Firelight shines around the room, reflecting off of the many lustrous surfaces scattered all around from wall to wall. Obols of all sizes, shapes and colors, gems and precious stones and odd metals that Fresh has never seen before, all of them capturing the radiant shine of the fire.

Yet, through the cast reflections of the glow, the light does somehow seem to lose some of its warmth, as if the glow itself carried the tinge of the bad-thing that all of these precious things had been stained with during their acquisition.

This is just a small room, a small, underground safe beneath one building, but Fresh is sure that there are many, many more just like this, scattered all over the place in every city. She is sure that there are larger ones, far grander ones in wherever the thieves’ guild resides. But all of it, every coin, every bit of metal and every precious stone was likely paid for with dire prices that she doesn’t want to know anything about.

And all of that, for what? So that it could all sit and accumulate down underground? Never to be used to buy a single smile?

It’s a waste of money. A waste of life.

“We’re living in interesting times, no?” asks the man, bending down and picking up an oddly pink tinged bar of silver metal. “Orichalcum,” he says. “It’s beautiful, I think,” says the man, holding the bar up into the air to watch the light reflect off of its smooth, highly reflective surface. “It only grows near the roots of the great-tree,” explains Patala, his voice hissing. “Very rare. Very expensive,” he says, his head tilting as he looks at the thing that he holds above his head. His body sways a little to the side as he holds some odd posture. But as before, there is something wrong with the way he moves.

It doesn’t matter if he’s walking around the room, standing still, turning his head to look their way or whatever else, there’s always something wrong with each and every pose and position he takes. A shoulder too low, an elbow bent outward, a foot twisted at a somewhat odd angle. It’s like he hasn’t quite learned how to ‘be’ yet, as a human. Though, Fresh still isn’t sold on that either. She has never seen his face, as it is hidden beneath an obscuring hood that seems to work just like her own witch’s hat. There is an impossibly veiling shadow there that never seems to leave, even under the direct glow of the reflective metal in his hands.

He tilts his leaned back head, looking at her. With his body still bent somewhat backwards, he holds his arm out sideways and holds the bar out towards her. “A welcoming gift, for this special occasion!” he says in delight, the jewel on his hood glimmering in the orange light.

A snap fills the room, crystal light shines out all around them as a spire of glass shoots up from the floor, separating them as it rushes towards the ceiling, smashing the bar against it with violent force. Through the transparent glass, through the eyes of her own warped reflection in the surface of it, she sees a wide, toothy smile, distorted by the refractions of the surface.

Her reflection shakes its head. The glass shatters, crumbling apart like a heap of ash and as it falls, like the dropping of a curtain, there is nothing left behind it except for mounds of gold and treasure.

The bar of metal clanks down to the stones, together with a single glove that it lays on top of.

“We don’t take hand-outs,” snaps Jubilee, looking around the room. “And we’re not here for your fucking games, Patala,” they say. “This is serious.”

Fresh looks around the room, trying to find the man.

“Is that so?” hisses a voice from behind them. Fresh turns her head, looking, but there is nobody there. By the time she turns her head back forward, the man is standing there, adjusting his glove back onto his hand. “I recall that you’ve taken them before.”

Jubilee points at him. “Those weren’t handouts, those were you people being manipulative, shady fucks!”

Patala bends down straight forward and leans in with his head towards Jubilee’s hand. “Funny of you to say that,” hisses the man, tilting his head as Jubilee’s glove vanishes into the shadow where his forehead should be. “What an odd creature you are.”

“Are we going to talk, or are you just going to be theatrical all fucking night?” asks Jubilee, leaning in closer towards him and then pushing his head away. As the man rises back up, Jubilee shakes off their glove a second later, as if it were dirty.

“What is there to talk about?” he asks coyly.

“Oh, I don’t fucking know,” replies Jubilee, placing their hands on their hips. “How about the fucking war on our doorstep?”

“I suggest buying a lock,” replies Patala.

“Oh, haha, very funny.” Jubilee bends down and picks up some dirt, getting ready to snap their fingers again.

“Now, now, don’t be a rude guest,” says Patala, sitting atop a pile of coins.

Jubilee snaps their fingers. A spire of glass shoots out of the ground towards him, but by the time it gets to where he was sitting, the man is simply gone. As if he had vanished in the instant that the pillar had obscured her vision.

“What’s wrong with a little war?” asks the man, his voice coming from next to them. Fresh turns her head, looking at the figure who is now laying, stretched out over a stack of various metal bars. “That’s when business is best. You’re merchants, aren’t you?” he asks, digging through a pile of coins. Picking one, he flicks it over with his thumb. It lands down on the ground at their feet, rattling loudly. “Make a little money.”

“Oh, I bet you fucking love this,” says Jubilee.

“I love every season there is,” replies Patala. “Spring, summer, autumn, war. They’re all enjoyable in their own way, no?” he hisses. “When the virgin snow starts to fall and the first ships start to land, think of all the happy faces!” he exclaims, rolling his head sideways to face them, a tiny trinket of some kind held in his hand, aloft in the air. Fresh narrows her eyes, staring at the thing as she realizes what it is. A heartstone-necklace, one of the ones she had made to let the fairies leave the mountain. Something shifts in his expression. “- and how they’ll be smashed down onto the rocks.”

He squeezes his fist.

[Durability {0]] [Item Destroyed{Heartstone Necklace}]

“HEY!” yells Fresh, wanting to make a rush at him herself now. Jubilee’s hand stops her, holding her back. In that instant, the fire dies out all around the room. Every torch extinguishes, every glimmer and glow and shine that had filled the space turns to void. In a single moment, it becomes dark and before the last shadow falls, Fresh grabs Jubilee’s hand.

“Don’t you think it’s great?” asks the hissing voice in her ear. Something blood-red glimmers across the room. Some single crimson jewel that has been chosen to be illuminated. “Don’t you think it’s great too?” asks Patala.

Glass shatters as Jubilee tries to keep the odd man away. “Patala, I swear to fuck if you don’t cut the shit -”

The man laughs, his voice echoing around the darkness. “You can’t hit what you can’t see, Ju~ bi~” She feels his breath next to her ear. “- lee~” Fresh swings out with her free-arm, this time hitting nothing but air herself. “You don’t think it’s great?” he asks. “That they will all finally reap what they’ve sown?” His voice travels around the room, together with the shattering of fresh glass that trails after him. “If the world wasn’t a bad place, this wouldn’t be happening, right?” he asks. “Don’t you want it to just be…” he takes in a sharp breath and there is the strained sound that she recognizes as the creaking of leather gloves being squeezed beneath tight fists. “- squeezed clean?” he asks. “Just to get rid of all the gunk and the muck?”

Fresh can’t see him, but she also knows better than to talk to him and so, instead, she just continues to squeeze Jubilee’s hand and they squeeze hers.

“You’ve seen it, the center,” he whispers. “You know what it is. It’s nice, right?” says the man who she can’t see. “It was all like that once and it could all be like that again,” he promises. “Sooner than you think. With just a little elbow-grease,” says Patala. The red light of the glowing gem across the room begins to die down as the silhouettes of several fingers begin to wrap themselves around it, like hands ringing a throat gasping for air. “Wouldn’t you like that?” he asks. “To share that better, clean world, with your friends?” The red light dies out, as it is suffocated. “That light world? Don’t you hunger for it too?”

Fresh stares out at the darkness, as the man finishes his monologue.

“Of course I want that,” she says. “But if you do it like that, you won’t be able to be a part of it, because you’ll be too weighed down by all the bad stuff you did.”

“And that -” hisses the man’s voice as the torches begin to relight. “Is why you are a selfish, horrible creature, Perchta,” says Patala. “Because you want to be a part of it. Even if you don’t belong.” Fresh opens her eyes. “You don’t belong. Not here. Not to this world. Not to these people. You’re a drop of oil in a glass of water.”

“That doesn’t matter!” argues Fresh, looking around the room for the man. But this time, he’s nowhere to be seen. “And if that’s true, then why have you been helping us?!”

“Because,” says the man as the last shadow vanishes in the room, leaving nothing but glimmering gold and treasure. “Oil is flammable.”

And with that, his presence vanishes, leaving only Fresh and Jubilee standing there.

“Well this was a fucking waste of time,” sighs Jubilee, shaking their head. They look around the room, letting go of her hand. They climb up the pile of coins and pick up the pieces of the broken necklace, bringing them back to her. “Here. Sorry,” they say. Fresh smiles, taking it and tucking it into her pocket. “We shouldn’t have done this. This was a bad idea.”

Fresh shakes her head, grabbing Jubilee’s hand so they can leave. “No. I don’t think it was,” she says, happy to finally have some context on the thieves’ guild’s relationship with herself. “Let’s go home, Jubilee.”

“Yeah. Fuck this,” sighs her best friend. “Fucking creepy, cryptic fucking bullshit.”

“Yeah,” nods Fresh in agreement.

Just like that, the two of them go home.