Scales and Swords ✓

33: Devil Hog

"Ok Toby here's the deal," Brise began, "we want to live up there."

Toby followed the direction of her finger up. He returned his gaze to her and chuckled. "Why those houses belong to the hunting crew, to live up there you have to be in a hunting team."

"Then put me in this hunting team," she said. "I've hunted men before how different could it be."

Tobias broke out into a fit of laughter. "You've hunted men! Bah! That's hilarious!"

Brise squinted at him and I watched her reach for her knife when I jumped in front of her. "Tobias, what she meant was she worked with this hunter for a while, while we travelled to and fro."

Tobias stopped and regarded us. "You girls are strange. Why don't I show you to your new home? Down here."

He started for the bridge and Brise grunted as I pulled her along. "We'll work something out, play along for now."

Tobias showed us to a vacant little house, of two bedrooms, a bathroom, a tiny kitchen and an adorably small living room. "So, what do you think?"

"We'll take it," Brise said immediately.

"Alright, I'll let you girls get settled in, I'll drop by later to talk about your duties while you reside here and someone will come by with dinner when it's time. Sounds good?"

"Yes," Brise grunted

Tobias finally left and Brise groaned as she dropped onto the cane bench. "Thought he'd never leave."

"He's a good guy, cut him some slack," I said.

"Aha, I don't care. Now let's talk about things that I actually care about, like this mission for example."

"Right," I sighed. "First we need to make sure our other team mates don't get found out or worse killed."

"Here's the plan," she began.

~~~

Mars was hunched over, scribbling into a book, when Brise kicked the door open. The pen flew out of his hand as his hands flew up in surrender. When he saw who had entered, he sighed and dropped onto his chair.

"It's knock not kick, is that so much to ask for," Mars muttered as he resumed his scribbling.

Brise cleared her throat and gagged before she began, "hi Mars, Mars-y." Her voice higher. "Cutie." She gagged.

"That won't work on me, just tell me what you want so we can both not suffer through this," he said, his eyes still glued to the book.

"Thanks," she sighed. "We want to go up there."

Mars lifted his gaze and looked to the direction of her fingers, up the tree. He shook his head and returned to his book. "No can do, hunters only."

"That's what we want," I chimed in. "We want to talk to Xon about becoming hunters."

He looked up again, but this time he looked us up and down, then snickered to himself. "Alright. But if my uncle asks, tell him you guys gave me no chose. Deal?"

"Deal," Brise replied. We filed into the little rectangular rooms, Mars called an elevator, and at the press of the button the room slid up the tree, out of the building and climbed higher till we were above the first level of houses.

"How does this little magic room work?" I asked.

Mars scoffed. "Not everything in this world operates on magic. I swear, every little problem, wave a wand, chant a spell and problem solved. No one ever uses their brains, or their hands. Magic makes people lazy and weak-minded."