Well you walk into a restaurant,
Strung out from the road
And you feel the eyes upon you
As you're shakin' off the cold
You pretend it doesn't bother you
But you just want to explode...
Most times you can't hear 'em talk,
Other times you can
All the same old cliches,
"Is that a woman or a man?"
And you always seem outnumbered,
You don't dare make a stand.
- Metallica, Turn the Page
Alone, really alone, for the first time in months.
It seemed like a lifetime ago that he had made the acquaintance of the others. Finn, Giles, Gustav, Rondald and Terri, and of course Judoc. When he had been introduced first hand to the wonder and terror magic, and seen "behind the curtain" at how awesome and yet how fragile a real Mage could be. Grizzled sailor with wife in tow, and a swordsman from the south who had been forced to learn quickly that these uncouth northerners still wore steel instead of silk.
The memory of it made him smile in a nostalgic, lonely kind of way.
The problems he faced now were like old friends in themselves. Find a place to sleep, avoid the curfew and the patrols, handle your business and get the hell out.
There were a few rough strategies he had developed over time. The first was to find something, anything, to get through the night and to start fresh in the morning.
The second was to find his end goal, in this case the
Angel Armory, and to work outward from there. This kept his wanderings to a smaller section of the city. Ideally he could lie low, eat, sleep and go about his business while limiting his exposure on the street to a few minutes at a time.
With the rain coming, and the light fading, he was inclined to go with the former.
If
The White Heart was on the way, and close by, that would work. If that failed the
Red Lion would be his alternative.
Magnus took a few moments to slide his coin pouch around to the front left side where he could protectively cover it with his shield, and then with a deep resigned breath, he made his way down the street where Rudyard had pointed.