There was just too damn much for him to sort all at once.

Politics and charity kept him busier than he may have liked. New friendships being made and old ones being stitched back together. The dead and the dying and She Who Tends the Dead waking with the spring. Salvador found himself overwhelmed, his mind overloaded. Just when he thought he had everything in order, something happened to scatter the files to the wind. But this one issue was finally starting to grate on his nerves.

They were still following him.

Who specifically they were was a mystery that continued to baffle him. There was something about them that prevented him from getting a fix on them, and Salvador Delahada had sixth sense in spades. He knew they were there. He could feel it the way a person sensing someone staring at them for a great length of time has a tendency to turn their head and search the crowd. The crowds of Rhydin City were unfortunately thick. They could have been anyone.

On the plus side, the crowds drowned that sense out. He could plow through the people and forget that they were following him. He could sit in taverns and lose himself to the comforting swells of noise. Sometimes he could just enjoy himself and forget that they existed. When he was alone, when the streets were empty, it was a completely different story.

Wanderlust had brought him blindly to the docks. Sometimes when he was restless, which was more often than not, he let his feet do the walking and his legs carry him wherever they willed. Today he found himself wandering aimlessly through streets lined with seedier seaside taverns. Most of the filth and underlife of the City had crawled into their various holes to hide away from the rising morning sun. This made easier for him to remember, to sense them, to recall a suggestion made.

"Run an experiment," Alain had said. "Pick up a tail - someone mundane - and see what happens to him."

Whoever these trackers were, try as he might he couldn't use his clairvoyance to see them. That only meant one thing, and it irritated him in so many ways. Wards kept people from scrying just as well as they kept fae eyes from Seeing. Whoever these people were, they must have been wearing some sort of enchantment that kept them well hidden, even through metaphysical means. Someone mundane, as the detective had suggested, was less likely to be that well protected. He ducked into one of those taverns.

The stink of fish oil and unwashed bodies hit him as suddenly as the hinges squeaked to announce his arrival. A few denizens of the underworld were milling about in a variety of positions. Some were sprawled across tables with their faces near drowning in puddles of booze, snoring. Others were still challenging each other to drink more than another. Some small few were more sober and engaged in a game. The crowd was not half as dense as it would have been hours before the sun crawled over the horizon.

A balding man with a greasy collection of threads plastered to the crown of his head looked up from behind the bar. He rubbed his mostly barren scalp, reached under the bar with one hand cautiously, and scowled with a grunt. Salvador grinned at him and jerked up his chin while strolling through the room. The eyes of those still conscious tracked his every move, and he gloried in the suspicion. This part of town was well known for potential violence and Salvador intended on starting a fight.

"Tequila," he demanded of the bartender, pressing up to the bar. He didn't sit. Putting his elbow on the edge of the bar, he turned to mirror those vicious glances he was being given by some of the remaining patronage. A silver coin between his fingers, he tapped the payment on the bar to make his order more reasonable. The bartender poured him his drink in a glass that likely hadn't been cleaned since it had first been bought a decade ago. He traded the silver for the tequila while locking gazes with one of the men involved in a game of cards, then he strolled directly over to them.

The man he chose to pick a fight with was built like one of the warships docked in the nearby port. He was taller than Salvador; he could determine that even from a sitting position. Seated in his chair, the man's head came up to his shoulders. If he stood up, he'd tower over him. And naturally, not liking the confident sneer on the young man's face, he stood up as soon as he got near enough to intimidate. "Wha' tchoo lookin' at, chump?"

His companions, a smaller more portly man and an even smaller mouse of a man, both pushed their chairs with a scrape of legs and joined him in standing. Three men added to the intimidation levels better than one, but Salvador was not impressed. "What're you playing, hombres?" he asked, still grinning sharp and canting a glance to their collection of cards.

"None yo' bidness," said the mousier man.

"Less'n y'gots coin enough t'play," suggested the pig of a man.

Salvador decided to think of them in this way. He gave them names: Mouse, Pig and Wrecking Ball. The giant of a man is the one he turned most of his attention on, and he didn't hide giving him a thorough look over from head to toe then back up to his face. His grin was lethal, but to these men it probably looked seductive, and many a straight man just doesn't like that kind of expression at all.

"He ain't playin' wit' us," grunted Wrecking Ball.

"Well, maybe not this game," Salvador suggested, gesturing to he pile of coins and scattered cards on the table. He swept his gaze over Wrecking Ball again, grinning into his tequila before he tossed down the shot. He thumped the empty glass on the table's edge and turned aside. "I've got another one in mind if you know what I mean," he said saucily. Giving Wrecking Ball a meaningful wink, he turned over his hand and then drifted away from their table.

He heard Wrecking Ball start to grumble irritably, and before he even got to the door the three of them were bent over the table whispering about their mutual discontent. Bigotry exists in all worlds, even this one. Salvador was counting on them disliking 'his kind' so much that they'd act on murderous instinct and follow him out the door.

They did. It was that easy. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Salvador strolled down the main street and lead his potential hate crime squad slowly but steadily away from their safety zone. All the while he was whistling a tune through his sharply grinning teeth.

Joyful, joyful we adore thee....

hearts unfold like flowers before thee

The tune was whistled shrill and cheerful from his lips as he strolled through the filth and refuse of civilization. Tight-packed buildings and reeking bodies made for a brilliant labyrinth for him to traverse. All the while his unwitting bait of three shoved and stumbled their way through crowds and structures to keep up with him.

Excitement and anxious glee exploded in the air like a freshly lit match immediately extinguished. Salvador felt the additional tension added to the chase like a splash of cold water. Those eyes had spotted him again and they were intense. The feel of them burned down his spine like the lance of a welding torch. Now was the opportune moment. The trap was set. He turned down an alley.

Wrecking Ball grunted and heaved a poor fishmonger out of his way, quickening his pace to dart into that alley in feverish pursuit. Two long steps into the mouth of the alley, and then he abruptly stopped, blinking in the dim and dreary side street. First Mouse and then Pig collided against his back, having not expected the sudden halt. All three of them grunted, but it was the mountain of a man who growled his discontent first. "Where'd the bugger go?"

Two seconds ago, Salvador Delahada had turned off the main street and stepped into an alley. There were no dumpsters or bins laying about for him to have ducked into. There weren't even any fire escapes for him to climb. The walls of the two adjacent buildings were steep, their roofs at least three stories high. Baked clay bricks were pitted and old, but not nearly aged enough for any man to have found a foot and hand hold to climb. It was as if he had simply vanished into thin air.

And you know? Truth be told, he actually had.

Not far behind these three men, the drow-hound had pursued his scent with reckless and certain abandon. On hands and feet, the little black monster skittered into the mouth of the alley, nose low to the ground and snuffling. The scent was still here, strongly present and filling the alley with the odors of death and rot, sweat and blood. The hound couldn't see his prey, but he knew that it was here, somewhere.

The alley came to a dead end thirty feet down from the mouth. There, clinging to the high wall of the back of a dyer's shop, hung a fly. Salvador had pulled the Veil of his mother's heritage down around him the moment he slipped onto this cramped battlefield, and unlike most men he had claws sharp enough to force pits and hand holds into brick all by himself. Twenty feet up, tucked up tight in against the window of the dyer's daughter's bedroom, he crouched and waited to watch the show. Now, finally, he could see who was so determined to follow him all around this gods forsaken City.

When the sound of scraping gravel kicked up from the mouth of the alley, Wrecking Ball whirled around to glare over the heads of his companions Pig and Mouse. All three of them had drawn weapons. None of them looked impressive. A couple of daggers, a length of chain, and a big thick club that looked like it had been ripped off the side of a freighter. "Who the f*ck're you?" snarled their fearless leader.

All thy works with joy surround thee.

The song continued to roll around in Salvador's head, and from behind his invisible curtain he grinned with elated ferocity. This is probably not what Beethoven had in mind when he wrote the song in the first place. Scratch that. It was a certainty.

Salvador entertained himself briefly by glancing in through the window to watch the dyer's daughter comb her hair. The scuff of feet on gravel and a groaning body slumping heavily to the alley floor dragged his attention back. Wrecking Ball had a nasty black bolt sticking out of the back of his neck. His face crunched against pebbles. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Mouse squealed like a frightened girl and dashed for the mouth of the alley. A shadow dressed in nondescript leathers and a hooded cloak intercepted him. The wiry little man collided with something unseen that made a shhkk and slurp of sound. With one final squeak the little man crumpled into the sweet embrace of death to join his fellow.

Pig blubbered and ran the other way. He had completely forgotten, in that one small second of panic, that the alley came to a dead end. Someone dressed much like the other figure at the far end dropped from the roof over Salvador's head and landed with a crunch on top of Pig's shoulders. The fat little man was quick to his afterlife as well.

If he had blinked, Salvador would have missed the entire thing.

The crouching black drow-hound was growling and slithering further down the alley. The two who had joined him took up positions at either end, watching and waiting in silence. This one he could determine clearly. A little logic concluded that the eyes that had been trailing him had to belong to the same. Drow. He could smell the stink of stone tunnels deep below the earth sticking to their skin.

Now sure, we know that drow have exceptional night vision. Their eyes are made to operate in places where sunlight does not exist, allowing them to see the heat signatures of their foes light up like red halos around their bodies. So why, then, could they not see Salvador?

Strictly speaking, he was not technically part of their world. The Between place he was occupying illuminated the morning in a haze of red. Sound carried no echo, as if every noise were muffled beneath a shroud. In brief, periodic bursts, he was witness to moments where the slithering hound shuffled backward, jerking forward again, and the shrouded silent killers swayed marginally as they waited.

One had dropped from the roof overhead. Now he stood below his feet, but Salvador twisted carefully to look up and around. Crouched against the rooftops on either side of the alley were others. To his left there were two, one low on his belly and peering down into the alley itself. The other was standing on the middle of the roof, hood turning to scan the skyline for any sign of him.

On the roof of the building to his right, there were three more. Two of them were positioned just like those on the building across from them, but one more was crouched low and watching the main street. Their energies ebbed and pulsed with a dull flare of malice. It wasn't long until a raging inferno of flickering red stepped into the mouth of the alley at the far end.

This one walked with a sway to the hips and an air of confidence that told him one thing. Here was the Mistress. Here was the female. He knew enough about drow to know that these men, even the man-beast still sniffling and snorting on hands and knees, had to have been controlled by someone. It was only a matter of time. She was pissed; he could See.

Delicately thin fingers moved in erratic gestures. Salvador squinted fiercely to get a clear look at her hands. That was a language, he knew, but it wasn't one he had learned. ASL and drow sign are not one in the same. He hadn't spent enough time around them to have picked it up. What was she saying? What was her hound finger-talking back at her? In her frustration, the female kicked the dog in the shoulder and hissed so quietly that he had to really strain to hear her. "Vel'bol xun dos hass'l uk zhah ghil?"

Now that language ... Salvador knew.

Salvador listened.

"What do you mean he is here? Speak!"

"He is here, Mistress, I swear it on my worthless life. Perhaps he is using some sort of spell?"

Crawling, slithering, skittering, sibilant words that reminded him of snakes and spiders. A language he had learned to better communicate with the rare and few he once called friend. Micarryl had found comfort in his knowing, as did Jhael, but both of them agreed that hearing it made them uncomfortable as well. Even the one he dared call family, pack and pride, was more often than not displeased to engage in discourse with those words.

"Come out, human. Talk. I may be convinced to let you live. You may have use to me."

The translations rolled around crystal clear. Hearing them now only made him laugh. A low and breathy sound of amusement that poured out of the overhead window at the end of the alley. Sure, this gave his position away, but he wasn't fool enough to linger in that spot for long.

Beneath him, the shrouded male turned sharply on his heel and looked up with swiftly cautious precision. Digging his claws into the brickwork, Salvador hauled himself up higher until he could roll over the ledge and up onto the roof of the dyer's shop itself. Crouched low, he could see the glint of metal and the tight grip of a gloved hand on the hilt of some sharp object or another. From this angle he couldn't tell whether it was a knife or a sword, but now he knew where at least one weapon was concealed.

Drow eyes were made for seeing in the dark, for seeing things unseen. Even an invisible creature was wont to give off a heat signature for their eyes to see. Salvador's camouflage was two-fold in this way. On the first part, his natural body temperature was unnaturally cold. On the second, he wasn't so much invisible as he was at present existing in a place Between two worlds. The realm of the spirit overlapped the realm of the living, and neatly he was tucked Between them, observing both at the same time.

The ghosts of the three human men -- Wrecking Ball, Pig and Mouse -- wavered uncertainly in a landscape of ebbing, misty red. They gawked at dark shadows looming near their bodies. Neither of them were yet ready to admit to themselves that they were dead. None of them knew precisely where to go from here. A reaper was due to come in time, perhaps a demon or an angel. Or perhaps they'd simply fade away, as is what Salvador more often witnessed, until there was nothing left of them at all.

In one small moment of cunning and confidence, Salvador put to ease the unspoken doubts of the female's small army. "Dos plynn uns'aa whol natha wael, Jabbress," he hissed while shifting and skulking down the length of the roof's ledge. His feet and hands were silent as paw pads stepping through high grasses. His voice rumbled with the subdued but anxious hunger of some great hunting cat.

He was a lion on the plains. They were the hyenas encroaching on his territory. How differently they hunt.

On the rooftops to either side of him, her soldiers snapped to attention. They, like their ground level companion, were instantly alert and wary with their hands upon their swords. His voice trickled out of one realm and into the next with a haunting quality that could put one's neck hairs to standing. But surely one little ghost wasn't enough to make these males wet themselves. In the deep and dreary Underdark, there exist worse things.

All eyes were turned intently on the building he was perched upon. Let them stare while he moved. In a few short seconds he had leaped from one ledge to the next, quiet as a cat bouncing from one countertop to the other. Slow and low he crept across the roof where three stood vigil, closer and closer to the center position. Behind the Veil he slipped his hand into his jacket, around to the small of his back, and curled his fingers around the grip of his birthday present from long ago; a tanto given to him by his sister. For one he knew he could make this quick and painless, but that was only one.

Eight to one were not fair odds in the grand scheme of things, but Salvador Delahada was not afraid. Honestly, that fearlessness should have got him killed countless times. But maybe it was just this heedless ferocity that kept him alive. Too few people know how to combat a madman. One had to wonder if drow were any different.

A ghost brought out a blade. He checked his position behind the one center-standing rooftop sentinel. Beyond and in front of this one crouched another, angled best to peer down into the alley below, but certainly with an eye on the roof of the dyer's shop to his left. To his right crouched another who had been looking down into the street. Point guard for any potential reinforcements, but all he saw were the sparse crowds lumbering through the streets. No one there appeared to be a threat. No one there looked as if they were coming to their mark's aid. He too turned chin to shoulder to look back at the last known location of their foe.

They were all alert and aware on some level that he was nearby. They were waiting for their orders to strike, and perhaps even wondering how they were meant to attack something they couldn't see. If only they could have heard him sneaking along tar and gravel, but his steps were too light and practiced to give him away.

Below he could hear the hissing words of their leader. He knew that only doubt had made her say what she had. She was flying blind and looking to regain the upper edge. "Natha wael, nau," she crooned. "Ol zhah kyreshorl nindel dos ph' zav. Jous dosstan. Ori'gato udossa telanth."

Those sweet words were the trigger that set the snake to striking. Salvador reached beyond the Veil, through the invisible curtain that shrouded him, and around to clamp a hand over the sentinel's mouth. A ripple and shimmer of displaced time and space all sloughed off in a second, and within that second he plunged the blade deep into the one drow's neck. It was a clean slice between the clavicle and scapula, where the meat is soft between the bones. In and out, snicker snack, he felled one foe and brought down his odds.

"Flattery," he remarked in dull-toned common as the corpse slumped at his feet, "will get you nowhere."

Blood dripped from the tip of sharp polished steel, and there he stood for all but three to see. The two on the roof of the building across from this one, and the two remaining on this one ahead and beside him, were suddenly much more alert. All eyes were on him once he stepped free of the Between places, through the Veil.

Salvador's mouth curved into the shape of a sharp and lethal grin as he looked from one to the other in turn. He raised the blade of his weapon parallel to the ground and invited them with two simple words. "Let's play," said the madman, and how his eyes did gleam.

Emotionally, the female drow was about as moved by the death of her servants; slaves, toys, pawns--as she might have been about as moved by the dissertation on surface elves and why they ought to be eaten. Every drow already knew that.

Mentally, she was counting her losses and realizing how stupendously misinformed her Mistress had been when it came to this particular opponent. One dead to a weapon in his neck, one crippled by knife to the thigh, another dead and cracked like black eggs below from dagger to the eye. She'd never admit it, but her respect for the in'loil d' shu female she'd been following for months rose. By at least an iota. Somewhere higher than pimples on the back of a light elf's arse--at least.

"Folt natha shame, dos orn'la inbal tlus ji sokoya a l' end d' mithril," murmured half to herself. The female had kept a hip leaning against abandoned barrel for most of this display, watching as a woman might watch the pegasi races or an evening at the opera. Entertainment. Her arms, previously crossed against steel-painted-black chest unfolded. He was cutting them down one by one with ease, despite having enough holes in him to be considered a sifter for flour. Time for something a little different, xas?

Time for some fun.

The female's boots against cobblestone encroaching were almost swallowed by the normal sounds of the city. Hardly anyone passing heard or even noted the desperate battle raging nearby.

Blood splatter might have been difficult to discern with the human eye, all the other splatters filthy human alleyways gather. Not to her, of course. Here where the torch light finally fades, even without infrared vision, the darkening red of cooling life, painters smeared across the cobble stone seemed a pretty thing. Vivid and artistic in drow sharp eyes.

She had small feet, this one. She was the typical female drow, all black skin that made the night feel envy, smooth and flawless Elven heredity. She might have been five foot and two inches without the heels, with, she meandered over the fallen bodies of dead or dying males (some fallen from the rooftops, some not) shot her up to an awe inspiring five eight.

Each step she took seemed to bring the female into some sort of subtle change. From the very lackadaisical pose with arms crossed moments ago--to a sort of unwinding tenseness that traveled up spine and coiled within muscle. To her side, her keen ears picked up the sound of what almost sounded like boiling water...except the only liquid here in this place was blood. A curious, distant side glance toward the drow clutching wounded thigh and then on ward.

Pretty, she was--but something more. Something charismatic that was more than just leather, spikes, daggers and curves. Something perhaps...divinely twisted began lingering about the female. And her aura became a shifting thing, as if she were slowly being flooded with...something. Behind the females' back, a sketching shadow, brief, there and gone of spider limbs--phantasmal and only a second. It was almost as if they were wings...

Another female drow would have immediately recognized the Favored Soul of Lloth, another drow perhaps would have scrambled away, bowing head.

Alas, this rivvil had no idea and would never know the extreme honor she was about to do him. The most glorious of blessings she would share with him.

From within the both diaphanous and leather marked outfit the female wore, she removed a bit of parchment scrawled with holy words. Her mouth moved, though the words were whispered and only for the ears of the gods, of magic. Around her, seconds flared, a shimmering and transparent shield of her faith.

It was as the shield finished its appearance that the female removed a scourge the likes of which few surfacers ever get the change to inspect close up...and live, anyway.

The Scourge of Fangs held a crude, rudimentary adamantine handle which, like soured silver or old steel, glittered dull. Not so much the handle which might draw Sal's eye or attentions, perhaps not even the fact the female was coming--but the collection of writhing serpentine constructs which served as the scourge's lashes. Each hissing, twisting mass could be mentally commanded to work together or separately, striking out as if a gathering of snakes thrown. She lazily lifted it and spun it in almost playful manner in her approach, as a girl might skip with jumping rope.

He was on the roof, xas? Therefore, the female would simply have to be there as well. She hated to have to use up one of the spells with such a long wait between the next cast...But what would it hurt? Surely this male would not cause her much trouble. Sharp features tilted upward as the mass of hissing snake-heads snapped and bit irritated at one another.

For the second time this evening, the female muttered quiet words in prayer or spell. This time, her delicate little feet began leaving the cobble stone below her.



-------

The hound was useless. Mouth filed and re-filled with steel capped teeth could do little if he could not move his jaw. He only watched from safety. Cowards safety.

Then again, cowards live.

It was when his mistress began to arise from earth that he began his slow retreat.

If he stayed, he died. If he ran, he died. Either way he was completely screwed, as he saw it.

He decided like any good dog would to tuck tail and run.

The issue with drow, of course, was that they had--well. Too many. One of those well known issues were their penchant of letting pride get in the way of sense. Cowardly without question at times when it came to their own self-serving goals didn't mean they did not have moments of emotion that overwhelmed such survival instincts.

As far as Renor was concerned? The male before her was nothing but a soon-to-be smear on the bottom of her boot. How dare he continue to survive--a surfacer which continued to spread their webs of filth across the land. A surfacer, who would never understand the glory of Lloth and all that she had to offer.

When her heels touch-clicked onto the top of the roof, uneven and unsteady footing as it could give--the female moved forward like shadows on long winter ice. The heads of whip, eager and excited over the prospect of flesh bit and hissed at one another blindly as the female cracked it in the air. An eldritch fan-fare for the ebon skinned queen bearing down on perceived rook.

"You will regret living when I am done with you," heavily accented and not the best common ever heard...But clear enough to understand. The whip was drawn upward and then behind her in harsh motions, preparing to strike forward with it in the next step as her features twisted in unholy pleasure, no doubt imagining the male before her stripped, chained, and cut to ribbons by the hissing tips of her weapon.

She walked through the line of fire of her own men left alive without care--either she knew they would be useless soon, or obviously thought them incompetent.

And while the drow had shielded herself in magic of faith; how long would the spell last? And why did she not use any other magic once ascending the roof tops?

Pride. Pride made men and drow do foolish things.