Sickening cries erupted again and my stomach quivered as the crack of knuckles followed by bones rang through the streets, drawing a small crowd that eyed the scene from down the street, knowing to keep their distance.

"Break it up, break it up!" A voice broke through the tense atmosphere punctured by the shrill screams of Albert as he struggled to cradle his bruises. A man in a dark blue uniform, adorned with rusty metal buttons and wielding a baton stalked across the street to where the two stood—correction, one stood.

The tattooed man scowled as if pitying that Albert's torture had ended so soon, and before he stepped aside he gripped Albert by the coat collar and brought his stinking breath inches away from the bruises his fist had carved into the shattered face.

"You have until tomorrow to meet me outside the Swan," His voice dipped dangerously low as he spat onto Albert's blood-stained coat that had been ripped in several places. Blood trickled down the sides like tears before being swallowed by his broken soul that desperately clung to what little life was pumped into it, his heart a tireless soldier that would have marched on until the end.

"Off of him, sir," The officer commanded, receiving a snarl before the man stormed off, the skinny man casting a withering look at Matilda before joining him and his friend.

"Which bonehead ratted on us?" The man's voice reverberated through the air, racking my body like a rumbling maraca. Only silence responded—who in their right mind would say anything—and the man emptied a bucket of spit on the side of the street as if it would mark his presence to those ignorant enough not to realize it.

The officer had begun heading away when Matilda leapt up and grabbed him by the shirt.

"You have to arrest them," She panted, pointing at the silver-haired man. "He mugged me and the other almost killed him!"

He just gave her a stare that seemed to have seen all the world had to offer: the good, the bad, and every shade of gray in between. "No one's dead, so no one's going behind bars. I don't know what you're doing here in downtown, but keep a watchful eye and you won't end up like him."

Albert let out a gag, flakes of blood splattering the ground as I rushed to his side. I nearly reeled at the sight of his horribly disfigured face, purple bulges littering his cheeks, his right eye swelling like a large balloon, and a thin cut that seeped blood from his forehead.

"Are you alright?" I whispered, for fear that my voice would split his ears.

"Yes," He murmured and his eyes rolled back to reveal veiny whites before they slid back into place uncomfortably. Leaning against the wall with one hand and clutching my arm in the other, he stood up shakily, his arms trembling as he let go. "Pass me some bandages, will you?"

I hastily fished the roll of bandages out of my pants pockets, ripping a few pieces as he taped his bruises. My hands, I suddenly remembered, and wedging the roll between my armpits, I applied a new layer of bandages, wincing as the adhesive pricked the tender flesh.

With a swift motion, Albert whipped out a rolled-up piece of paper, leaned back, and put it to his mouth. Puffs of water vapor drifted from the tube and he let his arms sag as he let out an airy sign.

"Ah, much better," He said, wiping a bead of sweat—no, blood—from his forehead. Then he glared at the paper as if it were something hideous, before tossing it to the ground and stamping it with his good foot.

"That was my last puff, I swear," He said to nobody in particular. Kicking the crushed paper to the side, he headed down the street, a slight limp in his step as he let out a crazed laughter that shattered the gloomy atmosphere above us. It echoed along the street before a few bystanders joined in, and then me, and soon Matilda and Ken. Even Camila flapped her wings excitedly.

But the laughter soon faded as Matilda's hands fidgeted frantically, as if trying to grope for the emblem. "I-I'm an idiot. I lost it..."

I patted her on the back but she just shrugged me off with a chilling shoulder.

"It's fine," I said, my voice quivering slightly, and it seemed I was trying to convince myself more than her. "We just need the passports, right?"

She ignored me and turned to Albert. "Who were those men?"

Albert just chuckled, strange after getting the crap beaten out of him—perhaps he inhaled a little more vapor than he should have—but I was glad that he was feeling better. Enough that he would be able to spill to us what in the world had just happened. Marion had only been partly right: he had a strange taste, but that only was rooted in the fact that he was a strange man himself.

And he was the one who was supposed to get us closer to the truth—how he would manage that I didn't know but then again, when had anything been clearer than the fog above us?

Reality check, he definitely took one too many puffs. Staggering along the street with nowhere in mind, he looked like a fish flopping on the ground, surrounded by a new environment that would soon render dangerous if he stayed too long.

"Over there!" Ken pointed towards a ruptured pipe, underneath of which was a small puddle fueled by a gushing waterfall. "A good douse of water should do him wonders."

With the help of Matilda, we hoisted Albert up and dragged him towards the pipe, dunking him headfirst into the rushing water, droplets spewing everywhere as he shook his head madly.

A glub, and then he stood up shakily, bits of faint red water streaming down his face as he blinked rapidly as if he had awakened from a deep slumber. His hand swam around his coat pocket and when it only met air and the fuzzy wool that coated the interior, his face fell and tears welled up in the corner of his eyes—or it was just a few water droplets.

"I didn't take a puff, did I?" He asked, though it was more to affirm the truth.

"Yeah...?" I said nervously and he let out a long sigh coated with a trace of water vapor.

"Dammit! I nearly had a week on me," He said. "Well, a good puff does relax the mind after an unfortunate, shall I say, encounter."

"About that 'encounter'," Matilda started, eyeing Albert curiously. "Who were those men after you?"

Albert scratched his fluffy beard and his expression tightened, brown flecks skittering frantically in his dark irises. "Let's talk and walk, shall we? By the time I'm done explaining it to you, we'll be closer to where you need to be."

He rubbed his swollen cheek and peered down the street where the crowd had dispersed. "They're gone, right?"

We nodded, affirmed by the relative silence along the block, muffled footsteps and hushed voices filling the air.

"Good," Albert muttered. "They seldom leave people alone and with that tricky tongue of his, he'll find a while to morph tomorrow into tonight."

"They do sound somewhat similar," Ken suggested.

"And that means I probably have until tonight," He said. "Just like the old proverb: early is on time, on time is late, and late is simply looking for a death wish."

With one last glance back and forth down the street, he gestured for us to follow him, sticking close to the left side of the street as if its shade would conceal us from prying eyes and bitter fists that lurked in plain sight. Those who needed only one excuse to pick a fight with anyone, and those whose eyes could only see the glint of gold in the darkness surrounding them.

We turned the nearest corner, a cramped street that boasted a variety of small shops and stores on the sides and was bustling with activity, a hubbub of shopkeepers yelling and clamored conversation amongst people as they shuffled along.

"So about my situation," Albert said, lowering his voice so that we had to huddle around him as we walked. Camila hovered above us, keeping a watchful eye on the surroundings. "Those fellows who gave me this pretty face run a lucrative loaning business around these areas."

"And you happened to get tangled into this, didn't you?" Matilda seemed to be struggling to not slap her palm against her forehead in secondhand stupidity.

He smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. "You can say it wasn't one of my smartest moves. But I didn't exactly have a choice when the power bill came in and I had blown all my coin on scraps and parts—and I wasn't fond of leaving my house in the hands of greedy capital officials—so I did what seemed to be the logical solution to my problem. At the time."

"Only that they twisted their words and you ended up owing more?" Ken asked.

Albert's eyebrows shot up and he let out a light chuckle, attempting to alleviate the tense atmosphere. "I couldn't have put it better. And now, I have until tomorrow—tonight, really—to get a hundred gold into my pocket. Doesn't get better than that, eh?"

Ken's expression was a clash between humor and sympathy, Matilda looked like she wanted to facepalm again, I didn't know what to think, and if Camila could talk, I was sure she would be spouting all sorts of stories about Albert's comical endeavors.

"But why don't you just rat them out to the police?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No use. They'll come after..."

"After you?"

"No, not just me..." And he left it at that, turning away so that our prying eyes could see no more.

We continued down the street, an somber silence draping over us as the light atmosphere subsided and reality struck us in the face. Albert was a nice guy and all, and though he did owe an absolutely absurd amount of gold to those thieves, I couldn't help but think maybe the world could give back a little to a poor soul.

But it seemed that suffering stained the streets as people trudged along dejectedly, their only goal to survive to see tomorrow. Perhaps there were simply too many souls that yearned for a better life, a chance to see the world not through paranoid eyes that darted around like flies, but peaceful ones that could see the light without being clouded by the darkness.

I glanced around, a small shack-like shop littered with oddities of all sorts dull and shiny, rough and smooth, and some I couldn't quite make out. A crude wooden roof was held together by a frame that trembled under the bustling street of scattered footsteps. A young man with ruffled hair the color of stripped bark stood behind the stand with a pair of large spectacles that had started to slip off his nose.

Beneath the stand was a faint lettering that said: We buy anything! A bold claim, for sure, but the assortment of oddities that was strewn along the stand and in heaps inside told otherwise.

"We buy anything..." Albert read, his gaze having followed mine. He snagged his cap off and wiped off the grime that had collected along the button knitted in the center of the cap, the thread loosening as he traced his finger underneath. "Sorry for the slight detour, but that hundred gold has to start somewhere."

"It's fine," Matilda said as we followed him over to the shop. "The Elemental Festival isn't until a little over a week so we have time."

The young man perked up at the sight of us, shoving the stack of junk that cluttered the stand aside. "Why hello, my friends. What can I purchase today? Geddit, I run this pawn shop so...

Alfred snorted and slapped his cap onto the stand. "How much will this get me?"

He looked deep in thought, fidgeting with a gold coin in his gloved palms, and pushed his spectacles up against the bridge of his nose. "Three silvers."

Alfer pursed his lips, holding back from a sigh as he averted the man's prying gaze. "Any chance you could make an exception? This cap is homemade and you know what they say about making your own things, right?"

"Enlighten me," The man said, his green eyes flashed with cunning, and a sly smile crept onto his face as he observed Albert with an eerie gaze.

"They're made from the heart," Albert attempted a smile as if it would sway a few coins his way, but the man just threw his head back and cackled, a shrill sound that made Camila scamper frantically on my shoulder.

"I see I've met a fellow jokester," He quipped, but Albert's expression only tightened and squinted at the man, trying to catch him in his gaze. "I've seen look far too many times... I know what you're for, you need money!"

"Well, nobody in their right mind would pass on a couple extra coins," He said as a bead of sweat trickled down his bandage-covered brow.

The man shook his head, his spectacles catching the sun's rays as glimpses of color shone through the glass. "Now I didn't say that. You need money desperately, and if you don't by the time the sun shines its last light or when day breaks tomorrow or whenever, you're going to add another black eye and a carton of blood to your collection. Or maybe to your deathbed."

He let out another cackle, throwing his head back before he propped his elbows on the wood, a shrewd smile tugging at his lips. "How much are you looking for?"

Albert hesitated, his eyes darting from the man to his shoes.

"What's wrong? Just tell him and maybe you'll get a good offer," I suggested.

"Hah! Listen to the boy, I can hook you up with any amount of coins, given the right price."

Albert blurted out after a moment, "Give or take a hundred gold."

"A hundred gold, eh?" The man tapped his chin thoughtfully, his eyes drifting across the four of us before they landed on me, the murky gray depths swallowing me in a sea of trickery and cunning.

"I'll give you a hundred gold," He started, and my knees trembled as he drew out the next few words as if it would be humorous to hold us in suspense. "But in exchange, I want that cardinal."