Well it's my very little wonder and it's one that I will keep

[lesstravelled]

Something was going on.

Something was always going on. The world was a big and bustling place full of the small evils people committed against each other. Road enjoyed that about life. Anywhere you went you'd find people being people everywhere, and it never mattered if those people were tall or short or old or young or lizards or dogs or boring old humes. People transcended the species barrier, and people were awful. Terrible.

Fun.

Sometimes there were the larger evils people committed against each other too, and Road was part of more than one of those. They were Noah. Clandestine, dangerous, remorseless. They had their spoons in more than one pot of evil and gave them a stir occasionally to make sure the nastiness didn't just sink to the bottom and stay there.

They didn't concern themselves with the lowerworld much. Road, and Tyki, and the others, had been busily stirring another pot on Jylland, their usual playground, when the summons had come from Khamja on the lowerworld. They'd had some work from them, in the past, but their relationship with Khamja was normally distant. The Earl had maintained the connection, because connections were good, and maybe once they were done playing on Jylland it'd be fun to find a new place to play, but when the summons had come, he hadn't been able to attend himself.

He'd sent Road in his stead, and Tyki to go with her. It was easier to be underestimated when you dressed cute and sounded cute and looked cute, and had someone that definitely looked like an adult with you.

Something was going on. Khamja were playing their cards close to their chest, but they'd requested the presence of every single member, both shadow and open, for an important meeting.

Road didn't try to surmise what exactly it was that was going on. It wouldn't involve them, at any rate, at least not yet, but there was always the opportunity for new opoortunities. New people, new places, new things to learn and use.

Their directions to the Desert Palace hadn't been the best. The place was hidden, and marking it on maps would be a good way of making it no longer hidden. Not that maps were any help when you were approaching from the other side.

Road gave their transport an affectionate stroke along its bony mask. The journey from Niflheim, where they'd been, to Rabanastre, would have been a boringly long walk if they hadn't hitched a ride. Fortunately, there wasn't a Hollow in existence that would deny a Noah asking a favour.

"Do you think The Earl will be upset if we set off their alarms?" she asked, tilting back from her perch on the Hollow's head to look at Tyki upside down. Her legs dangled down, her feet brushing dangerously close to its teeth, but it wouldn't bite. It wouldn't dare.

The route had been surprisingly well trodden for something in the depths like this. Hollows came this way regularly, but if you were used to Hollows you could tell where they veered away from a spot. They gave population centres a wide berth, or the smart ones did, so you found the paths they took might open out within sight of one, but almost never in one. Not unless they were told to.

The same thing happened here. There were probably wards, or some kind of defense mechanism to keep even the Hollows out of an area that would, normally, be one of their gathering places. Some old, forgotten, sunken ruin beneath the sands, deep in the heart of the Zertinan Caverns would be teeming with Hollows if it wasn't for the fact it wasn't forgotten, or abandoned.

The Hollows stayed away. Whatever was there was too powerful for them to think it worth taking on.

They'd come out of the Garganta into the Caverns, and then pressed on, but now might be a good time to let the Hollow leave. Not that Road was against making an entrance, but it would spoil the fun if everyone knew what they were before they knew what everyone else was.

Comments

[intangibleman]

"I think whoever set up the alarm system would be more annoyed," Tyki said, half distracted, eyes on the cavern around him. It was sandy, but still an improvement on the inside of the Garganta.

Tyki Mikk, a latecomer to the legacy of the Noah Clan, had struggled to get used to their preternatural connection with Akuma, or Hollows as they were called on the Lowerworld. He was long used to it now, just as he had grown plenty accustomed to his newfound wealth, the high quality clothes he got to wear and the food he got to enjoy, but travelling in the dark side of the world, the bits that lay hidden behind the scenes, was something else. It made him slightly uncomfortable, even now. Being out of that and back in the real world was better, but the Zertinan Caverns were still aggressively claustrophobic.

"It won't be the Earl who has to come to turn it off," he added in a mutter, eyeing Road's upside down face with an uncomfortable scowl as the Hollow's hard and stringy form moved beneath him.

He had let Road figure out how to get to the meeting place, the 'Palace'. She'd sorted out the route, the timing and all else. He'd just followed, feeling slightly put upon, and knowing he was playing fake babysitter so that the other members of Clan Khamja took Road more seriously than they otherwise would. He could have been playing cards or drinking away the day, but instead he'd been sent off on an errand, another one, one of many in the past few weeks, to the Lowerworld, of all places.

"Where's this palace?" He asked, voice flat and unimpressed.

[lesstravelled]

"It sank beneath the sand hundreds of years ago," Road said, sounding, for a moment, less childish. "Now it's accessible only by a door in the Zertinan Caverns, unless you have an airship."

She sat up again, and pushed herself off the Hollow's head to land on her feet in a jump. Her skirt flew up as she did, but she landed lightly, and turned towards the Hollow, which stopped obediently.

She could kill it. The temptation was certainly there. She could get rid of it while it was unable to resist and spend a few minutes enjoying it.

But that would be a waste of a good Hollow.

"It's not far from here," she said, to Tyki. There was magic in the air, here. Someone had a few local creatures in their thrall, and probably kept them as guards. "But unless we want to upset everyone, this is as close as an Akuma can get."

It might be fun to test their defences sometime. Although being where it was, it probably didn't need many from its inhabitants anyway.

[intangibleman]

An airship? Tyki's expression went flat, his bright gold eyes dulling for a brief moment. They could have saved the journey through the Unseen World if they'd used an airship, huh? Nice to find out so late.

He looked at the back of the creature beneath him, its skin grey, its appearance sinewy. It didn't feel like an animal, merely an approximation of one. It moved like you'd expect, but there was no warmth in it, no give to its flesh.

"People do get a bit funny about them, don't they?"

That was no surprise. Everybody knew that if a soul didn't move on like they should, return to the planet or Etro or the Farplane or whatever belief or terminology the individual preferred, the soul would eventually corrupt and become a creature of evil, even if the exact reasoning and process wasn't well known. Nevertheless, they had somehow captured the imagination of people, albeit in an overall negative fashion, like poltergeists. They had different names, but they were all the same. They preferred Fiend in some parts of Ivalice, or so Tyki had heard, and Hollow in the rest. On Jylland they tended to refer to them as Akuma, though those of Lucian nationality tended towards using the term Daemon instead. Regardless, they were always the same. Predatory monsters without exception, but varying intelligence.

[lesstravelled]

Road giggled, her mouth twisting into a cruel grin. People did indeed get a bit funny about Akuma, or Hollows, or Fiends, or Daemons.

Road was happy to call them anything. None of them mattered. They were dead, and vengeful, and that was useful, but the only thing that made them really different from other people was the part about being dead.

They consumed each other, and fought with each other, and kept going until the strongest ones came out on top, just like they'd done when they were alive.

Road was one of the strong. So was Tyki, although he was still getting used to that. None of the rest mattered in comparison. They could do what they liked to them. What they felt like to them.

"You're never met anyone in Khamja, have you?" she asked, as she set off walking. It wouldn't be too far. There was Mist within these Caverns and it made her skin prickle.

[intangibleman]

Tyki felt glad to be off the Hollow. He wasn't used to riding astride a beast, as he'd never been in a position to ride chocobos. The closest he'd come was eating one. He'd found out later, from a news crier and definitely not the men who had traded him the cut, that it was likely a stolen racing bird and not an animal raised for meat. He thought, in retrospect, that it was a little stringy, but it was much better than what he'd eaten for the past few weeks. At least it wasn't scavenged.

"No," he said, scowling at sand-coloured dust clinging to the hems of his trouserlegs already. "Why?"

[lesstravelled]

Road clasped her hands behind her back as she walked. The sand was everywhere. It poured from holes in the cavern's roof in great sandfalls in places, and trickled like dust in others. It was fine, and hung in the air, and clung to clothing, and shoes.

"Because people get a bit funny about them, too," she said, turning to flash Tyki a dangerous smile. Their little Akuma wouldn't scare most of the people inside Khamja. Gotei Captains and worse called this place home. "Or they would if they knew who they were."

She could see the entrance ahead. She could feel it, too, the magic binding it and protecting it. Someone had taken measures to keep the world out.

Or the biggest monsters within.

[intangibleman]

Tyki had heard that there were two distinct types of members. There were those who were openly affiliated with the Clan, those with dodgy pasts and nothing to hide with their association. Others, those with high profile assets or positions of public office, were the shadow members, or those who kept their membership private.

Khamja was made up of all sorts, the Earl had told him. Weapons dealers, members of Ivalice's anti-Akuma force, scientists, random psychos, criminals, people with insane abilities who wanted a steady outlet for them... and those who wanted to keep an eye on world events and a finger in useful pies, like the Earl himself.

He looked up at the door ahead and let out a low whistle. The air seemed to be charged with magical energy and it wasn't even particularly low-key. It felt like the crispy, near-static field left in the immediate aftermath of a spell. It was lucky that the amount of Jagd in Ivalice probably did enough to conceal even this hotbed of eldritch weirdness from prying eyes, or whatever organ detected magic.

He could feel some large creatures nearby, far out of sight. It made him feel a little bit like prey.

"Huh," he said. "Think they'll be pleased to see us?"

[lesstravelled]

"Would you?" Road asked.

But Khamja had invited them. Actually, Khamja had summoned them, from across the continents, to discuss a little problem Khamja had right now which was, inevitably, that one of its shadow members was currently in prison.

Khamja probably wasn't happy to see anyone right now.

She fell serious again as they approached the doors. Road could almost feel the magic crackle and fizzle in her hair and along her skin. It was like walking through a storm; there was a charge in the air if you knew how to feel it.

"They've called together everyone. There are going to be a lot of people here that don't like each other." There would, inevitably, be ones that worked at cross purposes to themselves. They had more than one Gotei Captain in their ranks, and more than one monster, too. Khamja wasn't a neat collective for the meeting of minds, it was a haphazard mishmash of people that found other people useful. It made for common enemies, and strange bedfellows.

"We might make some new friends," she added, perking up and giving Tyki a long look out of the corner of her eye.

She didn't have to tell Tyki to be careful of what he said. That was one thing she liked about Tyki more than any of the others. He was good at convincing others to like him, and he knew when to keep his mouth shut.

He was also good at cleaning up messes if he made any mistakes, or someone else did.

That and he was fun, unlike any of the others except the Earl himself. If Road needed a fake babysitter, she was glad it was Tyki.

The door opened for them without a fight. It was as if they'd been granted entry, rather than the door just being left unlocked.

[intangibleman]

Tyki gave her a smile that, on anybody else's face, might have been suave. When he did it, without reining in his amusement, it just looked dangerous. He would have to keep that in check. There was nothing to be gained by going into this meeting of Clan members looking like one of the troublemakers.

"Perhaps we will," he said, brightly.

He blinked at the door opening at Road's hand. That was magic, if ever he'd seen it. A light spread out from the center, pearly and soft, and then disappeared when the latch gave. Interesting. And probably expensive or difficult to make work.

"After you," he said, gesturing.

It wasn't gentlemanly. It would have been in an upmarket restaurant or luxury hotel, but here it was simply him allowing the more formidable of the two of them, or at least the more durable, to walk into danger first.

[lesstravelled]

Road didn't care about Tyki letting her go in ahead of him. Tyki was supposed to be her minder, but he wasn't the one in charge, or the more dangerous. Not unless you really upset him, anyway. When Tyki pulled out the stops he could be nasty.

It was another reason he was Road's favourite.

She all but skipped inside, entering with a cheery, carefree air about her. There was a small vestibule, like a chokepoint, that once upon a time would have throttled incoming forces and allowed anyone inside time to move. Now, she thought, it probably kept some of the bigger monsters from breaking in.

It would also bottleneck anyone rushing out to defend.

Beyond that was an entrance hall. The feel of a dozen different kinds of monster lingered in the air within, and all of them were people shaped.

[intangibleman]

Tyki stepped in after her, closing the door behind him. His well-made shoes clicked hollowly on the marble floor and he looked down at it, eyes raised. For a more than slightly villainous headquarters, it was certainly posh.

He, like Road, felt those within. He wasn't as good at is as her, being too used to the muzzy background noise found in cities to be able to discern current individuals clearly. It was a little like a magic eye puzzle to him, or trying to see a shape in fog. He'd probably get used to it over time, if he spent enough time here, but he rather hoped it wouldn't come to that.

He didn't feel anybody being openly hostile, at least. Nobody had rushed to meet them, weapons bared, so he supposed they hadn't just been granted entry to the palace on a fluke. Maybe somewhere, deep in the building, somebody was counting off arriving members.

"I half expected a welcoming committee," he said, a little disappointed. Well, it was all a bit of a let down.

[lesstravelled]

Road made a noise of open disappointment. She'd have liked a welcoming committee. It seemed like a bad idea, in the long run, not to have someone greet members at the door and herd them off to different parts of the Palace so that you could limit how much they ran into each other.

Then again, it might be much more interesting to let them just stumble into each other from the outset.

"Maybe there's no one here to make trouble with," she said, sounding a little bit disappointed in that possibility. She turned, following her senses towards a doorway further in. It was closed, but she could feel people beyond it. "We should find someone to show us around." There was no telling what might run into them, otherwise.

[intangibleman]

"I doubt that," Tyki said, with a laugh. "The Earl said that a lot of people would flock here, but that there are some residents that live here full time."

He did consider it odd that nobody was about though, not even to provide non-automated security. If somebody managed to get past the monsters and then get through the door, there was nothing to stop them storming the palace with a rifle. The ones with the rifles should be vetting the people walking in.

He shook his head and smoothed his clothes down, brushing sand from his sleeve. He wasn't about to be seen with a dusty suit, regardless of who met him, gun or not. He pushed his hair back with one hand and let the state he'd willed his appearance into revert back to normal. At one time, he'd always looked like this, slightly tanned skin, dark eyes... now it was a chore to maintain. His Noah blood, unknown to him for years, had won out and changed him. With his concentration dropped, his skin darkened to an ashy grey and his eyes brightened to yellow.

"I'm sure they can't be far," he said.

[lesstravelled]

"There are some in there," Road said, pointing towards the door. She could feel others around, too, but to say they were expecting the whole of Khamja to descend on them for a meeting, the Palace wasn't very full.

Perhaps they were earlier than she'd anticipated. She hadn't wanted them to walk in stylishly late; Road preferred to get to know a place, and the people in it before she made a move, but she'd thought some of the others might be the same.

Unless some of the long term residents were out dealing with Aizen's predicament at the moment. Maybe that was why the place felt emptier than it should?

She turned and looked at Tyki as he let his hume mask drop and his Noah come through. Road had good control over hers; she only let it through when she wanted, but Tyki, well Tyki was still a bit new. Keeping their true nature locked away beneath the surface took effort, especially when you were new.

But the dark grey skin of a Noah suited him better.

"If you break any hearts, can I watch?"

[intangibleman]

Tyki gave a smirk at that, but shook his head. It wasn't a refusal, merely mild disbelief. Road was a sadist, perhaps more than him.

"Let's see who we find, then."

It could be interesting. At least they were expected, so it wouldn't be likely to be a disaster. At least hopefully not. He didn't want to have to kill anybody, at least not this early on. It might ruin the mood for the meeting if he entered it with blood on his hands.

He made for the door.

[declaregamuza]

Kreeth was the first of what was set to be a veritable onslaught of new people into the Palace. Nel had never been so glad of having sent Szayel and the more rambunctious Arrancar away to retrieve Aizen's children than she was at the moment she'd learned that. Szayel would have tried to cause problems with the people already there. Give him people that didn't know him to play with too and he'd have definitely started something. To say nothing of the risk of Grimmjow and company finding someone they butted heads with. They didn't need a rehash of their introduction to Kadaj.

Information on Aizen's welfare was thin on the ground, too. He was in D-District prison, and that was all anyone could say. L was trying to break through their systems to get access to their security systems and computerised information, but he wasn't currently sure if he could do it at all, and even if he could, it would take days.

It left Nel feeling like she was spinning her wheels in the Palace. The day was a long routine of waiting for more information, and hoping Grimmjow and the others weren't in a rush to return. She whiled away time in the kitchen because if she was there everyone knew where to find her.

When the Palace's doors opened she lifted her head. More visitors, inevitably, more Khamja members, were on their way in.

A few seconds later something changed, and Nel felt what she could only describe as her Hollow cowering. The two that were approaching were Dark elemental, which was enough to set her own teeth on edge although she'd learned never to judge by an elemental alignment, but that wouldn't be enough to frighten Gamuza.

Still she could feel it, that fight or flight response coming from deep within, hotwired into the back of her own spine where her instincts met the Hollow's. It was definitely pulling in the direction of flight, fighting almost vanished as an option.

Her fingers tightened around her cup, her newspaper lying forgotten on the table as she looked up at the doorway.

[hagsfiend]

Kreeth had grown used to the palace. In the past few days, she'd explored what she'd cared to explore, met a few more of the residents (thankfully none as dreadful as the hilariously prickly Professor Hojo) and settled in as best she could without the ability to easily fly away from the place.

It wasn't too bad, for an underground base. She wouldn't have chosen something without a real sky herself, but it was good enough.

She rather liked Nel, even if she was somebody else's experiment and somebody else's subordinate. She was pleasant, even to her, which was rather nice. Kreeth was used to being treated like something of a pariah, even if she could be useful with her lotions and potions and eldritch spells when people needed them. It was for that reason that she scowled when she saw Nel's discomfort. The lines of her hands grew hard and she felt her tension in the air. It was almost enough to set her feathers standing on end.

She looked to the door, head turning around just a touch too much. Newcomers. Those chakra signatures weren't here when she'd arrived. Dark Elemental, much like herself, but not the same. It was said there was more variation in that element than any other and, at this moment, Kreeth believed it. She recognised one of them, if only vaguely.

"A Noah," she said softly.

Nel was right to be afraid.

[declaregamuza]

Kreeth was weird. She was Dark elemental, and one more piece of evidence in why you shouldn't judge by an elemental alignment. She moved wrong, and the wings made her size and frame deceptively tricky to figure out with a glance.

Nel liked her. She was respectful towards those that were respectful back, and had made a fantastic first impression on Hojo that had instantly endeared her to Nel.

She also knew a lot. Nel hadn't asked Kreeth much about her activities, just in case she didn't want to know the answer, but she got the impression that Kreeth had been around the block a few times, and run into plenty of nasty things on her travels. Probably done them, too, to be a member of Khamja.

So when Kreeth named the thing that was approaching that had set Gamuza's hackles to rising, Nel didn't doubt her. She just didn't know what the name meant. "What's a Noah?" she asked, feeling the presence approaching.

She made herself let go of her cup in case she squeezed it a bit too hard.

[hagsfiend]

"A clan with the ability to subjugate Hollows like Beastmasters do animals," she said quietly, quickly, and under her breath. "Don't show your fear, dear."

The Noah were well-dressed predators, to Kreeth's recollection. They dressed rich, pranced about wearing their name like a badge of honour and moved in the higher circles of Jyllandi nobles, particularly in the Niflheim, Tenebrae and Uberwald regions. They had influence, and power, and they used both. It was better not to turn your back on a creature like them, nor show them you were vulnerable. Kreeth would know.

[intangibleman]

Tyki pushed the kitchen door open and, this time, he didn't hold the door open for Road to enter first. Instead, he walked through it, upright and confident in his continued safety.

He looked at the two women at the table and rather hoped that his suit didn't look too dusty after their walk through the caverns. Well, first impressions mattered, didn't they?

"Good afternoon," he said in the common tongue of Ivalice, his Jyllandi accent rather different to Kreeth's. The smile he provided to accompany the words was, he hoped, disarming.

[declaregamuza]

The ability to subjugate Hollows like Beastmasters do animals.

That was the source of Gamuza's dislike. It wasn't her own fear Nel had to keep under control, but the Hollow's fear was rare, and infectious. Nel found herself having to keep conscious control to maintain a steady reiatsu.

When the Noah entered the room Nel was struck by those predatory yellow eyes, and the dark grey skin. If his presence wasn't making Gamuza so concerned she'd have taken him for a Mist Mutant and left it at that. There were enough of those in the Palace, after all.

The charming smile didn't help one bit, either. Nel wasn't sure what she'd expected, but an attractive man in a nice, if slightly travelled in, suit wasn't the first thing she'd have conjured to mind.

"Hello," she said, because staying silent and hiding behind Kreeth, even if it was only conversationally, wasn't going to help her not show her fear. "I take it you're the ones that have just arrived?"

There was a girl behind him, with pink hume skin. She didn't flag so much on Gamuza's radar, at least not with the man around, although Nel could sense the Dark in her.

[lesstravelled]

Road could practically smell the fear before she walked in the room. Tyki made someone in there very nervous.

She could feel the Holy elemental controlling herself even before she rounded the doorframe and got a look at her. Green hair meant she was a Selkie. There were a lot of them in Khamja, she knew, and a lot more of them on the lowerworld than on Jylland.

She was pretty.

The other one was an Aegyl, she could spot that right off. There weren't many of those around, these days, and they tended to keep to themselves, so finding one here drinking with a Selkie was fun.

Road clasped her hands behind her back and tilted her head, looking between the two women. She gave a bright murmur of confirmation. "Are we early?"

[hagsfiend]

"Not as early as I was," Kreeth said, her abrasive voice cutting through the silence that hung after the girl's question. "I think you're the only other ones to arrive so far, so ... yes, I'd say so."

They were both Noah. Kreeth could feel Dark Chakra clinging to both of them, though it was far more pronounced in the man. He hadn't bothered to keep his family-related Mutation hidden as the girl had. They made the usual suppression effort of the magically powerful, but no matter how much most tried, they could still be felt and she suspected that Nel, Holy Elemental as she was, felt them both acutely. She was, after all, in a room with three powerful Dark Elementals.

"Better to be early than late," she added, and then grinned. "Better pick of the rooms."

[intangibleman]

That wasn't bad. Tyki didn't object to arriving fashionably late when it was, well, fashionable, but when it came to representing the Earl at Clan functions, where turning up late would negatively reflect upon him and, as such, incur his wrath in his direction, he preferred to be early. Not as early as the early bird, evidently, but early enough.

The Aegyl's accent, together with her feathered wings, marked her as Jyllandi. It was unsurprising that there would be more of them there, but it definitely meant they would need to be careful who they spoke around. Spotting the people from their homeland and making a mental note of them would be necessary. Fortunately, he had been told that Ivalicians didn't tend to learn Jyllandi. There wasn't much point when they all learned their language instead.

"Good," he said, his voice low, tone bright. He half turned to the door he'd just walked through, eyebrows raised. "You know, I had expected that there would be guards."

[declaregamuza]

Nel felt hunted. Cornered. She was a Holy elemental in a room that felt suddenly much too small, surrounded by Dark elementals.

The man was an almost overwhelming presence, but the girl wasn't exactly nice either. It was like being stuck next to Ulquiorra when he had his mask out. His Hollow was nasty, and Dark, and these two felt similar, him more than her.

Kreeth didn't feel nasty, as such, to Nel, just like something she should be wary of.

Nel made herself breathe. Despite the fact that a part of her wanted to go and camp out in the garden instead of sharing such close quarters with this many Dark elementals, the stupid part of her with terrible taste in men was eyeing this newcomer up and whispering that he looked very good in that suit.

"There are," she said, tamping down her urge to find an excuse to go and instead being nice, "they're just outside. You'd have attracted them if you'd tried getting in without clearance."