Topic: The Adventures of Kith, the Cat, and the Khatun
Subject: Encounters of the Fluff Kind
26th Day, Ternoth Ore, 452 E.R., Davnor, Sendria. An old, forgotten passageway beneath the dungeons of Adedra Undolithe’s estate.
I could have married a merchant, Kithran Aldeath silently grumbles to herself as she trudges on hands and knees through the muck beneath the Undolithe estate. I look pretty good, a swath of gunk splatters lightly onto her face as she yanks her hand free from a particularly deep portion of it, well I can pretend I look pretty good. But nooo, I had to go and--a rat skitters across her path ten feet ahead and with a flash of steel it is pinned to the wall, twitching as the dagger steals its life.
I bet I would have done pretty well, Kith continues in her musings, tugging her dagger free of the wall and wiping the blade on her leg before resheathing it at her hip with the others.
That boy Edward my father had tried to set me up with seemed to like me well-enough before his great-grandmother’s ring went missing. She came to the wooden hatch in the stone above her just as her contact had mentioned she would, and begins to probe it lightly for traps and locks. Real shame about that fifty-seven gold worth of ring having gone missing. Real shame.
The latch comes free silently and with little effort, and Kith slowly props it open to search and listen for any signs of movement in the storage room.
Silence.
At least some handlers can be trusted once in a while. Kithran swiftly hops up and gently lowers the hatch back down. The stale smell of a small room suffering from decades of a dank environment and poor ventilation permeates her sinuses, and it’s truly a welcomed scent after what she had just crawled through.
As she begins wiping the loose bits of I’m-just-not-going-to-think-about-it off of her leathers, the tops of her half-Sylvari ears twitch at the sound of footsteps heading her way, and the flickering light of a torch sweeps beneath the door. Goddamn handlers . . . .
The room is small, filled only with shelving and racks that line the walls, and the random metallic items populating them. Which, now that she was looking at them, seemed rather horrific in nature, but such is the nature of items found in a dungeon, in her vast and varied experience.
As the footfalls approach, Kithran slinks lightly behind the wooden door, gripping the handles of her daggers. Her fingers fall comfortably into place as she lifts the blades out of their sheaths and adrenaline heightens her focus.
The sound of keys jingle briefly before clattering heavily onto the ground, and Kithran hears the sound of a young man cursing through the door as he lifts them back up. She sighs softly and with a quick, simultaneous flick, both daggers flip around in her hands as the door opens.
Whenever the young man finally woke up, several hours later, he could remember nothing of what had happened the moment he stepped fully into one of the many rooms filled with the witch's torture devices. He would simply remember searching for an open spot on the shelf, taking half a step toward it, and then he was on the ground, the back of his head in excruciating pain. What he would never forget was the dead man laying beside him, his eyes wide and his mouth agape as blood dripped slowly from the long, flayed crevice down the front of his neck. The young man would look down and scream, realizing that he had been sleeping in a massive pool of the dead man’s bodily fluids.
Kithran would remember the moment in a slightly different manner.
She would remember the young man stepping inside the room one second, and the dull sound of the butt of her dagger making contact with the back of his head the next. In one swift movement her daggers are back in their place and she forces her arms under his armpits, catching him before he slumps to the ground. She lowers him slowly, taking a look at his face as she slipps the key ring from his fingers. He looked barely old enough to curse as he had on the other side of the door, let alone to wield such a deadly weapon as that at his side.
You were lucky today, brat. Kithran pockets the keys and leaves the room, but goes only a few feet before the sound of murmuring ahead stops her. She presses herself to the stone wall, filmy and cold, and peers around the corner. Two men, much older and fiercer looking than the one napping in the storage room behind her, but in matching armors and weapons, stand at the end of the corridor.
The more massive of the two looms over the other, “You gave them to that boy?”
The other stands his ground, his low, angry retort likely an attempt to make up for what he lacks in bulk compared to the first guard, “He was just putting away some of her, her toys.”
Toys? Kith smirks, thinking of the thick, spiked chain the unconscious boy still held, That’s unfortunate.
The larger one jabs his finger into the other’s armored chest, “The keys are your responsibility, Tibbins, she’s calling for them now. Go find that kid and bring them up to her.” With that the massive man stormed off around the corner, and grumbling, the other moved her way.
Normally Kithran would listen to footfalls or breaths to determine how far away her victim was. This victim, however, is gracious enough to loudly relive his last interaction albeit much more bravely to himself as he stomps her way. She readies one of her blades. This time she would not be so kind.
He turns the corner and as the light of the torch washes over Kithran, he jerks back in surprise, “What the--”
“Hi Tibbins,” Kith grins as her dagger digs up into the space between his esophagus and jaw bone, slashing downward as she rips open his neck and he is gone. She holds back a grunt as this body, much larger than the last, slumps against her, and she stills for a moment to listen for any other movement. When she is satisfied they are still alone, she drags the form back to the storage room.
Sorry brat, I guess you’re not so lucky today, she thinks as she lowers the dead weight of the guard beside the young sleeping man, let this be a lesson to you. She stands and pads lightly to the door as the dead man’s blood begins to flow toward the other. Wow, look at me teaching youngsters, she grins as she quietly closes the door and decides in that moment to lock the unconscious kid in the room with the dead, profusely bleeding body, am I ready to be a mother?
With the door at her back, Kithran listens again, creeping forward when nothing but a thick silence returns to her. Peering around the corner, she confirms she is clear and slinks toward the next corridor.
While the timing of the guard routes seem to be a little off per her contact’s information, the map Kith had memorized of the witch’s underground labyrinth of tunnels and nightmarish rooms has thus far proven to be accurate. In the minutes that followed, a quick dodge, a slight distraction, or a perfectly timed cover opportunity kept the others wandering these putrid halls blessedly unaware of her movements. It would be just a little longer until she could slip up the stairs into the manor-proper, make her way up to the top floor, and into her private study where those mages claimed the grimoire would be.
“Goddamn it, I will kill Tibbins,” Kith hears the now familiar voice of the large guard who had berated the dearly departed guard from before. She slips deftly back into the shadows of another corridor as he stomps by and looks down at her blood-caked leathers. She was sure she hadn’t left a Tibbins trail because she never left Tibbons trails but--well there was that one time, and the one time before that--one could never be too sure.
She quickens her pace and dips around another corner which opens into a much larger corridor. This one does not have any of those torches that had lined the walls of so much of this place so far, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others with similar bastard blood as her skulking around. Kith takes a beat to skim this space for any movement, any steps or telling breaths. Neither catch her attention, but her eyes fall upon several cages, too small for the large lumps she assumes are creatures the witch had gathered for some horrific reason.
Sorry puppies, I can’t--”Fuck.” Kith ducks, wanting to slap herself for becoming distracted. People were the worst things any god could have come up with, but animals . . . animals she loved. She understood them. And as she had been gazing in the direction of the caged animals she had no time to free, she had kicked an immovable stone block that had littered her path. Glaring angrily at it now, she can see a thick iron loop embedded at the top of the block, and both covered in old, dark blood. She tries not to think of what the stupid witch had done to these caged animals and focus instead on determining if anything was coming for her after her spat.
Once more silence encompasses her and she rises, keeping her eyes only on her path, her ears ignoring the caged creature she hears softly rustling as she slips along the walls. The path out of this dungeon would not be much further now.
“You there . . . Girl . . .” A deep, low voice speaks out and Kith spins toward it, ducking down, her blades ready in her palms at her sides. In her brief glance around the room she hadn’t seen anyone who may have called out to her. If this place is haunted as well, I swear . . . .
Kith stays low and silently backtracks around the various tables and horrific paraphernalia around the room. She remains quiet and still for just another moment, sure that whatever it was had been unable to follow her, though she herself could hear no other movement in the room. Slowly, she looks over the stone slab, and makes immediate eye-contact with a massive tiger in one of the small cages. Her eyes flit from side to side, unable to discern the origin of the voice.
“Free me from this cage,” her eyes shift back to the cage and the giant tiger is speaking to her, “and I will help you find your way out of this foul place.”
A trick? She looks around again and can find no one other source, Surely this is too elaborate for a creature you would keep caged?
Kithran rises, and keeping her blades ready and eyes on all corners of the room, she makes her way toward the enormous cat. As she approaches, its features became even more strange to her. It is indeed similar to a big tiger, but its body is more humanoid than anything else, other than its claws of course.
She lowers her daggers back into their sheaths. Despite her now seeing its beaten and mangled body, its eyes it can hardly keep open and the metal chain anchoring it to the ground, she keeps her distance. Her hands rest on the hilt of her blades as she whispers, “Free you?” she visibly eyes him up and down, “You can barely speak. Even if I had wanted to flee, what could you possibly do for me?”
((OOC: assuming Ch’dau talks a little about what a badass he is normally in a fight, but I can revise Kith’s follow-up as necessary))
Though intrigued by this thing’s claims, its current predicament inspires very little confidence. She scoffs, “Perhaps if I were concerned about a cat fight I would be convinced, but you look like something one might find in a ditch.” She smirks half-apologetically and steps away, “Sorry kitty cat, I think I am going to have to pa--”
“Over here! It’s talking to it! Light the torches!”
Kithran dives for cover as fire lights up the faces of the guards blocking the only escape routes, and others begin searching the room for her. She scurries as quickly as she can away from where the guards had last seen her and hides. Biding the little bit of time she has, waiting for an opening and creeping toward one of the guards in an exit, she keeps the corner of her eye on the two other guards making their way toward the giant tiger’s cage.
Posted on 2019-10-07 at 02:18:04.
Edited on 2019-10-07 at 02:43:33 by breebles
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What game do you own the 
Return to Charadun - Q&A
The Morphing Game
Return to Charadun - Recr
Loved this introduction (for me at least) to Morgana! That mask element is really neat and I'm looking forward to some fun interations with her down the line 
