FATE\Deus Decipit

Chapter 38: Breakfast in Athens

9:50am, Central Athens, Hotel Lobby

The team sat quietly in the lobby of their hotel, more specifically, the corner of a near-empty dining area. At this point in the morning, there was almost no one around. In this time of fall, there were hardly any tourists around, and what tourists there were had already gotten their start for the day. This was one of the reasons the team had decided on a late breakfast; that, and the late, sleepless night.

Chauncey Morgans sat poking at his stack of pancakes. It was piled high, and covered with whipped cream, fruits, and a blueberry spread, just as he liked it, and yet he couldn't stomach a bite. As the moments passed, his eyes would drift on the one hand to his devil dog Cheval, lying still at his feet, and Radiya on the other, or, more accurately, at the spot he knew her to be. She sat not far from them, another corner, and yet she couldn't be seen with the naked eye. The techniques of her clan kept her wrapped in shadow, and though you could, indeed, 'see' her, the mystics kept your mind from registering her presence, melding her into the white noise of the wallpaper, another accessory of the space that the brain thought too meaningless to process. He continually found himself wondering where she was, before having to force himself to remember that she was, in fact, no less than fifteen feet away. In fairness, she could certainly up and leave without them being any the wiser. Another frightening gift courtesy of the Old Man of the Mountain.

Across from him were Xander and Filza, he digging into a stack of waffles lathered in syrup and butter, and her nipping at a bowl of grain cereal with no more appetite than Chauncey himself. Normally, this kind of silence would be relieving, nobody needed some loudmouth geezer complaining about the presence of bacon and ham at the breakfast bar, but here, now, the absence of Samman Quayyum was troubling to say the least.

Following the argument the previous night, he, Samman, had declared his full confidence in his 'Lady Alghul' and, upon slapping one of the ruby bands across his wrist, immediately set off to find her, believing he knew her and her company well enough to deduce her location. Xander let him leave, thinking it too much trouble to hold him back, and with the remaining team members' distrust of the ruby bands that were supposedly going to keep them safe from the suggestive mist, they could only call it a night. Chauncey, for his part, had remained awake for the entire night, one of the perks of having a devil familiar, waiting impatiently for the return of the argumentative necromancer, but to no avail. There were, however, other gains.

Though he lacked a view from his window, the booms of source-less thunder he'd heard the night before had been vindicated come the morning, the news showing the severe damage of two major sites within the city. It was no doubt the work of a Servant, almost certainly the 'Berserker' described in Alghul's notes. Whatever brawl had happened through the early morning, it was their first true lead in their shadow war against Aisha's own Caster.

Chauncey lifted his fork to his face, examining it while his thoughts drifted elsewhere. Making up his mind, he casually licked the syrup off the utensil and placed it back on the table.

Taking a sip from his coffee, which was more cream than anything else, he looked back to his teammates, meeting eyes with Filza before turning to the apparently distracted Xander, "So, what's the plan Cap'n?"

He finally looked up from his waffles, "Hm?"

His tired eyes narrowed slightly, "The plan. What's the plan?"

Xander swallowed what was left of the food in his mouth, "Mhm. Yeah. It seems an investigation of the Acropolis and Lykavittos Hill take priority. It's only a question of how we split out resources."

Chauncey leaned forward, maintaining the same skeptical expression, "Well, sure enough, that much is true. Do we split up and look for the old man?"

"The old man? You mean Samman?"