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.

 

[Vandor Colton]

Vandor's lips, hidden under a cloak of shadow, didn’t shift from his tobacco pipe’s bit. His eyes, though, glowed under the burn and the smoke. Her lips were a rigid line as her eyes glimpsed his.

The woman witnessed the man that was watching her. It was obvious, like the flame of the fireplace, yet the latter was wanted. The former? Either way, he did not break his gaze, and she did not look away.

So the lone patron who observed this strange person from his seat maintained his position, didn’t leave, didn’t flinch. He watched. He listened. A stranger himself as well, he was presented with an opportunity to step toward her as she ate, even bring his tankard and pipe over, but didn’t. He simply gave her his eyes and another patron nearby who came closer to her.

“Where’s a pretty thing like you get knives like those?” A man carrying a tankard of his own asked as he approached her. Silver hair. Gold eyes. Hers was a sharp if scarred visage, more or less, but hardly less beauteous because of it. For some, even more.

“I love a lass with a sword,” the other man burped. “How about I buy you a drink to coat your throat then we can dance?” He licked his lips. “And you can tell me about the boar you gutted to get that blood on your cloak.” At that, even bolder, he placed a hand on her shoulder.

Sasha'niel

 

[Sasha'niel]

Her eyes only shifted at the unexpected words, cutting to the stranger approaching. Unwelcome, unwanted. She did not stop eating with that meticulous manner of hers. "Bought them, I did." she said around a mouthful of pork. Her tone was cool at best. She could smell the scent of alcohol rolling off his breath.

This was precisely why she herself did not drink. All sense and caution flew out the window when spirits were added into the mix.

She grunted in reply to his first comment and gave a mirthless grin at the second. "Only one dance I know," she said. "You would not li-"

She cut off mid-sentence, fork and knife still in hand. A veil had fallen across her eyes the moment he laid a hand on her shoulder, eyes skewering him where he stood. "Do not," she began in a wintery voice as hard as steel, "touch me. You will take your hand and go." She remained frozen in place.

Instinct warred with caution. The so-called civilized world frowned on many things. She offered this drunk the grace to walk away in one piece. "Your hand and go, attached or not. Your choice."

 

[Vandor Colton]

The drunken patron and poor excuse for a man just watched and listened to this woman who spoke back to him, as if the uncanny thing had just happened, and he could not particularly conceive of such a turn in this conversation. It was as if his very attempt to win her over was swept away like a leaf in the wind at that very moment and to say that he was displeased would be an understatement.

Honestly, one other patron who watched the scene unfold had expected that this man had since already taken his toll with his manner and words and that blades might follow. However, the lady was patient if no less expectant. She waited for the drunkard to take his tankard and leave her presence, immediately, as her tone inflected.

“No,” the rude individual spoke. He didn’t let go. He just looked cross yet he evidently did not know the person he had crossed paths with. “I think you need a lesson in manners, lass, and I aim to teach thee.” His fistful on her shoulder remained as he waited.

Sasha'niel

 

[Sasha'niel]

She smiled, but it was nothing of amusement or kindness. More like baring her teeth. The canines were longer than a human would have and echoed the distant tie to draconic bloodlines somewhere deep in the past.

She stood suddenly and precisely, angling her body so that the crown of her head would smash into the man's nose. He was not much taller than she was. Even as she did that, she twisted in his painful grip. Her hands took hold of him at the wrist and the upper arm. After the bone-crunch of her head slamming into his face she dropped her center of gravity and with the ease of long practice, she threw him.

Had she not stunned him and sent blood spraying from his nose, or had the form and flow of her actions been even slightly off... Well, they weren't. She was slighter than he, but that didn't matter in some martial arts. His feet came off the ground, and she slammed him into the floor, breaking a chair with his body as she did.

Half a second later, she had driven a knee into the soft spot under his ribs. She hadn't let his arm go, and the flesh was white where she gripped it as she twisted it round. With a gasp of pain and surprise despite the explosive expulsion of breath, he was left with the choice of rolling onto his face or having his shoulder dislocated for him.

"A lesson in honor, for you. And boundaries too, yes?" She levered his arm further, sinew and cartilage creaking. Blood pooled from his broken nose. "If let you go I do, behave you will?"

The man nodded frantically, a wordless mewl of pain his only answer. Tears welled at his eyes.

"See that you do," she said. She let the arm go and it flopped bonelessly to the floor. Before she straightened, though, she delivered a merciless blow to his right kidney with a flattened fist. The bastard gagged and choked at the pain of it and his other injuries. He was still alive, though. Small blessings. "For the presumption, that was. The rest for your hand where it was not desired."

She stepped over him and took a different seat at the same table, shifting her plate and glass of water to where she now sat. There was no amusement nor smug arrogance at the quiet and decisive dismantling of the man. It wasn't even business. Just a matter of every day, for all she showed.

 

[Vandor Colton]

Some folks came to taverns simply to eat, drink, kick back and relax with a pipe between their fingers, exchange conversation, or even for live music. There wasn’t much of the latter but plenty of the former. Others? They came for a different kind of entertainment altogether.

Vandor hadn’t. Nevertheless he got it just then. It was a kind of surprise attraction and everything that preceded his entrance led up to this main event. He didn’t have to do anything but sit back, blow tobacco smoke, watch and listen. There were no jesters, no musicians, but one bloke was a joke and one lady was the one breaking his bones, more or less.

Oh. That nose though. If he was being honest, even for a sellsword, he had hoped for something like this to happen. Under the rim of his hood, he cocked a brow at how the woman sprung from her seat and threw the man to the floor, using his own momentum against him.

She was quick with her fist, just as merciless, and when that chair splintered into fragments, taking the entire tavern’s attention, Vandor decided it was time to sip his tankard. He licked his lips with a satisfied sigh, listened quietly as her words served her aggressor an offer. And what a lesson in honor it was.

Oof. The barkeep looked indifferent. The drunken patron didn’t even get up, just lay there writhing and moaning for some moments. The sellsword got up though as the silver-haired lady sat back down to finish her dinner. Tankard in one hand, pipe between his fingers, Vandor stood parallel from her at the other side of the table.

He didn’t wait, didn’t seek her gaze, didn’t gesture to alert her first, but simply pulled the chair back. Its legs scraped across the floor and, unless he was stabbed, the man sat down. Smoke drifted from his lips, lifted toward the ceiling and away from her face as he gazed her way. From this distance, even with the hood, there was no shadow in his visage as he met her golden irises with his blacks.

“So…” His gaze roved over her person, but it wasn’t lecherous, just observant. “Where does someone like you get moves like those?” He spoke in a confident tone, but not overconfident, he hoped, and not one to mock with.

Sasha'niel

 

[Sasha'niel]

She was keenly aware of the conversation around her. It would appear that this day, drubbing a patron would not result in wider violence. The keeper looked on in indifference despite the fact she had destroyed one of his furnishings. Probably wise, that.

The scrape of a chair caused her to pause in the act of cutting another bite. She let out a breath that could have been annoyance or could have been resignation. Her eyes locked on him, implacable. She ran her own over him in the same assessing manner. What she thought did not reflect in her face.

"The Sea, it does not favor the weak." She continued finishing her meal, gold scales gleaming on her arms. They thickly coated the top of them such that it looked like a lizard's skin, but they faded to a scale here and there on the underside. That which was not covered in scale was the same bronze as the flesh of her face. "The Seven do not, either." She turned to one side and spat at speaking their name, just missing the prone bastard who only now was getting to his knees.

"Why?" She took up the wooden cup and drank deeply of the water, eyes on him. Hard eyes.

 

[Vandor Colton]

At that, she ate. Alas, he had no plate. He had already eaten anyway. The ale served its purpose, a malty aftertaste, and the pipe was a fine finish with chocolate notes in the tobacco. He sat as relaxed as he was when his back was to the wall. The subtle difference was, if she managed to pick up the hint, his position suggested someone who realized there was no longer a wall to hide his flank.

The sea does not favor the weak. He repeated inside his mind at least. His eyes? They squinted as subtly as his hips shifted in his seat when someone walked past behind him, though he didn’t turn to glimpse. Instead, his gaze was measured with her face, unwavering. The Seven do not either. He might have taken her for a certain Nordenfiir reaver or one of religious fervor but would have been mistaken. The spit from her lips suggested no zealous patron.

She sipped her water. “It isn’t every day that someone enters this tavern with the ability to maim with restraint to murder and, given your speed and agility…” He sipped from his tankard. “I wonder whether the Seven and the sea trained an assassin.”

Sasha'niel

 

[Sasha'niel]

She did not relax. It was quite clear that she did not ever relax her guard. There might have been a question as to why. Many times, the people of the cities and further abroad could not understand a world where every danger was explicit and ever present.

She set her cup own deliberately, maintaining her stiff posture. "The Sea of Grass, it winnows the weak. Of finer stock I may be, but the No'rei have many like. Stronger there are, too." She gave a disdainful sniff at the very idea of an assassin. "Regardless. No honor there is in killing without knowing. A chance all must have. Even if chance it is, only."

She leaned forward, eyes intent. "Answer my question you have not. Why?"

 

[Vandor Colton]

Sea of Grass. Aha. Whether he knew it already, the No’rei were the people of the Sea of Sand and Grass native to the Aberressai Savannah. Theirs wasn’t so much an ocean as a grassland with a collection of clans that shifted with the wind and the waves and no mistake.

“Stronger is just about the word for any culture that wants to live longer than its inception.” He twisted his lips, debating whether to take another sip, but didn’t break his concentration. “The Father.” He held up his thumb, counted down his fingers. “Five T’s and then some, if I remember right.” He sighed. “Or is it six?” The man could not remember the pantheon. Perhaps.

“You sit in a tavern of simpletons,” Vandor answered, sitting back even as she leaned forward. Eyes into eyes. “And the occasional idiot who deserved no less than what you gave him, I imagine.” He shrugged.

“Color me curious as to what brings someone of your caliber to the outskirts of Allira, on swampland town, to The Marsh King's Daughter whose bartender is cursed with a permanent frown.” Sure, there were others who shared her presence that had deft hands, though she didn’t know his own. “In the shadows of the Shallow.”

Sasha'niel

 

[Sasha'niel]

Her lips thinned into a line. "Strong we are, if misguided by false gods." There was a hint of anger in her words that was not directed at the stranger across from her. "As dust on the wind are their names. Their words, they paint pretty colors in the air. But empty as the wadi in summer."

She sat ramrod straight again, her back not against the chair at all. It might have been prim and proper if she wore a dress but had come from a different culture. Taken with the warrior culture she had been born too, it painted a very different picture.

"To be alone did I come here," she said bluntly. "Those there are that do not appreciate me or my kin. I seek peace, but find it I do not." She grinned, the same toothy grin that was more in keeping with a predatory carnivore than a human. Someone of your caliber was noted and dismissed - mostly. She was by nature a prideful creature. All of her kin were. It was the driving force behind their violence and prickly sense of honor. It was those very traits that haunted her, however. "Chained to the ghosts of before, I am. Their rattling will not cease no matter where go I. Their number, it but grows as their kin come to collect that which they cannot."

It wasn't plaintive, nor was it a complaint. Simply a statement of how things were. She could not blame those that wanted her head; in their shoes, she would have sought to redress the balance as well.

She was just better at evening the field than they.

 

[Vandor Colton]

Spoiler: It's The Audiophile In Me

Strong, she was, as proven. Misguided by false gods and prophets, she was not, as far as he had viewed it. Anger delivered, yet her gesture was not given in any insincere way; was not taken for anything more than a misbegotten inhabitant of culture and custom; or any less for a woman who had just been mistaken for a whore in a tavern by a drunken patron beaten like a bested badger.

Tankard in one hand, pipe in the other, Vandor sat silent, quiet of tongue except when to split his lips and utter words in response. Yet it was not a riposte as if this man and this woman were in some duel of diction. She had a certain accent to her language and pronunciation to her words but so did anybody, really.

Her vocabulary was poetic, in comparison to his, at least. Oh, Vandor loved a good poem—just ask Ostrum Brandish—but to express its sentiment was not his gift, so he simply listened, as dust on the wind. Question given, answer returned, though hers burned with fervor, even if she might try to hide her passion like a blade in a sheath over a snake in the weeds.

“You have an appreciation for riddles, I see.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop as if to fiddle. “Truly, nobody comes to a tavern to be alone.” That much was obvious, he thought.

“Chained to ghosts?” Tobacco smoke drifted from his lips, escaping his nose, purposed to permeate a different direction than her gaze. “Sounds to me like you belong in a graveyard instead of a tavern.”

Vandor made no attempt to safeguard his position after his words, but he was his own vanguard in case the worst happened and his blade needed to be drawn. If not? Call it a prickly sense of humor over honor.

Sasha'niel

 

[Sasha'niel]

Something like chagrin flickered across her hard face, there and gone like a summer storm. "True," she replied. "For food and water to here did I come. In the city, no peace or solitude."

She might be a warrior and might not be a poet, but she was literate. Not everything the soft-skinned people outside the Sea did was meaningless and trite. Just most of it. Books were a fascination - take thoughts and putting them to paper to be kept for others far beyond one's life.

She barked a laugh at his statement. "Tried, many have." She indicated herself with her free hand, water in the other. Clearly, she was pointing out that she was still there, alive and more or less well. "Failed, they all have." Her eyes narrowed and she leaned forward. When next she spoke, it was in a quiet voice that did not carry far. "Such interest. Seek the coin that bloodless cowards would pay rather than face me themselves?"

Nothing about her changed, and everything did. An edge of readiness lay beneath the surface. There was no malice or fear. Fear had been bled from her years ago. It was a miracle that she still breathed as old as she was.

Especially as an outcast and pariah.