Wildport wasn't a massive town, but it wasn't necessarily a small one either. It was one of the main gateways into Azaire, and it showed. Ships with their masts and sails towering into the sky floated like great houses in the harbour; the scent of spice and fish and salt clung to the docks like it was woven into the stone itself. A small market of vendors pushing street food and little trinkets were just winding down for the evening, and the tavern, the Hammer and Anvil, was positively buzzing with sailors and labourers. The locals were used to seeing strange folks drifting in and out of the establishment. Tonight was particularly peculiar as what appeared to be two elves, a dwarf, a human, a dragonborn and a giant cat was shoved from the building.

The new party stared at the, now firmly shut to them, door of the tavern and exchanged a glance between the six that translated to, yes, this really was happening. Bella felt the most unease out of all of them. She couldn't help it; it just reminded her of her first day at the City Watch barracks. She'd been expecting them to ridicule her as they had done, that a woman would dare call herself a fighter. However, it turned out that the only insults were being exchanged between Carnate and Aldrich. The former was still upset at his loss of gold and demanding the stout figure pay him back.

With the sun setting and the night chill rolling of the whispering waves, the group made their way into the town of Wildport proper. It was still busy considering the time of late evening. People still scurried around like tiny ants, turning in for the night or preparing to not go home at all. Rickety wooden buildings gave way to more permanent brick and stone structures. The streets cleared of dirt and grime, and slowly but surely, the scent of salt and ale faded away into the fresh air.

Once they reached a sort of town square Bella and Hel, the two "humans", went darting off down the various crossroads to try and find a tavern or an inn of some description where they could stay the night. However, one of them should have probably remained behind. When the two of them returned, they found Janus, who had been trying to flirt with Alicia again, being held down, face first, into the fountain by the object of his affection. At the same time, Carnate and Aldrich stood struck dumb by this feat of strength. They had their weapons drawn like a fight had been promised and then interrupted by the drowning attempt in front of them.

"Any chance you're regretting this yet?" Hel asked, his shoulders slumped forward in defeat.

Bella got the feeling that Hel was also here for the same reason she was. Money. Escape. Trying to build something new. The question was, what was he running from? Bella looked at the anarchy spiralling out in front of her and, with a long, drawn-out sigh, unsheathed Widow Maker. The blade was gloriously heavy in the palm of her hand, the hilt moulded to perfectly fit her grip as she spun the greatsword effortlessly around her fingers and slammed it into the stone. A harsh metallic ringing echoed through the market place as Widow Maker struck, which resulted in a very desired effect from the rest of the group. Carnate and Aldrich's heads spun around so quickly their necks almost cracked. Simultaneously, Alicia jumped back in alarm, releasing Janus, who slithered onto the floor, howling in pain.

"OI! WHAT WAS THAT FOR!" He roared, still covering his ears. "Some of us have sensitive hearing, ya know!"

"In my defence, you were drowning," she snapped back, sheathing her weapon again.

"Any luck?" Carnate asked. He may not have visible ears, but he was rubbing the place they should be.

Hel shook his head. "We can't afford anywhere. It's all too expensive."

"How much do we all got?" Aldrich asked.

"In total, twenty gold pieces," Bella said. "The cheapest place we found wanted twenty-four."

Smoke shot out of Carnate's nose as he, once again, rounded on Aldrich, gold finger threateningly jabbing at his chest. "You little shit. I had another five gold before you came along."

"What did I do?"

"If you hadn't gone storming into that tavern like an umberhulk, then I wouldn't have had to pay someone off, and we could afford a place to stay tonight."

Aldrich tried to shove the dragonborn away from him, but mainly since there had to be at least a one-hundred-pound weight difference, he didn't get very far. Instead, he jabbed his shortsword up at Carnate's neck. "Shut yer face lizard," he snarled. "Ya shoulda just let him at me."

"Oh, believe me, I was tempted."

"Hey, hey, hey, calm down, both of you." Bella jumped between them. This was her job, breaking up fights, patrolling the city for trouble, she'd gotten very good at noticing when a situation was about to get out of hand. "What happened happened. It's in the past; we can't change it, so we're just going to have to find another place to stay tonight."

"Oh yeah?" Janus said, his magnificent golden fur dripped miserably. "What do you suggest we do then?"

"We could camp in the woods tonight," Hel suggested.

Alicia glanced upwards at the sky. It was the colour of steel. "I think we should keep looking. Besides, you never know a room might become..." She drew her dagger from seemingly nowhere "available?"

"NO!" It was the only thing Aldrich and Carnate had agreed on since they met.

Alicia grunted, "fine! Have it your way."

"If you murder anyone, I swear to Bahamut..." Carnate muttered under his breath.

"It's not murder; it just means they fell on my dagger."

"Let's see how that holds up in a court of law," Bella retorted.

Carnate snapped his fingers as an idea sprang into his head. Why didn't I think of that before? he thought to himself. It might be quite challenging to convince Alicia and the dwarf to go through with it, but the others would probably be on board. They may not lose a copper either. It was worth a try, at least.

"What would you all say if I told you I could find us a place to stay tonight for free?"

"I'd say you were lying," Aldrich said.

The temptation to punch the dwarf in the face was almost too much to resist. A soft growl rumbled in Carnate's throat as he quietly collected himself. "I can't say it'll be all that comfortable, but it's a roof over our heads, some decent food, and it'll be warm and dry. It'll be borderline free as well. Hopefully."

"Good enough for me," Hel said.

"Lead the way," gestured a still dripping Janus.

Carnate lead the group away from the square to the high-class part of town. Cheap constructions gave way to elegant wooden doors, stained glass windows, tiled roofs, cleaner streets and the type of grandeur that at least half of the group were used to. The fashion was significantly more beautiful than the tattered rags they'd seen before. To the keen-eyed Alicia, glittering jewels and bulging coin purses draped themselves over their masters' forms. She was almost tempted to relieve its owner of the unnecessary weight. She even started to move towards a plump woman who resembled the potato you always threw away. A hand clamped around her wrist and pulled her back to the group.

Hel's olive fingers stood out against Alicia's stark, pale skin and her gaze flicked up to his eyes. They were pleading with her, those hazel eyes begging her not to do what he thought she was going to do. She looked back towards the woman, sighed irritably and shrugged his hand off and kept walking with the rest of her convoy. There must be at least forty gold in there, she thought bitterly, but she didn't push her luck. Something about Hel told her to be wary. Something told her that he knew what he was doing.

After about ten minutes or so, the cobblestone labyrinth opened up to reveal a giant open courtyard and an impossibly large building. Vast alabaster pillars towered upwards, balancing the marble roof that shimmered gold in the twilight sky. Sapphire blue banners cascaded like water down the stone walls, each one bearing the symbol of a set of silver scales. The emblem repeated itself on the peak of the roof, carved out of the marble alongside scenes of warriors and slain monsters, their faces twisted in perfect agony. Only this time, the scales were cobalt blue, held within the jaws of a great dragon.

Alicia and Bella recognised the symbol instantly, a trail of ice racing down the spine of the former as she stared at the judging gaze of the eyeless creature. For Hel and Aldrich, however, the connection was less clear but still evident from the dragon at least. Janus, on the other hand, wouldn't be caught dead in these upscale parts of town, mainly because the high and mighty of this world's civilization didn't take too kindly to a creature like him. Humanoid or not, he was still a stray in this lavish world.

"A courthouse?" Hel said. "Look, as much as I fancy the idea of sleeping in a cell, I think I'll pass on this one."

"It's not just a courthouse; it's a temple of Bahamut," Bella pointed out.

That little revelation caused the loyal monk to spin round, draw his sword and point it, once again, at the base of Carnate's throat. It was the only place he could reach. "If you think I'm stayin' in that house of bastards, you've got another thing comin' asshole."

Carnate lowered his broad gold head until he was eye level with Aldrich. He was so close to the dwarf's face he could see the individual gaps between the scales, the rows of needle-like teeth. There a smell of burning coming from somewhere.

"Listen here, you little shit," he growled. "I don't care what lies you've been force-fed about my faith, I don't care how much you insult me, but if I hear one foul word escaping your lips about my god, I'll tear you to bloody pieces. Understand?"

Aldrich snorted in disgust, "whatever. I'm still not going in there."

Carnate pulled back to his full height and shrugged. "Alright, fine by me. Excuse me, sir!" Carnate called out to a gentleman who was making his way across the courtyard.

To his credit, he did stop and replied, albeit a bit wearily. "Yes?"

"What happens to those who sleep on this fine town's streets?"

The man pondered for a few seconds and then pointed to the temple. "They get taken in there by the Watch, sir."

"Good to know, thank you."

Aldrich glared at the dragonborn's cocky, smug smile and without a word to any of them, he turned and stormed into the temple. With a roll of his eyes, Carnate followed, pursued by the girls. Hel and Janus hung back slightly, the former gazing off to the horizon with a grim expression on his face.

"What are you looking at? Is there a naked woman in a window?"

That little comment earned him a whack from Hel's bow. You wouldn't expect a simple piece of wood to hurt, but the wire just caught Janus' skin. It was enough to draw blood and send a torrent of stinging pain racing up his leg.

"There's a storm coming, thunder and lightning by the looks of it. It's going to be a long, cold night."

A twinge of sadness clutched the young tabaxi's heart. Once upon a time, Janus could have stalked wary herds and sprung from the grass before they could have guessed he was there. He could have spied a single rain cloud from half a mile away or predicted the fortune of his tribe purely by the scent of the wind. Part of him missed those skills he'd lost over many years of disuse.

But there was no time to stew on regrets. Janus slapped Hel on the back as he hopped up the stairs. "Come on, let's find out about the hovel that we're staying in tonight. You never know; they might have ale."

Hel said something along the lines of "I highly doubt that" as the two of them entered into one of the grandest rooms any of them had laid eyes upon.

To the untrained eye, the temple could have easily been mistaken for a palace. The whole thing seemed to have been impossibly carved out of one solid piece of white stone. Pillars rained down from the ceiling, wrapped in gold and silver. The floor was marble, polished to the point it gave the illusion of walking on a glass sea as it caught the light from an enormous stained-glass window. The window showed the great platinum dragon himself. His wings spread to the corners of the room, claws digging into the stone, casting quiet judgement on those below him and to the criminals, murderers, thieves, and sinners carved out of the alabaster ceiling, their faces twisted in terror and awe.

People meandered in and out, some dressed in the silver and blue of the order, while others wore simple everyday clothes as they finished their daily prayers. A few guards accompanied a small group which caught the eye of most of the party. Still, only Janus, with his sharp eyes, caught a glimpse of a dull shiny object wrapped around the wrists of the three men and the woman as they were led below the temple itself. Manacles. Prisoners.

"I thought you said this was a temple," Janus said to Carnate as the chained people were dragged below ground.

"It is, but it's also a courthouse. It's like how the Raven Queen's temples can be funeral homes or temples to Sarenrae are hospitals. Bahamut is the god of justice, after all."

"Where are they going?" Bella asked.

Carnate shrugged. "How the hell should I know?" Then he spun on his heel to address the group, now just a bit more serious. "Right, listen closely cause I'm only going to say this once. I'm going to talk to someone about getting us somewhere to stay for the night. In the meantime, don't break anything."

For some reason, Janus felt like that was being directed at him. The fact that the dragonborn was looking right at him clearly had nothing to do with it.

"Don't steal anything."

Alicia didn't quite meet his eye.

"And for the love of the gods, don't insult anyone. You know I'm talking to you, dwarf."

Aldrich responded with a short, sharp gesture of one finger that earned a few muttered words from an elderly woman who just had to pass them at that exact moment. Carnate couldn't be bothered with a retort (this dwarf had already aged him by a decade), so he simply stalked off, cursing so violently in draconic it actually made Hel blush until the paladin passed through a doorway and vanished from sight.

Aldrich grunted. "Little prick. Thinks 'im and his crackpot old god can tell me what to do. Ha! He got another thing comin' if- ARGH!"

The others whipped round to face Aldrich's scream of pain and see a mace bouncing off of his already broken nose. Again, only Janus saw where it came from initially. However, after Carnate roared, "WHAT DID I JUST SAY!" with his hand still outstretched, it began very clear who Aldrich's attacker was. After Aldrich hurled the mace back to its owner, smacking Carnate full in the face in the process, the dragonborn stormed off, but this time with a few people staring at the carnage.

How in the name of Bahamut have we not been arrested yet? Hel thought to himself as he and Bella tried to stop the bleeding and convince him that his rapidly bruising face would not form a black eye. He didn't quite believe them.

Alicia rolled her eyes and wandered away from the swearing dwarf. The whole room was surrounded by a ring of alters with golden candlesticks, silver bowls filled with holy water and a few of Bahamut's symbols scattered across the top. She couldn't help the fact that her mind wandered to how she would take them; it was a force of habit that stemmed from her childhood days as a pickpocket. She knew how to recognise value at this point, and the only thing that she could take and earn a few gold pieces along the way were the candlesticks. She ran her finger along the rim and slyly glanced towards the door that Carnate had vanished through. He would kill her for it. But only if he caught her.

You know what? Fuck it, she thought.

Quick as lightning, she removed the candle, the slippery wax providing a little bit of difficulty, and slipped the candlestick into the back of her shirt. To the untrained eye, it looked like decoration, a brass clasp holding the fabric together. Still, she knew that it was more visible than she would have liked as it was an unwieldy thing. Whatever. It was passable so long as he didn't look too closely.

Carnate returned a little while later, looking significantly more worn down than before. "We've got a place to stay, for now anyway. At least until the Scalebearer comes to his senses. We're downstairs, come on."

No one liked the sound of this "Scalebearer", so they all made their exit sharply down into the sub-levels, away from the regal glamour and into something decidedly dingier. Alicia walked in confidently, straight-backed, head held high as she walked past Carnate, silently willing him not to notice the candlestick. But she knew from experience that gods didn't listen to her as she felt the golden rod being plucked from her back, a sudden glaring gap left behind. She kept walking, ignoring the low, dangerous growl that was rumbling through the corridor.

She froze as something clamped around her neck. Before she could even process the gold fingers encircling her throat, Alicia Galanodel was slammed against the stone wall with a sickening crunch. She heard other voices crying out in shock as his grip tightened around her throat, and he raised her upwards to directly meet her gaze; this left her feet hovering off the ground. Then there were those eyes...dragons eyes, burning with rage and fire, green and blue flaring to life, stoked by fury.

"Listen to me carefully," Carnate growled. His voice was surprisingly soft, quiet, and yet that rage was unmistakable. "I don't care who you are. I don't care what you've done in your life. I don't care if you steal, pillage or murder for the fun of it. But so help me if you take anything from my order, I'll break your neck so badly you'll grow an extra vertebra, understand?"

She nodded desperately, just wanting to be released from Carnate's grip as black dots swirled in front of her. He dropped her to the floor with a thud. She scrambled back to her feet, away from Carnate. The others just stared in shock and mild horror at him. That rage seemed to just die, fizzle away, smoulder to an ember and then simply go out, replaced by what appeared to be embarrassment.

Janus stared in awe at him. He admired strength in people, especially in those who didn't appear to have it immediately. Carnate pushed past the group to lead them further into the temple's underbelly without saying a word. It was cold but not unpleasant, and everything was clean, pure, just how the gods liked it. There were other people too. Fancy folk in long flowing robes, a few in light armour, all of them were in the repetitive shades of blue and silver. They were all staring at the party, Carnate especially. People would stop and stare as he walked by, but Janus couldn't quite work out what they were saying as they rushed past them. Maybe he was a bit of a celebrity, or perhaps, like Janus himself, was more on the infamous end.

Eventually, after a few more lefts and rights and a quick jog up a set of stairs, they reached a long corridor lined with doors, all identical. How very dull.

"We can stay in any of these rooms tonight. If it's empty, you can have it," Carnate announced. "Breakfast is served at seven o'clock tomorrow, so I suggest we get a...yes?"

Janus lowered his hand, "Is there anywhere I can get a drink in this place?"

A beat passed.

"No. As I was saying, be up early to get out of here as soon as- what now?"

"Is there a fighting pit anywhere?"

"No..."

"What about a whorehouse?"

"It's a temple!"

"So? All good establishments should have one."

At that point, Carnate pinched the bridge of his nose together and sighed a very long, very drawn-out sigh. In Janus' mind, all he did was ask an innocent question. He also hadn't noticed that dragonborn only have four fingers. It took him aback for a brief moment.

"Bahamut majak ve dastudr," Carnate muttered before storming off and leaving the others to find their rooms of their own volition.

It took a little while and a few sights that could never be unseen, such as the lady half-orc that Hel walked in on just as she bent over, but eventually, they all got a bed for the night with only minor mental scarring. The rooms were all identical and not that dissimilar from a jail cell. It was dull, to say the least, what with barren stone walls, a bare wood floor that creaked with every step, a rickety desk and a chair in one corner and a bed in the other. A lone window sat dead centre, which allowed the last few strands of sunlight to pour in.

Hel lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. For once, the wooden bed wasn't the problem or the musty smell coming from his sheets. No, the problem was that he couldn't stop thinking about what he'd done, what he'd seen today, the people he was now counting on to watch his back. He was a trusting man; that was a problem of his, but yet something bothered him about everyone he'd met. Janus and Alicia were running from the law; what had they done to get that kind of treatment? Bella was a warrior, no doubt about that, yet she had no master, no army behind her, no allies. Aldrich was like that too; he was a monk with no monastery, and round here, seeing a monk on his own was a sure sign that something had gone wrong.

Then there was Carnate. Strange, unpredictable, frankly dangerous Carnate. He was hiding something behind those gold scales and split apart eyes, something that he didn't want anyone else to find out about. Bahamut give me strength...that's what he'd muttered under his breath as he'd walked away. Bahamut had told him to be here, to do this, that meant that this new party had to be so vital the gods were getting involved.

Carnate was definitely the one to pique his interest, especially when the dragonborn had been staring at him. Those eyes looked like they were gazing into his soul, and he had caught a few little sideways glances from time to time. Truthfully he wasn't sure how much he minded. The few dragonborn he'd met before could never have been considered handsome. This one could, maybe even go as far as being almost beautiful in a sturdy, stoic way. He found himself wanting to know more.

But that could wait. They had a job to do which racked Hel's mind as he turned over. As he lay there, he whispered a silent prayer to the platinum dragon, begging to avoid a repeat of last time. He let sleep catch him just as the first drops of rain clashed against his window.