Ego homini Lupus

He glanced at the phone with the dead screen when Octavo showed him, tilting his head in puzzlement, "I think it needs to have the wire plugged in from time to time. To charge the battery..."

Daud looked back at the ingredients that were selected on the order, watching the screen shift along the 'timeline' cartoon. He puzzled a moment to consider the question posed: how would the chef fit them all?

"I don't know," he replied, "This is my first time ordering a pizza."

He shrugged, "It should be doable. I don't know why topping it with everything would be an option if it wasn't."

This weapon is a pneumatic device powered by a small biological battery.

Octavo requested a pizza, and once again, Daud nodded, bringing up a list of nearby places to order from to be delivered.

He wasn't too familiar with what a pizza was- even if the word was familiar in his native Serkonan, similar to the word for 'stamp'. And pictures showed a dough that was pressed flat, topped with sauces, cheeses, vegetables, meats, and herbs.

Daud pulled up the order screen, and chose a large pizza.

> Add a topping?

Daud selected 'yes', reading through the options- most of which were familiar and sounded decent. There were only a few options that confused him.

Pineapple, Daud thought, Is that similar to pine nut?

He reckoned it probably was.

Anchovy, artichoke, bacon, banana pepper, basil, black olive, broccoli, chicken, clams, diced tomato, extra cheese, fresh mozz, garlic, green olive, green peppers, ham, kalamata olive, meatball, mushroom, peperoncini, pepperoni, pickle chips, pineapple, salami, sausage, shrimp, spinach, and sundried tomato.

> Place order?

> Yes.

"It's smart for you to be able to learn to ride it. If I'm not around, this will be around. It's a lot faster than you when crossing the city, and I have a funny feeling you can transverse it with you."

At any rate, she needed to go over the basics. Ada slipped off the bike, setting it on its stand to rest and stepping beside it to gesture to the handbar and point to each specific feature.

He never bothered with the carriages or velocipedes in his own world. All transport was either too clunky, too slow, too exhausting to use, bound by rail, or drawn by horse. They lacked the speed and maneuverability Daud preferred for his work.

If the Ducati was as fast as Ada claimed, he could easily see it snaking through alleyways and the electric coaches and cars that took up the streets in Spirale- his only concern was his combined weight on rooftops.

Ada started listing pieces and their functions, and he stepped near her, his brow creasing with focus. Every part she named, he tapped with two fingers to orient himself.

"Clutch-" tap, "-stops power to the back wheel. Blinker-" tap, "-to sign direction. Horn, key and ignition..."

He didn't feel anything beyond the strange sensation of being dunked into the cold, but Daud explains what's been shared to him. Wandering Gaze.

As soon as Daud finishes his explanation, Henry's reaching inward for that new power. The room around him looks like it's been dunked in ink, the world darkened to grayscale to focus on the people in the space.

There's Daud, a bright beacon before him, and there's Ada in one of the rooms nearby - her office, he thinks. Enki at the front desk, with Cahara chattering his ear off like normal.

There's a giddy laugh that bubbles out of him, his shoulders shaking as he does.

Daud shook his head in response to Henry's question.

"No, not all the time. I call on it when I need to see where my enemies... or even my allies and people I don't want to be seen by are."

He unfurls a hand, gesturing to some snacks left on a table, green auras.

"Or when I need to find something... be it food, hidden files, levers, coin... Anything I could desire to have or use, I can find with ease."

Daud points to the tome by Henry, emanating a black, smoky aura and the subtle rattle of black magic.

"I'm so tired," he murmurs, his long ears drooping. All the dread and frustration inside him has been flushed out for now, replaced with bone-deep exhaustion. "But it sounds like we have nothing but time to figure it out."

If it could be figured. If it was even possible to kill gods like these. Octavo didn't doubt Daud's conviction, but at this point, it felt like their captors were more likely to be undone by their own negligence.

"Of course. There's plenty of decent places around here. A good meal will probably do you well. It's hard to stay focused when you're hungry."

And despair was a close companion of hunger.

It was why he always made sure none of his people went hungry. Even in the worst of times, with lean and poor winters, Daud made sure that the Whalers had money for lodgings and warm food to last the cold seasons.

Daud pulled out his phone, glancing down at the screen while he thumbed through options nearby.

The story is told over the sound of metal against whetstone, Rixian's head swaying back and forth as he listens. The explanation that it's an assassin's blade explains a lot - the way Daud moves, the knicks in the blade, the way the handle is worn smooth to a hand much larger than his own.

"Armor-piercing. It's definitely impressive - it's heavier than the curved knives I'm used to. I don't know if I'd be able to use it as well as you can."

Daud must be a very, very good assassin. His thoughts are filled with Antipode's voice, telling him that any assassin that lives long enough to go gray is one that must be treated with utmost respect, because there is almost no situation they would not be able to get out of.

"You've had an exciting life, then! I like hearing about the people who come to a place like this. We don't always get people looking to arm themselves, but those are the most interesting people in my opinion."

He tests the edge with his thumb for a moment - almost perfect. It gets set aside for him as he stands up to go find the second blade requested. He could put the finishing touches on them both at the same time.

"I used to run a guild," Daud answers, "My gang ran for just about twenty years."

Daud leaned forward, laying his forearm flat and parallel to the countertop. He rested on it, and drummed his fingers in thought.

"The Whalers, is what we were called. I ended up leaving because of a job that ended up being costly to the gang and the city we based ourselves in. Retired, for a time. Then ended up going into solo work- mostly for a personal mission. I didn't take up killing again until the last year of my life."

And it was only because he had to.

Daud was nonplussed to admit that he had died. Of course, for his profession, he was extremely long-lived, and met his end more peacefully than he expected. It was possible that he could have lived a lot longer, but...

The point was moot.

"Now, I'm training new fighters and espionage agents on behalf of the Broken Butterfly. These recruits are... not bad. Talented for what they can do- but they lack the kind of hunger and resolve that really make an excellent assassin."

"It's a long story," he croaks once he's able to speak. "I wasn't always a- a person. I used to be an object. An instrument." He pauses, pursing his lips. "...it isn't so uncommon where I'm from. I'm sure you can imagine what it's like, though. You can't do anything yourself; you're just there to be used by others. All you can do is watch."

Recounting this comes naturally. It's a monologue he's recited many a time, one he thought about as he tried to fall asleep. He squeezes the locket around his neck.

"I spent a long time locked in a cage, nobody playing me, just one magical item in a collection of hundreds. But I escaped, I conjured this body for myself after years and centuries of wanting my freedom. Watching the same cycle of events play out, over and over. I wanted to stop it. It was all I cared about, the only thing I really had to keep me going."

Probably more than Octavo realized. A tool- a piece of property, kept captive and beholden to whims of powers beyond you. All one could do was obey or fight.

"My mother was taken from her people by pirates," he informs, "To be sold as a slave. She endured the unthinkable, and escaped. Had me only a few months later."

Putting it nicely. Daud crossed his arms, looking at the ground, "When I was ten, I was followed home from school, and taken by a man that wanted use of my quick hands. My mother died fighting. For years, I trained, obeyed, bided time to make an escape, and killed my way out. I fled to Dunwall, joined a gang there, and was eventually set up. I got caught, thrown into Coldridge, and later sold as labor to a whalehouse."

He looked up, "I really wanted to change my situation. I wanted to be out- in control of my own destiny, make some kind of difference. I was only when my friend was about to be killed that I got Marked by the Outsider- a god, and given dominion over magic. But I didn't ask to be marked."

He sighs, "I don't know if any of the others did, either. I don't know if he ever spoke to them the way he did me- and even when I tried to turn my life around, leave the killing behind, he wouldn't let me be. I always wanted to believe that my choices were my own, that the consequences of my actions would be mine to bear, that I truly had agency- but after what I went through? Knowing that he could see what I would become the entire time? Steering me to intervene in a witch's plot? Showing me visions of what was to come? Cryptic nightmares? I started to question if I truly had control all along. I'd been used, I'd been had by my own nature."

In the end, he understood that the Outsider chose him in hopes of ending the bound gods existence, one way or another.

Daud wouldn't forgive being used, and driven to death- but in the end, Billie's own peace meant more to him than vengeance... and perhaps, it was fitting to make the mortal live in the chaos of the world he helped shape.

"Don't give up. It is worth it to keep searching," he says, "To keep fighting for your agency, no matter how exhausting. Even it kills. But it's also important to rest where you can. To recover. Or else you won't be able to fight where you need."

"It looks good on you. You look like my captain, and I suppose that is exactly what you are. Yes, I'll be back here after the wedding. Tonight will be the last night we'll be open for a while. I've already handed out vacation documents and packages, and have cornered us a deal with a Sound Lab in Fibonacci. We can bunker in one of the hotels there until these security and countermeasures are executed."

They had a lot to work on together, and she was looking forward to their dual passions.

It seemed she found a twin flame.

"You'll be sticking around, huh?"

One of the tailors shouted done, and stepped away, and the other groaned, finished within thirty seconds after. Ada stepped away from the both of them, turning on her heel and showing the embroidered tails of her half jacket with a small spin.

Ada walked a few steps to invade his space, brushing shoulders with a coy look behind her.

There was a lot of work to do, and several things that had to happen before they took countermeasures.

When Ada asked if he was sticking around, Daud nodded, "I'll wait here for you, for whenever you're done with that wedding."

The tailors finished their threadwork, and Ada stepped away from them, spinning to show off the folds of the fabric and the fine embroidery on the tail.

Daud clapped politely and lowered his arms to his side as Ada walked up to him to brush shoulders. She looked to him with a coy expression, and Daud brushed his knuckle against hers with a small smile.

"See you around."

"See you later."

He let her take her leave of him, watching her leave the Broken Butterfly to join Dam-bi for the social obligation, and gathered his gift, his flowers, and a few curious spiders from the table. Daud retreated from the eyes of onlookers- some envious, others curious, and a lot let-down- and made his way to Ada's office.

Ada took her hand back to herself, and she settled in spot to let the two trying desperately to get their stitching done finish in the next few minutes before she high tailed it out of here to this wedding. What a date for a wedding. She'd be back before they knew she was gone... maybe.

Daud's pale cheek with a dark red kiss on it held the waxy film perfectly, and it made her laugh. On his whale-grey skin it looked a little like a wound or like she'd perfectly tattooed it on. A few onlookers were envious, a few seemed emboldened- if she was handing out kisses there was hope yet.

There was not hope for anything but a flirtatious kiss or a look. She had a lot of admirers, some more well-behaved than others, and none that had ever really scared her. Daud was quick and efficient about dismembering or otherwise dissuading would-be suitors who got out of line, and her reputation largely did the work for her on the more unstable individuals.

From the corpses of her spiders, she had pulled their essential minerals to the surface, the excess copper from their bodies and that blue, unusual metal-like compound. The soft metal was easy enough to run through a printer as a filament, and it was easy enough to make a preliminary model and then create an epaulet chain, draping a few times, for his shoulder. She had patina'd it a chrome black, and set the strange, cocoon stone inside of a circular recess. Acid etching designs into the side was as much a treat as anything. The dead segments of the spiders resurfaced like nuclear shadows among the metal.

It was back in her control, the temporary set-up of machines that Hunnigan had brought were gone, replaced by his gift on the desk.

Daud gingerly raised the gift in his hands. It was an epaulet and chain, repurposed from the corpses of her strange, slain spiders, and a circular stone of dark crimson encased in the black patina metal. There was a strange energy to the stone- one that was unfamiliar to him, but still sang like a bone charm.

Was Ada sure that she wasn't a witch? Daud mused.

Of course, he thought that all of the witches across the Isles would be envious of what Ada could do.

He took a moment to figure out how to fasten it to his coat, fastening the stone to his lapel, and having chains rest over the shoulder. Satisfied with the weight and mobility, Daud left her office, calling on the Mark to quickly return to her with a transversal.

"Thank you for the gift," he says, stepping forward so she could see how it laid on him, "I like it a lot."

She always did very quick and precise work with her metallurgy, and it never failed to impress.

He sucks in a shaky breath, clutching his arms tight. "I can't live this way, nothing there's nothing I can do. This is what I was trying to escape but I'm just back here again! I can't- I can't-"

Daud shepherded Octavo away from people that might be looking, to guard some kind of privacy in a decidedly vulnerable moment. This, was likely a breaking point after a lot of exhaustive effort and fruitless searching- only to be confronted with the despair of the Inn... to have a celebration afterward? And such trivial acknowledgements?

Octavo had every right to be upset.

"I didn't say you were dead," Daud replies in a break between Octavo's hitched breaths, "But I don't know your circumstances, either."

He unlatched the canteen from his belt, offering Octavo water.