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Cutlery 'wow-ed 'her mom with some light-hearted tales. Mom laughed and enjoyed it. Cutlery left out the bloody details. it would be better if she thought her daughter was a real hero. The night outside grew deeper. If she was being searched for she needed to leave. Mother seemed to pick up on this and made some excuses about chores for her. Always the one to bear the burden. With an awkward extraction, Cutlery was out the door. Cutlery plunged into the darkening roads.
Lutaes light bruised to a dark purple memory in the sky. Cutlery found a tavern and picked the most expensive meal they offered. It had a baked potato stacked with several creamy toppings. The main dish was a massive slab of meat she tore into—lastly a classic sweet treat of Porange fruit and Ice cream. The sweetness nuked her and she groaned at the end.
To wash it down she tried ale for the second time ever. It sucked so much ass. Why does it come in such large flagons? Then she realized she had enough money for thirty more. So she pushed through and tried four more. Or was it five?
By the end of her sixth cup, she had new friends. They seemed to know each other: two large barbaric men and two average ones. Cutlery didn't look at them long enough to get the details. They started buying her more drinks. She was pounding each flagon in mere seconds by the eighth.
Without real pain, it was easy money. The men went from jubilant, to worried, to put out as she aaahhhhed the ninth drink and laughed. She tipped the bard and walked out with a strong step. Burps reverberated off nearby walls. The alleyway became her bathroom.
Eating and drinking was fun, but that wasn't quite her pace. The brighter and louder parts of town ahead of her signaled the main square of Zurkonia. It was at least a quarter mile across.
The vast space was brimming with people. A veritable sea of hair made up the surface of the fleshy sea. Cutlery walked below that surface on the cobblestone. Children held dearly to their parents in fear while looking in wonder at the many arcane lights and spectacles.
Cutlery saw a genuine opportunity here. Fun, experiences, and lastly, she could fuck with the Tower.
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Within the crowd, many targets appeared before Cutlery. Pairs and trios of hooded figures walked about. They were taller and broader, and they walked with firm steps. Their cloaks angeled oddly as they hung over bulky underclothing. Perhaps it was armor they were hiding.
The crowd had over a dozen slivered people mixed into it. Cutlery assumed there were three kinds of slivers here. First, high slivers from the tower trying to enjoy the night before the Temple came. A larger group would be low slivers on patrol for people like her. The third would be wild card slivers. A big city event held right before the Temple came was sure to attract some foreign slivers.
Foreign slivers be true chaos factors. Their powers would function completely differently from their own. Likely they would avoid the tower's ire as well. Most slivered people stayed wherever they gained their first sliver. New slivers were very hard to gain in different lands after that. Cutlery only knew this from Asim, who was from the distant Hazfen Supremacy.
There, slivers were considered heresy. Asim had fled the demi-god rulers known as Burgeond after her father took in a sliver from a rare rock known as Duabis that fell from the Belt. The Belt wasn't very visible in Zurkonia. Asim said the sky here seemed like a void. Something infinite and empty like the ocean. In the Hazfen the sky was filled with stone, glass, and movement. Cutlery just assumed it was like a whole speckling of moons rather than the very few four they could see here.
The sky sparkled over the town square. The much closer floating lights of spellcraft darted by overhead. Many non-slivered people used simple spells to dazzle the flowing audience. Nearly two dozen of these learned, blessed, or talented people were trying to squeeze a little coin from the shifting sea of people.
Cutlery found a pair of high slivers watching one such figure. A large anthropomorphic turtle balanced on a barrel in front of them. Short arms extended from a thick dark green shell. As their clawed hands shifted in the air, streams of light followed along. The streams wrapped about people's heads and then up above them. Sometimes they flicked out of existence and people found food stains or spilled drink gone from their clothes. Then the lights would flash into life once more and move onto someone else.
Most people laughed and walked off, but a few people who looked like they were on dates happily paid the turtle a few coppers in thanks. The pair of slivers watching the turtle subtly shifted their hands. Cutlery was watching them carefully and noticed a flash of a short but wide crystal in one cloaked figure's hand.
The crystal made a high-pitched buzz that reached Cutlery ten feet away. A hundred more streams of light joined the turtles. The crowd melted into applause. Yes, they were high slivers. Cultery figured she could cut one of their throats and get away with it.
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