#merridan

Starting from upper left going clockwise :3 Calypso ( @pricklythepearcat ) Clunix ( @inv-kob ) Buck ( @inky-bun ) Close ( @acn97414 ) Cyberstrike (mine!) Claude ( @pricklythepearcat ) Merridan (me again) Chord ( @blockheadblog ) Crab to Me ( @acn97414 ) a lot of c and b names HJSRJJHHJE thats cubes ig …

"Trust me, you won't be complaining after we get paid. As much as they offered us to find Yarrow, you'd think he killed or robbed someone important." He gestured emphatically toward somewhere ahead of them.

Tasha frowned. "Isn't he a professor or something?"

"Historian, yeah. Specializes in arcane studies. Apparently someone tipped him off to a cache of chaos crystals, and off he went. Alone."

She scoffed. "What a joke. The man's chasing a fairy tale. He’s going to get himself killed out here in no man's land over a bedtime story."

Merridan shrugged. "The arcana department seems to think there might be something to it. Enough that they're willing to fork over enough to keep us fed for the next two months at least. Be nice to take a vacation, don't you think?"

"Yeah, if we don't get swallowed up by quicksand before we find this guy. When have you been out here before, anyway? Didn't think swamps were your thing."

"They're not." He jabbed his walking stick into the mud and hauled himself up a nearby embankment. "First thing I'm doing with my share of the pay is spending a week in a fancy bath house in Roblena while a strapping young lad in a loincloth scrubs the mud off my balls."

She snorted. "Poetic, as always. Mercenary work's wasted on you, mate. You should be set up in Verovalba writing high class literature."

He swatted the map aside and shook his head. "Not going into a gaping, festering wound in the middle of the desert, that's not cowardice, that's just decent sense, and anyone with half a brain would agree with me. Don't lie to me. This was never about the money to you, and I can respect that, but don't expect me to follow you blindly on an idiotic suicide mission so you can satisfy some inexplicable need for—for—"

"For what?"

"I don't know, Tasha. You tell me." He pointed to Ingrid, now standing perfectly still at the edge of the clearing as she watched them argue. "Have you come clean to her yet? Poor girl deserves to know what she's getting into bed with, don't you think?"

"You're skirting a dangerous line, mate," Tasha warned. "I'm telling you, one more word, and–"

Merridan laughed in her face. "I'm skirting a dangerous line?" he hooted."Not you? Not her, our little wayward stranger about to be unknowingly stranded hundreds of miles from civilization with a bloody Chaostouched?"

The silence that followed made her ears ring.  Tasha drew in a sharp breath and glanced between Merridan, standing shoulders squared with a defiant glint in his eyes, and Ingrid, who had gone several shades paler throughout the course of the conversation. Within seconds Tasha had Merridan shoved against a tree, knife snatched from her boot and held against his throat as she gripped his collar in her fist. "Fuck you," she spat.

"Go on, then," he taunted. "Going to skewer me like a pig for my honesty? So much for your quest to prove your father wrong—"