Crumbs from the Bread King [GOBLIN]

[Cambie]

"The rich do not come to this part of the city often anymore," he lamented softly, as though echoing her sentiment. Truly, Suliman's Palace ought to be restored to its former glory and showcased for the gem that it was.

But then again, this new shanty town had its own unique beauty to it, more aligned to his quiet appreciation of life than the palace itself.

"Not all of the palace is gone. I know of ... secret places. Untouched places, places of solitude."

[GoblinFae]

Tiraris' head slowly tilted to the side as her interest was further piqued. "You are full of endless surprises Kassim. It seems that every turn you show me something new only to entice me further to see something greater. I fear it all coming to an end," she joked softly.

"Tell me do you often show young ladies these places of solitude or only your wives?" A playful wink told him that she was teasing even as her red eyes danced in the scorching sunlight.

[Cambie]

That comment brought a small wistful smile to the man's face, a rare sight indeed. His golden eyes peered back down at the temple complex, and his mind wandered to days of yore, when he was a young man who still enjoyed the smaller pleasures of life. Food, wine, women... now, everything felt more like a whispered dream than pleasure.

Still, for some reason, he felt he could trust this girl. Not with everything, not by a long shot. But little things, like Suliman's Palace...

"Only I know of these places. And you, if I show you. But you must promise to keep their locations to yourself. It would be a shame, like you said, for the rest of the palace to be overrun."

[GoblinFae]

"Though it may not mean much to you, your secret is safe with me. I have no one to tell nor any desire to destroy the beauty of a treasure long forgotten in time. Though I do not know if your solitude is out of choice or necessity my own I can assure you is out of habit. I find most if the world to be rather oppressive without a great deal if personal space and peace.

"I would be honored of you showed me the way," she told him quietly, offering her hand for the taking.

[Cambie]

His golden eyes drifted slowly, unblinking, down to the offered hand before gently reaching up with his own and taking it. The gnarled roots of his calloused palms dug softly into her smooth skin as he wrapped his fingers around her hand and silently led her off the balcony and back into the jumble of alleyways. The winding path toward Suliman's Palace cut through parts of the slum that were so overgrown that even the desert sun refused to shine through the canopies and dripping archways.

Still, a gentle downward slope made the journey somewhat more bearable as the two walked through narrow corridors and musty streets before finally emerging within the fallen gates of the Palace itself. The slums seemed to stretch on forever through those gates; he led her through them now. Shanties and hovels lined the cracked stones on their left and right, in the shadow of what remained of the Palace complex. Without the benefit of a high vantage point like on their balcony, it was difficult for the unlearned traveler to even realize they were within the walls of a former Shah.

[GoblinFae]

The hand enclosed about her own gave Tiraris slight pause as she felt the rough calluses that were thicker than her own. She wondered to herself what he thought of her own hands, rough from carrying knife and sword among other weapons. What she felt though did not seem to her like the hands of a farmer and even less so those of a merchant. It made her wonder to what profession her companion belonged to though she dared not ask for fear of the question coming back to her. It was not that she could not lie, her entire life had been built upon those after all. It was just the principle of the matter that she would rather not. She had told enough lies to simply be at peace in Essyrn. No more were necessary now.

"It makes you wonder," she commented as she stared up at crumbling walls, "what would force a man to forsake such beauty and let it fall to such ruin."

[Cambie]

"Even as cities topple, life goes on," Kassim stated simply as they peddled their way through the throng of bodies filling Suliman's Palace. If not for the still soaring minarets and towering walls above them, it would've been difficult to tell this part of the city from the other slums dotting Essyrn. Twice they had to avoid piles of waste dumped into what most certainly used to be the garden of a shah.

Abruptly the Stranger turned left at a small alleyway, leading the girl down a very narrow path that appeared to go nowhere. It became so narrow at the end that they had to release one another's hands and walk single file. Then they had to slip sideways to make it through. No wonder nobody ever went this way.

[GoblinFae]

"Life goes on," she repeated in agreement. Her eyes were constantly moving as she turned this way and that to try and memorize every bit of the forgotten palace she could. It hard to imagine what it was like in its former days of glory but every once in a while, Tiraris would catch a glimpse of something that hint at having been spectacular. Each such sight made a tiny bubble of awe build up within her heart, driving to look for more as they went.

The squeezing through alleyways made her scowl slightly though as she attempted to avoid dirtying her dark clothes unnecessarily. Given that it was a sandy desert though almost always assured she would be sporting tan blotches in places. However, she preferred not to have them all up and down her front and back to allow others to question or even worse, speculate, as to what activities she had been up to.

"It is no wonder you have never taken another woman with you here," she teased. "Any more," she moved her hands in an hourglass shape, "woman would hardly fit."

[Cambie]

The Stranger stopped for a moment and glanced to his companion. The smallest trace of a smile flashed across his expression before it quickly vanished back to that contemplative look he seemed to always have. Somehow, his face was a bit different again. Perhaps the cheekbones were a bit higher, the chin a bit more pronounced. In any case, he turned away and continued sideshuffling down the narrow crevice.

The walls grew closer and closer, and that narrow path seemed to stretch on forever. But soon it seemed like it widened again, until it opened up into a square-shaped dead end, perhaps four paces in any direction. The walls shot straight up, high into the sky, but uncovered. It almost felt like looking up at the clouds from the bottom of a well. And like a well, a small drip, drip echoed as tiny droplets fell against the cracked stone beneath their feet.

Without a word, Kassim started placing his hands against the old stones of the far wall, feeling for something. Some sort of trigger perhaps. This Palace had so many secrets.

[GoblinFae]

The heat must have been getting to her, Tiraris mused to herself as for the barest of moments she thought her companion's features had changed but then she was second guessing herself and blaming the light.

It was the sudden dead end and Kassim's actions though that gave her pause to chuckle softly. "You know when I said that most women could not fit into those alleys, it was not my intention to misrepresent my own size and imply I could fit into even those pinholes. Though I must thank you for the compliment all the same." She winked at him before moving closer to inspect the walls herself, her fingers trailing the crumbling facade. The faintest traces of runes revealed themselves, however their having weathered the harsh elements for so long left them nearly undecipherable to the assassin.

"What do you make of this?"

[Cambie]

It'd been so long since he'd come back to this spot, that the Stranger had almost forgotten where the secret passageway was hidden. Luckily, his companion was more perceptive than him at this instance. With a soft smile he turned to her and took her hand, tracing her finger along the faded glyphs. To anybody else it would've looked like mere dirt stains. But she had a good eye.

"The old Shahs that built this palace liked their solitude. They built secret passageways into the stones themselves, hidden away from everyone, even the servants. Passageways that led to hidden nooks in the walls themselves. Chambers of meditation."

Taking her finger, he traced one glyph, and then another, and then a third much further down the wall that didn't even look like anything.

And then the faded stones of the wall itself began to shimmer, as if they were staring at a distant mirage. They became warped and wispy, and translucent, until a small portion of the wall was all but gone, leaving just a black staircase that led downward.

[GoblinFae]

Tiraris shivered, though whether it was from his touch or the ripples if magic beneath her hand she did not pause to consider as a new passageway appeared before them both. "Or chambers of refuge from angry wives," she jested though her mind went a different route imagining means of escape in times of war.

"So should I be concerned as a lady in entering the great dark unknown with a strange albeit attractive young man, Kassim? Or perhaps the better question is should you be the concerned one?"

[Cambie]

He turned and gave her a blank look before replying, "Your only concern must be to watch your step. This passage has not aged well."

Unlike him.

He took two sure steps into the darkness, boots finding the exact spots that granted the most sturdy footholds. A small surge of familiarity rushed through him as he did so, and a small smile crept onto his face in the shadows. It'd been too long since he had been back here, despite how little he cared for his city of birth. His one solace in the bustling city of jewels.

When he turned to regard her, much of him was obscured in shadow. His hand reached back out toward the light though, for her.

[GoblinFae]

"You really cannot take a joke, can you Kassim?" Tiraris sighed and without any sign of hesitation dropped her hand within his own outstretched one as she made to descend into the darkness after him. "Surely it would not kill you to crack a smile or outright laugh now would it? Or is a maiming really all that terrifying to you?" She continued to jest even as her eyes struggled with the lack if light.

[Cambie]

At that last little jape, the Stranger did indeed crack the barest of smiles, though likely it was lost in the growing darkness of the stairway. Slowly he guided the two of them down the steps, taking great care from both his own nimbleness and memory of his place to avoid the potholes and broken steps.

It might have seemed an eternity, but finally he found that the staircase ended in a smooth, flat surface. The darkness was complete here, and so he set about looking for an object which he'd left here on his previous sojourns this way: a small rusty lantern.

[GoblinFae]

The darkness was not as off-putting for her as she would have thought though being led about blindly in it certainly was. Old habits died hard and her instincts screamed at her not to trust and to be extremely wary. Unlike some though, she did not brush those instincts aside. Tiraris kept her ears pricked for anything. The whisper of cloth over unsheathed metal, the patter of leather upon stone, the increase of breath before the plunge, all of this and more were signs of attack that she knew well. She would be prepared for anything. However, her greatest lament was that in this complete and oppressive darkness she could not for the life of her control the fires within her that sparked with her anger and pain. Not even the tiniest of dancing flames could be brought forth to offer a pinprick of light for them both. It made her sigh in frustration, though she allowed her companion to lead her about, trusting ever so slightly that he knew what he was doing despite his silent and mysterious ways.

[Cambie]

Perhaps her internal frustration translated to the tiniest of changes in the way she followed, but in the darkness the Stranger's hand gave hers a gentle squeeze as if to reassure her. Even his golden eyes could not pierce the darkness, but his footsteps were nonetheless sure and accurate. He'd been here too many times to forget.

Finally, his free hand brushed up against a cool stone wall that marked the corner of wherever they were. Crouching down, his palm brushed over the cold metal rod of a rusty lantern handle. Some oil was yet left inside, from the weight of it. He smiled softly in the darkness and released her hand.

And just like that, the lantern was lit, basking the room in a soft yellow glow. The chamber was too big for the light to reveal all, but it did reveal the colorful mosaic tiling beneath their boots, even after all these years unmarred by time. The lacquer and paint gleamed brilliantly as the day they were painted.

[GoblinFae]

Tiraris had been about to make an agitated comment but was cut short by the faint glow of the lantern setting the floor and some of the walls alight with shimmering reflections. As the daughter of an old noble house, she understood the cultured beauty of the architecture and breathed a sigh of wonder. Slowly, yet decisively she picked her way through the fallen rubble towards what she could see of the walls to try and better view the depicted scenes and stories being told with long forgotten stones and jewels.

"To think this all lies hidden not so far from poverty's door. What stops them from entering? Surely they know this exists here."

[Cambie]

"Some do," he admitted softly, raising the lamp for her so that it fully illuminated the wall that she inspected. The mural depicted scenes of old Essyrn: old citizens, Shahs, animals, and a hundred other things. Some of the vibrant colors were faded with time, but the beauty of the craftsmanship remained.

"But if the elders recall the way down here, they do not speak of it. Many have found their way down, only to never return. The door shut behind us, and in the darkness it can be difficult to discover the passage out."

A small trickle of water echoed from the distant darkness. "Come," he said, after allowing her a moment to reflect on the mural. "The chamber goes deeper."

[GoblinFae]

"You do not fear losing your way?" she queried even as she easily moved to follow him at his side. "Or is the greater thing to fear down here, finding yourself?" Tiraris chuckled softly even as she allowed her ears to take in everything where her eyes failed her. "Perhaps the better question to ask is where is the water coming from? Or am I just hearing things?"