Sigil: The City of Doors

Now, it was a sad and well-known fact that the Ditch wasn't exactly prime real estate.

If nothing else, the smell could be an issue, and that was before one got into the properties of the water in question.

To call it "unpleasant" most of the time was to flatter it extravagantly.

But sometimes, the insalubrious waterfront managed to be even worse than usual.

Such as when Ikkit the Bastard hadn't yet gone home from a long night of scavenging.

He'd been out there all night, and while the vicious little monster usually had the common courtesy to move with stealth, there'd been a bit of a racket an hour or two after Antipeak, something involving the sound of a short fight, followed by some brief screaming. Any evidence of whatever had happened had long since been submerged in the Ditch of course, but the day's first light found a small figure clad in mismatched castoff clothing trudging along the shore dragging a bulging sack of salvage behind him, and four dead cranium rats slung around his shoulders.

With his hat pulled low over his beady red eyes, Ikkit appeared most intent on scrounging up any remaining useful items he could before any of the luckless sods who actually lived here got it together to do the same while they had light to see by. He used his free hand to pick at his sharp teeth with a splinter of bone he'd found somewhere in the course of the night's events, then flicked the improvised toothpick over his shoulder with a muttered subvocalization that any listener fluent on Goblin would have recognized as a dire curse upon the ancestry of whatever had provided the bone in question.

A few early risers spotted him, but knew to leave him to his own business. Ikkit the Bastard was nobody's idea of a cutter to spend much time around, but he also tended to leave alone those who gave him the same courtesy.

A sudden burst of heat comes from a random object, sand billows through covering a pile of already pilfered trash. A quick remark under the breath as a small, equally as filthy, figure runs out of the portal. He then takes a moment to make sure no one was following him before taking a second to take in the surroundings. "Mission accomplished", the helm lifts a little to show the typical yellow eyes and green skin of the vagabond. "Good hauls, I assume?" Krol knows better than truly engage in conversation with a scavenger, but an acknowledgement of their presence reduces the likelihood of a mugging.

Ikkit's reaction to the sudden arrival was, in essence, the same as his reaction to most arrivals, sudden or otherwise.

He scowled. WHich, being the expression he usually wore, meant that only a careful observer would note that his expression had changed at all.

"It'll do. Mine, 'lessways you wanna buy any of it."

He didn't sound too optimistic about a sale. In his experience, people who weren't all agog after coming through a portal seldom had much immediate use for glass bottles, bent pieces of metal, or other detritus. Maybe he could sell some of the bones?

But not the rats, those were for later.

Something rustles in a pile of nearby detritus, probably "washed up" by the Ditch on one of it's more moody days. First, the smell of offal, terrible and pungent, sweet with decay. Then a long bony hand reaches out of the pile and takes a hold of one sturdy piece of iron jutting out of it, using it for support.

Ignaeus slithers out of the pile, disturbing it surprisingly little, even though he drags a long heavy cloak of blooded red on his frame. He shuffles, low to the ground, eyes barely seen through the dark cast by his red hood. He reaches with another long thin hand, pointing with one finger, too many knuckles on it, at Ikkit's haul of cranium rats.

"A rat, I'd buy, goblin." He mumbles in barely understandable common, with a voice that is raspy and deep.

Ikkit pondered this new arrival with an almost-identical scowl.

He really had the rats earmarked for a food stall just outside of the Hive, he always got a fair bit of jink (relatively speaking) for fresh protein down there, but...

But a potential sale was a potential sale, and cranium rats weren't exactly rarities..

"All four. Gotta reg'lar buyer for sets'a four're more. Three's no good, can't make the kebabs right. without a head on each end."

Ignaeus gazes at Ikkit. One can't be sure if he's wrestling with annoyance at the small green thing getting between him and his prize, or if Igneus is simply struggling to understand what Ikkit is saying. Eventually the red pile of cloth and (one can presume) bones let's loose a raspy sigh that carries with it the dust of centuries.

"Keep heads. Everything but guts. Need the guts. From that one." Ignaeus points at one of the rats with determination.

He took the rat in question into his hand and got a grip on its head, preparatory to twisting it off.

"Jink first. One penny."

Rat guts were cheap. Ikkit didn't really understand why, exactly, they tasted fine to him, but this bone-bag berk seemed less interested in the culinary angle.

But whatever, a sale was a sale, even if it was just a penny.

Ignaeus takes a second again... Then:

"Jink... Coin... Cash..." He spits the last word out like it's poison. He seems to glower beneath his rags, and his hands twist and jitter like he's having an attack of some kind, or perhaps in the grips of strong emotions.

Eventually he settles down, closing his eyes and opening them after a few seconds.

"Not... A servant... Don't have... Jink... Will pay... With a future." He brings up one finger.

"One... Future... For guts..."

"Can't eat a future, cutter. Can't sell it neither."

(do I need to roll to know what this entity means by "future" in this context)