[Poor Grallus, the Rogue – 11]

Pushing through the busy streets of Tristel, both Dreg and Bexter are looking around nervously. They are bumping their way forward in the busiest section of the city; the trade district. Hundreds of food cart owners, artisans of all kinds, and patrons, are yelling over each other in attempt to make their deals. Dreg looks like he is searching for someone, while Bexter can’t keep his eyes off of the pastry vendors.

“Yesterday we wasted an entire day planning on how to find Grallus while he is off in who-knows-where, probably moving farther and hiding deeper away from our reach,” Dreg yells as he jabs his stubby elbow into the ribcage of a man twice his size that didn’t get out of his way fast enough.

Barely paying attention, “I don’t think Grallus would care much about hidin’ from us Dreg, I mean he’s got worse problems cause the boss is so mad right?” Bexter seeing that the crowd is thinning, starts to pick his mark.

To make progress forward the two are forced to continue to shove their way through the crowd. Dreg repeatedly throws his arms up to push away products that assertive shop-keeps jam in his face. Dreg is slowly getting more and more irritated by the huge crowd and their slow progress. Rapidly he yells, “Of course Grallus is more worried about the boss – but the boss gave us a five day window – and we blew one day already – and if we don’t find him the boss is going to light us up like uh…” Dreg trails off noticing that Bexter isn’t paying attention to him at all, but has instead set himself affixed to a tiny feeble old woman carefully carrying something in front of her.

Suddenly Bexter, who is easily four times the woman’s overall mass, sticks out his leg and hip bumps the old woman. She immediately falls and drops her bundle of pies to the ground with a splat. Bexter quickly scoops up as much pie as possible with a single hand while simultaneously jamming his face full, “Awww that’s too bad, so this ain’t eated-able now anyway huh?” The woman sits in the dirt somewhat dumbfounded as they turn their back on her and continue walking.

“Will you pay attention?!” Dreg yells reaching up and smacking the back of Bexter’s neck causing him to dribble pie on his chest. “The boss is mad at US TOO, you spud!”

The crowd finally subsides as they continue their walk away from the trade district, “Aw I don’t remember the boss sayin’ anything about any windows, and Dreg we can’t find Grallus ourselves, it’s impossible, that guy is way too sneaky and smart even.”

Dreg slaps his hands together, “That’s it! You’re a genius you idiot! Why didn’t I think of that?!” He forcibly pulls Bexter to a side alley deep in the shade. Bexter is casually licking the remnants of the apple pie off of his tunic. “Grallus runs with ‘Chaos Theory’ right?” he says ignoring Bexter completely, “yeah I know he does, so that means that we should get their rivals involved and have them find him for us.”

Finally looking up from his pie stained shirt, “How we gonna do that Dreg, I mean we can’t just make some big important group do something for us, can we?”

Squinting his eyes, he looks off to the west, deep in a mental scheme. Dreg responds without looking at Bexter, “I know just the guy, leave that… to me…”

Again without looking directly at him, Dreg grabs Bexter by the collar and starts walking west toward the open courtyard. “Where we goin’ Dreg?”

“There is someone we need to see at the main gate.”

[690] Words : What’s in a name?