Fable - Ask The First Hearth

[Zyndyrr K'yoshin]

Spoiler: Music IC

From drum to fiddle, the tavern of The First Hearth by the Spine was filled with music to bring it to life this night. The musicians needed little help with this in the middle of its lively patrons. Some were drunk enough to dance with or without a band. Others were too busy in their chatter to pay the instruments any heed, but such was the atmosphere; there when you consciously wanted it, there when your subconscious simply needed it in an establishment like this.

However, amid the music of musicians, the chatter of chittering teeth from men and women and the clinking of cups and platters from servers, there was a different tune altogether that perked the ears of one man. He listened from a distance, sat on his lonesome for the moment with the stool on either side of him having no guest beside his person.

He heard the bartender deliver a beer to someone further down the counter; the heavy mug slid like a blade scraping across rock. He smelled the smoke of tobacco as it drifted up his nose from a nearby patron. He tasted the nectar of his red wine or what passed for it amid its vinegar aftertaste. He watched the wall across the counter, shifting on his stool in his cloak as if to pull himself closer, but there was no escaping this room through a window made of paint.

The buck runs, Zyn. His father once mentioned to him. All you have to do is drop it with an arrow. There in their underground jungle. Approach the injured beast, my son, take your blade and steal its soul with one scrape. Though, as Zyndyrr K’yoshin studied the painting of an antelope behind the bar—coat black as onyx and on it were birds—he wondered if flaying a creature like this was much the same as flaying a person when it came his father.

Zyn blinked the thoughts away, took another sip of his wine, licked his lips and dipped his head. His hood was pulled away from his face, revealing his silver mane and charcoal complexion, pinning him for a drow, not that it mattered what his audience thought of him anyhow.

However, his ears pricked, head tilted to the music, basking in its glow like the buck does to the sunlight. Firelight danced from behind in the tavern’s great fireplace, the band off to the side, but all Zyndyrr heard was the tune from that hearth. Hold the drum, the violin, as he listened to the flames that blazed away.

“I remember the words,” he whispered to no one in particular. He had heard this song more than once before. “And the dance that becomes dust.”

Dread (Demolly)