Fable - Ask Dust in the Wind

[Sasha'niel]

It was a miserable day. Grey light filtered through low clouds pouring out a dreary rain. Water ran through the gutters on the street and out of downspouts and off the eaves of rooves. A chill of the changing season hung in the air like an unwanted visitor.

Sasha'niel walked the street with her hands beneath her cloak, trying to ignore the cold and the wet. It had been years since she had left her native lands, but even now it was difficult to acclimate to the cold and the wet. She was tough, though. The desert and grasslands were not kind places to live. They killed the weak as surely and swiftly as a knife to the heart. She was No'rei, and even if she did not believe the tripe peddled by the Seers any longer, something had built her and her kin of sterner stuff than most.

Case in point, her side still ached where she had been hit. It had been a lucky blow - for her, at least; the point of that bastard's blade had sheared off in the brief round of swordplay. The thrust should have ended her life. Instead, it bruised her ribs.

The bounty hunter wouldn't bother her any longer. There were no half measures on the Sea. He raised a blade to her and she could do no less than ensure that the threat was ended forever. So it had been for a decade, and yet the kril'ach kept coming and throwing themselves on her blades. Why couldn't they simply leave her alone and let her fade into the world and be forgotten?

She slipped off the street and into a local watering hole. This was the Shallows, but even though rough sorts hung around every corner most had the good sense to keep away from the shrouded woman. She carried herself with a lethal grace and the barely constrained aura of violence common to her kin.

The interior was smoky and filled with the murmur of hushed conversation and the occasional round of drunken laughter. Many of the patrons looked up as she passed through the door - careful, assessing looks that quickly found somewhere else to pry. Tall, she cut a lean figure shrouded in her travel stained cloak - now with spatters of darkening blood on it. She threw the hood back as she came in, shaking rain from it as she did. Silver hair and gleaming gold eyes swept the room.

It might have been the blood, or it could have been the arsenal she wore. The bulge of heavy knives under the cloak were easy to see, as was the hilt of a sword with a well-worn grip. Her other accoutrements were back in the room she had stayed in the past few days. She would have to get them and her horse eventually, but so soon after yet another failed attempt by a bounty hunter, she did not feel comfortable returning.

Taking a seat at an empty table so that she could see the door to the kitchen and the entrance to the common room, she sat bolt upright with her arms crossed in front of her chest and waited. It did not take long before a boy - a teen, and as rough as the rest of the patrons and denizens of this part of town - came to take her order with only a hint of wariness.

"Water," she said in a clipped accent that practically carried dust from the desert on it. "Meat I will have and water will I have with it," she said. She reached into a coin purse at her waist and dug a handful of copper out and set it on the table.

"Water?" The boy seemed surprised. This place was a tavern, and it was usually beer that was asked.

"Drink in mixed company I will not," she said bluntly. "My coin, take and go."

After a moment, the boy shrugged and scooped up her money and left. She sat stiffly, eyes roving the room. It was not panic or fear that drove it. Merely readiness and awareness of her surroundings.

 

[Vandor Colton]

These swamplands were not pretty to the eyes. Not in the way some might think, at least. They were dark and dreary like today’s rain, no less grey, and the frames of structures were as treacherous as last night had proven. The water was no ocean, and the mosquitos might suck your blood like a vampire.

On the other hand, one might appreciate their reputation, the kind of escape they created, like prey hunted by predators. There was life here beside its inhabitants; wildlife, tamed or untamed, like birds that chirped or lizards that lurked the perimeter, cicadas in a choir.

The Shallows maintained a unique peace away from civilization, skirting its edges, shadowed in the outskirts of the greater city of Alliria. The swamps weren't so stagnant as some expected though. There was industry in these towns as much as misery and frowns when it came to today's storm.

This tavern, named The Marsh King’s Daughter, came with a story born for it. At this hour, certain patrons conversed over the building that had been built the previous morning only to sink into the deep that very evening. Others took to drinking, laughing and merriment, eating the rainy day away, or smoking.

Only, there was one person in their midst who didn’t really fit in so he maintained his distance. It wasn’t his appearance or that these humans and dwarves were beneath him. He was human too, was not short but could eat and drink with his own kind as much as dwarves. He wore armor of a simpler fashion; steel plate but grey over silver, worn by weather and having no squire to maintain it.

Sat in a corner, a tankard of ale on the tabletop. Sword and scabbard at his hip, shield on his back, black cloak draped over his person with hood raised, and a pipe between his lips, tobacco glowing bright that moment.

So, not so alien to this establishment, despite not being a resident. Not so different from the other sorts of persons. No ghost, no king, not by far. However, what set him apart was that those in his midst were just winding away, a number of them dockhands or smiths, fishermen and indifferent to him, he figured.

Yet this man who sat within them was a sellsword on a contract and, having glimpsed the newcomer’s entrance, taking note of her weapons and stained cloak, not just from the rain though, he trained his gaze on her the entire time.

Black eyes roved over her golden eyes and silver hair from the shadows. He didn’t sip his drink, just sat in silence, smoking slowly. No smoke rings. The haze was lazy. Nothing to show beneath the hood's rim over his face. Though, at that moment, if she was glancing his way even in passing, she might have noticed the way he peeked with that pipe between his teeth.

Sasha'niel

 

[Sasha'niel]

She waited in silence with the patience of a hunter. That aura of menace kept anyone from joining her table as effectively as brandishing a weapon would.

She found it difficult to be at ease just then. Arms crossed, eyes scanning. There was something in the air today that bespoke trouble. She trusted her instincts much more keenly than any Seer's warning and thus far that policy had paid well. She still had her skin more or less intact and her freedom in hand.

Her eyes drifted... and then cut back and sharpened on a man at a table in one of the corners of the room.

Unlike most of the patrons - whom were dockworkers, thieves, criminals, and general laborers - this man was clearly a warrior. And he was looking at her. She did not need to see through the gloom veiling his eyes to know he was looking at her; her scales itched at the attention. She pressed her lips into a disapproving line that clearly did not invite and stared back at him.

A plate slapped down in front of her, eliciting a grimace. "Your meal, lady," the youthful boy that had taken her order said. She felt a touch of chagrin that she had not noticed him approach. Her glass of almost clean water followed. The boy didn't stick around.

The scent of roasted pork struck her a moment later. She hadn't realized just how hungry she was until that moment; it had been a day or two since her last meal. Without any preamble, she picked up knife and fork and began to demolish her chops with quiet efficiency and a neatness out of keeping with a so-called savage.

All the while keeping an eye on the room in general, and the unknown warrior in specific.