>>6116476>>6116561>>6116678it's your fucking fault...
>>6116016# # # # # #
Unless you know where to look, the harbour city of Zena is no place for a meeting. The docks are too busy, a circus for ants where figures covered in black soot from the furnaces and the smithy and the warehouses carry and ship goods hither and tither throughout the coastal part of the Throne, either flowing north closer to the capital city, or south-west to Tramontana, the rebellious underbelly that already tried to rear its ugly head against the Throne, and paid the price for it.
Zena, a city of commerce and intrigue, indeed, but where magic and Asterites were scarce, managed to get out of the Eldritch War better than most others. Since then, administrators and bureaucrats have pretended to look the other way when it comes to smuggling and other unsavoury activities, which only take the blink on an eye.
Here, amidst the cloudy banks of a wooden pier, a heavy moneybag swiftly exchanges hands, followed by a baby held in tight crimson ribbons, never to be recovered. There, a flash of steel and a puff of Frigéian blackpowder signal the end of a deal, the bang, gasp and watery echoes of a body hitting the water hidden by the laughs of the seagulls and the horns of the ships. In this place, things do happen so fast that there is no time to sit down and have a nice conversation with a friend.
Unless, once again, you know where to look.
And the silver-haired figure, cloaked in shimmering grey, certainly seems to know. She jumps out of a winding tunnel, a bellowing hole of rotten wood and rusty bars, excavated in the bowels of the docks by generations of smugglers and shantymen. She’s grateful for their work. The underwater facility holds back the tides thanks to thick iron walls, which creak and groan like the mandibles of a giant haunted by an ill tooth. Saltwater drops fall all around her, mixed with grease, oil, and the secrets of a city in a hurry.
She is quite different. She has learned how to move, how to glide effortlessly. Thus, she approaches the underwater tavern with slow, deliberate movements that highlight the delightful fullness of her body and her wobbling chest; dozens of eyes, some of them real, some of them dull pebbles attached to a mariner’s tanned skull, follow her enticing curves, forgetting all about the geometric edges of the steel, and stolen tetracerarmide blades that rest beneath.
“Nice tits,” groans one of the smugglers, spitting on the floor, as if to add to the dripping saltwater.
[cont.]
