6. “The risk I took was calculated, but man am I bad at math.”
Some days, the gods smiled on Devi and her activities. Other days, she swore she was being actively punished for every transgression that she and her ancestors had ever committed.
Today was the second type of day.
She crouched behind a low wall as the shouts of the Watch echoed through the Lower City, wishing for an invisibility potion. Beside her, Astarion craned his neck to look over the top of the wall. “You are among the worst thieves I've ever met,” he grumbled. “Certainly the sloppiest. Trying to pickpocket a guard in the middle of the open street in broad daylight…”
“Hey, I took a calculated risk,” Devi retorted, risking a peek over the wall. “Unfortunately, I'm terrible at math.”
Astarion gave her a flat look. “You don't say,” he deadpanned.
“Shut up.” Devi ducked down again as she saw the armour of Watch guards come around the corner. “Shit, shit, shit…” She looked around the alley she and Astarion had taken refuge in; her eyes settled on a manhole. “You're not going to like this…”
Astarion followed her gaze, and a moment later, he gave her a glare that would have made a lesser person quiver in their boots. “If you think I'm going to go spelunking in the sewers with you again, Deviali…”
“It's Devi to you,” the thief replied, rolling her eyes. “And it's the sewers, or making a break for the rooftops.”
With a groan, Astarion looked around the alley, seeking literally any other escape avenue that didn't involve the city sewers. The only route that led to the rooftops would take the pair across the line of vision of the Watch; and between his white hair and Devi’s neck tattoo, they were too distinctive-looking to slip away easily in the non-existent crowds. “I hate you,” he said with a resigned scowl.
“No you don't,” Devi said with a cheerful grin. “Come on, let's–”
“There!” shouted one of the Watch. An arrow sailed over the wall and struck the ground beside Astarion's right boot. “Surrender!”
The two rogues looked at each other for a moment before Astarion fished an arrow out of his quiver. In one Elf-quick motion, he was standing to fire the darkness arrow at the feet of the Watch – a cloud of impenetrable shadows erupted, sowing chaos among the blinded guards. The vampire reached for Devi's shoulder, hauling her to her feet. “Can we get out of here now?” he demanded. “And not through the sewers!”
“What, you didn't want to smell like a latrine for the next tenday?” Devi asked as the pair started running. Bypassing the manhole, they made it to the ladder and scrambled up the rungs, then dashed across the roof of the innocent shop they had scaled. With a quick look around, Devi veered to her right. “Come on. This alley down here leads to a shortcut back to–”
The armoured head of a Watch guard popping up over the roof ledge made Devi and Astarion screech to a halt. “There they are!” the human man shouted, lumbering up the last few rungs of the ladder as the two fugitives altered course, running for the next building over. “After them!”
“All right, new plan,” Devi said as she and Astarion fled. They came to the edge of their building and leapt over the gap, landing on the roof of the next structure before running again. “If I remember correctly, we can run down this street over the roofs, climb up one of the larger houses, and lose them in another alley.”
“Just how many times have you done this?” Astarion demanded. “Running from the Watch with new and stupidly inventive escape routes?”
“I lost count. Usually once a tenday, on average.” Devi grinned at Astarion’s scowl. “Where’s your sense of fun?”
“You call this fun? I much prefer charming someone in a tavern to running from armed guards over rooftops!” Astarion glanced over his shoulder for a moment. “Does Gale know about what you consider to be ‘fun’?”
“What Gale doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“And what about us? Your sense of fun is going to get us both killed, and then Gale will resurrect us, then kill us again!”
“Relax, my vampire friend! Gale isn’t going to kill either of us.” Devi also glanced over her shoulder, frowning at how many of the Watch were pursuing them. “Jaheira, on the other hand, will probably murder us both.”
Astarion groaned. “I think I would rather Gale kill us after all.” He and Devi leapt over another gap between buildings, wide enough that they both had to strain themselves to make the jump. “Do your normal pursuits always end with you being chased by two units of the Watch?”
“My personal best is five units. And that was also the only time the bastards caught me.” Devi sharply glanced to the side. “Go right!”
With another groan, Astarion followed the half-Elf’s order. “First, you get us turned into cheese,” he started, “and then you get us pursued by the Watch…”
“Technically, the cheese incident was your fault,” Devi pointed out. “You accused the djinni of cheating first.”
“Don’t get me started,” Astarion warned.
“I’m sure Shadowheart and Gale will back me up on this! Besides, I have a plan to get us away from the Watch. How fast can you climb a wall?”
Astarion blinked in confusion, then looked ahead and groaned when he saw the bell tower before them. “What happened to losing them in an alleyway?”
“I like this idea better!”
“... I hate you.”
“So you’ve said.” Devi whipped around another corner, Astarion only a step behind her, and started scrambling up the rugged side of the bell tower, using the crevices in the bricks to pull herself up. She heard Astarion swear under his breath before he started climbing after her, as quickly as his lean fingers could find holds in the bricks.
The two made it to the top of the tower just as the Watch, breathless and panting, arrived at the base of the tower; Devi silently dropped below the edge of the parapet and gestured for Astarion to be quiet, then strained her pointed ears to listen to the guards below them.
“They came this way!” she heard one guard say, while wheezing as he tried to catch his breath. “They must have dropped into the alley!”
“I don’t see anything,” said another voice. “Which way would they have gone?”
“Are they with the Guild?” asked another guard.
“Nine-Fingers usually hires better thieves,” came a dry comment; Astarion smirked at Devi’s scowl. “Split up. We’ll search the area – they can’t have gone far.”
“With how fast those two can run, they might be halfway to Rivington by now,” complained the second voice.
“Then we alert the Fist and the Steel Watchers,” said the dry voice.
A chorus of groans answered him. “I’d rather let those two escape than get the Steel Watchers involved!” groused the first voice. “Unnatural, those things are. Not one of Archduke Gortash’s better ideas.”
“Do you have better ideas?” the dry voice muttered.
“By the time the Steel Watchers receive the alert, those two will be long gone,” said a new voice. “Every second we spend here arguing, they’re making good their escape.”
“So, do we just give them up as a lost cause then?” asked the third voice. “They could be anywhere now.”
“We put an alert up in the barracks,” said the second voice. “Put the Watch on alert, and warn the Fist. Two thieving Elves, one male and one female – the male with white hair and pale skin, and the female with a neck tattoo and long auburn hair. At the least, it might make those two miscreants go underground and rethink their ways.”
“Career thieves like that never rethink their ways,” muttered the first voice. “The female at least seemed to be cocky. Trying to pickpocket one of us in broad daylight… the audacity!”
“They might be refugees who got into the Lower City before Archduke Gortash enforced his restrictions against them. Or adventurers who’re up to no good,” said the dry voice. “Let’s go get those warnings about them posted, then. We’ll apprehend them soon enough.”
Carefully peeking over the stone railing, Devi watched the guards disperse, walking back over the rooftops or clambering down the sides of the building; she looked back at Astarion once the coast was clear, and smirked. “See? Told you I could elude them.”
“Yes, and now we’re going to be watched for by the bloody City Watch,” Astarion complained. “As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with Gortash and the Elder Brain.”
“You worry too much.” Grinning, Devi slipped back over the wall and climbed down the bell tower; she waited on the roof below for Astarion, then made to jump back down to the alley. “Come on. I did manage to nick that one guard’s purse, and he had marching orders for the Watch on him. At the least, it should give us an idea for what the guards are doing–”
She landed on her feet on the cobblestones, and immediately heard the mechanical whirring of a Steel Watcher only metres away. When she looked toward the sound, she winced when she saw the large construct charging toward her and Astarion. “Shit!” she yelped, breaking into a run down the alley. “Hurry!”
“Next time you go on a pickpocketing expedition, you can take Gale with you,” Astarion groused as the two fled, the automation in hot pursuit.
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What if Desmond is stuck in Odyssey and Isu bullshit made his physical appearance have glowing lines and he's mistaken as an God or Isu maybe a demi god and meet Alexios /Kassandra.
The premise of Desmond joining the misthios' crew if he gets to their time period is similar to my answer to what if Desmond had an Isu body during (insert time period here) (I really need to make a masterlist of all of my posts, I just spent 10 minutes looking for this XD)
So… have a little exchange between Desmond and your misthios of choice instead?
===========
“Y-y-you just blast them all away with… what the hell was that?!”
“Oh, that? I call it the Ring of Chaos.”
“That’s some freaking superpower bullshit, that’s what it is!”
“I simply borrowed the strength of Are-”
“Oh, no, no, no. You don’t get to say that it came from the gods or whatever. What are you?”
“I can ask you the same thing.”
“Hey, all these glowy lines do is make it easier for me to point you to the exit in case of a blackout, you’re doing shit that makes this entire thing feel less sci-fi and more fantasy. Am I in a different world? Maybe I didn’t time travel. Maybe I got kicked into a fantasy world…”
“You’re not making any sense again, Desmond.”
“Your face doesn’t make sense!”
“… I don’t understand what that means.”
“Is it that? That broken spear thing you have?”
“The Spear of Leo- hey! Desmond!”
“Are you doing all these crazy shit because of this-”
BOOM!
…
…
…
“Desmond…”
“Yeah…”
“Did you just use my spear to destroy a statue of Hera?”
“I may have accidentally laserbeam’ed it out of existence… maaayyybbeee…”
“We should probably run.”
“Yeah, we should.”
.
.
.
Later, once they have been chased out of Samos and safely aboard the Adestria:
“In my defense, Juno’s a bitch anyway”
“Who???”
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