. "I believe the linens on my bed are already soaked in blood from yesterday. You can use them to carry this out to the back yard. It won't do to keep this out on the porch."

Attayl nodded wordlessly, watched Nerin stride off to talk to Lance. Based on their earlier interaction, she knew that it should be Nerin talking, it was her parlor and there was something else that might work in their favor. Still it felt wrong to stay back. She wanted to help, and as hard as it was. Maybe helping included staying back for once. With a sigh she picked up the bloody box and carried in out into the back yard, unwilling to leave it here for the time being.

Walking up into Nerin's room she fetched the bloody sheets and then returned downwards, wrapped the bloody head and carefully placed it in another, clean box. It was easy to leave a little sign on the wall, and she remembered it vivdly, had used it too often before. She added two more signs and then placed a few coins as payment. The head would be gone in the morning, swallowed by the city and those keeping it clean.

When she walked back inside she made a stop in the kitchen and set some water to boil after thoroughly cleaning her hands. Then she filled two glasses for Nerin and Brillin, sticking to the alcohol both had drunk the previous day and poured herself some tea. Sitting down at one of the tables she looked at the wall, lost herself in her thoughts. It was a mess, and she could leave now. With Willet gone, there were no ties holding her back anymore, nothing. She could leave, vanish and be never seen again. Staring at the wall and taking a sip of tea now and then Attayl waited, her thoughts whirling around leaving and staying and the quiet wish, that this was over soon.

[+Invocation]

Lance shuddered at the touch that rimmed his spike. If she wanted, she could - no. He had to trust her now. It'd gone too far to try to avoid that now. "Yes," he replied, volume matched to Nerin's whisper. "Yes it is." And someone had to die for you to get it, Lance. When are you going to mention that? That idea was absurd. He couldn't tell anyone about that. He'd be counted an accessory to murder, a murder that couldn't be explained away as self-defense. He had more things to do before meeting his end at the hands of a firing squad.

There was always something more.

"It wasn't worth it."

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

Nerin shifted up a little, her mind a haze of curiosity and odd, jumbled emotions. She still kept her hand over the metal disc, as though her continued touch on it might prove its existence.

"Can I - "

She stopped speaking almost immediately, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. 'Can I see it?' Really, Nerin, just asking a man to take off his clothes and display some kind of morbid piercing at your whims? What is the matter with you?

"I-I'm sorry," she stammered, looking up to realize that she was still inches from Lance's face. Harmony's bands, she was lucky that the mist was so cool, otherwise Nerin was sure her face would catch fire. "We should have a drink. I mean, we - I..."

Nerin focused on the swirling pattern of the mask right between Lance's eyes, forcing herself to regain some kind of hold on her wits. She cleared her throat. "Perhaps you could join us for supper, and we can discuss what to do next. I imagine it would be rather novel for you to be properly invited into my parlor. Though you could always drop in through another window if you'd like. I wouldn't want you to get bored."

You're still touching him, Nerin. She ignored the little voice, and put on her most charming smile.

@Invocation

[+Invocation]

Lance grabbed Nerin's hand and guided it under his shirt to the perpetual coldness of the spike between his ribs. "Normally it's look, don't touch, but might as well shake it up." He winced a little as the action put too much weight on his wrong leg. "I also tend to charge for this kind of experience. You're a lucky woman, Nerin."

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

Nerin drew in a sharp breath when Lance took her hand - and promptly lost the ability to breathe at all when he guided it up under his shirt. His fingers were tight around her wrist and pressed against the back of her hand, sliding her palm up until she felt it there, a disc of icy cold nestled between two of his ribs. His skin felt white hot in comparison, and that heat traveled through her fingers and up her arm, a wave of warmth that made her shudder.

He was speaking, and Nerin forced her mind to process the words. "I also tend to charge for this kind of experience. You're a lucky woman, Nerin."

She very nearly nodded her head in agreement, her eyes flicking between his face and the taut expanse of skin visible where her hand had dragged up the hem of his shirt. Nerin caught herself just in time; it was getting quite difficult to think through the deafening sound of her heartbeat.

"As I keep having to remind people," she said, amazed that her tongue still worked at all, "this isn't that kind of parlor."

Nerin attempted to put some acid into the remark, but it came out as little more than a murmur. She stared up at his face, still half-concealed beneath the mask, his eyes keen and intense behind the purple lenses. He shifted his weight a little, bringing him even closer, and she caught a flicker of pain cross his face when he leaned onto his leg. She frowned, looking down, the fingertips of her right hand pressing into his skin a bit in reflex, as if to hold onto him.

She looked back to his face, recalling Willet's head in the box on the porch. "You're hurt, aren't you?"

@Invocation

[+Invocation]

"Just a little. Bastard grazed my leg before I could get him down. I've survived worse." The wince on his face and the tightness of his voice belayed the otherwise cavalier words.

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

Nerin looked back down at his leg, but couldn't make out any blood against his black trousers. It had to be worse than he made it seem though; his jaw was tight against whatever pain he was feeling. 

Do something, Nerin. She should help him back into the parlor, clean his wound and stitch it up before it turned nasty. But she did none of those things, unwilling to move her hand from the heat of his chest. It was cold up here on the roof - true night had fallen, and the mist hung thick around them, turning the Hollows into a shifting dream world. Lance was warm, and real, and here. 

"Can't have you dying," she said softly. "You still owe me a dance, after all. We wouldn't want you to go breaking your word."

Her left hand had somehow ended up on his knee, though she couldn't recall directing it there. She stared up into his eyes, feeling drunk on the smell of pine and woodsmoke and wet, misty air. Her heart was so loud, surely he could hear it. 

This is ridiculous, the shrinking logical portion of her mind protested. Get up!

"Well," Nerin whispered. "Let's get you taken care of, then."

@Invocation

Edited January 29, 2020 by ZincAboutIt

[+Invocation]

About half an hour later, Lance walked into the parlor, having left Nerin to walk back inside from the roof at her own request (surprisingly using the front door for once), with his trademark swagger and bravado pulled firmly back into place and a slight bounce in his step as he spun into the main room and directly into a chair. "So, how about that package?"

@Sorana @ZincAboutIt @Ookla the Maybe-Existent

[+ZincAboutIt]

Nerin slipped back in through Jeb's window and crossed silently through the darkened room. She noted the smears of blood on the doorknob and looked back to her hands. A few flakes of red remained in the lines of her palms; she wiped them on her dress, which was still damp from the mist. Nerin pulled her hair back into its half-tail, sliding the pins into place and smoothing her hands over the front of her skirt. She could hear Lance's voice downstairs, and she attempted to ignore the tingling shiver that ran over her skin at the sound. Nerin allowed herself one long, languid stretch and a little smile before she descended into the parlor proper and crossed towards the kitchen.

Lance had seated himself at the table with Attayl, who had - bless her - set out at least one drink. One look at Lance's masked, smirking face told her she'd be needing it. Nerin ducked behind the bar and opened a few drawers before she found Jeb's old leather medical bag. There would be bandages at least, something clean, and probably a little bottle of clear liquor to wash the wound. She heaved the bag out of its place in the cupboard and carried it over towards the table, setting it down and picking up one of the clear glasses of whiskey.

"Don't let the swagger fool you," she said to Attayl, looking Lance square in the face as she took a sip. "He's been shot."

@Invocation @Sorana 

[+Invocation]

2 hours ago, ZincAboutIt said:

"Don't let the swagger fool you," she said to Attayl, looking Lance square in the face as she took a sip. "He's been shot."

Lance tipped his head equivocally. "True enough, but it isn't the first time, and after the wonderful preliminary care I got," he paused to take a swig from a flask that had been stowed away in his coat and wink gently at Nerin, "how could I even feel such a small thing as a bullet wound?"

Edited February 17, 2020 by Invocation

[+Sorana]

Attayl had looked up when Lance entered the room, but she kept quiet until Nerin had arrived as well, and they were all sitting together at the table. Wordlessly she stood up and fetched more glasses as well as a bottle, and deliberatetly placed them on the table between them.

"What do you expect?" She asked Lance while she poured him a drink. "That I start crying at the sight of a bloody head?" She rested her eyes on him, for once not looking away. She had cowered her whole life had served those in power only to stay a life and here, in this moment she found herself looking up.

"Do you really think you idea is so original that nobody ever did it before?" Sitting down again she lifted her own glass and took a sip, taking her time. Her eyes never left his face and she found iritation dripping into her voice. "You can stop playing your game." She informed him, growing tired of his parading around. "I know how this works. You need to maintain your facade in front of the others. You'll stay here for a while, make sure everybody on the streets will know. Throw a little flirting into the mix, preferably with a happy end as that will give you some more leverage."

Her hand flicked out towards the door. "The head as a symbol of power, same as the paint you leave on the walls around the place. You need to establish yourself as protector, need to demonstrate that you are the stronger horse around, or the others will prey on you."

She took another sip, the alcohol warming her insides. "Stay here for a while if you need it for your presentation, but then you can leave. You were the one who dragged us into this conflict, don't try to be the benevolent  guy that helps us out now." She could leave if she wanted to. Her ties were cut. She could leave this place behind, leave it all behind. Later. Once she made sure that Nerin was safe.

Leaning forward she put her mouth close to his ear, lowered her voice until it was barely a whisper. "And if you hurt her, instrumentalize her, I will hang you up from your intestines."

@Invocation

[+ZincAboutIt]

Nerin stayed quiet as Attayl spoke, poking through the medical bag and setting each item she might need down on the table. The girl was growing ever bolder, and it at once cheered Nerin and sobered her. She said nothing, but flicked her eyes between the two of them, watching for something to turn dangerous.

Nerin kept her brass off, but was ready in case things got heated. She’d stopped Soothing Lance sometime during the last half an hour, though she couldn’t quite recall exactly when. Two spots of gentle heat tickled her upper cheeks as she set out a roll of bandages, and she took another small sip of whiskey. 

What she wanted was to get drunk - hell, all of them should be drunk after the day they’d had. But if Lance’s wound ended up needing stitches, she had to go about it with a clear head. She felt an irrational, foolish spike of cold fear when Attayl told Lance he could leave after this business was over, which she smothered immediately in irritation. Of course he would be leaving after this was over, and she’d be glad to see him go. 

Nerin watched as Attayl leaned over to Lance and whispered something into his ear. She looked down, focusing her attention on listening, and caught enough words to get even more annoyed. Her mouth pressed into a thin line, and she glared down into her glass. Did she appear so helpless that some street girl felt the need to play the protective chaperone? Nerin may not have spent the last years plying her trade dockside but she was hardly some naive, fresh-faced maiden at her first formal party. 

Nerin set her glass down a little too hard and looked down at Lance’s wounded leg. “Right,” she said. “I’ll need to cut your trousers a bit to see the wound properly. I can sew them back up afterwards.”

She pulled a pair of sharp scissors from within the bag, along with a small towel and the bottle of clear liquor. “This isn’t for drinking, but you’ll probably want to start.” 

Nerin pointed at the glass of whiskey, then  knelt down by the side of Lance’s chair, wincing a bit at some bruise on her knee she had somehow missed and brandishing the scissors at his inevitable smirking. Just before she made the first cut, Nerin stopped and looked around, realizing that something was missing.

”Where is Brillin?”

@Invocation @Sorana

[+Invocation]

Lance smirked at Attayl's words and looped an arm around her shoulders companionably, subtly Pulling Nerin's scissors into his other hand as he did so. "You want to threaten me? I could slash your throat and physically nail you, hand and foot, to a wall before you could react and no one would fault me. Most people wouldn't question it. 'Just another victim of the Farriers' is all you'd be known by. You want to try it?" He rested the cold metal end of the scissors against her wrist. "You wouldn't last any longer than a second. You want me to respect Nerin? Already done. That's why your blood isn't all over this floor already with your ribs suddenly exposed to airflow. That's what tends to happen to people who put their faces near mine without warning. 

"You want me gone? You're going to have to shove me out of that door, and I think Nerin might take a little bit of offense to that. Her parlor, not yours. If she wants me gone, she can very well tell me herself. In the meantime, stretch your bounds by all means, but don't take it too far. 

"You may not live to regret that."

@Sorana

He pulled the scissors away and reversed them back toward Nerin, grip-first, pulling his other arm back in the same motion. "Alright let's get this over with. Only the front needs stitches, but the hole's pretty nasty since it was probably a .357 that got me. Came out cleanly, if there's bone shards, I can't feel them. I'll have a drink when you're done, but not until then." Lance slipped an electrum ring out of an inner pocket and onto his finger in case he needed the store. He stood up quickly and shucked his pants down to his knees to expose the bullet hole in his thigh, taking care not to move anything underneath that wasn't strictly necessary. "Easier than cutting, yes?"

@ZincAboutIt

[+ZincAboutIt]

Nerin stood quickly and sent out a rather indelicate wave of Soothing, dampening most of anything still simmering across the table. "That is quite enough," she said, her voice tense and quiet. "No one is going anywhere until we have more information, and no one is going to be getting any more rusting blood all over my rusting floor."

She gave Lance a sharp look, then Attayl. "My parlor, my roof, my rules. And right now, the rules are that we sit here, and drink whiskey, and figure out what the hell is going on in this Octant. No fighting. No threats. No need to defend my honor or some other such nonsense. Just... sit down."

Nerin took another small sip of whiskey, then allowed herself one deep breath. In. Out. She opened her eyes, squared her shoulders, and knelt back at Lance's side, taking the scissors and laying them at her feet. Nerin's eyes flicked over his trousers, now bunched at his knees, and the vivid red that had spread across his underclothes. She felt heat creep up her neck at the same time as she felt genuine, cold concern curdle in her belly. It was a disorienting combination. With a small sigh, she rolled up the hem of the right side of his drawers and then hissed quietly at the hole torn through the meat of his thigh muscle.

She peered closer at it, then reached for the small bottle of clear liquor and the towel. She tucked the towel beneath his leg, then uncorked the bottle and looked up at Lance's face. He looked far too calm for someone who was about to get stitches without any morphine, or even drink in him. "This will hurt," she said, likely more for her own benefit. Then, she poured a small measure of the white liquor into the bullet wound, wiping the surrounding skin to clear off the blood. 

"You were right about bone shards, I can't see any," Nerin said, threading the curved needle and tying off the end of the thread. Then, she set to work before she could lose her nerve. As she worked, she kept her head bent deliberately over the wound and did her level best not to think about anything that was not happening right now. The warmth on her neck and the pleasant, misted memories of the last hour were shut into a convenient closet within her mind, though the occasional flicker of image or sound threatened to distract her.

"So," she said to Lance, not daring to look at his face until she was done, "your people are obviously about to finish off the Scarlets, what with Willet, um... well, dead. Is that all you want? Just the Hollows? If any of them are as powerful as you are..."

Nerin trailed off, not wanting to reveal Lance's strange metal spike, but also unwilling to keep these questions unasked. She hoped he understood her meaning. This parlor was her home, and Attayl and Brillin were her guests. She had to know what was going to happen here, even if both of them would soon be in the wind. And Lance too. He'll leave too, eventually.

@Invocation @Sorana 

[+Invocation]

Lance sighed, a light tapped flow of determination coming from the ring to let him shrug off the pain, and spoke softly. "I don't know. They don't...like me at the moment. The Scarlets are likely already dead or scattered, honestly. Doesn't take long for certain parties to get going when they smell weakness. And yes, some of them can do what I can. They are a major threat, even if some people don't realize it fully, like Willet didn't. Most people will learn somehow, unless we do something."

Even contemplating doing something like that turned Lance's blood cold. With what he'd seen...going against them might be suicide. But they might have to. If there was no other choice, would he do it? He could flee to the Roughs, or even beyond that into the wilderness. He could live. Rust Elendel and all its high society, he could pick up and leave. What was keeping him here? He could make masks outside the city just as well as he could in it. He had enough money to do it. Hop a train and leave. This wasn't a fight he could win "...but we need to fight it anyway." 

@ZincAboutIt

[+Sorana]

Attayl watched Nerin for a moment and then silently got up. She knew she'd overstepped had known the moment she had spoken but in the end. Lance was right. It wasn't her place, it wasn't her decision. She headed over to the bar, drowned the remaining whiskey in her glass and then set to clean it. There were obviously secrets in the room, secrets she wasn't part of and so she simply looked at the glass for a moment, contemplated their words. Words about fighting, about the need to fight. But there was no need. They only needed to make sure that everybody knew who the parlor belonged to and everything would be fine. Unless... unless Lance used the parlor to get rid of the gang, for whatever reasons he had. Nerin knew, and she was expected to be quiet, nice and polite and behave. Just like she always had been.

Attayl turned the glass around in her fingers, not looking away from them. She had thought Nerin a friend, someone she could rely on, someone she could maybe help. But in the end here she was again, nothing more but a tool, expected to do whatever it was told. You didn't fight the gangs. You just didn't. It was suicide. If this was a tale, then she would kneel down in front of Nerin, offer her life for hers, follow her into the fight blindly and without knowing what was going on. Her fingers tightened around the glass and she grit her teeth. This was no tale. And for once, she wanted to decide what happened to her, to her body. She would stand by Nerin's side, but she would do it as an equal,or not at all.

"I won't do anything until I know what is going on." She stated quietly, instinctively lifter her shoulders to prepare for the blow that would come, that had to come. You didn't defy. You just didn't. And she'd just done it the second time within minutes. "I'm not stupid. I know that there is more than you let on."

Edited February 18, 2020 by Sorana

[+ZincAboutIt]

Nerin said nothing for a while, focusing her attention on the remaining stitches. She had to admit, all in all it was a decent job - the stitches were precise, neat, and not too tight. As she tied off the thread and snipped the end with the scissors, Nerin poured a little more of the alcohol onto the wound and then set about winding some clean bandages around Lance's leg. There was a calming efficiency to the activity, just winding cloth, checking the tension, her fingers firm but gentle on his skin as she tied the bandage one last time. 

She sighed softly and looked up into Lance's face, feeling some fatigue bleed into her expression as she - for once - didn't attempt to look clever or unimpressed or irritated. Nerin was tired, and afraid, and she had so many worries crowding her mind that at any moment, she was sure they'd begin pouring out of her ears. And yet, amidst all the clamor there was a slender thread of something else. It wasn't quite hope, and nothing so ambitious as happiness, but still it glittered there in its small column of exhilaration nonetheless. 

By all accounts, Nerin knew she should loathe this man - and rather a large part of her did. It was all too easy to pin this recent string of horrific events on Lance, what with him bursting through her window, defacing the walls, and drawing attention to the place. He was insufferably smug, casually violent, and radiated 'dangerous' like a halo of dark, crackling energy. And perhaps worst of all, he was unpredictable. Nerin was used to being powerless in a traditional sense, but for the most part, Nerin knew how to turn a situation to her advantage. Influence. That is what Brass bought a woman, and if she was delicate and savvy, the world would be none the wiser of it all. But Lance seemed all but immune to her Soothing. Before that infuriating smirk, Nerin was just a woman with two hairpin daggers and no family worth mentioning. It should have terrified her. Rust and Ruin, it did terrify her.

But a not-insubstantial portion of Nerin gloried in that terror. There was something exciting about having that influence stripped away. It was that feeling in your gut right before a fall, that swooping weightlessness. Lance was the edge of the arc right before the plunge, and Nerin knew she'd likely smash her brains out on the rocks at the end of that arc if she wasn't careful. But, she reasoned, she'd likely be dead by the end of the week anyway, so who really cared?

"By 'we,'" Nerin said, getting up off her knees (and wincing) and taking a longer sip of whiskey, "I assume you mean you and the small army of Allomancers you'll be hiring to go up against your own gang. Because if by 'we' you mean you, me, Attayl, and Brillin - wherever he's got to - I may as well pour arsenic into this whiskey, and we can at least die drunk."

She looked back to Attayl and sighed, beckoning her back. "She's right, you know. We know rust-all about this business. Word on the street is that the leader of the Farriers is some kind of prophet for Harmony's sake. I'm about twelve hours from cutting my losses and booking the first train out of Elendel, and if you're even a little bit sane, you should do the same. So if it's insanity you're advocating here, I'll need a rusting fantastic reason to do it, Mister Rapis."

Nerin stared into his eyes, trying to read him, trying to understand. She was standing on the roof, deciding whether or not to jump, deciding whether or not the arc was worth the plunge. Her eyes traveled down his neck, then lingered on the place beneath his shirt where she knew that cold spike lay hammered between his ribs. Nerin's hand flexed unconsciously as she recalled the feel of it - a disk of ice against the heat of his skin. Her mind strayed into other recent events, and she felt her face color again, though she did not look away. Rust him, but he had her, and he knew it. He knew she was going to do it, going to step off the roof with him in collective insanity and trust that he'd find a way to Pull her at the last minute before she turned to pulp on the cobbles. She could see it in his face, half-concealed though it was. He had her, but rusts if she wasn't going to make him earn it.

Nerin sipped her whiskey, and cursed his eyes, and waited.

@Invocation @Sorana