[center] [img]https://i.imgur.com/PVXYWf6.png[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/1jzmb3e.png[/img][/center] [center] [color=7DBC89]Race:[/color] Yuan-ti [color=7DBC89]Class:[/color] Rogue Arcane Assassin [color=7DBC89]Location:[/color] Port Verge [color=7DBC89]Interactions:[/color] [@FunnyGuy] [@Lava Alckon] [@Samreaper] [@Oso] [@DWGJay][@princess][@Potter] [color=7DBC89]Mentions:[/color] [color=7DBC89]Equipment:[/color] [hider=Full Equipment List]🌸 A finely crafted katana 🌸 A concealed dagger laced with paralytic venom 🌸 Throwing needles coated with different poisons 🌸 Black silk combat outfit reinforced with hidden Mithril chainmail 🌸 Soft-soled boots that allow for near-silent movement 🌸 Smoke bombs and illusion charms for quick escapes 🌸 A set of forged documents under multiple aliases 🌸 A tea set and an assortment of teas 🌸 Incense 🌸 Leather gloves[/hider] [color=7DBC89]Attire:[/color] [color=7DBC89]Gold Balance:[/color] 98 [color=7DBC89]Injuries:[/color] Gash on hip and thigh, small cut on her head, aching shoulder [img]https://i.imgur.com/phiFSQQ.png[/img][/center] Meiyu spent the evening in silence, a shadow in the corner. While Minerva bathed and chattered with Phia, Meiyu sipped her tea, letting the chaos of the room slide past her like water over stone. She read, unmoved, the steam from her cup curling in thin, serpentine ribbons—mirroring the unblinking focus of her golden eyes. She watched the Kitten with clinical interest. The shifter’s boisterousness was a gaudy cloak, but Meiyu had already begun to peel back the layers. Minerva’s frantic energy and Wendel’s grounded calm—two faces, same coin. The presence of a changeling was no surprise. One vanished, another appeared, both scribbling in the same journal. She might not have pieced it together if she hadn’t read over Minerva’s shoulder. But she kept the secret. A hidden blade is only useful when no one else knows where the hilt lies. Night deepened. The others claimed their bunks. Meiyu took the lower bunk across from Minerva, watching the firelight flicker over restless limbs and stiff shoulders. Arya tense, Phia fidgeting, Minerva unashamed. None of it fazed her. Every sigh, every shift—a data point. While they slept, Meiyu sat in stillness, mind tracing the invisible web binding them. Eight gems. Eight tethers. She pressed her fingers to the hidden mark beneath her robes, feeling its cold, proprietary thrum. They were all pieces in someone else’s game. Her thoughts flickered to the Little Fox. Why tail them? Maybe a ninth gem, maybe just another stray drawn by the same thread. She would find out soon enough. For now, his secret was hers alone. There was no profit in sharing. Sleep came lightly. [hr] Morning crept in, gray and salt-laced through warped glass. Meiyu woke as someone slipped into the bathroom. She moved in silence, a shadow dressing for war. When the door opened, the Kitten was gone. In her place: a stoic Valenar elf, darker-skinned, presence heavy and severe. Meiyu didn’t flinch. She didn’t reach for steel. She stood by the table, posture loose, and offered Malik a slow, knowing smirk. She knew. She was neither surprised nor impressed. She watched him, silent, as he adjusted to the new skin—so different from the Minerva’s naked bravado the night before. She said nothing. There was no need. She smoothed black silk, checked the hidden needles at her belt. Phia’s questions and Arya’s silence washed over her. Meiyu’s eyes stayed on the door. The pirates would come soon. The game, at last, was moving. [hr] [center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w2x-DxIi5E[/youtube][/center] Meiyu moved through the winding streets of Port Verge with a silent grace that made her seem more like a ripple in the air than a woman walking on stone. While the others bristled under the gazes of the locals or looked toward the looming silhouette of Seadragon Keep with trepidation, Meiyu’s attention was fragmented with lethal precision. She sensed the Little Fox before she saw him. Clever, nimble, but to her—just another pulse of heat at the edge of awareness. Predator’s intuition. As they turned past splintered driftwood, she kept her gaze forward, but her shadow reached for him. [color=7DBC89][i]“Hello again, Little Fox,”[/i][/color] she sent the magical whisper, her voice a ghost in his ear. She felt a flicker of amusement as they approached the reinforced gates of the keep, the ship-hull walls rising like the ribcage of a leviathan. Just before the heavy iron-bound doors swallowed the group whole, she cast one more thought back toward the shadows. [color=7DBC89][i]“Are you going to be my guardian angel today? Or are you just waiting for the leftovers?”[/i][/color] Inside, the throne room fractured light across old bones. Meiyu ignored the guards. She studied the beams, the patchwork scars in the wood, the way shadows pooled. She measured which rib would break first, which darkness would swallow a body whole. Then, she looked at him. Prince Ravic Dane. The Little Shark. Her gaze didn’t just rest on the Prince; it dissected him. She cataloged every rhythmic shift of his translucent blue skin and the deliberate weight behind the tapping of his fingers. He appeared young, but Meiyu was no fool—she had lived long enough to know that eternal youth was often the most expensive mask of the ancient and the monstrous. Her eyes flickered from the frayed gold of his coat to the tension in the hand gripping his blade, searching for the invisible fractures that existed in every man. She looked past him, too, scanning the gargantuan rib bones of the ceiling for structural rot and noting anywhere someone could be hidden watching them. Every fortress had a soft underbelly, and every master had a throat. She was merely deciding which one to open first. Then he spoke of property with the casual arrogance of a man who had never truly tasted his own blood. Internally, Meiyu’s thoughts turned a shade of black that would have made even Phia’s vibrant flowers wilt. She belonged to no one. Not to whatever divine or otherwise being that had marked her, not to the masters she had buried in her past, and certainly not to a blue-skinned boy on a chair of junk. The idea was almost erotic in its danger—a misunderstanding she intended to correct with blood, eventually. But that would come in time. Beware the patient woman. She watched the others bare their teeth. Malik’s blood, Phia’s pride, Corin’s steel, Bastion’s oath. All noise. All weight. When silence found her, Meiyu stepped forward. No stomp, no shout. Just a slow, predatory glide that shrank the room to a breath. She stopped, head tilted, golden eyes unblinking—studying Ravic like a jeweled insect she meant to pin and keep. [color=7DBC89]“Meiyu,”[/color] she exhaled, her voice a low, sultry vibration that seemed to crawl up the bones of the throne as she gave the smallest of bows. [color=7DBC89]“And if I am property, I hope you are a careful owner. I have a habit of outlasting my masters, and I’ve noticed that even the sturdiest thrones are built from the bones of things that thought they were invincible.”[/color] She let her gaze linger on the scars on his chest, her eyes widening with a dark, appreciative hunger—not for the man, but for the ruin he represented. She stepped back to the group, but her eyes never left his, her smirk sharpening into something truly malevolent. [color=7DBC89]“Tethers and leashes are such intriguing things, aren't they?”[/color] she murmured, a soft, chilling giggle escaping her lips. [color=7DBC89]“They go both ways, Prince. If you hold me too tight, you might find I’m the one leading you to the bottom of the sea…deep, cold, and breathless.”[/color] She settled into a watchful stance, the golden glow in her eyes promising that if he truly wanted to own her, he would have to survive her first. And no one ever did.