For once, door duty for Warfinn turned out to be something less than boring... though it was still not particularly any less arduous than usual. It was the night shift-- which was, perhaps, the worst shift of all, because no on was stupid enough to be wandering around the island at night, and yet the door had to be manned, anyway. As it turned out, that was probably a good thing, and for the first time Warfinn didn't wonder why he had to be out there.

He hadn't been stationed at the great gates to the Citadel for more an an hour-- with his current partner, the most annoying Tacetak-- before the first interesting event of the night occurred. It wasn't an extremely interesting event, but it wasn't the same old boredom, either. The annoying Tacetak had seen it first, and pointed it out. "Hey, War, lookit that!"

"What is it, 'Tak?" he grumbled, but looked up, anyway-- and stopped grumbling, at least for a minute. There, stretching across the heavens, was the biggest shooting star he'd ever seen. "Well, look at that...."

"Woulda thought that all th'mages and the like woulda know'd 'bout somethin' like that, wouldncha?" Tacetak cackled. "But not a peep! Bet they're all bouncin' around now, tryin' to fig're out what it is, an' how they missed knowin' it was comin!"

Annoying, jabbering, back-country hick Tacetak... even listening to nothing but the sea below the cliffs was better than having to listen to him. Warfinn went back to ignoring him, but he did keep an eye on the shooting star. It didn't take long to disappear, but he could at least wonder about it, to keep his mind off of his boredom: wonder what it was, where it came from, where it was going... if it would touch down on Kynn, or move on.... That would have lasted him another hour, at least, but by then, there was other excitement to keep him occupied.

A trio of people-- they looked like people, but from a distance, you could never tell-- approached across the rocky terrain. Warfinn thought his eyes were tricking him, at first, until Tacetak started squinting into the distance, too. "Is that-- that looks like people out there! Since when're there people wanderin' 'round at night?"

"Usually only dangerous types, 'Tak," Warfinn grunted, hefting his spear and pulling himself up to attention. The trio were coming closer, and they looked like some weird kind of elves: not Drow, but... they didn't seem like regular elves, either. They had the tall, pointy ears, but that was about it.

"Halt! Who comes to the Citadel of Shadows?" he demanded.

They all stopped, and the tallest of the three-- and he was tall!-- came forward slowly, both hands raised in a universal gesture of peace. "Travelers. We mean no harm." His words were strange, lightly accented, but understandable as the common Nexian tradetongue.

"Statecher names an' business!" Tacetak barked, and Warfinn would have winced, if not for discipline. Tacetak's rough speech was no way to represent the Citadel to outsiders....

"Sythwyr Ruvanon," the tall strange said, inclining his head with a kind of archaic politeness, apparently unfazed by the country accent. "My brother, Nonaarama," he held out a hand behind him, indicating the burly but not quite as tall elf-man behind him, "and our companion, Ryruraan. Our business is simple. We seek someone who may be here, but who may not be. One of our people, in part."

It took a minute to work past the tongue-twisting names, factor out the accent, and rearrange the choppy sentences into order. Warfinn, predictably, figured it out before Tacetak. "You're looking for somebody?" he repeated. "Somebody like you, who might not even be here?"

"Our blood," Syth-- Sythwyr?-- Sythwyr corrected gently. "Our people."

Gods and demons, but he was a creepy fellow! All pale and skinny, with all that dark hair hanging around his face... in the shadows from the gate torches, he didn't look entirely real, almost like death itself. "Well, I don't know of anyone like that in the Citadel-- but I'll ring up somebody who might know." Or, he added to himself, will know what to do with you!

Tougara showed up shortly, despite the late hour. The three strange elves were definitely lucky he was the one to show up, rather than someone like Seph, who would probably have sliced each one in two just for waking him up. Well, maybe not the thick one-- he looked like he could break Seph in two, if he tried at it. At any rate, Warfinn was just glad when the lizard-man showed up. The strangers were too quiet, just standing about waiting, and now that he had enough time to actually look at them all in the torchlight, they all seemed a little creepy: the tall, skinny, death's-head Sythwyr, with his hulking, closed-faced brother, and the tiny, wraithlike woman with the weird, gray skin and aloof expression. Creepy, all of 'em. Tacetak, for once, seemed to agree with him, and kept his annoying chatter to himself.

But the gate came open not long after they'd send the courtyard messenger inside after someone of authority to deal with guests who were not unfriendly, but who were out of the ordinary, to reveal the red-haired lizard-man. "Is there a problem, guardsman?" he asked, shutting the gate prudently behind him and blinking sleepily under his impressive set of bangs and gold horns.

Tacetak, for all his chatter, didn't like dealing with higher-ups, so Warfinn got to do the talking-- thankfully. "Strangers, sir, with a strange sort of purpose. Didn't know if it would be wise to let them in without contacting someone with authority about newcomers."

"Wise enough, I suppose, even if it's annoying," Tougara sighed, rubbing at his muzzle before turning to the three strangers. "What can I do you for?"

Sythwyr had obviously used his time waiting to work out a better way to say what he wanted to say. "We are seeking a member of our people-- our blood-- which may be within your walls. We mean no harm, and once we have determined whether who we seek is within or not, and speak to him if he is, we will be on our way again."

"Well, we do have a lot of pretty strange people in here," Tougara admitted, looking the trio over critically. "But it's not always the safest to just go wandering around, especially at night. Would you object to an escort?"

Smart move, that, Warfinn figured: keep the intruders "safe", while at the same time making sure they don't go poking their noses where they don't belong. Sythwyr probably understood, but he bowed slightly-- respect and agreement, it looked like. "We have no objection, and an escort would be welcome as a guide in a strange place."

"Well, Guardsman Warfinn here knows the place inside and out," Tougara said, casting a sly, red eye in Warfinn's direction. "He can guide you around."

If that was meant to be punishment for waking Tougara up, Warfinn could handle it. He could give the creepy threesome a tour of the citadel, send them on their way, and then turn in early. Even better, he'd not have to deal with Tacetak until the next time they were scheduled on door duty together, which hopefully would not be for a long, long time. "It would be my pleasure, sir," he answered, tipping his helmet at the stranger-elves amiably.

Tougara, failing to irritate him, frowned, but couldn't back out, now. "Fine, that's settled. I'll get the guard captain to send you a replacement for your post. Let me know if there's anything else?"

Which, of course, meant that there had better not be anything else. "Yes, sir," Warfinn replied, saluting.

"I'm going back to bed," Tougara muttered, and stalked back inside.

Chapter Three

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