Cyrus earned something of a glimmer in Alphonse's eye when he brought up his Lineage as an Ebon Knight, the woman focusing intently on that sword for a spell before his words brought her attention more fully to bare. "See-Roos Vun Fowst," she repeated, dancing a finger over the letters as she visualized them in her imagination. These foreign dialects were often hard to understand.
Pulling herself up, the large lady careened forward, huddling over the small table with a sharp, unhealthy lean. Her elbow touched the dirty wood, arm stretching over to tap a savage, enormous claw against the wood idly as she listened and mulled over what he said in her mind. It seemed believable enough to her. "Rrrr-wrell," she began, a growl sharply punctuating the word. "Seroos, ay've been out 'ere on me own 'fer Malek knows 'ow long." Her gaze drifted side to side, those golden, slitted feline orbs telling of her savage nature as they sought to distract themselves with a roach she caught scurrying out of the corner of her eye. "Hm," she huffed. With Cyrus this close and personal, the wider, less angular muzzle betrayed a more feline association to her appearance, although the two sets of horns sprouting from her head spoke of no known local feline.
Sitting up nice and straight, she stretched out her back and puffed out her chest, crossing her arms at him nice and tight. She let the silence fester just a little bit longer to draw out some words from him, but the Rathari lady had a good feeling so far, and she trusted her feelings about people. Lifting her chin, she chuffed. "There's not much of a group 'ere. Wha-di-dey call it? A 'cell'? Odder than tha courier who strays in ter relay orders from on high, is just me 'ere."
"Wouldn' be opposed 'ter workin' together, though I been workin' alone fer awhile." Her deep and rasping voice fell to a silent trill as she brought up a claw to tap and itch at her cheek in thought beneath one of the gruesome-looking horns.
Arms slacking, she blinked and extended a beastly paw across the table, extending it as a gesture of good faith for him to shake. "Is a pleasure to meet'cha, Seroos. Aye look forwa'hd to workin' with yee." She pursed her lips to smile, a grin of genuine satisfaction--only, to anyone else with her crinkled nose and gruesome teeth, it looked like she was baring her fangs like some predatory animal.
Pulling her paw away, she rolled her head to the side. Her dialect shifted to something more concise, a crude imitation of the local tongue as she focused on making her words more concise. "Suppose you're the first I've met outside since my recruiter," she told him. "Part of what I do here, Seroos, is I'm givin' the Remedy a good name. I work to earn trust of these ash elves so that one day maybe they'll be boots on the ground for the revolution. Now, I don't know if ya ever been to Sil-Elaine, an' I'm sure it don't matter, but those Dranoch have a hold on the country. They keep whole cities locked up like cattle, an' it's a fucked concept. The Sil'norai here, they--they're people who've fled that life who're trying to survive, an' there's a lot o' em."
"So, ya gotta know, ya gotta get in good with dem, and that's part-a me mission 'ere. Recruit Dranoch, and keep 'em safe from thar Dranoch who've been sent to infiltrate and spy. They come from tha border with Sil-Elaine, an' is not far. Not far at all." Alphonse walked her fingers across the air in crude imitation with one hand.
SLAP
One hand crashed into the other, fists clomping together with claws in a vice. "They feckers, all uh dem, they lie and pretend to be like you 'n me to fit in, so you can't trust a flea's ass around 'ere. Most've 'dem look like elves though, since they from the same country. Sometimes ya can't tell the difference, like with 'dem Botchlings. An' they good at it, they blend in really well. I haven' found 'em all, an' I don't know how many."
Puffing out a cheek, she tried to guesstimate just how many there were in her mind. "Dunno. A hundred? A thousand? And they numbers keep replenishin' so I swear the feckers are breedin' here in the slums uh Lower Nivenhain. So I think they got a queen like a bunch'a ants. Find tha queen, kill tha bugs. You think thas' pretty good reasoning, Seroos?"
"If ya wanna work together on rooting out these bastards, tha' is."
"Aye'll warn ya. I don' take a lotta breaks. I work hard, and together we're gonna work hard. The work requires being available as often as ya can, or the trail will run cold minutes before ya get there. Workin' fer the Remedy doesn't pay squat except in kickbacks from the families ya help, and they usually poor enough that they can't pay in money but rather goods. A lotta it really do be like charity."
Alphonse rose from the table, having to duck beneath the low ceiling while she held on to a beam crossing it for support. Her other paw snaked down to snatch up that scabbard, rolling up the strap over her shoulders. "So with all that in yer noggin, ready to go show me how ya handle yerself in a figh' down the block in one of them abandoned courtyarr's?"
