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You glare at the map. Four days travel to Drury. Twenty days left. You glare at the book and vanish it into storage. You glare at Muffin, who shrugs.
“Let’s find her before she does something stupid.”
“Eh, sure, she is growing on me a little. What kind stupid do you think she’s getting into? Not exactly right in the head, holy types.”
You stomp through the inn, steadily fuming. You do not have time to waste on this, and here you are, wasting time on it. And if you need to kill someone along the way? Probably even less time to work with. <span class="mu-r">About a day less, yes.</span> And a spider queen is talking to you. Of course.
“She might be going after those cultists. She might be reporting me. She might be...I don’t know, abandoning everything to be a pirate. She’s struggling right? She’s caught between this rock and a hard place-”
“Was there subtext in that book or something? You remember I can’t read, right?”
“I just, it’s a big city, how the hell are we going to find her? Can’t exactly just ask about Torches, probably attract the wrong attention.” You’ve definitely gotten lost in curtains, but keep pushing forward.
“Probably ought to lower your voice, yeah.”
The elderly mother of the inn crashes into you, hard. “Watch it, foreigners! Stop shouting! And pick up your trash!” She scowls at you and thrust a heap of sticky paper into your hands before angrily pointing you toward the exit. You largely ignore her and push into the daylight before looking at the mess in your hands. Onion peels, a sticky eggshell, a frayed sock, rotting vegetable stems and a single stained piece of paper. With an address quickly scribbled on it.
Muffin stares at the mess in your hands until you vanish it all into storage, even the rotting vegetable stems. “You uh...got plans for all that?”
You finally lower your voice. “There was an address in that mess.”
“Reading bullshit strikes again. Let’s see what sparkle pants got into.”
The address takes you into the poorer side of town, where the stench of abattoirs drifts downwind, then deeper still until graffiti covers the walls and hard eyes stare at the two of you as you pass.
Muffin glances at you. “You sure you read that right? I don’t really mind a place like this, but it’s not exactly where twinkle gloves would go, is it?”
“I think that’s the idea.” You gesture at the street lamps. “Notice the lamps?”
Muffin stares for a moment, then she laughs. “Well fuck. They’re all torches, aren’t they?”
