Private Tales Blood drawn at the Silent Fiddle

[Rainer]

~~​

“Is that it? Is that the head of the bucca?”
“It is.” Rain lied.
“Can I see it? All that trouble at my fathers port warehouse, I’d love to put a face to the mischief.”
“Recommend you don’t. A knocker puts off an intense smell. Only thing keeping it in is this…” He flicked the lid on top of the bloodied satchel. “A bit of a twine and an old sailor’s knot.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Oh yeah. They mark their territory by pissing on their own beard.” He lied again. “Hard to get the smell out of the room once it sets in. Your best bet is to burn it or to bury it out back. Or…toss it in the strait.”
“Pissing on their own beard?” The young merchant sneered. “Hard to imagine that.”
“Best you don’t.” Rain replied as he set the head on the counter. “I’ll take my coin now.”
“In a rush, then? At this hour?”
“Mmm.” The swordsman replied. “The witching hour is dogging my step. Preferred to have a bit of brine in hand to greet it.” He lied. Again.
​

~~​

Biases were part of the job. One didn’t hunt monsters, as a monster, without understanding that humans, and even the longer lived versions, were pregnant with superstitions and old folklore beliefs. Some of those beliefs served a purpose. Spilling salt, thrown over the shoulder for instance, could bind and root evil spirits to the earth for a time being. A strategic mirror could remind evil entities of their hideous visage, casting them into a fit of dissociation. Some beliefs held value. Others were simply formed to expedite some sense of comfort, often looking for the easiest and least accurate solution. Such as assuming trouble on the wharf could be tied back to a local rumor, decades in the making.

The merchant’s son had claimed a bucca was inhabiting his fathers most prestigious port house - used primarily for export of precious metals to Dornoch, where it would inevitably make its way to mages and masters of Elbion. The truth was that the bucca, or oversized bearded Kobold, had in fact taken over the warehouse. But in knowing that these creatures are often isolationists and avoid settlements, preferring caverns and bogs, Rain immediately took this to be uncharacteristic and peculiar. After physically breaking the mental hold over the being, who introduced himself as Knival, the hunter discovered that the creature had been ensnared by a bog witch, living deep in the swamps beyond the shallows.

It was the reason why Rain smelled of algae, methane, and detritus as he stepped into the Silent Fiddle tavern. And it was why he still had enchantress blood on his lips, bringing about a natural flush of pigment across his cheeks.

“We have grog…and we have more grog.” The tender gruffed as he wiped the lacquered countertop down with a greasy rag. The tavern smelled of clove tobacco, sweat, and musk. And the slightest hint of a damp and moldy corner that never seemed to dry. “Spoiled for choice.” Rain replied, still feeling intoxicated by the blood. And the presence that came with it. Pressing a couple pieces of metal currency down with an index and thumb, he slid it forward to the sound of metal slipping against gloss. “Suppose I’ll take the grog.”

He wasn’t sure of his reasoning for being in this place. He was better suited for a straw filled bed, sleeping off the euphoria and the expectation that the idle room would eventually spin, and that spin would send the whole continent into orbit. But against his better judgment, he found his way to an almost unnamed place with senses so heightened, he could hear a man scratch his mustache towards the back of the room. And the smell of something else…

“Here it is lad. Find a dark corner, not looking for no trouble…” The large barkeep nodded, motioning towards Rain’s swords, sheathed and glinting on his back. The Vedymin took the hint and nodded, heading over to an empty booth, lit at the center of the table by a deflated puddle of burning flaxen wax. Sliding in, he set the drink on the table and placed the swords on the seat next to him.
​

Larewen Dragana

 

[Larewen Dragana]

En route to his destination, Rainer may or may not notice an awfully overdressed woman sitting uncomfortably at a bench, but by herself. If not, well... she definitely saw him. An untouched cup of grog lay before her, along with a book of some sort splayed open. It didn't appear to entertain her near as much as watching the armed man go for one of the corner seats. It wasn't until he'd gotten himself situated that the necromancer rose from her chair. She closed the book, then waved her hand over it. The air shimmered and the tome vanished.

Larewen stepped toward Rainer, her heels tapping a cadence into the warped boards beneath her feet. The Silent Fiddle could use a little updating, but with a steady menu of grog, grog, and more grog, that was unlikely. Places like this though... were great for hunting victims. It wouldn't take much coaxing for Larewen to bring one of them out of their drunken stupor with the idea of going somewhere quieter, somewhere more romantic.

When she reached his seat just a few moments after rising from her own, she gestured toward the one opposite him. Not many seemed to come to this place armed to the teeth, and Larewen and Rainer were both armed, in their own ways. He with his swords, her with her magic.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked, mismatched gaze taking him in. "These other creatures--they are boring. With their talks of women and grog, they're lowering my intelligence."

And really, they were. She'd been sitting here staring at a full, disgusting mug of whatever constituted the grog, listening. Tales of women being conquered, brags of who they've slept with. Most of them were quite disrespectful, but it was hard for Larewen to take any of them seriously. Worse, she needed to feed and none of what was available would slake her appetite. They'd taste more like that putrid excuse of a drink, she feared.

Rainer

 

[Rainer]

For the brief moments the separated him sitting down and her approaching his table, he wasn't there. Sure, his physical presence was there and his hand was gripped firmly on the pewter mug, fingers laced through the handle. But otherwise, he was on the floating steps of rotten wood, barely above the water that traipsed about the Shallows. It was there that his journey led him, prior to this moment, through the trees and the swamp.

When Larewen approached, it wasn't her. For those first few seconds as Rain blinked himself back into the present through lidded golden eyes, it was that cursed enchantress. His other hand had never truly left the hilt of the sword and for that brief twilight between here and there, his grip tightened on it instinctively. And as fleeting as a passing breeze, he returned to that table at the Silent Fiddle, sitting across from someone who didn't belong.

The Silent Fiddle wasn't a place for entertainment or discourse, not by his expert estimation. It was for the haggard and exhausted. The mudlarks, toshers, pure finders, and rat catchers. The most elevated of these denizens, beyond the two currently wondering why the other was here, were likely pitch moppers, rolling off a soon-t0-depart vessel from the harbor to fill up on grog before heading to a nearby brothel. It was a place for drink, quiet contemplation, and the idle and fruitless peruse of countless moments that might have led to a fate that ended at the Silent Fiddle. Contrarily, Larawen might as well have been a gleaming ruby in a bucket of coal for how much she stood out.

"By all means..." He replied as he pulled his hand from the sword and gestured towards the seat. "I suppose I should be flattered that you would expect an engrossing conversation from someone like me." He had noticed her before, now that he had a moment to think about it. But he wasn't the only one. Just about every other set of eyes trailed her wake as she moved to the table; the lot of desperate men and hungry vultures. "One's boring might be another's quiet introspection..." Reflected visage in the foamy film of the grog, looking up at them through a pewter tunnel. "Did you expect anything more from a place like this?"

The tender strolled by and plopped another candle down, after relighting it with the wick of the puddle that preceded it.

Larewen Dragana ​

 

[Larewen Dragana]

Larewen reached for the candle, but not before she reached into a pocket hidden in the outfit she wore and withdrew a small silver case. Opening it, there were black cigarettes, but they gave off the smell of clove. She swiped one and then offered Rainer one. The woman reached for the candle, using it to light one of the smokes. Only after did she reply to him.

"Easy food," she said. "You see how they watch me. I could have any one of them for dinner, but I imagine they all taste awful. Desperation, I guess. And considering you're the only other intelligent being in the room, of course I'd want to talk to you. Whether you appreciate the company or not."

The elf seemed full of herself, and to some degree, she was. Cocky, rude, and uncaring of others beside herself. The politeness and propriety that she put on was a fake visage, but she made it convincing. After all, she's got to pull of some charm. She caught a tender to ask for grog, though she wasn't thrilled about tasting it. She preferred a fine wine. One made elf blood being the best, and her favorite.

"My expectations are never met," she said, taking a drag off her clove cigarette. A few minutes in to it, and the grog was brought out in another pewter stein. She looked down at it with distaste, then, hesitantly, brought it to her lips with the hand not holding the smoke. It smelled gods awful, and tasted even worse. Larewen spat the mouthful back into her cup and slid it away from her. "How can you drink that swill?"

She felt a roll of nausea follow the taste of grog, but fortunately she didn't vomit often. Instead, she brought a gloved hand to her face and wiped away the grog staining her lips.

"What brings you here?" she asked, mismatched eyes looking to his face. Her right one, brown, sought any threads of magic that he might possess. Other than seeing those threads, her eye was useless; it bore no sight, unlike the green one on the left.

Rainer

 

[Rainer]

He didn't outright refuse the cigarette but he also didn't accept it. He didn't often smoke, at least not in this life but when he did, it was more for the exterior benefit than the enjoyment. It was closer to the druidic practice wherein the smoke would help to dissuade biting insects and the like from congregating around his person. So instead of accepting one, he simply observed as she lit hers.

"Years of practice. My occupation is more famine than feast, despite it's necessity, and I'll take what I can get." His profession being, of course, in the acceptance of bounty and hunting of monsters. Which, given the initial statement of her feeding on the denizens of the place, should have put them at odds. But for some particular reason, he found himself reasoning his way out that initial reaction. Perhaps she could have fed on these people in ways that didn't necessitate their death - or perhaps they were criminals, the likes of which may have deserved such fettered fate. Or perhaps the less than moral perspectives of the bog enchantress were still running hot through his veins, preventing him from maintaining alignment with his typical predilections.

He took a drink of the grog and did his best not to wince, though he expected it would get better the more he drank of it. "I am here..." He stopped mid thought, catching the look in her eyes and the way they attempted to pierce the rough exterior façade.

"Alabaster Tepes Stregoika..." He spoke as he put his cup down. "An exiled alchemist, high level of the Elbion college for his time, spoke of superstitions and beliefs as if they were akin to heavy metals or toxins. For things to consume such means that they are transplanting those superstitions into them. In small doses, it only has superficial effects. But over time, the body is incapable of breaking down those toxins and the build up produces a similar effect in the consumer. Ally hypothesized that it was the common peoples faith in higher beings, and their inherent fears of those beings, that had produced a similar fear in the idolatry of those gods within the elders of the races that consume blood." He paused, tapping the pewter cup. "That's why desperation tastes like that. And fear."

He let out a shallow breath, as if the explanation of the theory had somehow taxed him. "I am here because it was the logical next stop from the place I just left. And is that why you are here? For things you consider unpalatable?"

Larewen Dragana ​

 

[Larewen Dragana]

"Unpalatable is precisely the reason I am here," she said, her voice quiet enough as not to be overheard. "These kinds of people are rarely missed, and I prefer to toy with my prey; I want to see the fear in their eyes when they come to the realization that they are doomed."

She grinned, a fanged grin that glimmered in the candlelight betwixt pale lips. It was gone quickly from her face. If she knew that he was a monster hunter, she'd probably seek to toy with him; she felt she was nigh untouchable, considering no one had harmed her in quite some time. She was mostly a pompous asshole of a woman, and she knew it. Pride was her crutch; vanity her staple. Why else would a woman dressed so richly enter a seedy establishment, if not to hopefully find trouble. She'd invited herself to sit with him because he was the only one that wasn't drunk (yet at least).

"Sometimes, sacrifices must be made. While I'd much rather have an elf or two, I'm settling for less, because it's easier to get away with. One does not live so long by preying on nobility all the time. Here, they die and another one replaces them, just like worker ants. You start doing that in Alliria Proper, you're far more likely to get caught."

Larewen took a long drag of her cigarette, a wisp of clove-scented smoke curling upward. The cherry glowed bright and hot before she pulled it from her mouth and exhaled slowly. She dipped her head toward his mug of grog and asked in a lilting voice, "How can you stomach that?" The necromancer was genuinely curious. So much so that she didn't care much if she changed the subject. She had little interest in the exiled alchemist, though she wondered what made him feel the need to tell her about this Alabaster.

The elf looked down into her own pewter cup, and the thought of taking another swig from it turned her stomach. Finally, she circled back to the alchemist. Leaning back in her chair, she took another pull from her cigarette then tapped the ember out in a small pewter ash tray. "Do you believe in his ideology?"

Rainer

 

[Rainer]

"Hard to say..." He wasn't sure what he believed, but he had seen the consequences of that faith in others. "When I've killed an elder vampire who was afraid to cross running water, believing all water to have, at one point or another, been consecrated by any various numbers of holy people..." He spoke soft as well now, cognizant of the nature of their conversation, and shrugged. "It's hard to not put some form of credence in it. Speaks to the strength of belief, good or bad."

The ethos around vampirism was a diverse as the variants that stemmed from the original tree. But generally, one thing was fairly common among the covens - you don't kill other vampires. And as this conversation turned towards the subject, it should have been clear that Rain did not give much merit to that tradition. In fact, in most circumstances, he acted in direct defiance of it. That was the nature of the Vedymin strain.

"Maybe that's the same answer to this grog, in a roundabout way. What I can consume is of perspective and memory. Just hours ago, I may have gulped down half the muck and mire of the shallows. In comparison, this isn't' so bad..." He held up the mug. "But if you can't stomach it, maybe you can escort me to a finer establishment that I am not often accustomed." His hand dropped down beneath the table and within a flash, he produced a silver bangle, adorned with shards of obsidian and emerald.

"My pockets are a bit heavier than normal. I imagine I could spare some change for something beyond the grog." The bangle had intricate patterns for runic magic, lacquered with a dry but fairly fresh splotching of blood. Enchantress blood.

Larewen Dragana ​