Lunamor

Eza frowned. This was an inconvenient time for Aradan to start treating her with the amount of trust she deserved. ”Alright. Good luck, then.” She slid her dagger into a sheath, plopping down in a corner and watching Aradan leave. Eza couldn’t just let him go, since those people were surely going to continue coming after them both. She had a feeling that she wouldn’t be able to convince him to betray Thavel, however, so she would have to resort to less direct tactics. She’d wait for him to turn the street corner, then use his many gold rings to track where he was while staying far enough back to avoid detection. She wasn’t entirely sure what the step after that was, but she could figure that out later. @Qianweilian @Steel Speedster

“I… don’t know where you’re going. I can help you if Thavel isn’t where you expect, though, like with breaking him out of somewhere or finding information on his whereabouts.” Eza grabbed two matching knives with iron implanted inside of their hilts. Tiny emeralds were set in a ring around the edge of the hilt and little inlays of gold snaked through the dark wood. They were her second favorite pair, her first favorite having been lost when she was captured. She also grabbed a small, thick wooden board that could be affixed to her wrist, almost like a shield. This was significantly less elegant than her knives. ”I can also help you with spotting hemalurgists and running away from dangerous people, if need be. Or with stabbing ‘em.” She tossed one knife upwards, blade facing downwards, then ironpulled on the iron in its handle. The dagger turned unnaturally in middair so that it was falling hilt first, and she calmly let it fall back into her hand. She’d been practicing with these a lot. @Qianweilian

Eza frowned, setting down her miniature fox. ”I really would like to help you with your Thav situation. Let’s call it something I need.” She paused for a moment, trying to determine how easy it was to offend this guy. He seemed nice enough to handle some honesty. ”I really don’t think you’re gonna make it that long without someone helping you. You shouldn’t have trusted Thav, and you certainly shouldn’t have trusted me. You got lucky that I’m not...” She suddenly wasn’t sure of what she was saying. Eza shook her head, then continued on. ”The Alleys have some very bad people, and it took you very little time to get captured by some. It’s not like our world here, rules are different and it takes a while to learn them. You seem like a good person, so I don’t want you to die. I’m also pretty sure the people who captured us still are gonna look for me, so it’s also in my best interest to stop them. Please let me help you.” @Steel Speedster @Qianweilian

“Are you gonna go looking for Thavel again?” Eza twirled the glass fox in her fingers around. ”I can help with that, if you want.” She very much did not want to get tangled up with whatever organization had captured her again, but she’d probably have been spiked to death without Aradan. Throwing some money at him didn’t make it feel like she’d yet repaid her debt. The group would likely still be looking for her, anyways, so helping investigate them might be of use to her. She also was really starting to doubt Aradan’s odds of survival if he continued alone. Following a mugger into a secret meeting with an evil organization seemed like a really poorly thought out idea, and it had indeed gone rather poorly. @Qianweilian

“I’m an iron savant. Things get very bad if I don’t have enough iron, and I need quite a lot of it. I’m very glad you happened to have some.” She grabbed a small glass fox from another bag and began fiddling with it, watching how the light reflected off of it. ”I’ve never really been safe anywhere, though. I always need to be vigilant. There’s…” Eza trailed off, unsure if she should continue. Aradan seemed like he was almost too good to be true. If he’d wanted to hurt her he certainly could’ve by now, though. ”There’s some people that have been after me for a long time. Hemalurgists. They gave me this.” She pointed at the larger of the two scars on her face. Aradan deserved to know the risks of being around her. ”The Alleys themselves aren’t safe either. I’ve already had two associates die on me from unnatural things here, though one of those brought it upon themselves. Perses was part of it. You’ve gotta be careful here.” Aradan didn’t seem like he’d been very cautious so far, considering that he’d gotten captured then broke out a complete stranger. ”How’d you wind up where you found me? And do you know who those people were?” @Qianweilian

When Aradan shook her hand, Eza attempted to sneakily slide one of his rings off his finger and palm it. She felt rather guilty about it, but it was just so shiny and he had so many of them. She immediately started answering his questions, trying to divert his attention away from her actions to her voice. ”The spiked man is called Perses. He calls himself Prince of the Alleys, which is stupid. His spikes give him iron and steel allomancy. He’s also got feruchemical tin, and rumor says he’s got allomantic bronze too. He’s not a Steel Inquisitor.” Aradan seemed to be from the Scadrial of her time, based on his allomancy and knowledge of guns. He must be pretty sheltered to think people with spikes in their eyes must be Inquisitors. ”Monsters like him still exist where we come from.” She absentmindedly scratched at the large scar stretching from her chin to her temple. “I was locked up in the complex because I took something from those people. I don’t know who they were, but some of them were spiked, so they must be bad. The woman who chased us is named Fenna. She and I fought against monsters under Perses’s control, once. Like, literal monsters. It’s weird here.” Aradan’s last statement weirded Eza out a bit. She wasn’t sure why he was being so nice to her. She nabbed a vial of iron from one of her many stashes and downed it. ”You’ve got a really weird piece of metal on you.” She flared her iron, then pointed where the strange line she had noticed earlier led. ”It’s not a spike, I know what those are like. It’s iron, but has a really bright line in my ironsight. What is it? Is it how you have both pewter and iron?” @Qianweilian

Even after the faint twin lines leading to Perses’s spikes had long since vanished and Fenna had disappeared into the night, Eza continued to take random turns. Eventually, once she was satisfied they weren’t being followed, she finally slowed down, breathing heavily. She led the man towards the Mistwarrens, which was the opposite direction of the way she’d initially started fleeing, keeping an eye on the rooftops nearby all the while. She finally made it to a door with a strangely pristine-looking handle. In a practiced motion, she yanked on a particular thin blue line leading to within the lock. It’d taken her a while to find one with a system precise enough to throw off most other lurchers or coinshots and buy her some time if they came knocking, but not so precise that she struggled with the lock too. With a click, the door swung open. She strode inside, motioning for the man to follow her. Eza closed the door after him by ironpulling on the handle and yanked on a different line to reengage the lock. “My name’s Eza.” Inside was a strangely bare looking room, adorned only with a small cot and blankets covering suspicious piles of stuff. All of the blanketed piles were clustered together in one corner of the room. She made a beeline to one such blanket, yanking it away to reveal several large aluminum-lined pouches. She dumped one of them out to reveal quite a lot of coins. Every single one was blemished or dirty in some way- these were her spending coins. She wasn’t too sure what exactly all of it was worth, but she figured it was worth a lot. She pushed the pile towards her rescuer. “Here’s the money I promised. Thank you.” She held her hand out for a handshake.

@Steel Speedster, are you good with Eza and Aradan outrunning Fenna/escaping at this point?

Eza cursed. They appeared to have caught the attention of Perses. She didn’t know why, but with him, any reason was a bad one. She spoke softly to the man running next to her. ”His name is Perses. He’s done some very bad things. Take the next left, then right.” Based on gossip around the Mistwarrens, Perses was a Seeker. He was also said to control fire, explode people with his mind, and be Death itself, so she wasn’t completely confident in the rumor. It was, however, one of the most consistent rumors. She glanced behind her and could see Fenna still barreling after them. Without iron, she couldn’t outrun her. With iron, Perses could likely easily track her. She cursed again, then called over her shoulder. ”I really don’t think you should be following us, Fenna!” She tilted her head in the direction of the two very faint lines leading to Perses’s spikes. She probably wouldn’t have noticed them were it not for the man pointing him out. ”We both know what he can do.” She then suddenly turned left into an alley, using an ironpull to quickly redirect her momentum and planning on turning right as soon as possible. @Through the Living Mist

Eza jumped slightly at the hand on her shoulder. The man was right. She couldn’t afford to stop and talk to Perses. ”Follow me.” She took off running towards the left, ironpulling on the largest blue line she could find to boost her speed. She was quickly beginning to tire, the past several days with very little food or sleep wearing on her. At this point, there was little chance of her outrunning her rescuer even with the use of iron. @Qianweilian @Koloss17 @Steel Speedster @Through the Living Mist

Eza froze. She’d hoped he wouldn’t recognize her. That was a foolish hope. ”We… worked together, briefly.” Perses and Asylum didn’t exactly end things on the best of terms, considering that the former had blown a hole in the latter’s head. Hopefully his animosity towards them didn’t extend to her. She’d outright thanked him for killing Asylum, so maybe that counted for something. She tried not to think about Asylum. That meant thinking about the monster they’d made her into. The face she didn’t quite recognize in the mirror anymore. @Qianweilian @Through the Living Mist @Steel Speedster @Koloss17

Eza flinched when she heard the thud of something impacting against the rim of the trapdoor. Based on some tiny lines leading to pewter dust below her, that was Fenna. She resisted the urge to slam the trapdoor shut on her fingers. She might need to rely on Fenna’s mercy later. She looked over at the person in the street when she heard her rescuer question him. He was spiked, one in each eye. Those were familiar spikes. Perses. She knew this creature. The first thing that she’d seen him do was murder people. The last thing that she’d seen him do was order monsters to murder people. The fighting had destroyed the constabulary it took place in, causing it to collapse on most of the people the monsters hadn’t killed. One of them was her friend. This was the monster who had killed Eighth. Her hands tightened into fists, and she again wished for her daggers. She wondered how hard it would be to pry the spikes from his eye sockets out with her fingernails. Then she looked at the man next to her, the person who had risked his freedom, and probably life, to rescue her. If she tried to strike out at Perses, he’d surely try to kill them both, and most likely succeed. She wouldn’t let him kill this man too. Eza looked up at her rescuer, speaking softly but urgently. “That man is more dangerous than those behind us. We need to leave now.” She looked around, orienting herself. She recognized the clothing shop across the street- she’d nabbed a particularly nice belt buckle from it. “I know where to go.” @Steel Speedster @Through the Living Mist @Koloss17 @Qianweilian

@Koloss17, is Perses wearing his glasses? Eza will react functionally the same way either way, but I will edit my upcoming post if he isn’t.

@Koloss17, is Perses thinking that Aradan is using hemalurgy? If so, is he mistaken or correct in that assumption? If he’s correct, I need to change Eza’s response cause it would be pretty different.