Random thoughts

[DoS Archive]

From: neriskyn@aol.com (Neris Kyn)
Date: 01 Sep 1998 18:36:01 EDT

The wanderer sat in his chair... well, sprawled was more like it. He did enjoy being comfortable. Things had started to finaly go well for him, and when that happened he always seemed to dredge up something to worry about. Like the duel last night.. it had been nothing out of the ordinary, but something about the way the man held himself piqued his curiosity.. something from this past. Pulling his book open, glancing once again to
Tay and her opponent in the ring.. he opened it, flipping to a well read page. his thoughts drifted into the past as his golden scanned the contents....

A shapely redhead danced suggestively on a table top near the stairwell as an elderly, yet lively man pounded away on a piano... The patrons were almost all male, shouting and holering, pinching and molesting any bar wench that happened to pass within their grubby arm's reach, sharing meaningful winks with their companions. Smoke and noise filled the tall main room of the Maiden's Chalice, one of the most prominent inns of the port town
Teraklayn...but not after today...no longer would rejoicing and laughter fill this room.. nor would the maids have to worry about avoiding the sailor's painful grasps... a large price to pay for the riddance of such a small annoyance...
A cloaked figure stepped into the room, his presence demanding no special attention. The sounds and smells assaulted his senses, his hand drifting up to push back the hood of the dust cloak.. something he and his companions had picked up a few days ago to better blend in with the dull inhabitants of this dry seaport. His delicate, agile fingers brush agaist his short, spikey hair and pointed ear as the hood falls to his shoulders, his face
still hidden from the sight of those who happen to look up, the bright sun streaming in through the door and playing around him, revealing nothing but a dark silhouette of a man. The figure steps slowly into the room, the voices of those at the tables near the door lowering and then dying away almost completely as their adjusting eyes fall upon the stranger. The slow, measured footfalls of the young man stop... the dirt that was pushed up in his
wake falling slowly...he lifts his head a bit, his eyes becoming visible as they move out of the shadow cast by his own body. The man's pursed eyelids slide open to reveal shining gold eyes... almost inhuman in their intensity. Silence grows where his gaze falls as those penetrating orbs drift from one end of the room to the other.. then back. All eyes had been pulled to the man by some demanding force..the barkeep stood, transfixed, his
motionless hand holding a towel, stuffed inside a half cleaned flask... The piano had drifted into silence as the old man's fingers lost their way, his faded blue eyes falling on the stranger as well.
The entire room had gone silent, the creaking of the walls as the wind played against the building and the noises of life in the city the only sounds carrying through the stale air. The gold eyes fell on the motionless dancer, who had been regarding him with a look that was both wanting and speculative...and something that caught his attention. His cold golden eyes drifted again to the other side, his face devoid of all emotion.. The tense
silence is broken as the young man's footfall sounds through the hall, his head dropping back down as he gazes at the floor a few feet in front of him.. the usual noises of the inn returning... the patrons turning back to their friends and conversations... the piano starting back into a local rag.. But the noise had dropped dangerously low.. as if all the patrons were anticipating something.
The stout bartender finished cleaning the large glass in his hands and layed it down slowly as the stranger aproached the bar. His hand drifted below into an alcove under the bar, his fingers wrapping around the handle of a well oiled, but seldom used, battle axe. The gold eyed man's brow pulled down a fraction.. but returned to the same impassive mask in a fraction of an instant... noticed only by himself. Before the young man reached the
bar, the portly tender called out to him.
"Ere, what da want? ...Freaks like you aren't welcome here..." The man's baritone voice carries through the room and it again fell silent.
The freak's face remained impassive, his eyes boring into the bigoted man. "I'm looking for someone."
The voice sounded too old for the body.. but it somehow fit with the eyes... so much knowledge in those eyes.. knowing things they shouldn't..things that..The tender snapped out of his stupor, his brow pulling down in anger. "Listen you, I know lots o' people... but I dun' know you...and I dun' wanna know.. Now get outta my inn.." The voice faltering at the end as he realized he was being ignored... his hand gripped tensely around the axe
handle.. reassuring himself.
The stranger had long since been ignoring the portly man, his body shifting around to lean his side against the bar.. his eyes falling on the man he'd known would be there... sitting at a table in the corner furthest from the door. He wore rich clothing and appeared well groomed, a sword hanging from his hip. He and his companions stared back at golden eyes...The adorned man.. seeming out of place in these surrounding brushed a stray hair from
his face... his other hand falling absently to his sword. The strangers eyes met, for only an instant, with the nondescript man at the nobles side... then he turned back to the tender.
His words were quiet, but broke through the silence like an earshattering boom.
"You know how to use that thing.. or you just gonna sit there all day?" The golden eyes flitted over to the tender's arm.. which still clenched the axe handle. He heard the fear inside the portly man, like thousands of voices screaming at once...he felt it like a cold oozing liquid....but he had long since grown use to such things. He waited in anticipation as the tender just stared at him... a single drop of sweat beading up on the large
tender's glistening forehead...sliding down the man's unshaved face, and coming to a rest at his chin. His arm tensed as he moved to bring the axe to bear....and worlds came to an end.
It all happened so fast....but then agian.... it always did with the Brotherhood. A dagger flew into the man's throat.. but not before one found it's mark through the bartop as well as the rotund man's axe clenching hand. The silence that permeated the room was no longer that of anticipation, but of death. In the time that it took the dead man to hit the floor.. the rest of golden eyes' companions had finished their task.
He leaned over the bartop casually and retrieved his unussualy long daggers.. replacing them in the sheaths strapped to his wrists... an odd sight considering the daggers were longer than his forearms. He turned slowly.. the impassive gaze falling upon what he knew would be there. Only three other men stood in the room... and he could call each an associate.. if not a friend. The only person he had come to call friend had been the
inparticular man who was seated next to the noble... and who was now standing over the rich man's body. His golden eyes fell around the carnage as he turned... stepping over a tipped chair and the body lying next to it.. a thin, sharp knife protruding from his eye. He looked up at the two other assasins.. then at Jared, who had finished removing his own daggers from Lord Dupaul's chest, and was also regarding his friend.
He didn't have to ask if anybody was hurt... there hadn't even been for any resistance..then his ears twitched as his mind caught something that his ear could not...a mixture of fear and relief. ..His eyes darted to the piano as he pinpointed the feeling... Jared and the others fixing on his line of sight, catching the look on his face. The freak held a hand up in silence to stop the advance of the others as he slowly made his
way towards the piano...the man who had been pounding on it now lay against it in a final song...
Twirling a dagger once in his left hand, he shifted his weight, preparing to step around the music maker and end the life of the one hidden there. ..A loud thudding stopped him in his preperations as a young boy.. no older than five, burst through a side hallway shouting..
"Momma Momma...I caught a huge bi..".. his sentence never finished. The one hiding had been the dancer.. as Neris had guessed...but what he had not counted on was the complication of a child. The woman had burst from her hiding place screaming undecipherable words of fear as she grabbed her son and slammed into the side of the bar, unable to control her flight. The glass that the round tender had been polishing, shook... then toppled, already
near the edge.. seeming to fall in slow motion...

He is slammed back into the present as the noise of his shattering glass hits him. Apparnetly he nudged it off the table while deep in thought. Sheepishly glancing around the room he closes the well worn book and pushes his thoughts aside for another time.

NAP