Thar Shaddin

"Move it asshole."

Chris had to be shoved into the cell by two of the guards. He was big enough to passively give them enough trouble to have angered them during the whole trip to the HQ. Refusing to walk and having to be forced along like a stubborn ox, they had finally managed to get him where they were going. Once inside the cell, he immediately grabbed the bars and started rattling them.

"OY!" He yelled, even though they were still standing right in front of him on the other side of the bars, causing one of them to wince at the sheer volume of his booming voice. "C'mon in 'ere an' I'll show ye dunces what's fer!"

He shook the heavy iron door some more, creating a clanging sound that resonated throughout the jail area.

One of the two guards who had escorted him to the cell turned away from him and looked at the other.

"So why's he here?" He asked.

"Pushed an elf right through a tavern window and then started fighting Granthon." The other replied.

"He fought big Gran?"

"Yer damn fuckin' right I did!" Chris yelled, interrupting the two.

"Yeah..." Continued the guard, as though Chris wasn't even there. "Probably sucker punched him or something. Gran was on the floor when we got there."

At this Chris thrust his fist between the bars of his cell in an attempt to punch the speaking guard in the head, but the guard was a step ahead and had pulled himself out of reach before the fist could hit him.

"Feck ye!" Yelled Chris.

"Shut up." Said the one he'd tried to punch, who then turned to the other again. "I say leave him here for a few days with no food. Fucking lunatics."

"Like hell ye well!"

"Yeah. If he's not done by then we'll send him to the judges to see what's wrong with his head." Replied the other guard, ignoring Chris' loud protests.

The two men walked out of the jail area still talking to eachother, leaving behind the steaming Chrishton alone in his cell, guarded by one of the battlemages who didn't even bother to look at him. Chrishton likewise left the battlemage alone, and lumbered over to the lone bench in his cell and fell into it.

So far, so good, he thought. But where were the others?

She had been led into her cell a few minutes after a particularly rowdy tall man had been led down. She was placed in the cell adjacent from him and still wore a shocked look on her face from when she heard the guard turn the lock on her cell.

"Wish they all came as quietly..." he muttered as he left.

She sat on the floor with all of her attention on the "pillow" that was before her on the small bench. Its old calico patterned fabric was well worn and it bristled with many small pins. A smaller drum shaped pillow was mounted in the middle of the larger pillow, a small yellowed band of paper circled it. It was into this pricking that the pins were jammed making small geometric designs. Twelve small hand carved bobbins hung from this drum and they made clicking noises as Illilli flicked the bobbins back and forth, occasionally stopping to move a pin forward into the working.

"Twist, cross, twist, twist, picot..." she muttered to herself making a small hiccup-ping noise every now and then. The zebra like markings at her wrists made a calming almost hypnotic pattern as she manipulated the bobbins of homespun linen thread. The lace she was making would be pretty, but hardly of high fashion.

She had "Come" here willingly for questioning when the city guard found her clutching her cook pot and a gristly dragon's horn in the square. She willingly surrendered her knife, it was too small to be a dagger, and let them poke through and prod through the rest of her belongings. The pins she had were too flimsy to be used for lock-picking or anything similar. They were gracious enough to let her keep her things with her, and wash her hands of the blood and gore they had been covered in at the tavern massacre before leading her down to a cell to "wait".

She had spent the previous 5 minutes detangling her lacework after the guards had tangled it up and she tried to refold and repack her backpack of meager belongings. So now she sat in the dust and dirt of her cell in her deerskin leathers and comfortable well worn boots... Making lace of all things.


Still wearing the shocked look Illilli had broken out her lace loom to have something familiar and comforting to pass the time and tried not to cry on the lace she was making.

The man in the next cell scared her and made her ears burn with embarrassment as she heard him cussing out the guards. She was rapidly getting use to it though he still scared her.

She moved another pin forward and she sobbed as she wished she hadn't left her family's farm.

Once the guards had left, the cell block was surprisingly quiet. The mage on duty outside the cells said nothing, and his disciplined mind made it easy for him to pass the time without anything to do.

Chris gripped the bars in his large hands and looked around. He was in here alone, so he could only assume that whoever he was supposed to meet would arrive shortly, unless they were already in one of the other cells. He leaned his head closer to the bars to try and see around the stone wall that separated the cells, and he thought he heard something. Sobbing?

The fox spirits danced around his head, orange and silver forms that only he could see and hear. They were always laughing at him and being a general nuisance, but it didn't bother him anymore. He wished they would stop playing around and tell him what he was here for, but they never did. Never would.

"Oy." He said through the bars. "Anyone there?"

The guard didn't even look over.

Kelly had arrived in this new city as dusk fell. Exhausted from a week or so of almost continual travel, he'd just grabbed a quick beer at a tavern before finding a room to stay in and disappearing for the night. He hadn't made himself noticeable, so no one seemed to notice him. He had planned to meet people and learn about his new city the next day.

That never happened, however, because there hadn't been anywhere to wash up in the room he had chosen. As he had strolled through the just-awakening streets of Marn on his first morning in town, he had happened to catch his reflection in a window and decided he ought to clean off at least one of his many layers of travel-grime. He had seen several clearly magical people around, so he had assumed he was safe in picking up a rock, cupping it in his hands, and making it into water to splash over his face.

He had found out too late that his assumption was wrong. Apparently, one of the guards he had seen lurking about had been watching him. Kelly had found himself whisked away at knife-point before he knew what to do. When the city officials found out that he was not only not a registered magic-user but also an outsider, he had almost immediately found himself in a prison cell. Kelly had been polite to the guards, of course, but he wasn't sure, now, whether that had helped or hurt his situation.

It had all happened so fast. Kelly only remembered the events of the past -- what? hour? day? -- as one remembers a dream, and he still wasn't sure he understood what he had done wrong, or what punishment he should expect.

So it was that Kelly Roarke was sitting in a dark, damp corner on the floor of a prison cell, hugging his knees to his chest protectively, his head lolling forward so that his rather dirty black hair, long-since liberated from its ponytail, covered his face. He had briefly looked up when the guards brought in a very loud, angry man and placed him in the cell opposite his own, but had quickly tuned the newcomer out.

It was no wonder, then, that the young woman hadn't noticed the blob in the corner of the dark cell. In fact, Kelly had been so distracted by his own confusion that he hadn't noticed her either, when the guards first brought her in.

What finally brought him back to reality was the sound of sobbing. Why were people so bloody fond of crying -- of pouring their souls out for just anyone to hear? Kelly detested crying. He tried to tune his new cell mate out as he had the ranting man across the way, but that proved futile. He would have liked to shake that idiot girl, punch her maybe, yell at her. Instead, he said mildly, "Hey, I hate to see such a pretty girl cry."

Just then, he heard the man across the way call out, asking if there was anyone there, but Kelly didn't want to have anything to do with him yet. He didn't really care whom the girl answered, just so long as she stopped crying.

"Sorry... Its just been a very long day..." Illilli sniffed and did her best to regain her composure. She hadn't noticed the man in the cell with her and was glad that her nose wasn't dripping.

"I don't know why they locked me up in here except for the fact that I saw this dragon and fire demon attacking a tavern in town... I attacked the dragon and broke off one of its horns... and earlier this one woman had been attacked by a sword and and..." she sighed and just leaned her head against the bench. She was no longer sobbing but then she had recuperated from her shock.

"I was just asked to come in for questioning and they locked me in here..." she sighed as she continued weaving the bobbins of thread into the lace pattern.

"Oy. Anyone there?"

"Well, I'm here for however long they keep me here..." she set down the last bobin and moved another pin on the pricking.

Addressing both the men she added, "My name is Illilli and I'm new in town. Is it always this hectic in a city like this? I've read lots of books but I was never prepared for anything like THIS..."

It's them alright, Chris figured. And there were two of them, a man and a woman, by the sound of it. And the woman was utterly helpless, almost pathetic sounding. Sobbing even. Yeah, it had to be them. Some poor lost woman and some guy who was sure to be totally useless in combat. That sounded exactly like the kind of miserable help Inari would stick the fox with.

He wished he could at least see the strangers he was presumably here to meet. How was one expected to plan anything when he couldn't even see his new allies to decide if he liked them or not? As if being stuck in the most heavily guarded jail he'd ever seen in his life wasn't bad enough, it's not like they had a mirror around so he could conveniently jump into the umbra and escape. He would have to fight his way out of the place with these two ninnies tagging along.

The girl mentioned something about a dragon and Chris winced. He knew who it was she was talking about, and images of dragons started invading his head as they always did when he heard about them. He hated dragons, was terrified of them the way some people were scared of heights. Ever since that day he got into a fight with one the nightmares had been a problem.

"Great..." He muttered to the spirits after listening to Illilli's story. They laughed at him some more.

He let out a heavy puff of air and leaned fore-ward against his cage with his arms dangling out into the hall, face squashed between the bars so that he was looking at the lone mage guard with a ridiculous, mashed together expression. The mage's eyes turned to look at him briefly, and then looked away as if he didn't care.

"Ahh, ha-ha! Boogy-boo, eh?" The jeer was directed at the sour face of Chris, expectorated in a thick Thar brogue. The portly guard swaggered in along the cell block, past the mage guard.

He held a tall woman by a frightening grip on her wrist. Despite her slouch and the effect it had to hide her figure beneath her sack-like blue dress, she did appear sturdy enough to offer resistance, and angry enough to want to. Her clutching at her midsection with her free hand, however, showed she was nursing a pain.

The pork-faced guard stopped in front of the two occupied cell blocks, glanced between them, and turned to address the mage. "It's fillies in th'ne and dicks in th'other, i'n't it suppose'be?" he said.

The mage looked coolly from the cell occupied by the pugnacious Chris, and the other occupied by the gentler woman and man. "Well I think they're doing it 'violent' in one and 'non-violent' in the other," replied the mage thoughtfully.

The guard with the new woman rolled his eyes. It was so like a mage to think in such terms, when sex seemed a much surer and easier way to do the sorting to begin with. "Aye-huh . . . 'is vi'lent one decked a lady shopkeeper, 'ey were both scavengin' in some burnt-up shit near the market . . . Guess she didn' wanna give up her good finds, eh? Eh, filly-shrew?"

The woman opened her mouth, about to say something, when the guard jabbed her in the ribs with his fingers. She let out a squawk and doubled over his arm. He gave Chris another boogy-face as he shoved her into his cell.

"They’ll be checkin' this one's b'longin's in front and bringin' 'em back when they're cleared," he said to the mage, then clapped his palms soundly and swaggered back out.

Dorcas clung to one bar of the cell with her left hand, firmly kneading at her midsection with her fingers as she wrenched her face up. She couldn't see her cellmate; her eyes were closed. She gave no sound but a series of strangled squeaks as her face continued to contort with pain.

Kelly watched from his corner as the guards dragged in a second woman. If he had had any thoughts of escape, he might have been glad to see that she looked strong and healthy, even if she was hurt. For the time being, however, he was still counting on his good behavior. He hated to see the guards treating the new woman so roughly, but his belief in his charm was strong, and it would take a little more than that to shake it. besides, he told himself, that's her problem, right?

What was the social protocol for a situation like this? Kelly found he didn't know. He hardly ever broke any law, much less one that would warrant a trip to jail. Law-breaking led to both camaraderie with fellow law-breakers and conflict with law enforcement -- not an activity Kelly was likely to seek out. When one was in a bar, one drank and gambled; when one was with a woman, one talked primarily about her and dumped buckets full of complements all over her. But what did one do when one found oneself in a dank prison with three people whom one had never met, at least one of whom might be nuts, and grumpy guards who knew how close at hand?

Feeling pathetic, Kelly had to admit that he was rather lost without some sort of behavioral outline to follow. He could try addressing the guard outside politely, but that might turn the other prisoners against him. Likewise, he didn't want to make an enemy of the guard by seeming too friendly with the other prisoners.

Well, one thing was clear -- one didn't start a conversation and then not respond in turn. "That sounds rough," he said to the girl who had introduced herself as Illilli. A totally empty remark, yet carrying enough sympathy to be polite. Good. Now, he'd wait to see what the others did.

"I just wish I knew why they would lock me in here when I came here willingly... Atleast I've been treated rather politely..." She kept working on her lace, moving a bobbin here, a pin there.

"So how did the rest of you end up here? If you don't mind my being nosy. You don't have to tell me if you don't want too..." She paused a moment to pull her sleeve back displaying all the marking down her wrists and hands. It was quite warm and smelly in the cell and she placed a hand to her head to massage the headache she still had from earlier in the day.

Chris just watched the guard with a disinterested expression when he brought the girl in and did his tough guy show at chris. He didn't have anything to prove to the guard or to anyone else. What the guard didn't know was that Chris could get out of his cell and pummel the tar out of him whenever he wanted, although the mage would probably be too much for him.

With another guest in his homely cell, he pulled himself away from his place mashed between the bars so he could look her over and say hello in his own strange way, which basically consisted of looking at her while he spoke to the people in the other cell.

"I'll tell ya why they shoved ya in 'ere with the rest o' us. It's cause ya look different and these idiots're scared o' that." He said in response to the first question.

The mage quietly shifted his eyes to give chris a look that was unmistakably a warning. Chris met his eyes and continued talking, knowing full well that a lowly cell guard didn't have the authority to do squat.

"They stuck ME in 'ere cause I was showin' one o' their tough guys what tough really means."

He looked away from the guard at Dorcas again. His unshaven face was dirty and after over 40 years it was just starting to show some real age. His eyes and large frame served to cover that up.

"An' by the sound o' things, yer 'ere fer the same reason, eh girly?"

Whether Dorcas heard the conversation going on around her, she did not make any acknowledgment of it. She remained leaned into the bars of the cell she shared with Chris, sucking in quiet breaths through her teeth. As Chris began to speak, she opened one eye the slightest bit and watched him with her forehead smashed firmly against a bar. She'd have quite a dent in her forehead from it; she looked like she was trying to cause herself some pain that way, perhaps to take away from that which she was already nursing.

She didn't respond to the talk from the people she couldn't see, or to Chris's input to their topic, but she was forced to try and comprehend what she'd been asked.

"An' by the sound o' things, yer 'ere fer the same reason, eh girly?"

Dorcas took a good thirty seconds on that. She screwed up her face and tightened her grip on the bars, slowly turned her face to look at the man, managing to slowly bang her brow bone and protruding cheekbone along the metal. A deep breath was too much for her to manage. She grimaced as she began to speak.

"Didn' get in hear by letting any shi'-fer-brains call me 'girly,' I'll tell you tha' much," she hissed. "An' if you try it again, I'll show you 'tough,' I will."

The girl suddenly looked a bit younger as she stared grimly at Chris, a little heavyset in her slouch, with her awkward lantern-jaws thinning out her barely juvenile face. The dirt caked on her face was veined with the dry riverbeds of recent tears.

"Fucking orful," she said, in a lower tone this time. "Throw me in 'ere an' I'm cracked in 'alf inside." It seemed she had decided she couldn't attempt to hide the fact that she was injured, and that any fronts of toughness would have to wait.

It was rather strange, Kelly thought, to listen to a conversation when one could only see half of the participants. He had tried envisioning the man and young woman in the adjacent cell but had soon given up, realizing that his brief and dim glimpses of their struggling figures as they were brought in had not stuck in his memory.

It sounded like the girl in his cell had also been taken in for magic-related reasons, while the other two were there for challenging authority. Kelly filed that information away. He might still have to stay in this town for a while once he got out, and he liked to be well-versed in the law of any land he was staying in. He cursed himself for the nine-hundredth time for not taking the time to find out the rules of Thar Shaddin before he found himself in jail.

He couldn't deny himself a little pang of pity when the girl he couldn't see mentioned her injury. A little involuntary grimace crossed his face, but it disappeared quickly as Kelly got a hold of himself again. He glanced at his cell mate, hoping she hadn't noticed.

Neither of the occupants of the other cell had stated their names, as Illili had. Kelly decided to take his cues from them, since they seemed to better fit his image of "jailbirds." He knew he could never pull off any sort of tough-guy act, though, so he resorted to a method of self-defense he did know how to manage.

"Well," he said, "as far as I can tell, I'm in here for trying to wash my face. It's not all that bad, though -- after all, this is the first town I've ever been in with such an enthusiastic welcoming committee." It was a pathetic attempt at a joke and Kelly knew it. It was the best he could manage, however, considering how many times his nerves had been through the wash that day.

"I guess I'm here because its convenient to make certain I don't leave before they get a chance to ask me about that dragon and demon I saw at the fire..." Illilli got up and walked to the bars.

She made certain the guards knew she didn't have anything in her hands by pulling her sleeves back past her elbows. She stuck her arms through the door to her cell and crossed them around 2 bars resting her wrists on a convenient cross bar and her chin, on her wrists. She leaned against the door and sighed as she peered between two bars.

"Hope you feel a bit better" Illilli addressed to the women in the next cell.

Her headache continued to pound in ever increasing pain. She shrugged and politely addressed the guard nearest her cell.

"Excuse me sir... I have a splitting headache... Could I please have a some water, or at least could you tell me when water will be available next?"

Illilli looked fairly flushed across her face and there was a knot between her eyebrows from the pain of the headache.

Chris laughed. It was a brief, loud gust of air that carried with it a wave of good humor.

"Hah! I like ya! Ya've got some spunk, girly."

Easily twice her size, he obviously wasn't worried by her threat. The grin on his face said it all. He was daring her to try something, and didn't think she would. Not waiting for a response, he shoved his large hand in front of her as if to shake.

"Name's Chrishton. An where I come from we dun try ta act tough when we're all bitchin' about a little bruisin'."

He heard the request for water made from the nearby cell, and quietly wondered if he was being spared the trouble of breaking them out.

The battlemage watching over the cells looked over to illilli when she made her request. He had been trying his best to ignore the inmates all together, but such a task was impossible even for his disciplined mind. He'd already decided that her cell was the one he liked, and Chris and Dorcas' was one he wanted to flood with lava.

His eyes glanced over the expression on her face, and he decided her request was genuine. The cell block wasn't exactly a concession stand, and there wasn't any water around except the skin he had hanging on the wall behind him for personal use. Most of the guardsmen carried them around as part of the uniform.

The mage turned slightly and plucked the sack from its place on the wall, bringing it with him over to Illilli and Kelly's cell where he held it out for her, danging it by the shoulder strap.

"Don't finish it," he said, and then quickly added "and don't touch your lips to it."

The guard was a tall man, and with the ornate silver and red plate armor he was wearing, he looked even larger. The breast plate was decorated with weaving patterns around the emblem of the guard, which consisted of crossed swords behind a circular buckler. The mages all wore red leather gloves, and various parts of the metal plates that covered him were inked in red as well. It was all crafted with such skill and elegant design that only an elf was capable of creating, and to add to the regal image of it all the mages also sported large metal collars that sprouted up from the chest piece to frame his head in an odd metallic halo. He wore it all as though it weighed no more than plastic.

Illilli carefully took a few gulps of water from the skin careful not to touch the skin with her lips.

"Thank you very much. I feel better already." She said as she held the skin out to be returned. Once the guard had accepted the the skin back she went back to the bench and carefully packed her lace loom back into her backpack.

Once her backpack was repacked she sat down on the bench kicking her long legs out. More markings like those on her wrists could be seen where her deerskin leggings separated from her low soft boots.

With a sigh, she leaned back with a hollow thump as she slumped against the wall of the cell. Closing her eyes she focused mostly on wishing her headache to go away.

Muttering to her cell mate, but mostly to herself she said, "Well what's next... This has already be a long and exciting day as it is..."