Hunting Death- On the Rooftops
#15 of Hunting Death
On the Rooftops
I revel in the free air once back out of that building but once that relief has run its course I'm left with the situation of how to go explore the town. In order to maximize my chances of finding one of the people that can help me stop my own death I need to go somewhere where I can see as many people as possible but if I see too many at one time then I'll have an issue where my blood will burn but I still won't know which exact person is the one I want. One top of that there is always the issue of having to deal with those kids again and without Hashal to try and convince them otherwise they may not take a hint without me having to threaten them. I look up at the sky for a moment to try and get inspiration and then it comes to me.
I take a moment to scratch at an itch behind one of my ears and then look around the nearby buildings trying to find my way. It takes me a while to find what I want but I manage to find a low overhang that I can reach. I hop up on top of it, struggling a little bit in the process since I'm not use to having to do a lot of jumping like this. From there it takes me only another minute until I'm on top of the building that Hashal is supposedly working.
Up here I would have a great vantage. I can roam through the city freely without restriction and especially won't be bothered by those kids anymore. As I begin moving from building to building I amuse myself with the notion of how differently would they have treated me if they knew what I really was. My first priority is to find somewhere where I can locate someone who will be able to help prevent my own death. The first step is to find someplace crowded enough that I'll be certain to have my blood burn for at least one of them, then use the rooftops to observe them long enough to decide if there good or bad and if good figure out a way to get them to join me in my quest. Of course the first obstacle is to be able to tell which one my blood is burning for, especially since it'll only burn once for each person and it does me no good if I can't figure out which one to follow if I can see fifty people when it burns. Finding a populated area is easy enough given how loud they seem to like being. All I have to do is follow the rooftops until I find what seems to be the most I'm terribly loud location.
The location I seem to end up is a sort of large square. Or at the very least that's what the interior shape inside the buildings seems to roughly resemble. It is a very nice square as far as I can tell, but having no experience of other such meeting areas. There do seem to be quite a few smaller building like things around square with from the sounds a bunch of humans stopping and interacting with people on the inside of these little almost building like things. I would get a better view to see what is actually going on but that would put me at risk of seeing too many people at a time and having my blood burn without me having a way to distinguish who its burning for.
I find a nice looking prospect along one of the buildings. It's a sort of sign as far as I can tell. But what's nice is that it's made of somewhat older wood and not all that well taken care of. I'm sure it serves its purpose to the owner or is too expensive to simply replace. At any rate it will be to my benefit to go and check it out. I'm sure that I can find some corner or something that will allow me to peak at a few people at a time in a restrictive manner. Might not be ideal but would serve my purposes. Of course when I am moving around to try and get over to this sign I notice an even more enticing reason to go. Whether by design or wear there's a small crack in the wood, a small gap that would serve my purpose perfectly. I'd have to check it up close but it might be exactly what I need.
Getting to the sign still takes a bit of work, especially since the buildings are not exactly built with the intent of someone hopping from one to the next. But after only a single slip I manage to make it over to the sign and take a moment to rest before peering out through the crack in the back of the sign, bracing myself in case it backfires and doesn't do what I need it to or my blood burns instantly. It doesn't and from the gap I can see maybe one to three people depending on how close I am to it and I have some wiggle room as to where it's pointing if I move around. So something that is exactly what I'm looking for. Though while I'm doing this and doing an initial check to see if any one of them are my own I notice that I'm not alone on this sign.
Perched on top of the sign looking down at me is a bat. And this strikes me as very odd. Not so much because a bat would exist in this town, far from it. I've caught at least a few signs of a presence of bats where I grew up but they generally made sure to stay away from us. Though we do not typically hunt bats as they're usually not worth the effort we do tend to pounce at it if we can. And yet here's a bat staring at me without any sense of fear or wariness. If anything I'd have to say that its expression is mirroring my own. It is watching me the same way I am watching it, not with concern but with curiosity. And as I stare at it I reflect on the situation. I realize that I must look as out of place to it as it does to me. And as odd as a bat perched on top of a sign like a bird in the middle of the day may be, I'm sure seeing a clothed foxlike creature of my appearance and size hopping around along the rooftops to deliberately get to this sign to look through a small hole is equally odd, if not more so. A bat is common, my kind are not. I realize that we must have the same purpose for being here. This bat must be here to observe the people down there just as I am, meaning there must be some sort of intelligence behind the bat's actions.
"Hello there," I state cheerfully, finding some comfort in not being the only intelligent non-biped in the area. "Can you speak? My name is MigeYeFoxe."
My head tilts to the side as I await some form of response. While waiting for that response I try to figure out just what this bat most likely is. I can't think of any of the magical species where the base species is a bat, let alone one that looks just like any other bat. I suppose it could be a familiar just like what Hashal told me to pretend to be. If me being a familiar would explain why I am intelligent, the same could easily be said for this bat. My head tilts to the other side as the bat still isn't responding to my greeting. Perhaps that pendent doesn't work in this situation. When I saw the trinket from that elf I got a good enough look to know how to replicate the effect, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I know exactly how it works. I know it translates everything that that elf and Hashal say so that I can understand it and translates everything I say so that they can understand me. But I do not know if it translates all languages or just the language of my kind to some sort of common language. In which case the bat not be able to understand me. Seeing no threat in the bat and no source of conversation I dismiss it mentally and go back to my crack in the sign.