Following the events of The Message
Nearing on 10 PM

When the world finally stopped moving, they were standing in the middle of a bedroom.

The room was small -- even smaller than the mage's hotel room had been at the Sodding Arms -- and dark, with most of the light coming from a large, sloppy orange candle that was burning on a black plate on the nightstand. The restricted size was largely due to the fact that one of the walls seemed to be made out of an enormous wooden root, which jutted out into some of the space that might have otherwise been available for the room's inhabitant. 

The room itself looked simple enough. There was a small wooden bed pushed up against one of the room's flat walls, which had been left messy and unmade.  A round wooden table with two mismatched chairs sat under the tree. All of the table and the usable parts of the root were covered with the trappings of ritual magic: partially-melted candles with different colors of wax, chalk markings, rounded pieces of clear quartz.

Aviad dumped his canvas bag on the end of the unmade bed.  The skeletal hand jumped off of the duffle and onto the floor as it landed. Using its fingers like the rapidly-moving legs of a spider, it scurried across the wooden floorboards and over to Aviad's boot, where it began to climb up his leg.

The mage looked around the room, and then huffed out a breath. "You can leave your things in here for now," he told Nate, turning towards the door. "Come on. If Tawse isn't here, we can check with the spirit to see if there are any other rooms free."

Nate didn't like this. He didn't like being portkey'd to an unknown destination and he didn't like being set-up in a shitty little bedroom in some hole in the ground. It felt too much like getting escorted between cells, no matter how friendly the host. The range of a portkey was significantly greater than the range of an Apparition which cut that option off.

"Tawse?" Nate turned around. It dawned on him. There was only one person named Tawse that was worth knowing about. He hissed, shifting into action. "This is the Black Chimaera! Shit, I can't be here!"

His wand ready for the fourth time tonight, he moved past Aviad to the door and found it was mercifully unlocked. He looked down the crooked corridor with the uneven floor. It was empty. He turned back to Cohen their eyelines about level, and gave him a long hard look. He spared a glance to the skeletal hand gripping his neck.

"What do you know? What is this?" he asked tightly. Tawse was on a benevolent streak, these days, and no true threat to Nate's welfare - that didn't mean Nate was keen for him to know about any of this. But Hunt? She could be anywhere. She could be here.

Aviad raised his eyebrows, waiting patiently as Briggs put two and two together and decided to panic in response.

Arba had made it all the way to his shoulder, where it went through its normal routine of jockeying with Tzippori for prime real estate. The mage shot both of the skeletons a warning look as he dug through his pocket for a cigarette. Finding one, he took the portkey match and struck it against the table, then held it up to the end of the cigarette to light it.

Briggs had rounded on him again, looking somewhere between panicked and furious. As Aviad took a long drag on the cigarette, he tossed the remains of the match into the flame of the orange candle, where it quickly ignited.

"It's the Black Chimaera," he said calmly. "Relax, Briggs. Didn't you want to hear about other ways to deal with your Ministry other than letting them grind you under their boot?"

Nate took a deep, cleansing, calming breath. He was beginning to acknowledge that tonight's events were bringing him to a breaking point, that it had been building up and building up, and a temper he'd never had before was finding its voice. The calm in Cohen and the calm in Bagnold rankled him and made obvious a growing instability inside him. He exhaled and flexed his hands, then peeled away from his stance opposite his neighbor, jealous of the cigarette but not interested in asking to bum one.

"I'm all ears," he said said, calmer now. He flipped his wand around in his hand to a neutral hold and crossed his arms again. Scratched his nose. He wasn't exactly optimistic about whatever Aviad's secret strategy was. Anything involving whatever brand of magic it was that Aviad practiced was right out, as was leaving the country. Nate didn't have the viciousness or social pull that Cinead Tawse had either, and no friends in high places. At the moment, all he had was a docile Auror (Jonas Trevelyan) and his beguiling neighbor from parts far-flung.

At least Briggs seemed to calm himself down after taking a deep breath. Aviad tucked the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and clapped an extremely warm hand to the other wizard's shoulder. Then, with a half-look back to ensure that his neighbor was following,  he resumed his journey towards the door of the little bedroom, stepping over a large root tendril that ran across the floor.

The hallway outside their point of arrival was long and crooked. The floor and walls seemed to be made of hard-packed dirt, and there were plenty of roots running across the ground, weaving in and out of the walls. Tzippori and Arba both seemed to have settled their squabbles from a few moments before, with Tzippori sitting perched on his shoulder and the skeletal hand clinging to the back of his shirt between his shoulder blades.

None of this seemed at all unusual to Aviad, who moved down the hallway with a relaxed confidence, pausing only to make sure that Briggs was keeping up and to take an occasional drag on his cigarette.

"You British are all the same," he remarked offhandedly as they strolled down the eccentric corridor, which seemed to be angling slightly upwards. "Your Ministry slips its tendrils into everything, but you're so used to jumping when they tug on you that you don't realize they're the ones making you do it. None of them play by their own rules, have you noticed?"

And so they were off. Aviad's hand on his shoulder and that calm easy smile, it made Nate forget for just the shortest moment where they were and why. Nate unstuck his feet and followed along down the ramshackle corridor, deeply uncomfortable but with few other options. As they went it became inescapable that they were quite underground. The Black Chimaera was a verifiable warren, it seemed. When he'd come to find Lorelei Hunt, the surroundings in the main part of the pub were clearly more cellar than penthouse, but he'd not had time to explore the whole premises before she'd nearly killed him.

Aviad began and Nate scoffed. No one liked to be lumped in with, 'all the same'. But the follow-up, well, it had some merit. Nate would hardly characterize himself as 'jumping' in response to 'tugs', but considering how Aviad had found him today, Nate could suffer leaving pedantry at the door.

"Oh, I've noticed. Their hands are all tied right up until they aren't. Paperwork is backlogged until it isn't. And I'm a werewolf if it's convenient for the werewolf hunter."

Nate then tapped Aviad on the arm to get him to hold up. They were nearing the end of the corridor. He spoke in a low voice.

"Look, mate, I wasn't kidding. Last time I was here, I left that finger behind. And, if you didn't know, this is the second Black Chimaera."

He had to laugh a little then and mutter to himself. "Merlin's frosty bollocks. Is it just Tuesday?"

Briggs tapped his arm, and Aviad paused. The mage tucked the cigarette into his mouth as he turned to face his unlucky neighbor, taking a long drag as the other wizard expressed his concerns.

Unfortunately, his familiars were less interested in what Briggs had to say. Arba, presumably sensing the close vicinity of its wayward finger, began to scramble up and over his shoulder in an attempt to pounce on Nate's hand. This set off another jostling match with Tzippori, as the skeletal appendage intruded on the toucan's space and the undead bird snapped back.

"Ach!" Aviad had to take a minute to wrestle and separate them, which nearly lost him his cigarette in the process. Finally, Tzippori was settled back on his shoulder, smuggling preening its invisible feathers, and he held Arba at arm's length by its wristbone. The hand's four bony fingers scrabbled at air, twitching and squirming, though it was unable to get purchase on anything.

Heaving a sigh, Aviad turned back to face Briggs, giving him a long-suffering look.

"I know it is the second Black Chimaera," he said as patiently as he could manage, considering he was attempting to keep a grip on a writhing skeletal hand and carry on a conversation at the same time. "Why are you nervous, achi? If you're worried about running into Tawse, he's probably putting his kid to bed." Though the big Scottish wizard also might have his own thoughts on Hunt riling up the dog catcher who had gotten a knife into his side back during the zoo incident in December.

Nate narrowed his eyes at the tetchy spat between Aviad's skeletal creatures; the gentle neighbor had adopted Hunt's hand and now he wondered if he'd come by the toucan the same way.

Nate crossed his arms and wiped a hand over his stubble. Aviad's questions were fair and the answers were no secret, but that was the strange thing: what did it mean that Aviad apparently knew nothing about why Nate was famous at the Chimaera but knew the less publicized fact Tawse had a kid? The blunt answer (that Aviad had been Tawse's man the whole time and was sent as a spy) didn't align with Tawse's usual way of doing things. And even Cinead's modus operandi of Polyjuice disguise didn't pass the smell test and was frankly not a performance even Tawse could pull off.  Besides, Tawse didn't need those tricks for Nate - his charisma and largesse were always enough.

Aviad was giving Nate every reason to be suspicious but he kept convincing himself to trust in the strange wizard with his bickering bones.

"I blew up the first one," Nate said finally with a shrug. "Not my fault, but that's not as grabby a headline. Regardless, I don't think he's forgiven me for blinding his mastiff."

But that wasn't all. Nate lowered his voice and had a look at his marred right hand.

"And I know from his own mouth that Tawse's thrown with Hunt."[1] Did he need any more reasons?

Even so, Nate kept home the part where Tawse knew just about all there was to know about Hermes and how much he'd stolen last fall from locked homes and businesses. Why, he wouldn't want the Sodding Arms tenant board to think he was some kind of criminal.

1.	11 Nov 2011 - Sane, Sane, We're All Insane - Nate is present when Cinead offers Lorelei help in her chaotic errands.

For a quiet, unassuming neighbor who largely seemed to keep to himself, Briggs appeared to have quite the knack for getting himself into trouble. Tawse and the pub, Hunt and the finger, now the incident with Bagnold: Aviad gave the other wizard a measuring look as he wrestled the skeletal hand back into submission.

"I wouldn't say that Tawse is the one who's thrown in with Hunt," he said, giving Arba one last, firm shake to remind it to behave.

To be fair, Aviad knew that he didn't really understand all of the ins and outs of the British magical underworld. But Tawse was particular about his grudges, and the mage's scruffy neighbor didn't seem like he was really worth nursing one against. Hunt was far more unpredictable, but that was more than enough reason to sidle close to her. Briggs seemed equally interested in maintaining his distance from both of them as he was with getting into fights with the Ministry dog catcher.

But that was the gist of it. If everyone was your enemy, then there was no one to have your back.

At least Arba seemed to have finally settled down. Aviad gave the skeletal hand a good, long look just to make sure its contriteness was genuine, and then placed it back on his shoulder, on the opposite side from Tzippori. 

"Well, you're going to have to take your chances somewhere, brother," he said at last, looking back at Briggs. "We can go have a drink in the Black Chimaera and decide what to do next, and if Tawse or Hunt come by, I'll be there to have your back; or you can go back to wait for the Ministry on your own and hope that they believe you over the dog catcher."

How Aviad Cohen was so clear and free compelled Nate. The feeling was part admiration and part envy - Nate could only guess how he managed it. He had to suspect his neighbor had a less gentle side that was sufficiently intimidating. Or, perhaps that more dangerous aspect meant Cohen was willing to do more to serve Tawse's interests than Nate would. Nate was technically an Ex-Azzie who'd fared better than most, but he didn't share Tawse and his kind's virulent anti-muggle ideals.

Nate watched Aviad and realized he'd prefer his company over the specter of arrest awaiting him at the hotel. That spark of 'walking backwards into hell' was piqued again, itself compelling him to take his chances with Cohen, to trust the strange fellow once again. The same one who kept bones for pets.

Nate put his hand to his mouth and scratched his stubbly chin for a moment then shrugged. "The hard place it is. But I'm buying."

He'd taken enough favors from the strange neighbor and if he wasn't careful he'd be further into debt with a man he'd rather be on an even keel with.

As there was only one direction to go other than the way they'd come, Nate took the lead out to the common room.

On the surface, the Black Chimaera looked the same as any other dive on a Tuesday night. It was quiet and there were many seats available. The specials were mean to lure people in, half price on this or that. But the Black Chimaera was no normal pub. Only some of the patrons were fully human and Nate suspected that any wands in the room were likely to be ill-gotten. Neither fact were particularly disturbing to the on-again-off-again thief.

At the bar, Nate requested one of Aviad's cigarettes and asked about his preferred drink order.