Khazmine’s stomach growled ferociously as she entered the bread peddler’s bakery in her damp clothing. She'd spotted glass counters filled with baked goods from the entrance but was unprepared for the buffet of goodies on offer inside. The aromatic wafting of freshly baked wheat and rye breads struck the outcast as soon as she strode in, and she licked her dry lips at the prospect of having a fresh, hot roll in her hands.

In her haste to fill an insistent belly, Khazmine had forgotten to guard herself from the incoming barrage of insults from the old bread peddler.

“Oy, runt! What are you doing in my shop again?” The bread peddler hollered from behind her streaky glass counter with a crackly, strained voice. She was a crotchety old witch, lamed and hobbling from years in her trade, with dried hands and a shriveled heart. “If you’re lookin’ to steal anything, I’ll ‘ave the city guards set on you!”

“Be nice, auntie!” The bread peddler’s niece shouted back to her equally stubborn relation. “She’s ‘ad a rough night, and I told her to come in for a hot meal.”

“Why, so this thing can rob my shop blind?” The bread peddler bellowed as if Khazmine wasn’t standing four feet in front of her. “Get back to work, Tatty! And you, don’t touch anything.”

Harriet spared a single huff for her horrible auntie before returning to pull another pan of loaves from the oven outside. The familiar scents of burning pine and fresh bread filled the cramped courtyard and meandered into the shop as she toiled. Khazmine caught herself staring at the pan of new arrivals, wondering what kinds of bread were on offer, and if she’d ever had a loaf so warm before.

“You best leave ol’ Tatty alone, too.” The bread peddler warned. “I’ll humor her as long as you’re here but make no mistake; she don’t need ‘friends’ like you. An’ I don’t want some abomination hangin’ around my shop.”

Khazmine scowled at the hideous old bag, not for her cruel words but for her assumptions about the skin-and-bones half-breed. If she could pass for a “normal” Outsider or human, then Khazmine could at least buy a proper meal without being cast as a criminal or degenerate. Instead, she faced such horrid comments from humans and Outsiders alike every day.

“It’s nice to see you again, too… And I have money, mistress.” Khazmine greeted through clenched teeth. She’d been brought up to address her elders and those who deserved respect appropriately, and the habit stuck long after other manners had been extinguished. “Have you any hot loaves or buns?”

“I’ve got a few crusts an’ heels for the likes of you, if you have coins enough.” The bitter, spindly old beast shuffled around the counter and dug ferociously at the back of her display. She pawed at handfuls of bread crusts cut from the uglier loaves and shoved them carelessly into a holey, half-rotted burlap sack. “That’ll be two silver does, runt.”

“Highway robbery, mistress.” Khazmine sneered as she retracted her hands from the waiting sack of garbage. Anything higher than a few copper fawns was outright price-gouging and the old woman smirked knowingly as she extended an outstretched palm for payment. “I’ve only three fawns to spare. Please have mercy, fair maiden, for I am but a poor girl with little to her name.”

“Fair maiden, eh? Too bad your tongue’s the only silver you have, creature.” The bread peddler clicked her tongue and thrust the lumpy sack of crusts at Khazmine. “Go on an’ take it. They’re no good to me now that they’ve had the same air as you.”

“Blessings and virtues to you.” Khazmine bowed her head sarcastically and made for the exit after leaving three Fawns on the counter that disrupted the flour dust on top of it. “I’ll be off then.”

“Say, runt! Why don’t you get yourself a real job, eh?” The bread peddler teased. It was a miserable thing to say to one of the outcast half-breeds, and Khazmine gripped her prize all the harder so as not to react unkindly. “I hear the Guild’s looking for weaklings like you for target practice. You should apply there!”

The cackling from the old bread peddler followed Khazmine out to the street as she left, haunting her steps as she meandered back to the alley she’d traveled through last night. For a moment, Khazmine’s eyes glazed from accumulated tears, and she permitted herself to briefly wallow in the bread peddler’s insults. It’s not like she had a choice to be what she was, and it was all the harder to hear such mean-spirited comments from a woman Khazmine so thoroughly despised.

She was in the midst of allowing pained tears to well up in her eyes when an unexpected tug on her precious burlap sack snapped Khazmine to attention. In an instant, she sensed the familiar static of predatory energy she’d felt before and realized that it belonged to whoever was attempting to pull the sack of crusts from her unprepared hands. A ghostly-blue, whisper-thin hand clasped onto the sack like a grasping wyrbird’s talons, clenching hard enough to pierce the burlap and reveal the contents inside. With unexpected strength, the hidden hunter from behind the bakery revealed themselves, wrenched Khazmine’s breakfast from her hands and hauled off towards the Forbidden Ruins like a scalded cat.

“What the? Hey!” Khazmine shouted at the small, pale Outsider with sky blue skin and long, ratty white hair as he scurried off barefooted with her sack. “Get back here!”

Flying as fast as an arrow, the spindly lad darted through stands of trade goods, street vendor stalls, and bewildered food peddlers. His tiny frame easily slid past people and obstacles in his way, and he bent his body to artfully dodge colliding with anything in his meandering path to freedom.

“Stop, you bloody thief!” Khazmine snarled as she gave chase. The irony of calling another cut purse a thief was lost on Khazmine as she thundered after the nimble boy. “Give it back!”

Startled by the angry calls of the raging half-breed, the Outsider boy briefly turned back to see how close his pursuer was. Unfortunately, this broke his focus, and the tiny boy crashed into one of the city guards on patrol at an intersection, splaying him and his prize on the ground. The Outsider ducked a flurry of strikes from the guard’s pole arm before swooping low to collect the dropped burlap sack and fleeing anew.

The guards gave a half-hearted, tepid pursuit of the young Outsider boy, but promptly abandoned their hunt at the sight of a filthy half-breed giving chase. There was no sense getting involved in rats squabbling over crumbs, not when there were far more noble causes to champion in Old Sarzonn.

By the gods… All this for a lousy sack of crusts? Khazmine pressed harder to close the distance between them, her wrath renewed at the audacity of the child’s petty crime. “When I get my hands on you, I’ll—”

The nimble child continued to dash through the hollows and recesses that only a seasoned veteran of the backstreets would know about. He covered a vast distance between the bread peddler’s bakery in Merchant’s Quarter and the ancient cemetery before ducking into a narrow hovel near the ruins of the Fallen Wall. The Outsider child half expected his victim to give up the chase once he’d crossed over into the Forbidden Ruins, as the jagged chunks of exposed stone were incredibly dangerous to traverse.

Sure enough, once he’d turned his head to check for danger, the young Outsider scanned the perimeter around the ruins and found the area largely vacant. Only the gentle chittering of an emaciated ruins rat echoed in the eerie emptiness of the ancient corner of Old Sarzonn. Secure in his escape, the ragged boy allowed himself to slump against the flat of a fallen pillar and catch his breath. His feet throbbed from having to endure the hard footfalls on cobblestone streets, and his calves ached from his unexpected exertion.

For a half-breed, she sure was scary.

High above the fallen archway leading into the Forbidden Ruins, a vengeful fury wiped sweat from her brow. Unknown to the Outsider, his entire escape was shadowed by Khazmine, who’d resigned herself to destroying this miserable whelp for daring to steal what little she had. Her sensitive ears had picked up the bread thief’s strained breathing and she’d successfully triangulated his position from above. Khazmine poised herself for a surprise attack to reclaim her stolen treasure, sneaking closer and closer to a shadowy corner of the ruins.

As Khazmine crept towards her optimal strike location, the young Outsider below her approached a shabby lean-to that rested against a bone-stone pillar in a secluded crevice between toppled walls. Sudden winds that carried the threat of monsoon rain whistled through the spooky stone rubble, deafening Khazmine to what was happening in the nearby lean-to.

“Oy, Pavo.” The Outsider called into the dwelling with a voice that mingled with the rush of chilly winds. Inside the raggedy lean-to laid a small, sickly, caramel-skinned lad with black hair and bright red eyes which sputtered to life as the pale boy entered. The tiny boy tugged a scrap of cloth over his shivering body to protect himself from the winds as the Outsider coaxed him from the warmth of his blanket. “I’ve some bread for you. Come on.”

“é Pavo?” The young southerner sat up with weak hands extended for a crust of bread. Those tiny hands were overshadowed by the sizable chunk of stolen bread that plopped into his expectant grasp. The Outsider smirked as his companion ravenously chewed on a heel of rye bread from Khazmine’s burlap sack.

“That’s right. All for you.” The elder boy replied with crinkled eyes from a satisfied smile. “Pinched it from some half-breed—”

“Ahh!” Pavo fearfully inhaled a mouthful of bread that threatened to choke him. A fearsome creature had silently descended on the hovel and startled the southerner with her aggressive stance and menacing silhouette. Poor Pavo mouthed unsuccessfully to his unaware companion to warn him. “Ari!”

Khazmine positioned herself between the fallen bone-stone pillar and a chunk of crumbling wall, which closed off their escape route. Not having any alternatives, the pale child turned around and lunged at Khazmine while brandishing a small, rusty knife with a chipped blade. His arm darted forwards and back, launching a barrage of strikes at Khazmine, which the half-breed narrowly dipped to avoid.

The reach on his weapon was poor, as his short arms forced him to get much closer to the intruder than he felt comfortable with. This discomfort allowed hesitation to sneak into each lunge, making successive strikes less and less impactful. Meanwhile, Khazmine leveraged her superior reach and skill to avoid making contact with this terrified Outsider.

Still winded from earlier, the young boy quickly tired from slashing and jabbing at his pursuer, and his grip on the weapon faltered. He and Khazmine finally locked eyes as the boy hopped backwards to avoid being caught in a grapple, and his forehead glistened from the prolonged combat. Seeing him now, Khazmine’s eyes narrowed as she tried to estimate how old this child was. A piercing stare from the towering half-breed reduced the youthful Outsider to shivering in place, yet he refused to back down.

“You’re brave, I’ll give you that.” Khazmine squinted as the young boy gasped to recover his breath. “But it’s over. Hand me the sack you stole, now.”

Without warning, the pale Outsider child swung once more at Khazmine with his rusty blade and sliced viciously through the air. The half-breed reflexively brought her arms up to defend, barely evading the frantic stabbing by wrestling his forearm into her vice grip clutches. Khazmine’s hand that had been dwarfed by a Star Guard’s last night had surrounded the tiny Outsider’s wrist, and she forced the knife from his hand to discard it nearby in the ruins.

“Foolhardy, little one.” Khazmine scowled at the pale child she detained with a single clenched hand. “Although you’re probably too young to know not to steal from a fellow thief.”

“Lemme go!” The pale child barked and snapped with all the viciousness of a baby marshpup. “Run away, Pavo! Run!”

Terrified whimpers inside the lean-to drew Khazmine’s interest, and her pupils constricted at the sounds of weak sobbing. She thought she’d heard a different cry when she approached and confirmed that the frightened voice belonged to a tiny, sickly boy of no more than seven years. With the older boy safely managed and the younger one too scared to move, Khazmine could survey her assailant’s home clearly. As bad as she had it, these two boys were far worse off than Khazmine had ever been.