Lion Head Mesa glory & garbling

Ty for starting <3

If Machiavelli had a a bone for every time he trailed a wandering red man up the Mesa, he’d have precisely two. Hardly enough to build a proper skeleton, but it was strange that it had happened twice.

Machi had been working steadily at drinking away the throb in his leg when he noticed the Guard Captian's retreating form. Ever the picture of selfless hospitality, the half-breed wasted no time gathering a fresh serving of wine to accompany the one he was already nursing. With the bowls of fermented berry balanced and a call trailing after the Jodai’s retreating figure, Machi’s voice echoed off of the mesa's ancient walls only to be met with silence.

Machi, undeterred, set off in pursuit. Three legs or not, he prided himself on speed, and reasoned he might be able to reach the Jodai before he had gotten too far. Unfortunately however, as the gap between them grew and grew, it became quite clear that he had no intention of being caught.

That was only sealed once Khusobek had begun his ascent of the Mesa. The steep incline loomed ahead, and Machi, with no fondness for scaling stone and dirt—especially with only three working legs and drunk slightly inhebriated—paused after only a very short climb up. A tsk of disappointment left his lips as he resigned himself to retreat, the wine still in hand as he cursed men and their mystifying fascination for tall, hard-to-reach places.

And then—disaster.

A sharp expletive sliced through the stillness, followed by a splash, the unmistakable clatter of a tortoiseshell bowl against stone, and then... silence.