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[sub][color=8E939E]✧     Location: Soft Haven Bounty House     ✧     Purse: 12 copper     ✧     [@McMolly] [@Trainerblue192] [@Hero]    ✧[/color][/sub][/center]
Kyreth noted in passing the… well, passing of the hedgeman, pushing past himself and Lilann on his newly determined way to the Bounty House at the end of the bridge. It should have given Kyreth some comfort that the armed stranger had apparently lost interest in his Tainted hostages, but it didn’t - his nerves still buzzed like a head full of wasps in this strange, too-still place, leaving him again wondering if it was his own timid inexperience with the world at large working him up, or if something else entirely was at work. 

He didn’t have to wait long for his answer, as no sooner did the hedgeman pass than Lilann hitched herself to the railing, pulling Kyreth’s eye down from the finely worked stone of the building and bridge to the still, murky waters below. 

Kyreth didn’t need Lilann’s explanation to realize immediately that his nerves were indeed justified. Although she put it in flowery, esoteric terms he almost didn’t understand, any child of Buscon knew the legends of [i]Wander’s Warning,[/i] even if he’d been lucky enough never to see them himself. 

Well. Until today. 

Gods above, he thought, he really was well and truly cursed. Either that, or Selene had taken pity on him and deigned to send a clear and present warning to her new and clumsy child; sailors did say the lights would sometimes bloom on ships as harbingers of coming storms. They were also said to be the souls of dead sailors trying to steer their kind away from doom, the lights pulsing like blood through the veins of panicked, dying men. Still other tales said they were the vibrant, pulsing warnings of spiteful spirits telling anything near to keep away and promising vengeance on intruders. In any case, the message was clear: [i]“Here is death; go no further.”[/i]

Kyreth’s hand found the iron charm on his chest before he even had the chance to remember it, his lips moving of their own accord with a nearly-silent prayer as his eyes latched on to those dread lights in the lake. But for all her own eloquent warnings, Lilann didn’t seem nearly as scared as Kyreth thought she should be, something that seemed to come as habit to her in the short time he’d known her. She acknowledged his fears as legitimate, but despite her words, the giggle that followed as she gently pried his hand from her bicep betrayed little caution. 

Kyreth had half a mind to turn tail right there; from the claw marks to the hedgeman and now these horrible lights in the lake, the gods or fate or whatever pulled the strings around here was practically shouting at him to [i]run.[/i] If he pressed on now, well, he’d probably deserve whatever gruesome end awaited him, having been fool enough to defy the countless warnings the powers that be so generously gave. Foolhardiness wasn’t like him; quite the opposite. A lifetime in Buscon taught you to run and run fast, run quiet and run agile through choking, twisting streets and dark, smoky taverns full of sleeping beasts. You only fought if you were really good at it or had your friends behind you, and Kyreth was neither strong nor popular back home. More than anything, you did not, did [i]not[/i] go looking for trouble; it’d find you plenty well on its own, there was no need to tempt fate any more than that. 

So once more, just like back in the woods, Kyreth thought of running. 

But once more, just like before, he didn’t. And the reason was the same, too: he didn’t want to leave Lilann, who’d shown him so much kindness, who was so confident in the face of danger but just so [i]small[/i], to face the danger of this place alone. Of course, despite his many efforts over the past months he wasn’t an entirely changed man; he still didn’t much like the idea of delivering himself into the maw of whatever made the lake and forest and the animals here hold their breath. So he struck a bargain with himself: he’d see Lilann delivered safely to the Bounty House and then leave, divesting himself of the silly notion that finding an honest life would be just as easy as walking up to an establishment and asking for a job. At the very least he could do that, he thought. 

Of course, for all his meagre mustered courage, Kyreth still just about jumped out of his skin when a voice much louder and much less gentle than Lilann’s sounded from mere feet behind him. He whirled around to find the shadowy-haired boy staring incredulously up at him, asking questions. 

Kyreth consciously exhaled, letting his shoulders fall as some unconscious part of him noticed just how much shorter than him the strange-looking boy really was. By all accounts, he really could have grown up in the depths of Buscon; he was as skinny and sunken-eyed as any child in Urchin’s Run, with a familiarly wary look about him, pale like those kids who ran errands for the bawdy girls and never got much sun. Maybe he came from another big city somewhere else; hell, he might have come from Buscon if not for the fact that Kyreth was decently sure any kid there with inky shadows in place of hair would have been thrown in the ocean as a bad omen, or else kept in a dark and private place as a display piece. For a second, just barely a second, Kyreth’s nerves took a backseat to a sudden curiosity about this weird kid, and his brow knit together in bemusement. 

But that second passed quickly, and at last remembering himself, he forced a personable smile. [color=8E939E]“Just… saw something in the water,”[/color] he excused lamely, rubbing the back of his neck under his cloak. He could feel the fabric tug on his horns, and raised his other hand to steady the hem of his hood. [color=8E939E]“Forgive us. We’re just a little nervous, is all. Far from home; you understand.”[/color] He inclined his head to the elvish woman trailing behind, not wanting to offend her if she was indeed this boy’s guardian, as it seemed she was. 

Clearing his throat, he offered no more explanation, instead glancing to Lilann with a nod before setting off once more down the bridge to the Bounty House. “At your lead,” she’d told him. And if he kept his hand close to his knife under his cloak and his eyes always scanning as he did so, well, that was his business.