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A/N: This takes place in the same world as Angsty Blitzwing.
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"Why are we here again?"
Yrpaxi stomped his rearmost left foot. "To speak with the Layer of Cards, so that zie might reveal what the forces of the universe have divined of our lives to come."
Blitzwing followed after the eight-legged armory-sergeant through the bazaar that covered most of this island. He kept getting funny looks from the locals; there weren't a lot of aliens around here. Just the natives and their animals, and most of them under the covered walkways rather than out in the road. It was approaching noon, and both suns were up.
"Yeah, I get that," the triple-changer said, "But why am I here?"
"To intrigue hir into laying a spread for us free of charge."
"Oh... Heh." Blitzwing nudged a stubborn creature that looked like a scaled bison with too many legs out of his way. Captain Azure had hammered home the concept of 'you break it, you buy it' to all of his crew, and he would see your pay docked to cover whatever it was that you had destroyed. "How much further?"
"Zie usually waits at the central fountain." Yrpaxi stopped, head turning towards a weapon shop. "Go on and speak with hir. You will know hir when you see hir."
"Not a chance in the Inferno."
Yrpaxi looked up at him. "You will find hir alone. Zie does not see more than one at a time. Zie will know you are coming, if you go to hir."
Blitzwing glowered. Blitzwing argued. Blitzwing asked what the Pit that pronoun Yrpaxi kept using was. But eventually Blitzwing went to the central fountain.
A robed figure sat on one of the benches there, the spray gently touching hir robe and keeping the amorphous, tentacled creature that piped at hir feet moist. A saffron pavilion kept the suns off them, and the ground around the bench held baskets of odd sorts. Blitzwing recognized the ridged shellfish Yrpaxi kept munching on, as well as various other sea-going creatures and agricultural products. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the two, since everything on this blasted planet seemed to think tentacles were a great evolutionary addition.
Weird. He couldn't sense below hir robe. He hunkered down, and the cowled head turned towards him. Okay, how to put this...
"So, you've come," zie fluted. "We have been waiting, Knight of Swords."
Blitzwing utterly lost his train of thought. "What?"
The piping creature at hir feet trilled merrily.
"We have been waiting," zie repeated. "You are not who we wait for, but we know you would come here. So we will lay the cards for you and interpret them, though the symbols are not as they ought to be for your race. But that deck must not be taken out until the Dawn-Star comes unto us."
"...Okay?"
Blitzwing privately decided to never again let anyone in the mercenary company take him to see the local sites on whatever planet they got leave on.
End