On the Hills of Eden

“Good morning, Minervan,” the Hashashin said, looking the waiter dead in the eye.

“M-morning, Sir,” the waiter replied, standing alone at the doorway, beads of sweat beginning to form within his hair and trickling down his forehead as a cruel betrayal to his admittedly lacking attempt at an inconspicuous disposition.

“They’re in here, aren’t they?”

The four of them heard as they cowered behind the counter.

Soleiman looked over at Pallas, flashing her a look of worry while Rumi quivered herself into the foetal position.

“W-who, Sir?”

“Alright, look. I know they’re in here, I saw them enter,” the man continued, sighing as he did so. “If they don’t show themselves, that’s fine. I’m not here to drag them back to the Gravitas.”

Rumi shivered slightly less violently.

“It doesn’t matter if they show themselves. All they need to know is that if they get caught, I get caught for letting that damned Chitite in.”

They looked over to Qingxi, who returned the attention with a shifty-eyed glance.

“So it is in my best interest that they get out of here.”

The man paused for a while, giving the group the opportunity to make their presence known.

…

“Yes Sir,” the waiter managed, though the hesitation in his voice made it clear he frankly would’ve much rather preferred to have spent his day zoning out instead of bricking it in front of the military police.

Slowly, Soleiman got to his feet, though he quickly sat himself back down after a few panicked hand-waves and a silent, “Sit down!” from his sister.

“Alright. My Hashashiyyin comrades will arrive at the Thosmodene Estate in about ten minutes, give or take,”

“A-alright?”

“So if they decide to skip out on doing whatever it is they planned there, they can leave via the city’s northeast checkpoint in about five minutes’ time,” he said. “I’ll be heading there to get the guards off the road for about a half hour, so that’s the time window they’ve got.”

“...Okay.”

“Draw them a map, heck, lead them there if you need to. If they get caught,” the Hashashin said, the rising menace in his voice matched by the increasing frequency of the poor waiter’s whimpers, “Then you and your business are as good as ash, understood?”

“Yes, Sir!”

The Hashashin grunted, followed by the sound of the heavy doors closing shut.

The four of them sat still behind the counter, giving some time for the Hashashin to leave the vicinity before slowly re-emerging.

“How did he know we were here?” Rumi asked.

“I… he probably saw us,” Soleiman replied, stumbling over his words slightly. His expression still mixed in with confusion, he slowly looked up at Pallas, a pleading look in his eyes.

But she too was unable to completely process the situation, the thumping of her heart in her ears slowly fading back into her chest.

“We should leave soon,” Qingxi eventually said, moving past the counter as she headed back towards the front doors. “We can’t stay here, whatever we do.”

“But we can’t just leave without visiting the Thosmodenes, we wouldn’t survive past a day out there if we don’t prepare ourselves well enough,” Soleiman countered, adding, “Not to mention the fact they’ll be on our tails the whole time, too! We’d be screwed without a horse or two.”

Rumi groaned slightly, putting her hands to her head as she slowly sank towards the floor, stopped only by Pallas holding her up.

“My head’s going blank,” she whimpered, her legs buckling from out under her even as Pallas supported her.

“Alright,” Pallas said, helping Rumi to a nearby chair. She thought for a moment, collecting the myriad of ideas and arguments and risks and rewards that flew about the debate room of her mind.

“Soleiman, you and I will get whatever we need from the Estate,” she said. Placing her bag on the floor and fishing out her armour set, she continued, “Qingxi, you and Rumi wait here for a while. Get yourself ready, do whatever you need, and then leave for the northeast exit- wherever that is, alright?”

“You want to split up?” Soleiman asked, hesitantly dropping his bag onto the floor to fish out his armour.

“We can’t stay here, we can’t all make it to the Estate, and we can’t just leave without paying the Thosmodenes a visit,” she replied, tying the ropes and clicking the buckles about her hip in place. “There isn’t any other way.”

“Mmh,” Qingxi hummed in agreement. “You sure?”

Pallas continued clicking her armour in place, the patchwork of wood and ceramic sending a surge of adrenaline through her with each additional piece she donned.

“...Yeah. I am.”

Having decided on a plan, the two halves of the party then split up, planning to rendezvous outside the city.

Pallas and Soleiman soon slipped out into the now completely deserted street, the few civilians brave enough to walk about now likely scared away by the sight of a foreign warship docked at the pier.

Looking back, they waved a goodbye to Qingxi and Rumi standing about a table the waiter used to scribble a rough map of the terrain surrounding Kardia.

The doors eventually thudded as they shut the tavern off from the outside world, leaving the two siblings out alone in the street.

“Out west, right?” Pallas asked.

Soleiman nodded, cracking his neck.

“Alright, let’s go!”

The two armoured figures began on a slow run, their armour clicking and their bags jumping up and down as they ran into a dark, shaded alleyway between the ragtag assortment of shops and houses by the street.

Their boots squelched against puddles of stagnant water and patches of soggy dirt as they dodged around random bits of broken or unwanted furniture or trash, droplets of mud and murky water staining the wood of their armour.

Faced by a wall at the end of the alley, they made a hard turn right, Soleiman having to push himself off of the structure to keep himself from slipping on the mud.

They dodged under a wire and pushed their way through drying clothes, finally arriving at the other end of the alley and out into the street directly adjacent to where they’d come from.

Cautiously, the two of them peeked out from where they were, Pallas clearing the left and Soleiman the right. Once it seemed the coast was clear, they bolted out into the street, startling the handful of passersby present. And as Pallas led the two of them across the street, aiming for the next alleyway, Soleiman kept his eyes on the pier all the way downhill.

It was clear, for now.

They made their way into the next alleyway, met by a tall fence twice as tall as either of them on both sides as they arrived at its end. Undeterred, Pallas launched herself off of the soft earth, using her hands to soften her landing as she sat herself atop of the fence. Kicking one of her legs across to use as an anchor, she reached her hand out and grabbed Soleiman, heaving him up and over.

The two of them then jumped off, boots sinking into the soil before they took off again.

They weaved from alley to alley, crossing street after street as they made their way towards the Estate. As they ran, they felt as the attire the Duke had provided them grew wet and heavy with their sweat, clinging to their skin and making it feel as though they’d been tied down under their armour.

Run, peek, cross, repeat. Again and again, the minutes ticked by, each one a minute taken away from the time they’d have to talk with the Thosmodenes. Each one a step closer to failure. Even still, each one felt like an hour, the rising heat and the oppressive humidity of the nearby sea making each step through the mud and each anxious look around the corner all the more unbearable.

Run, peek, cross-

Soleiman grabbed Pallas just as she made her way out of the alleyway, yanking her back into the shadows.

“There’s a pair of Hashashiyyin by the pier,” he said in between heavy breaths. “Walking.”

Pallas nodded in return.

“We can make it then, if we hurry,” she responded.

Though Soleiman, too preoccupied with trying not to let his heart give out under the stress of the exertion, didn’t say anything.

“You need help with your bag?” she offered.

Soleiman shook his head.

“I’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

They resumed their advance, jumping from street to street. Each time, they waited for the Hashashiyyin to get just far enough to make their run so that they wouldn’t get seen. But they never made the run to break out into the street ahead of the Hashashiyyin, unable to find an alley straight and clear enough for them to get enough of a headstart to avoid being seen.

“What the heck do we do?” Pallas whispered. “We can’t just keep waiting for them like this!”

“I…” Soleiman struggled, still fighting for air. But, as he looked up to see a singular passerby stop in their tracks to stare in disbelief at the two siblings, he had an idea.

They continued trailing behind the Hashashiyyin to get to the next alley. Then…

They simply walked out.

In full view of the Hashashiyyin, if only they turned to see them further up the street.

Almost agonisingly slowly, they strolled across the street, their silhouettes in the peripheries of the Hashashiyyin as innocuous as could be as the passersby around them stood in confusion.

One step forward, then the next.

And they were in the alley’s embrace once again.

They’d made it, much to Pallas’ disbelief.

Rumi and Qingxi bade farewell to the waiter after handing him a few coins as a token of their appreciation. They headed out into the street, the surprising ferocity of the early morning sky bearing itself down upon them the very moment they walked out of the tavern’s comparatively heavenly shade. Qingxi, who’s armour made standing out in the heat all the more uncomfortable, almost felt as though she were being steamed alive.

As the beads of sweat began rolling down her forehead, she held the makeshift map the waiter had so graciously provided them with before the two of them, recalling what he had told them just moments prior.

“The exit’s just up this street, right?” she asked Rumi, her eyes darting about the map.

If you could even call it a map, for really it was just a set of five points set down at arbitrary distances from one another, labelled in Minervic by Rumi and with rough distances between them shown as well.

“Should be,” Rumi responded.

The first point was where they were right now, the tavern. The second happened to be the Thosmodene Estate, around 800 metres away from where they were. The third and fourth points were labelled as the north-east and west exits, both about a few hundred metres from points one and two respectively.

Most interestingly, though, was the fifth point, anywhere from 30 to 40 kilometres away from the exits. Labelled as ‘Mesimeos’, a supposed village in the middle of the Minervan forest, connected to Kardia only by a single scraggly road.

Slowly, they made their way upstreet, the path below them turning from stone to compacted dirt to loose soil as they stuck to the buildings on the right as closely as they could for their shade. Though the air was so humid it often felt just as hot under the skylight as it did under the shade.

As they walked, the streets around them grew increasingly more impoverished, the buildings more squat and sparse and the grass more verdant and lively. Strangely enough, though, the atmosphere grew livelier the further out they went, and the more run-down and chaotic everything looked, the more passersby they saw going about their day.

Each one carried with them a basket or two, though them holding the baskets well above their head denied Qingxi and Rumi the luxury of knowing what was held within.

First it was just one in every few shops with their verandas open and welcoming to business, but then these operating shophouses became more and more commonplace the further they went. Each one selling a certain type of goods, ranging from woodworks to furniture to fibres, ropes and tarps.

Eventually, they came across a little gathering of people, every single one of the attendees carrying a basket in their hands. Some empty, some filled with the golden glow they knew only as that of the Edenberries.

In the centre of their little gathering was a quaint little water-filled marble cauldron, its intricate carvings just barely noticeable under the coating of dirt and dust that covered it.

As they shuffled past the lamentful congregants, their soft hums and whispered prayers like the distant rustling of leaves, they watched as one among the attendees approached the cauldron.

“O’, ye who wander,” the man cried out, falling to his knees as he held the basket of golden berries to the sky. “We come unto ye with an offering of glow, so that ye may yet leave us for the land of the souls,”

Slowly, the man tilted the basket forward letting a handful of Edenberries, both bright and dull, spill out into the cauldron’s water. Each one sinking below the water’s shimmering white surface to meet the others at the bottom.

The man then backed away, moving to join the rest of the crowd in silent prayer.

They continued on their walk to the northeast exit, the murmurs of the crowd now fading back into the background.

“Do you know what that was?” Qingxi asked, glancing over her shoulder to confirm she really saw what she did.

“Well,” Rumi said. “I think it's called a Libation. I’ve only ever seen it a few times, though, and apparently its done to ‘placate the spirits’,”

“Ah, so it’s like a form of ancestral worship?”

“Mmh,” Rumi hummed in consideration. “I… wouldn’t say so, it’s more like trying to ward off evil than venerating the dead.”

“Interesting.”

The two of them continued on their walk, until eventually the sparse shophouses finally gave way to a clear, grass-covered opening. With the city’s borders clearly delineated by the imposing stone wall upon the horizon, they very clearly saw the unmanned gate that led to the outside. And sure enough, hung right above it were the words ‘Northeast Exit’.

But as they made their approach to the last of the houses, a heated conversation came into earshot, the hot argumentation rather strangely undercut by a… soft, sad crying. Not the kind that made you pitiful or sorrowful yourself, but the kind that gave you goosebumps. Even through the sweat and the heat and the armour.

And one of the arguing voices they recognised. It was none other than the Hashashin that let them enter in the first place.