As the Vanisher finished his subtle gesturing, he fought to keep himself from frowning. The golden-eyed man barely seemed to recognize that he was being spoken too throughout their brief conversation. The man seemed to understand the basics, and looked to where Nestor pointed quite bluntly, but otherwise appeared lost. The Vanisher had no other way to convey the concepts he wished to show without the men in leather armor noticing, so he decided to give it up. [i]If my partner is too dense to catch on to this, he’s probably got other talents[/i] he concluded, watching the golden-eyed man avert his gaze.

Without a word, the archer then handed his group number scroll over to Nestor, who quickly accepted it. The Vanisher already concluded that the golden-eyed man had the right scroll, otherwise the stranger would have said “farewell” and left after getting confused by Nestor’s gestures. Nonetheless, to keep the spectacle going for the leather-armored men, Nestor opened the scroll and took a few seconds to read the three large numbers plastered in the middle. As he did so, it took all the psychological inhibition in his body to keep him from whispering, “you blithering fool!” under his breath.

Nestor debated making a more obvious gesture to the golden-eyed man, but determined that more attempts to covertly provide information would lead the leather-armored men to suspicion. Additionally, Nestor figured that the man was too poorly educated to understand what he was doing. As a result, Nestor smiled a dreadfully forced smile and rolled up the scroll, handing it back to the golden-eyed gentleman once he was done. His hand moved painfully slowly as he reached out with it, speaking as he did so.

“Well then,” Nestor started, “I guess you really are in my group! We should get out of here, but let’s take the South gate. The main gate will be too crowded.” With this said, Nestor walked past the golden-eyed stranger and began to quickly move through the crowd, heading South through the plaza. By this point, the plaza was thinning out, making the groups of leather-armored men slightly more visible amid the crowd of people.

As he continued along his path, a large group of rather wide drunk warriors wandered into his way. (Time – 0) Nestor gritted his teeth after realizing the necessary detour he would have to make as a result, staring to the left of a rather fat man to see the leather-armored men surrounding a fountain. (Time – 1)

The fat, drunk soldiers had a rough appearance, but these leather-armored men were slightly more refined, almost deceptively so. A few in the group had cards out, and a few others calmly sharpened their blades or cleaned equipment, leaving two rather scrawny men seated on a dry lip of the fountain to keep watch. None of the men were particularly noteworthy in appearance, besides scars, odd patchwork armor repairs, and randomly assorted weaponry, however the way the men treated each other was cold and harsh, almost violent. None of the men who were playing cards smiled, whereas all of the fat, drunk soldiers blocking Nestor’s favored route were merry and happy.

The two scrawny men on the fountain nudged each other as Nestor looked their way (Time – 1.5), then one jumped off the fountain and started to whisper in the ears of the other men. (Time – 3) Nestor gestured for his new companion to follow him as he weaved his way around the fat soldiers, moving past the men at the fountain. As they walked past, the leather-armored men paid no heed, but after the two passed by, all of the men watched eagerly, steadily getting up from their spots and replacing their equipment as the two got further away.