wrecking_yard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wrecking_yard) wrote2014-03-22 10:10 pm
wrecking_yard) wrote2014-03-22 10:10 pm
Accidental Nano - Ch. 2
Fandom: FFXIV
Summary: Snowballed headcanon on Thancred's background!
Chapter Summary: Going looking for ... well, he's not really sure what he's doing, but he's making people who sorta worry about him LINEFACE a lot.
Warnings: Not a whole lot for this.
“Doing something about it” proved to be easier said than done; the guard were definitely keeping an eye on him now, and most of the other homeless and otherwise dispossessed that he knew were going to ground, going tight-lipped and paranoid. The attempts at investigation weren't doing anything for people's nerves, and even after he found his voice again, people hanging around were thin on the ground; those who could afford it were hurrying through, afraid of the killer or killers. After a few days, he'd picked up the habit of finding odd perches out of sight when he wasn't performing, the constant sense of being watched from the patrols getting to him. He was hitting a point where he'd be either resorting back to pickpocketing and petty thievery or hoping Ives could bring in enough for both of them.
It was later in the evening and the winds were getting colder; he was needing to be more paranoid about getting back to the clocktower, in case he picked up a tail, so he'd found a ledge off a rooftop a few blocks away from his normal square to wait.
He'd honestly lapsed into drowsing when he snapped out of it to a “There you are” from the roof itself a few feet away; he stopped short of having a knife out, recognizing the Elezen girl leaning over the edge, scarf wrapped up into around her face.
“Ayla! It's good to see you well – I was starting to worry.”
“Really? Here I thought you'd have more confidence in me.”, she chided.
He shifted, catching the edge of the roof and vaulting back up to it easily, perching on the edge. “With the murders going on, I'm even worrying about Ives sometimes.”
“I'd worry more about the guards getting their hands on him, if they could hold him.”
“He's dodged them well enough that I think they're starting to doubt he ever existed.” Not quite true, but he knew they hadn't seen hide nor hair of him, or they'd realize Ives worked a different part of the city from where they lived and would be focused there instead of around Thancred. “I haven't seen you in a few weeks.”
“I found a new place, a little out of the way; it's safer – there's others and the guards don't really go there.” She was calm and content with it, but something about it worried him; there were a few patches of empty buildings and places with less reason for patrols, but...
“If it's near the old church by the wall – the people doing the killings were based around there. It looked like there was a group, and a voidspawn as well.”
She laughed and shook her head. “No, no, not near there; up east by the stream, the burned-out inn.”
He had to give a sigh of relief at that, at least; it was further away from where the attack had happened. The cultists had probably relocated, the guards were probably swarming that area, but if she hadn't seen anything since, then it was probably another part of town. “What kind of others are you staying with?” He knew a few people from that part of town, and a few that'd headed that way; it wasn't a huge distance away.
“It's just a group that's been banding together; folk that're getting tired of being cast out everywhere and scraping to survive. I'm surprised Ives hasn't said anything to you, he's been helping.”
“He's been in one of his moods; likely he just doesn't want me seeing him doing something besides being a hard survivalist so he can pretend he's heartless and I can't call him on it as easily.”
“He'll probably bring you by sooner or later.”
A bit of noise from below got their attention; whatever other questions he'd had were forgotten – there were getting to be a few more of the guard in the area than he liked. “I need to split, run a loop before I go home; they're trying to find him by stalking me, so you probably don't want to be seen around me.”
His attention had still been over the edge, so that his balance wobbled when she leaned over to hug him around the shoulders; she was shooting up enough to be a bit taller than him if he were standing. “Take care.”
“You as well.” He raised a hand in a half-wave as she walked off.
*************************************************************************
A few more days of alternating between trying to keep enough routine that they wouldn't get suspicious and avoiding being watched for his own sanity, and a thought occurred to him; he managed to skirt around without being seen, and by now he knew the lock on the back door of the weaver's shop well enough to get it open faster than if he'd had the key.
It wasn't even shut before there was a thin-bladed rapier aimed at him. He blinked at the point, and up the blade to the girl on the other end. “Edine?” She had the blade angled about right, and was squinting at him with a mix of disbelief and exasperation. “You've been learning to use this?”
“Of course I have, with everything going on – what is wrong with you, breaking in like that with a void cult about, I could've skewered you!”
She hadn't lowered the sword yet. “You look well yourself.”
She rolled her eyes, finally dropping the blade with a frustrated noise. “A couple of the guard have been by more than once asking about you; what did you even do this time?”
He half-laughed, a sound that weakened and died partway through. “It's not me. They think Ives killed Mattye, so they're trying to get me to lead them to him.”
The open irritation faded out. “Ives...that brown-haired friend of yours?”
He nodded; Ives hadn't been around them often, but he did stop over while Thancred was working the squares.
“Wasn't he also taking lessons from Mattye?”
“He was. He wasn't anywhere near it.”
“Why are they after him then?”
“Because the thing that did it used his knife.” He folded his arms closer, the warmer air of the shop's back room sinking in.
Whatever last bits of anger she'd had were gone, replaced with worry. “...Thing?”
“...It – I'll get to that in a moment, there's something I needed to ask you.” She shifted her jaw, then nodded for him to continue. “Have you gotten any orders for – black cloth, especially in larger amounts...maybe a few weeks to a couple months ago?”
“If we had, we would've gone straight to the guard. Mother has a few stories about void followers, she wouldn't take that lightly.” She turned the sword-hilt in her hand, not at the ready but not quite willing to let go of it. “It was a voidspawn?”
He nodded. “It looked like a man in a black robe and a mask; it might've been possessing someone.”
Edine's brows furrowed and the worried look deepened. “Come back on an off day – Mother and Da were almost killed by something like that once, but she knows the story better.”
“I will.” It wasn't one of the stories he'd ever heard, but somehow he wasn't surprised; for a retired adventurer, defeats weren't usually considered light conversation for company.
She turned, setting the sword on the bench she'd been sorting scrap cloth on. “..Thancred? Are you alright?”
“Ah?”
“I know you were close with Mattye...”
He opened his mouth, but there wasn't much he could find trying to play it off; finally he stopped, dropping his gaze. “I'll live.”
“...If you need anything-”
Whatever she was saying was cut off by the door to the front opening, Edine's mother stepping through. “I told you, he doesn't live here, and I have work to do.” She closed the door, turning with several dresses over her arm, some with easily visible tears and holes, and gave Thancred a very narrow, tired look that spoke of running low on desire to deal with things. “I am going to close my eyes and count to five. When I open them, I am going to put down the mending work, I will not see you here, and I will walk back out into the shop to tell the inspector that I haven't seen you, and that he's free to search the shop if he likes, he won't find any sign of you. Are we clear?”
He opened his mouth, closed his mouth, and nodded.
“Oh, and Thancred? Take a break from performing for a while.”
“Thank you.”
She closed her eyes and started counting, and he made for a back window on the other side of the shop, out into a blind alley.
*************************************************************************
Watching out found that she hadn't been kidding; there were a couple of guards hanging around the places he'd usually be, and he caught sight of the mage he'd spoken to wandering the area a few times, clearly intent on something.
Which, from her warning, would probably involve arresting him for questioning, something he really wanted to avoid when he knew that he could repeat the truth as many times as he wanted and that one wouldn't believe it.
A noise out of place woke him up at a stupid hour of morning a few days later; Ives was already out, and there was a scrap of fabric tied onto a chain that ran though the mechanisms, occasionally muffling the normal pattern of rattling. He managed to catch it as it went by, unfolding it to find a simple bit of stitchwork with Byregot's sigil.
That was one way to flag a time, and a relief, even if Ives would have kittens Thancred had told Edine where they lived for her to know where to leave a message like that.
He slipped out a good hour before the indicated time, curling up in a corner out of sight, but not far from the shop, in the pre-dawn fog. One of the patrols went by a bit before, but it was clear around when the sound of the chime of five bells rang out.
There was one candle in an upper window; he slipped in through an unlocked first-floor window, carefully setting it back.
He'd only ever seen her mother's room in passing through a cracked door, neatly kept and mostly what anyone would've expected of a craftsman that made enough to be comfortable; nothing rich, but well-made and serviceable, besides the plaque on one wall with a dragon-skull.
A small table with a couple chairs was pulled out of the way, the lights down in the room and curtains drawn; the weaver was up and dressed, waiting, with a few sheets of paper and a quill-pen with ink on the table.
“Milady Lyons?”
She waved him in; he quietly shut the door behind him. “Edine said you saw some sort of masked Voidsent.”
“Yes, ma'am.” He settled in the chair.
“Before I ask anything else, do you think you could draw me the mask?”
She slid the paper across, and moved the inkwell and pen within his reach.
It was messy, but he managed a loose sketch, hand shaking a little thinking about the thing watching him; a simple oval mask with a very minimal suggestion of a fanged maw splitting it, sliding the paper back to her.
She looked at it, frowned, then rubbed her nose with one hand, eyes closed, the other going to a pendant with Nymeia's symbol on it. “Lady of fate help us....”
He waited, not entirely liking that reaction.
“Thancred, before anything else... promise me that you won't try to fight it. It will kill you, and you're lucky that it decided to let you live the once.”
“Ah – you have my word.” Very much not liking the sound of this. “The – Inspector, when I had tried to talk to him, said something about – he called it an Ascian, and told me they wouldn't use mortal weapons.”
The frown turned into a grimace, with a mutter he only half-caught about feeding someone their own staff. She took a moment there before she folded her hands on the table in front of her. “I never knew a name for it. We'd been hired to help deal with a nasty tangle in Thanalan that we thought was simple bandits and maybe a squabble between syndicates, when we started catching signs that one of the gangs involved in the fighting was summoning void-sent, which we traced back to some 'mage' they were taking orders from. No-one had ever seen his face, or anything to identify him, because he was always clad in a black robe and mask.” She indicated his sketch. “And in questioning people from more than one group, he had his hand in almost every side of it, as if he were trying to incite something that would've led to a much worse conflict as the syndicate whose shipping lanes were being disrupted got more testy. We managed to track him to an abandoned old watchtower in the desert, and went in well prepared for the most vicious summoned beasts we could think of – which he did greet us with, and which we easily dispatched.” She frowned, a hand moving to run over the holy symbol. “He only laughed at that, and shrugged off Tristram's strongest magics as if they were nothing; he teleported down to us with the void visible in his passing, and burned through Tristram's shielding spell as if it weren't even there before I could even bring my blade to bear. We narrowly escaped with our lives, and I still wonder if it didn't let us go; the Sultansworn sent men out with some of the strongest thaumaturges in the guild to corner it, only to find that it had vanished without a trace, leaving the men that had contracted with it to hang.”
“The one that killed Mattye …. when it teleported away, everything bloomed black around it.”
“Aye, and the Inspector having a name for 'them' makes me shudder to think there's more than one like that.” She shook her head. “The one that we encountered – assuming it isn't the same individual – was a manipulator; it was clever, cunning, and did most of its work by tricking mortals into doing the damage for it. If the others are anything like it, then that man is a fool for thinking one wouldn't 'stoop to using a mortal weapon' if it would mean causing more confusion and suffering.” She leaned on one hand, elbow propped on the table, studying the drawing thoughtfully. “I wouldn't be surprised if it let you go simply for the sake of making its presence sound more suspicious and unbelievable; after all, if they had to chase the evidence themselves, they wouldn't be able to deny it, but hearing it from someone they don't trust who's close with the owner of the weapon it used makes it look all the more like you're trying to throw them off his trail to protect him.”
It made a great deal of sense – too much, and he buried his face in his hands after a moment to turn that over. “I played right into its hands.”
“Don't beat yourself up over it; it's likely fooled far greater and wiser than a stripling young bard.” She reached over to lay a hand gently on his wrist. “It fooled Mattye.”
He swallowed with a short nod.
“...What do I do? I can't just let it keep doing this...”
“Do you have anything that could prove your friend's innocence – where he was when Mattye died or the like?”
He slumped with his arms folded on the table, giving her a dull, flat look. “He said he was across town filching a handful of small jewels.”
She had a beat, closing her eyes with the pinched look of an oncoming headache. “I'll see if I can't sway someone other than the good Inspector into looking into this more thoroughly; until then, stay out of the way and don't go after it – none of us know how to fight that thing, and it will probably have smaller voidspawn watching over its followers that would eat you alive.”
He nodded, but earned a very sharp frown. “I mean it Thancred – for once in your life, stay out of trouble, or you're going to end up dead.”
“I'll be careful.”
“If you die, it will upset Edine, and I will be forced to find some unscrupulous thaumaturge to resurrect you so I can kill you myself.”
“I give my word that I won't try to fight it.”
“It can be there in an instant if you pick a fight with its followers; going after them is the same as pursuing it.”
“I understand, and I will avoid a fight.”
“At this point if the Inspector catches you, he's like to have you hung alongside your friend as an accomplice.”
“I won't go anywhere near him or the guard.”
She studied him with a frustrated glare. “Whatever you're planning, you shouldn't do it.”
“I'm actually out of ideas at the moment.”
“...That's worse.”
“I will hide out and try not to do anything stupid.”
“Your definition of 'anything stupid' does not fill me with confidence.”
He shrugged, trying to give a disarming smile that only got the glare narrowed.
“Just get out of here before the sun rises and don't get killed.” She rubbed her temples with a faint growl, waving him out as he stood to leave.
*************************************************************************
*************************************************************************
Footnote: The days are about twenty four hours, split into four cycles of six. It's set up to match the six elements, and alternates "astral/umbral"; the calendar of months does the same thing, and is labelled by the Twelve, hence being able to use one of their symbols as a signal of a time.
Also for the completely canonblind, Elezen are sort of an elf-analogue, although they're no more or less supernatural than anyone else.
Summary: Snowballed headcanon on Thancred's background!
Chapter Summary: Going looking for ... well, he's not really sure what he's doing, but he's making people who sorta worry about him LINEFACE a lot.
Warnings: Not a whole lot for this.
“Doing something about it” proved to be easier said than done; the guard were definitely keeping an eye on him now, and most of the other homeless and otherwise dispossessed that he knew were going to ground, going tight-lipped and paranoid. The attempts at investigation weren't doing anything for people's nerves, and even after he found his voice again, people hanging around were thin on the ground; those who could afford it were hurrying through, afraid of the killer or killers. After a few days, he'd picked up the habit of finding odd perches out of sight when he wasn't performing, the constant sense of being watched from the patrols getting to him. He was hitting a point where he'd be either resorting back to pickpocketing and petty thievery or hoping Ives could bring in enough for both of them.
It was later in the evening and the winds were getting colder; he was needing to be more paranoid about getting back to the clocktower, in case he picked up a tail, so he'd found a ledge off a rooftop a few blocks away from his normal square to wait.
He'd honestly lapsed into drowsing when he snapped out of it to a “There you are” from the roof itself a few feet away; he stopped short of having a knife out, recognizing the Elezen girl leaning over the edge, scarf wrapped up into around her face.
“Ayla! It's good to see you well – I was starting to worry.”
“Really? Here I thought you'd have more confidence in me.”, she chided.
He shifted, catching the edge of the roof and vaulting back up to it easily, perching on the edge. “With the murders going on, I'm even worrying about Ives sometimes.”
“I'd worry more about the guards getting their hands on him, if they could hold him.”
“He's dodged them well enough that I think they're starting to doubt he ever existed.” Not quite true, but he knew they hadn't seen hide nor hair of him, or they'd realize Ives worked a different part of the city from where they lived and would be focused there instead of around Thancred. “I haven't seen you in a few weeks.”
“I found a new place, a little out of the way; it's safer – there's others and the guards don't really go there.” She was calm and content with it, but something about it worried him; there were a few patches of empty buildings and places with less reason for patrols, but...
“If it's near the old church by the wall – the people doing the killings were based around there. It looked like there was a group, and a voidspawn as well.”
She laughed and shook her head. “No, no, not near there; up east by the stream, the burned-out inn.”
He had to give a sigh of relief at that, at least; it was further away from where the attack had happened. The cultists had probably relocated, the guards were probably swarming that area, but if she hadn't seen anything since, then it was probably another part of town. “What kind of others are you staying with?” He knew a few people from that part of town, and a few that'd headed that way; it wasn't a huge distance away.
“It's just a group that's been banding together; folk that're getting tired of being cast out everywhere and scraping to survive. I'm surprised Ives hasn't said anything to you, he's been helping.”
“He's been in one of his moods; likely he just doesn't want me seeing him doing something besides being a hard survivalist so he can pretend he's heartless and I can't call him on it as easily.”
“He'll probably bring you by sooner or later.”
A bit of noise from below got their attention; whatever other questions he'd had were forgotten – there were getting to be a few more of the guard in the area than he liked. “I need to split, run a loop before I go home; they're trying to find him by stalking me, so you probably don't want to be seen around me.”
His attention had still been over the edge, so that his balance wobbled when she leaned over to hug him around the shoulders; she was shooting up enough to be a bit taller than him if he were standing. “Take care.”
“You as well.” He raised a hand in a half-wave as she walked off.
A few more days of alternating between trying to keep enough routine that they wouldn't get suspicious and avoiding being watched for his own sanity, and a thought occurred to him; he managed to skirt around without being seen, and by now he knew the lock on the back door of the weaver's shop well enough to get it open faster than if he'd had the key.
It wasn't even shut before there was a thin-bladed rapier aimed at him. He blinked at the point, and up the blade to the girl on the other end. “Edine?” She had the blade angled about right, and was squinting at him with a mix of disbelief and exasperation. “You've been learning to use this?”
“Of course I have, with everything going on – what is wrong with you, breaking in like that with a void cult about, I could've skewered you!”
She hadn't lowered the sword yet. “You look well yourself.”
She rolled her eyes, finally dropping the blade with a frustrated noise. “A couple of the guard have been by more than once asking about you; what did you even do this time?”
He half-laughed, a sound that weakened and died partway through. “It's not me. They think Ives killed Mattye, so they're trying to get me to lead them to him.”
The open irritation faded out. “Ives...that brown-haired friend of yours?”
He nodded; Ives hadn't been around them often, but he did stop over while Thancred was working the squares.
“Wasn't he also taking lessons from Mattye?”
“He was. He wasn't anywhere near it.”
“Why are they after him then?”
“Because the thing that did it used his knife.” He folded his arms closer, the warmer air of the shop's back room sinking in.
Whatever last bits of anger she'd had were gone, replaced with worry. “...Thing?”
“...It – I'll get to that in a moment, there's something I needed to ask you.” She shifted her jaw, then nodded for him to continue. “Have you gotten any orders for – black cloth, especially in larger amounts...maybe a few weeks to a couple months ago?”
“If we had, we would've gone straight to the guard. Mother has a few stories about void followers, she wouldn't take that lightly.” She turned the sword-hilt in her hand, not at the ready but not quite willing to let go of it. “It was a voidspawn?”
He nodded. “It looked like a man in a black robe and a mask; it might've been possessing someone.”
Edine's brows furrowed and the worried look deepened. “Come back on an off day – Mother and Da were almost killed by something like that once, but she knows the story better.”
“I will.” It wasn't one of the stories he'd ever heard, but somehow he wasn't surprised; for a retired adventurer, defeats weren't usually considered light conversation for company.
She turned, setting the sword on the bench she'd been sorting scrap cloth on. “..Thancred? Are you alright?”
“Ah?”
“I know you were close with Mattye...”
He opened his mouth, but there wasn't much he could find trying to play it off; finally he stopped, dropping his gaze. “I'll live.”
“...If you need anything-”
Whatever she was saying was cut off by the door to the front opening, Edine's mother stepping through. “I told you, he doesn't live here, and I have work to do.” She closed the door, turning with several dresses over her arm, some with easily visible tears and holes, and gave Thancred a very narrow, tired look that spoke of running low on desire to deal with things. “I am going to close my eyes and count to five. When I open them, I am going to put down the mending work, I will not see you here, and I will walk back out into the shop to tell the inspector that I haven't seen you, and that he's free to search the shop if he likes, he won't find any sign of you. Are we clear?”
He opened his mouth, closed his mouth, and nodded.
“Oh, and Thancred? Take a break from performing for a while.”
“Thank you.”
She closed her eyes and started counting, and he made for a back window on the other side of the shop, out into a blind alley.
Watching out found that she hadn't been kidding; there were a couple of guards hanging around the places he'd usually be, and he caught sight of the mage he'd spoken to wandering the area a few times, clearly intent on something.
Which, from her warning, would probably involve arresting him for questioning, something he really wanted to avoid when he knew that he could repeat the truth as many times as he wanted and that one wouldn't believe it.
A noise out of place woke him up at a stupid hour of morning a few days later; Ives was already out, and there was a scrap of fabric tied onto a chain that ran though the mechanisms, occasionally muffling the normal pattern of rattling. He managed to catch it as it went by, unfolding it to find a simple bit of stitchwork with Byregot's sigil.
That was one way to flag a time, and a relief, even if Ives would have kittens Thancred had told Edine where they lived for her to know where to leave a message like that.
He slipped out a good hour before the indicated time, curling up in a corner out of sight, but not far from the shop, in the pre-dawn fog. One of the patrols went by a bit before, but it was clear around when the sound of the chime of five bells rang out.
There was one candle in an upper window; he slipped in through an unlocked first-floor window, carefully setting it back.
He'd only ever seen her mother's room in passing through a cracked door, neatly kept and mostly what anyone would've expected of a craftsman that made enough to be comfortable; nothing rich, but well-made and serviceable, besides the plaque on one wall with a dragon-skull.
A small table with a couple chairs was pulled out of the way, the lights down in the room and curtains drawn; the weaver was up and dressed, waiting, with a few sheets of paper and a quill-pen with ink on the table.
“Milady Lyons?”
She waved him in; he quietly shut the door behind him. “Edine said you saw some sort of masked Voidsent.”
“Yes, ma'am.” He settled in the chair.
“Before I ask anything else, do you think you could draw me the mask?”
She slid the paper across, and moved the inkwell and pen within his reach.
It was messy, but he managed a loose sketch, hand shaking a little thinking about the thing watching him; a simple oval mask with a very minimal suggestion of a fanged maw splitting it, sliding the paper back to her.
She looked at it, frowned, then rubbed her nose with one hand, eyes closed, the other going to a pendant with Nymeia's symbol on it. “Lady of fate help us....”
He waited, not entirely liking that reaction.
“Thancred, before anything else... promise me that you won't try to fight it. It will kill you, and you're lucky that it decided to let you live the once.”
“Ah – you have my word.” Very much not liking the sound of this. “The – Inspector, when I had tried to talk to him, said something about – he called it an Ascian, and told me they wouldn't use mortal weapons.”
The frown turned into a grimace, with a mutter he only half-caught about feeding someone their own staff. She took a moment there before she folded her hands on the table in front of her. “I never knew a name for it. We'd been hired to help deal with a nasty tangle in Thanalan that we thought was simple bandits and maybe a squabble between syndicates, when we started catching signs that one of the gangs involved in the fighting was summoning void-sent, which we traced back to some 'mage' they were taking orders from. No-one had ever seen his face, or anything to identify him, because he was always clad in a black robe and mask.” She indicated his sketch. “And in questioning people from more than one group, he had his hand in almost every side of it, as if he were trying to incite something that would've led to a much worse conflict as the syndicate whose shipping lanes were being disrupted got more testy. We managed to track him to an abandoned old watchtower in the desert, and went in well prepared for the most vicious summoned beasts we could think of – which he did greet us with, and which we easily dispatched.” She frowned, a hand moving to run over the holy symbol. “He only laughed at that, and shrugged off Tristram's strongest magics as if they were nothing; he teleported down to us with the void visible in his passing, and burned through Tristram's shielding spell as if it weren't even there before I could even bring my blade to bear. We narrowly escaped with our lives, and I still wonder if it didn't let us go; the Sultansworn sent men out with some of the strongest thaumaturges in the guild to corner it, only to find that it had vanished without a trace, leaving the men that had contracted with it to hang.”
“The one that killed Mattye …. when it teleported away, everything bloomed black around it.”
“Aye, and the Inspector having a name for 'them' makes me shudder to think there's more than one like that.” She shook her head. “The one that we encountered – assuming it isn't the same individual – was a manipulator; it was clever, cunning, and did most of its work by tricking mortals into doing the damage for it. If the others are anything like it, then that man is a fool for thinking one wouldn't 'stoop to using a mortal weapon' if it would mean causing more confusion and suffering.” She leaned on one hand, elbow propped on the table, studying the drawing thoughtfully. “I wouldn't be surprised if it let you go simply for the sake of making its presence sound more suspicious and unbelievable; after all, if they had to chase the evidence themselves, they wouldn't be able to deny it, but hearing it from someone they don't trust who's close with the owner of the weapon it used makes it look all the more like you're trying to throw them off his trail to protect him.”
It made a great deal of sense – too much, and he buried his face in his hands after a moment to turn that over. “I played right into its hands.”
“Don't beat yourself up over it; it's likely fooled far greater and wiser than a stripling young bard.” She reached over to lay a hand gently on his wrist. “It fooled Mattye.”
He swallowed with a short nod.
“...What do I do? I can't just let it keep doing this...”
“Do you have anything that could prove your friend's innocence – where he was when Mattye died or the like?”
He slumped with his arms folded on the table, giving her a dull, flat look. “He said he was across town filching a handful of small jewels.”
She had a beat, closing her eyes with the pinched look of an oncoming headache. “I'll see if I can't sway someone other than the good Inspector into looking into this more thoroughly; until then, stay out of the way and don't go after it – none of us know how to fight that thing, and it will probably have smaller voidspawn watching over its followers that would eat you alive.”
He nodded, but earned a very sharp frown. “I mean it Thancred – for once in your life, stay out of trouble, or you're going to end up dead.”
“I'll be careful.”
“If you die, it will upset Edine, and I will be forced to find some unscrupulous thaumaturge to resurrect you so I can kill you myself.”
“I give my word that I won't try to fight it.”
“It can be there in an instant if you pick a fight with its followers; going after them is the same as pursuing it.”
“I understand, and I will avoid a fight.”
“At this point if the Inspector catches you, he's like to have you hung alongside your friend as an accomplice.”
“I won't go anywhere near him or the guard.”
She studied him with a frustrated glare. “Whatever you're planning, you shouldn't do it.”
“I'm actually out of ideas at the moment.”
“...That's worse.”
“I will hide out and try not to do anything stupid.”
“Your definition of 'anything stupid' does not fill me with confidence.”
He shrugged, trying to give a disarming smile that only got the glare narrowed.
“Just get out of here before the sun rises and don't get killed.” She rubbed her temples with a faint growl, waving him out as he stood to leave.
Footnote: The days are about twenty four hours, split into four cycles of six. It's set up to match the six elements, and alternates "astral/umbral"; the calendar of months does the same thing, and is labelled by the Twelve, hence being able to use one of their symbols as a signal of a time.
Also for the completely canonblind, Elezen are sort of an elf-analogue, although they're no more or less supernatural than anyone else.