Eyes on the Prize

it may sound absurd but don't be naive

even heroes have the right to bleed

At his foot was a dirt path, and much like the others that he'd passed, Terith would follow it with his fabled intuition -the low rumble at the pits of his empty stomach, hollowed from several days out in the brutal wild. The swordsman gingerly raised an arm, like a leverage of sorts as he leaned close to a nearby tree. His figure huddled over, bending at the knee as if in response to the gnawing pain that slithered up the inner linings of his stomach. At his lips was a breathless huff, released with a string of incomprehensible mumbles, most likely directed at his ungodly appetite and his past diet and his current location where he was basically cornered by inedible shrubs and poison mushrooms.

The journey to Motor City proved to be brutal in matters of distance, more so when realizing how he ended up squashed among such remote locations in the first place. His previous request entitled him to travel into the sketchy areas of a neighboring, abandoned village. The objectives were something of the past for him, since it was handled quite nicely in that regard. But due to the injuries he sustained and the immediate rest he needed to recuperate, it seemed that the next train that should have gone through the forestry in less than a day left Terith to dwell on his own sorrows, ultimately driving him to travel by foot to the next available mode of transport: the vegetable carts in Beanstalk Village, whose path to Talonia seemed to briefly stop at Motor City.  

However, nothing concerned him more than the ache near his abdomen, biting back as he took the initiative to keep trudging down the dust road. His trip to the city would have been discarded among his pile of trivial things in favor of persistence, something that did him miracles against his hunger through will-power alone. But a guy like him could only endure so much; not even his experience with earlier travels could match how desperate he was to claim something as a decent meal.

The swordsman withdrew a breath as he approached a clearing through the trees, the scent of chopped wood and embers briefly sweeping past his form as a breeze drifted by. Down below was a set of scattered huts and a gathering of people at the center of the area where bonfire smoke rose higher into the skies. He'd descend the sloping hill with an expression of anxiety warping through his tense smile, idly wondering if the tribesmen were at least civil when it came to strangers of his quality. Frankly, if this was the sort of ritual that involved a feast afterward, he wouldn't mind temporarily adapting to animism.

"U-uh....hey there." he began, unable to process any other intelligent greeting as he approached a woman whose ornate tribal clothing gave him quite the awe at first, "Um...what kind of party are you guys having?"

She'd tilt her head at him slightly, blinking numerous times before speaking, her words heavily accented by her native slur. "Sacrifice." she said, looking back at the fire and the people who tossed their offerings into it. "To please Gods. To help us kill big animal that bring harm to many of our brethren."

Terith arched an eyebrow at the prospect, his thumb instinctively glossing over the webbing on Kushinada's handle. By the gods, he seemed to have found himself an opportunity. What sort of beast this was seemed to have escaped him, but it was a given considering how readily reckless he was under the pretense of a demanding appetite. "Well....I'm a wizard from Fiore and um...I might be able to help you with this little problem..." he offered her a tipsy-looking grin, "If you don't mind outsiders helping, at the very least."