Private Tales The Shadows of Destiny

[Keyleth]

Keyleth noticed the odd discrepancy of the rather poor village, but the elegant jewelry that the inhabitants wore. Did they get the stones and ore from the dwarven ruins? It made sense, which was an intriguing quirk of the little village.

Reluctantly, she followed along behind Nasir as they moved off towards the inn.

She wasn't sure why the man decided that he wanted to rest all of the sudden... but it stood to reason that he just wanted a comfortable bed before he tried to raid the town.

"And just how long are you planning on staying here then?" She asked him.

 

[Nasir]

"A single night will do well enough." Nasir already had his suspicions about this place, but he wanted to confirm things before they returned to the others.

The townspeople watched them carefully from perches inside windows and behind fences, some of the children waved and stared, but most folk simply went about their business. Oddly enough Nasir saw no signs of produce or meat, at least not in the form of a market.

Lips thinned, but eventually they reached the Inn.

It was a run down thin, the wooden walls half falling down and the ceiling slightly curved into the building itself. Nasir glanced up towards it, then shook his head and motioned for Keyleth to follow inside.

The inside was better than one might have guessed, well carved furniture and a roaring fire made the place feel almost homely. Half a dozen patrons sat around tables, but Nasir quickly crossed the room and spoke to the Innkeeper. "We need a room."

 

[Keyleth]

Keyleth was left alone for a brief moment while Nasir went to speak with the innkeep. She swept her gaze over the simple room, offering a tired smile to anyone who she made eye contact with. Truthfully, she didn't have the spirit or energy to pretend to be happy. Exhaustion and despair were cancer to the soul.

She'd lost her home, her daughter, her lover, even her dignity. What did she have left? Spite? It wasn't much, but at least it was something.

A small part of her wondered how long spite would carry her onwards.

Once Nasir returned with the key to the room in hand, she snapped her attention back to him and the facade of a smile fell from her lips. She certainly couldn't be bothered to be friendly with him.

"Right... After you then."

 

[Nasir]

Nasir gave a false tilt of his head in deference, then turned towards the hallway.

Out of the corner of his eyes he could see the Innkeeper watching them. His gaze was one of greed. Briefly he wondered how such a man had managed to run an Inn, usually that sort ended up as salesman rather than in hospitality.

Not giving it too much thought the Drow maneuvered himself and Keyleth down a narrow hallway towards the last door at the end of a row of six.

The key slipped into the lock easily enough, and as the door opened a room about as unremarkable as anything could be revealed itself. Lips thinned for a brief moment, and he had to keep himself from scowling. How he missed the accommodations of home.

"You can have the bed." Nasir told Keyleth as he deposited his things on a large chair in the corner.

 

[Keyleth]

Keyleth glanced around the room momentarily, suddenly realizing how long it had been since she'd seen a proper bed. She ached to lounge on the mattress until the end of time, but her pride kept her from immediately running over to it.

Instead, she paced around the small room for a moment and then settled onto the mattress.

Her eyes locked into Nasir, narrowing slightly.

"What are we doing here?"

 

[Nasir]

For a few moments Nasir did not answer Keyleth's question.

Instead he looked around the room. Keen eyes folded over mirrors, furniture, the floor, and even the ceiling. It was the last place he looked that he spotted what he was looking for, small speckles of blood that had not been cleaned.

"Watching." He answered finally.

He had absolutely not illusions about himself. The last two hundred years of his life had been spent killing, destroying, and doing whatever it was he liked. He was not a good person, nor would he ever be.

Nasir believed that morality in the eyes of Humanity was worth less than horse shit.

Yet his suspicions of this town were growing darker and darker.

"The Dwarven City was thriving the last time I was here." He stated bluntly. "Many years ago. Now it's just these people."

 

[Keyleth]

She sighed quietly and pulled her hair down to run her fingers through the tangled locks. How long had it been since she'd had a proper bath? Weeks?

Shaking her head, she started to braid the long tresses into a simple plait that fell over her shoulder. She quietly listened to Nasir talk about the village and the old Dwarven city.

"And how many years ago was that?" She asked in a low voice, arching a brow at him.

It wasn't surprising to hear that humans had run the dwarves off, or perhaps slaughtered them. Violence was to be expected from them.

 

[Nasir]

"I'm not sure." He admitted truthfully. "Years."

His lips pursed. "Decades."

The face he wore looked as though it had survived decades, so that wouldn't seem too off. At least he thought so.

Human age was always difficult for him to judge, particularly with the children. Briefly he wondered if he should stay silent more, but this face was beginning to itch at him. A part of him tired of the disguise. Nasir wanted it broken.

"I wonder what they did with them." He mused as he sat himself down.

 

[Keyleth]

The unique populace of Minaris meant that Keyleth was accustomed to a life amongst humans, elves, and everything in between. Her late husband had been human. She'd watched as time ravaged his aging body, the thin lines at the corner of his eyes, the creases along the side of his mouth.

He hadn't been elderly, not by any stretch of the imagination, it could be argued that he'd been struck down right at the acme of his prime.

Nasir's appearance may have fooled the humans that he kept around him; but she noticed the little details that could only be learned through centuries.

"Killed them, likely." She said in a low voice, shaking her head.

"Do you care?"

 

[Nasir]

"I do." The dwarves were not his kin, but they had helped his people in dark times. Long before Nasir had been born, but his peoples memories were long and they instilled them within their young.

He still remembered those stories.

So much of his life had been spent in exile, he felt an almost familiarity with the dwarves that had been driven from their homes. It made it almost worse that it was humans who had done this. The parasites who infected the earth.

His lips raised in a slight snarl. "It is in their nature."

He said more to himself than her.

 

[Keyleth]

With another sigh, Keyleth fell onto her back on the bed, hands clasped over her belly as she continued to stare up at the ceiling. She wasn't tall enough for her feet to reach the floor from this position, so she lightly kicked then against the bedframe.

"Their nature? Humans you mean?" She asked, rather casually.

It was a small detail she picked up on that sparked her interest. Nasir wasn't human, she knew that much... But what was he? And why was he pretending to be one?

 

[Nasir]

He had said too much.

His tongue was getting loose in his middle years. Perhaps nostalgia was simply getting the better of him. Remembering a time when exile had not seemed to bad, when his time free on this earth had not been as dower.

Fingers tightened, and somehow he appeared above Keyleth. Before she could move a hand clasped over his mouth, and Nasir's face hovered over her. For a brief second his skin shifted, a lash of purple light floating over his eyes. "Enough."

His voice was stern.

"Sleep now." In a sudden wave Keyleth would feel a wash of indescribable drowsiness, as if a spell was falling upon every part of her being.

 

[Keyleth]

She recognized the magic for what it was, her cry of protest muffled by the hand that was clamped over her mouth. Her eyes went wide for the briefest of moments before the magic settled over her body like a miasma.

As badly as she wanted to strike out at him, she couldn't bring her arms to move. Instead, sleep sounded far more enticing.

She slowly blinked up at him and then the tension ebbed out of her muscles. And her eyes rolled shut, passing out as the spell took hold.

 

[Nasir]

As soon as the spell overwhelmed Keyleth’s senses Nasir took a step away from the bed.

His tongue had been far too loose. It was his time spent with the simpletons in his band, the forlorne feeling that was slowly entering his soul. For so long he had given up on home, but now...now that was beginning to change.

Nasir did not know why the feeling had suddenly struck him. Perhaps words of waywardness, the thought of putting himself back where he truly belonged.

The raiding and marauding was growing tiresome. He needed something more, he needed to return to where he belonged. Fingers tightened for a moment, and then he moved to the corner of the room. A short few words were said, and Nasir himself seemed to face.

It was a few hours later that the door opened, soft bootsteps creeping in.

 

[Keyleth]

Her dreams were not restful. Golden lights danced in darkness. A blood red tide crashing against a white sand shore. Her daughter covered in gore, lying motionless on the beach.

Behind her, a Leviathan loomed in the distance. Ivory scales torn, but glistening in the morning light. Death hung in the air.

Everything jumbled together and she felt lashes of pain, mind-rending stabs of magic.

A tragic, overwhelming sense of loss suffocated her. As if part of her soul had been torn asunder.

Keyleth woke with a visceral scream, bolting upright and clutching at her chest with one hand.

She didn't even realize someone else was in the room with her.

 

[Nasir]

The figure that hung over her seemed startled.

It's silhoutte half jumped back as Keyleth rose from her bed with a loud scream, the outline of a small knife reflecting within the subtle moonlight shining in through he window. It stood there, shocked as Keyleth screamed.

Then suddenly it let loose a guttural noise.

An edge of something pierced through the silhouettes garb, a figure of all black sprouting behind the man that had been standing back Keyleth. There was a loud wrenching noise, the splatter of blood onto the floor, and then a clatter as the ragdolled corpse fell onto the floor.

Nasir stood over Keyleth, his true form flickering for only a brief moment before the mask he wore reappeared within the dark and he leaned into the moonlight. "He did not wound you."

It was not a question, but a statement.

Her scream was from something else.

 

[Keyleth]

Sweat covered her brow and she could feel her clothes clinging to her skin. Each breath was a labored burst and every fiber of her being screamed in agony. It took her several moments to realize where she was and what had just happened in front of her.

She had not even recognized the threat looming over her until Nasir spoke.

Gritting her teeth together, Keyleth wrapped an arm around her stomach and grimaced.

"Vasherah..." She whispered the name through tight lips, her hair falling into her face. Tears stung her eyes and she rapidly shook her head. A part of her soul had just been slaughtered.

She swallowed hard and reluctantly turned her pale blue gaze to Nasir. "What... what happened?"

 

[Nasir]

"The Innkeeper." He looked down at her with keenly interested eyes.

There was clearly something wrong with her beyond being scared my a knife wielding peasant. He couldn't quite place it, but there was an air of bite to her, hesitation that seemed to cling to the very air. Something was bothering Keyleth.

Lips thinned for a brief moment, but he continued. "He intended to kill and rob us."

That was his guess anyway.

"But." Nasir leaned close to her. "I do not think that is what troubles you."

 

[Keyleth]

Slowly, Keyleth regained her composure but the ache in her chest remained. She wondered if it would be a permanent scar of what just occurred, it was likely.

Exhaling a shaky breath, she pressed herself against the wall to support herself as she closed her eyes. She needed a moment to process what she'd experienced; but there wasn't any time. Nasir was there, pressing her with unasked questions.

It was ironic that someone tried to rob and kill him. A bitter laugh escaped her throat and she shook her head.

"It was just a dream." She lied, not feeling as though she had any reason to explain the truth to him -- especially considering the secrets he kept.

 

[Nasir]

"Ah, a dream." He smiled, knowing that it was not the whole truth.

Keyleth had dreamed before while in camp, and although the reactions had been bad, they had never been that bad. His eyes cast down at her, lips thinning for a brief moment as he considered pressing her for more information.

"I don't dream anymore." Nasir said suddenly. "Not for a long while."

Centuries now. "Not si-"

As he spoke a voice outside in the hall cut him off.

"Geoff, you get em?"​

 

[Keyleth]

Keyleth's eyes snapped to the door and she tensed slightly. She hated that she was so vulnerable. Without a weapon to properly defend herself, she was forced to rely on Nasir's ability to fight -- unless she could get a blade of her own in the chaos.

She glanced to Nasir and arched a brow.

As much as she loathed to admit it, they would need to work together in this situation. Her expression made it clear that she was waiting to see what his next move would be.

 

[Nasir]

He said nothing, instead his head half turned as he heard footsteps coming down the hall.

"Wh-"​

Before a word could even leave the strangers mouth Nasir threw the odd long knife in his hand directly behind him. There was a guttural sound as the blade stabbed through the man's throat, throwing him back and pinning him to the far wall.

The movement had been fast, faster than any man should have been easily capable of. Nasir's fingers unfurled, and he stepped over to the Innkeepers corpse as the man pinned to the wall struggled, his blood spilling slowly from the wound in his throat.

"Here." He said as he offered Keyleth the small knife their assailant had been carrying.

 

[Keyleth]

The offer of the blade was a surprise, and Keyleth wasn't sure what to make of it. Her initial instinct was suspicion. She curled her fingers around the short hilt, nevertheless, and took the weapon from him.

Her eyes flicked to the dying man against the wall, and then back to Nasir.

"You and I are going to have a conversation after this." She said simply, and then moved out into the hallway.

She didn't know where Nasir intended to go, but she did not plan to sit around and wait for the entire village to come swarming into their small room. If she was going to be fighting, she wanted space to maneuver.

 

[Nasir]

"We've been conversing this whole time." Nasir pointed out as he stepped into the hallway and grasped the handle of his long knife.

With a single swift wrench he pulled the blade free, sending the man crumpling to the floor as a bloody mess. He lingered for a brief moment, stepping on the soon to be corpse as he walked towards the lobby of the Inn.

Beyond the corner of the hall he could hear two voices.

They spoke quietly enough that even he could not make out their words, but it was clear to him they were more of the villagers. Nasir half turned back to Keyleth, motioning towards the corner and raising two fingers.

 

[Keyleth]

Blade in hand, Keyleth's entire demeanor seemed to shift. Her eyes narrowed as she prowled towards the door, knees slightly bent as if prepared to leap forward in a moment's notice. A fight was something she could handle -- though her injuries from Nasir's attack a few weeks prior still ached.

She held her breath, listening intently by the doorway for the briefest of moments.

Had it just been the innkeeper that came for them, she might have let the others live. But it was clear there'd been some sort of scheme hatched, and the locals intended to kill her.

Not but a few hours prior, she would have considered letting them do it... but now that she knew Aviana was alive she had purpose. No backwater graverobber was going to stand in her way.

She gestured to the left, indicating she would move in that direction to Nasir, and then she rushed through the doorway.