Saul lifted up an arm to shield himself from the fumes, but they oddly clung to the back end of the room. Once assured of his own safety, he rushed over to Xen’s side and lifted him upright. His black clothing was obscuring a lot of his injuries, but the broken parts of his mask were showing a lot of blood. He pressed one thumb against his cheek and tried to assess if it was broken or not. As he pressed against his soft cheek, he could see where heavy tears mixed with the blood. Something about the way they were clinging to his face made him uncomfortable, something in his gut telling him they weren’t caused by physical pain. Just as he got confirmation of the injury, Xen gripped Saul’s collar and pulled him close.

“Please...” He said in a soft whisper. “Please don’t let anyone see my face. I need my mask...”

His eyes shut after the quiet plea. Saul took out his handkerchief and draped it over the exposed portion of the Erudine’s mask. Even if he was not aware of the full gravity of his request, Saul wasn’t one to deny it. He tried shifting him about, but was worried about there being any broken bones. The fumes in the back began to die down, and the humming of the room resumed again. With it, Saul felt a panic to leave the area, and he looked over to where Plafluf was getting up off the ground.

“You alright? We need to head out of here.” He told him.

“Yes... I was only thrown into a wall, I am fine.” Plafluf replied with a groan, getting back his knife and sheathing it.

While he approached, Saul lifted Xen up into his arms. They turned around only to face a large number of Urchski with spears at the ready. One of them pushes forward, a dirty iron helmet making him stand out from the rest.

“What happened here?!” He demanded, clicking the bottom of his staff against the floor.

“We got pulled away by some intruders here. They grabbed my friend here while we were in the shadows and started attacking him. Managed to get back here just in time to rescue him, but they ran away. You should see some blood by the pool... managed to cut off one of their arms in the fight.” Saul told him as Xen started to stir.

Best not to tell them about how Xen snuck away from us of his own volition. Those two were terrifying in a fight, I’m amazed Xen got such a lucky strike in on one of them. Either way, we need to keep on our toes and just get out of here. He thought to himself, letting Xen down onto his feet and helping prop him upright.

The leader gestured to one of his subordinates, ordering him to check out the blood near the pool. One of them scampered off and sniffed around the area, nodding towards the captain after a short while. Though Saul couldn’t quite understand what the captain said under his breath afterwards, he could spot a heavy set of curse words when he heard them.

“Okay, we will believe you for now, but you must leave immediately!” He shouted.

“Believe me, we don’t want to be here any longer than we have to.” Saul replied, shouldering Xen and making their way out of the building.

Two of the Urchski followed them from behind with spears at the ready. As they left, Saul could hear them moving around and cleaning things up from the battle. When they passed through the door into the darker areas, he couldn’t hear them anymore, but the murderous intent of their escorts was still obvious. They made it to the stairwell, and by then Xen was conscious enough to climb out on his own. With the hatch open, all of them had to shelter their vision, not realizing they’d been down there for so long. The guards closed the hatch quickly behind them, but no one was left outside this time.

“I... I need to head back to the inn. I need to lay down and—" Xen started to say before wobbling to his side.

“Doubt you’ll make it there like this. Plafluf, hate to be a burden, but do you mind housing Xen here?” Saul asked him.

“More of a concern of if my mother will accept it. She is nice though, I don’t think it will be a problem. Maybe he will need rent, but that is fine.”

Saul rolled his eyes at the rent comment, but continued carrying the Erudine off in the direction of the treehouse. As they walked down the road, they got many strange looks from the passing Urchski of the area. Thankfully it wasn’t long that they were outside, and they got back to Plafluf’s home without any more trouble.

Once in the home, Plafluf scampered ahead to let his mother know about what they needed to do. It was only once he’d left that Xen leaned close to Saul. The grip he took on his collar was weak, a stark contrast to how he’d appeared when they first met.

“I know this might be too much to ask, but... can you please repair my mask? It is incredibly important to me. Finding a replacement here will be impossible.” He said as he reached into his pocket. “These are the pieces that broke off of it in the fight. You must glue them back together without taking my mask off.”

Saul took the splinters, some of them being no thicker than a hair. “You really managed to pick all these up in the fight? I tried to scan your body for broken bones, but couldn’t get a good reading to count past the bruises on your body. What if you managed to tear something internally doing this?”

“The mask is more important to me.” Xen answered, swallowing hard. There were tears in his voice, even if Saul couldn’t see his face. “Please, just do it for me.”

“Alright, alright. You have my word. I’m sure there’s got to be glue of some kind down here in the Megaden.”

Plafluf returned and waved them forward into the living room again. Xen wrapped an arm around Saul’s shoulder and clung tightly to his side. He helped him up ahead till they find a line of pillows lined on the floor waiting for him. It took a lot of groaning and shifting weight, but they managed to lay him down on top of them. Plafluf’s mother reached for the handkerchief with one hand, but Xen almost instinctively slapped it away and pressed it against his cheek.

“Oh, uh, right. Tell your mother that we’re going to need some glue. He wanted me to repair his mask, but doesn’t want anyone else to see his face right now.” Saul said, watching as his guide translated the instruction.

Though the mother huffed in frustration, she left the room speaking in her native tongue. “She can use some of the sap to help, but it must be pulled out of the wall and kept moving, so it may take a while.” Plafluf translated again.

Saul nodded and sat down beside Xen, pulling out his notes and writing stick. That cloud that erupted out of the pool when the body part fell inside was definitely strange. I came here just to track down the source of this smuggling ring, but clearly there’s something bigger going on. What do the eastern Urchski want with that place exactly? What was it about the room that made even Volruun so terrified? He thought to himself, scribbling in his pages and flipping through them repeatedly.

Before long the mother comes back with a wooden bowl and a spoon, mixing the contents inside as quick as possible. She gives him some instructions which Plafluf translates as needing to keep the sap moving or it will harden and be unusable. He took the bowl himself and started stirring it. There was an almost rosey smell to it, which matched the blood red color that it had. Using one hand with the spoon while the bowl was in his lap, he started piecing together the mask parts one by one.

It took some effort, and Plafluf eventually had to help stir to keep his arms from going too tired, but they pieced it together. The solic color of the mask was now cracked and fused back together in a bright red. Though the sap didn’t expand much, it still sunk into the cracks of the mask. As he placed it back together with the one on Xen’s face, it was already getting late into the night.

“He’ll have to sand that down at some point I’m guessing. Didn’t even notice he went to sleep though, he’s as still as a corpse on those pillows.” Saul said, finally taking back his handkerchief and wondering how he’ll get the bloodstains out.

“Why all the fuss over his face anyway? Is he that ugly?” Plafluf asked, staring at Xen.

“I highly doubt it. The Erudine are all the same beneath that mask, actually. Men, women, children. All their facial features are more or less the same. I heard it comes from some curse they all caught back on the old world. Regardless, now they all wear these masks to hide it. Religious reasons and all that.”

“But wasn’t that one in the tunnel an Erudine? They weren’t wearing a mask.”

“True... guess that would be a question we’d have to ask Xen himself.” Saul replied, rolling his shoulders with a sigh. “Either way I’m exhausted after everything we’ve done. I need to get some sleep while I can, so I’m heading back to the inn. I’ll be back here in the morning. Make sure that he doesn’t move around too much, alright?”

Saul stretched out his arms and double checked all of his various pouches before he left. Unlike when he first arrived, the sounds of moving people were now replaced with soft birdsong. The chirps were mostly lower pitched and slow, owning to the fact that only the larger predator birds would be making noise at these hours. He closed his eyes for a few moments on Plafluf’s doorstep to listen to the relaxing sound before he carried forward.

The street was incredibly quiet, aside from the occasional Urchski that would scamper past him as he went. Only in the main square did he still see people moving around. It wasn’t as much as he’d often see in the center ring, but enough to make him a little homesick. He entered the inn and met up with the barkeep again, who was yawning from working all night.

“Ah, you are the unlucky person to work with Plafluf! Did he run off from you?” He asked him, cracking a fanged smile.

“Not at all, he’s been a great help. I’ll need a room for the night, if that won’t be much trouble.” Saul replied, sliding two coins down onto the counter.

The innkeeper huffed and picked them up, replacing their spot on his bar with a set of keys and a tag that had a number painted on them. “You are lucky that he did not tell you about the soup story too much. He ranted here for days when he first had it happen. Personally, I heard that he struck a deal with some nobles for something he stole on the western side.”

Saul took the keys and read his number. “Oh? Didn’t realize that you thought he was a criminal when you pointed me in his direction.”

“Heh, he is a good kid, smart mother. Stealing from a westerner is nothing major, they are likely a thief anyway. I would wonder if it was a southern, but he has all of his teeth!” The old Urchski laughed to himself.

Saul nodded and left him to his night work. The stairs up were opposite the entrance itself, and he had to ascend past another floor of dining tables before he found the stairs going inward and spiraling up the center of the trunk. On these levels, the rooms were carved into the walls. They would barely be accommodations for a single person in the center ring, but for an Urchski it could probably fit two or three. His room was on the fifth floor, near the top of the tree itself.

I’m stunned that the tree is so large. It was hard to get a good grasp of the volume from the ground floor, but this tree must easily be as tall as the barrier to the outer section. Must’ve been fortunate to the one that first found this place. Saul though to himself, pressing his key into the lock.

“You’ve been causing quite the stir I hear.” A female voice came from behind him.

Saul turned around to find a female Urchski standing on the stairs. Unlike most of the ones he’d seen so far, she was dressed in a silken dress, with a frilled collar around her neck, and even had ribbons of various bright purple shades tied around the tip of her tail. Her coat was almost marble white as well, which would make her stand out from most of them immediately. There was a thick coat of wealth emanatic off of her every motion.

“Only for those in the criminal world I would hope. You seem to have me at a disadvantage though, have we met before?”

“No, mister Saul, we have not. My name is Edyta and I am of the house Cherno in the Eastern Megaden. If you are not well versed in our politics you might not know either of those names, but I will not be modest and lie about our importance.”

“Better to be honest and brash than hiding something and sweet.” Saul replied, keeping his hands at his sides. “Well since you’re so important, would you mind letting me know what I’ve done to draw your personal attention like this?”

“This investigation of yours, of course. From what I have been told by some of my siblings, you’ve been poking around into very restricted areas while doing it. Would you mind telling me what it is you’re looking for while snooping through haunted ruins?”

“Haunted? Oh my, I had no idea. I guess with all of the guards there on my last visit, it seemed like it was almost a barracks.”

“I would prefer an answer, not snide remarks.” She said, whipping her tail lightly.

“Well unfortunately I am unable to share the specific details of what I am investigating right now to the public. You’re free to do a check on my credentials if you doubt who I am or if I am here on official business.”

“So you are refusing to give me the information I want?”

“With all due respect to one of noble birth, miss Edyta.” Saul replied, folding his arms carefully. “You’re asking questions that might make you a suspicious party in my investigation right now. If you want me to answer that, then you’d better expect a whole lot more from me.”

Both of them were silent for a few more moments until the Edyta stepped up from the stairs onto the floor completely. She approached Saul carefully, with her tail ribbons dangling up in the air with a slight lift of her tail. Once she was just less than a yard away, she cocked her head to the side at him, observing carefully. Though all Urchski had pitch black eyes, her still had an excessively piercing quality to them as he stared back.

“Of course I would not want for the ever-powerful merchant’s guild to snap down on the people of the Megaden because of my actions. If you don’t want to tell me about the investigation it is well within your rights to do so. However, I would like to say that your job must certainly accrue a lot of dangerous risks.” She replied, swinging herself around and moving back to the stairs. “The Megaden is a very dangerous place in general, so you must always be on your guard. Being within the ruins though, especially that one buried underground? Well... there’s no place in alzholme quite as risky as being in there, human.”

Saul kept quiet as she left, waiting for even her footsteps to fade away. Once she was gonna, he let out a heavy sigh of relief. There was only the noise of the bar crowd faintly below in the room now, and he chose to head inside of his room to get away from it.

The accommodations were very basic. A window that was just a hole with some wood left as bars covering it up was about the only thing on the wall opposite of him. Aside from that, there was a dresser with only two drawers, a bed that was about a size too small for him, and an empty desk. He took a seat on the bed, noting it must have been stuffed with some kind of animal fur. Happy it wasn’t as unbecoming as the rest of his room, he got undressed and laid down to sleep. It hardly took a minute after he closed his eyes for him to go out, the exhaustion of his encounters for the day suddenly hitting him at once.

Saul didn’t dream much that night, only a few passing images that he managed to forget with just a couple of blinks of his eyes. The sunlight poured over him from the nearby window gracefully, a stark contrast to the bustle and shouting of the morning traffic below. Matching the sunshine in his room, he managed to get to work getting dressed and ready right away. Saul wasn’t the type to have trouble sleeping, and even less so waking up. It was a trait that managed to earn him jealousy from some of his acquaintances back in the center ring.

Once he was ready to set out he left his room, making sure to lock it as he went. The bar was full of mostly Urchski, though this time there was hardly a mug in sight, most of them hungrily tearing at meals placed in the center of their tables as Saul passed them by. The street outside was similarly busy, but without Plafluf to guide him, Saul had to bump around a few folks and dodge a cart as he left the big hassle spots.

Eventually he got back to Plafluf’s house. The sound of birdsong now was much more chipper and high pitched. He knocked on their door and glanced up, watching some of the mountain trail-tails fly between the branches. He didn’t have to wait long before the door opened with Plafluf on the other side.

“Good morning. How’s Xen doing?” Saul asked him.

“That is what I was going to ask you. He left really early this morning with just a note saying that he was going into the western section.”

“What? Why would he...?” Saul started to ask before shaking his head. “Nevermind, it’s obvious. We just need to hurry over there and make sure he’s not getting into trouble. Right now he’s a part of my case and I don’t want him messing things up or getting hurt worse.”