Quick interlude, title was written in a rush so probably won't stay the same. Please enjoy!
[Down And Out]
“AND STAY OUT!”
Azalea Quinn rolled with her rough landing before glaring back toward the bar that she had just been tossed out of. A pair of burly men, one tall, one short, glared at her with crossed arms, as if daring her to try her luck. Behind them, the barkeep—a man with a shaved head and a frankly ridiculous mustache—started her down with a sneer.
“I’ll not have you picking fights with customers for no good reason,” he said gruffly. “If you want to brawl, find a tavern or head down to the Dungeon and leave my patrons alone.”
Azalea stumbled to her feet, her glare pulling at the scar on her face. “Your patrons are pigheaded idiots who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel. They deserve a good knocking; I’m just the only one with the balls to do it!”
The men who threw her out glowered at her and she sneered. “You heard me. Maybe if you’d learn to keep your trap shut, you’d find a woman willing to flirt with you for less than a free drink.”
The taller of the two men took a step forward, his jaw clenched, but the barkeep placed a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. “She’s not worth it. Let her rot in the gutter where she belongs.”
The door slammed shut, leaving Azalea standing in the street with her fists clenched and her pride stinging worse than her backside. A few passersby gave her a wide berth, their eyes sliding over her scarred face and armor before quickly looking away.
“Bastards,” she muttered, spitting at the door. “All of ‘em.”
She turned and stalked away, her boots scuffing against the cobblestones as she trudged down the street. The midday sun beat down on the back of her neck, making her sweat beneath her armor and irritating her further. She needed a drink. A real drink, not the watered-down piss they served at that excuse for a tavern.
Azalea wandered the streets without any real destination in mind, her mind churning with dark thoughts that circled back to the same bitter conclusions they always did. She passed by a group of adventurers chatting animatedly near a quest board, their voices carrying across the street.
“Do you want to head down to the Hostess?”
“What? That’s on the other side of the city! Why don’t we just drink at one of the bars around here?”
“Because I see if the Little Devil is gonna be there. I hear she lives there, ya know?”
“Pfft, what? You want her autograph or something?”
“Let’s just go.”
Azalea’s lip curled at the mention of the name. It seemed like that name was on everyone’s lips these days, even though it had been almost a fucking month since the girl had her little duel with Apollo’s ass-kisser. You couldn’t walk two steps without hearing someone gush about the Little Devil this or the Little Devil that, as if she was the only adventurer in Orario worth talking about.
“Little Devil,” Azalea sneered under her breath. “More like Little Bitch.”
Azalea turned down a narrow side alley, heading away from the busier streets before she heard another mention of that name. The area she was heading into was full of businesses and shops that had already closed down for the day. Most of the people hanging around were just heading home or meeting up with someone else, meaning they weren’t liable to bother her as long as she didn’t look at them.
Good. She wasn’t in the mood for company.
Azalea’s mood drifted as it always did, returning back to that day in the Dungeon. The smell of blood and piss was still fresh in her mind, as were the screams and the sounds of bones cracking as her fellow familia members fell one after the other, dropping like flies to the Orcs and Minotaurs that had come out of nowhere. Almost twelve of them went down there, and only she came back up.
And of course, she suffered the consequences for that.
“Fucking weaklings panicked at the first sight of trouble,” Azalea muttered, her fingers curling into fists at her sides. “If they just rallied and followed my lead, they could have made it out alive too.”
But they didn’t. And now Soma Familia was down twelve of its stronger members, including her. Azalea’s chest burned as she recalled her god’s hands on her back, locking away her Falna and rendering her just as weak and useless as the bums on the street, with just as many places to call home. Someone had to take the blame for so many deaths and considering how it all played out, just getting kicked out of her familia was a pretty light punishment, at least on the surface.
But it wasn’t just the loss of her Familia that had Azalea’s hackles up. Being kicked out of Soma meant she was cut off from the good stuff. Soma’s drinks made even the high-end classy shit they served at restaurants taste like swill, and now if she wanted some, she’d have to pay.
She slumped against the alley wall, the rough brick scraping against her armor as she slid down into a sitting position. Her hand dipped into the folds of her cloak, fingers closing around the familiar shape of the bottle she had pilfered from the bar before they tossed her out.
Azalea unwrapped the bottle, tearing away the cheap cloth with her teeth before spitting it to the side. Whisky sloshed to the ground as she popped the top, but she ignored it and drank down two mouthfuls.
“Fuck,” she muttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “That’s terrible.”
She took another swig anyway, relishing the burn of the mid-shelf alcohol as it rushed towards her empty stomach.
Azalea leaned her head back against the wall, staring up at the midnight sky streaked with silver stars visible between the rooftops. Tanya Degurechaff... Her problems started with that little girl.
If I could just get my hands on her...
But even as the thought crossed her mind, Azalea knew it was pointless. Tricks or not, the bitch had practically destroyed a Level Two in front of the whole city, and Azalea wasn’t even a Level One anymore. Wouldn’t be, until she could find another familia and a god to unlock her Falna. She was... weak. Too weak to put up a fight against a little girl.
Azalea briefly toyed with the idea of circumnavigating the fight altogether. She knew that Tanya lived at the Hostess of Fertility, slept soundly in the rooms up top. How hard would it be to sneak in there and put a knife between her ribs when she couldn’t fight back?
The fantasy was a satisfying one. She could picture it perfectly—the look of surprise on the girl’s face, the way her blue eyes would go wide with shock as the blade slipped between her ribs, the gurgle of blood in her throat as she tried to scream. It would be quick, probably messy, but deeply satisfying.
Unfortunately, reality was a cold bitch and quickly washed away the dream. You couldn’t do that shit on the surface. The Dungeon was one thing; people died down there all the time and nobody questioned it, but a little girl getting murdered in her bed was the kind of trouble that got fingers pointing. And Azalea knew that there were enough leads to get them pointed in her direction, and then a noose around her neck.
Not worth it, she told herself, taking another swig of whisky. Not for that little brat.
She wanted revenge, wanted it with every fiber of her being, but she wasn’t stupid enough to throw her life away for it. She’d find another way.
As Azalea took another swig, the sound of approaching footsteps reached her ears, sticking out amongst the distant chatter and laughter of the city around her. She didn’t move, remaining slumped there as she waited for them to pass her by.
Only they didn’t, and instead, she tensed as the footsteps paused right in front of her, clearly waiting for her to notice them. Was it a guard?
Azalea lowered the bottle and found herself staring at a pair of shiny black dress shoes, the kind that had probably never seen an alley this filthy in their life. Her eyes traveled upwards, past a pair of perfectly stitched black dress trousers and then the lapels of a finely pressed suit to find a pale face staring down at her.
The man standing before her was tall and lean, with swept-back black hair and dark eyes framed by darker brows and fine lashes. His complexion was that of polished marble, with not an imperfection to be seen in his sharp jaw and slightly pointed nose. His hands were folded behind his back as he stared down at her with an expression of mild interest.
“You seem a bit down on your luck,” the man said, and Azalea sneered out of reflex.
“If you think you can buy me for a few Valis, you’re gonna be sorely disappointed,” she spat, baring her teeth at him like a feral dog. “And if you try anyway, I’m gonna shove my sword so far up your ass you’ll be spitting steel.”
The man didn’t so much as flinch at the threat. Instead, he chuckled—a soft, amused sound that made Azalea’s blood boil.
“There will be no need for that,” he said, his lips curving into a slight smile. “I am not here to arouse your anger.”
Azalea scoffed at the fluffy language, instantly pegging the man for a pompous prick with more money than brains. “Couldn’t arouse anyone if you tried,” she muttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Now fuck off. I don’t want whatever you’re selling.”
Unfortunately, the man remained where he stood, smiling almost serenely. Azalea prepared to repeat her demand with an appropriate threat added on for good measure, when he leaned down and put something on the ground in front of her .
Azalea glanced at it and froze, her bottle of whisky dropping from limp fingers. It was a wine bottle, with an etched neck and a round bottom, wrapped in foil edges with gold. The label was one she would recognize anywhere, the crest of the Soma Familia emblazoned proudly on the front, proclaiming to all what it was.
Soma. Real, genuine Soma.
Azalea’s mouth went dry despite the whisky she’d been swallowing. Her hands trembled as she reached for the bottle, her fingers brushing against the cool glass as if to make sure it was real.
It was. Azalea’s breath catches in her throat as her fingers closed around the bottle. She had drunk enough of this stuff to know the real thing when she saw it, and this wasn’t some cheap knockoff made to look like her god’s wine.
She looked up at the man, her expression hungry. “Where did you get this?”
The man stood back to his full height, gazing down upon her with a surprising amount of tenderness for a stranger. Azalea looked back at him, staring into his golden eyes with suspicion and—
Wait. Weren’t his eyes supposed to be black?
Azalea blinked, and the light disappeared, leaving the man’s eyes as pits of onyx in his pale skull and making her wonder if she had seen it in the first place.
“The same place as most, I imagine,” the man said. “Consider it a gift, freely given as long as you lend me your ear for a moment.”
As if I’d let him take it back now. Azalea’s grip tightened on the bottle of Soma, her knuckles whitening around the glass. Still...
“What do you want?” she asked suspiciously. “And make it quick. I just got a ticket to a good time and I don’t know if you can tell, but I haven’t had many of those lately.”
The man’s gentle smile widened. “Yes... You have been slighted recently, have you not? Stripped of your power and your home, cast out by your god like so much refuse. And all thanks to one soul.”
Azalea’s jaw clenched but she didn’t say a word. Despite that, the man seemed to get the confirmation that he needed as he continued.
“If you would like... I could give you the means to get back at her,” the man said, his voice laced with a tenderness that was almost unnerving. It coated the offer like honey, sweet to the ears, and Azalea’s eyes widened before narrowing as instinct took over.
Though she had fallen on hard times, Azalea was still a veteran Adventurer. She had been on the cusp of Level Two when her Falna had been taken from her. She knew when a situation was strange, an offer, too good to be true.
There’s something off about him, she thought. He knows too much and no normal person would be walking around with a bottle of Soma in their pocket, even in the safer parts of the city.
Was he a god? Azalea wasn’t sure. All gods sealed their power when they descended, but divinity had a way of leaking through in even the least powerful of them. This man carried an aura of something, but it wasn’t like anything that Azalea herself had ever felt, and that made her all the more wary.
But the idea of getting back at Tanya was a sweet poison, curling through her veins and settling into her bones like the Soma she was clutching.
“What’s the catch?” she repeated, her eyes narrowing. “What do you want from me?”
The man crouched down until they were at eye level. He rested only a foot or so away from her, his hands pressed against one another, fingers laced as if in prayer. Azalea tensed, her fingers twitching to grab the sword holstered at her hip, but she froze as a strange light emerged from behind the man’s eyes. Onyx shifted to gold, glowing in a way that could have been no trick of the light, and the man uttered a single word.
“Faith.”