Dallen held the rough cloak tight against his face as another cold gust battered against him. It was not a particularly cold night — the Shattered Heights never got as cold as the bitter north, not even in the dead of winter. But the winds here were always potent. This broken land lay in pieces like a smashed dinner plate, with huge chunks of land jutting up out of the earth or sinking down deep into it, all separated by steep cliffs. It made the wind seem to cut twice as hard and twice as fast, ricocheting off the huge stone walls and right into Dallen’s face.
This place had once been whole — a land of rolling hills, steep heights, and cliffs only where they were supposed to be. He supposed they weren’t called the Shattered Heights back then. The Whole Heights didn’t have the same ring to it. The Unshattered Lows, perhaps…either way, it made little use dwelling on it. The land was broken now. Just like the rest of the world — ever since two gods had decided to go on fighting each other, leaving everyone else to clean up the mess.
That was just how the world was: this region, once second only to the Empyreal Expanse itself in wealth and prosperity and haughty lords with lofty titles, now buckled and shifted and cracked whenever it felt like it, no matter how much the high lords and their wizards might command it to do otherwise.
Of course, that didn’t stop all the lords from still claiming that their land was still a place of prosperity and order, made in the true and perfect image of the Pattern itself. Dallen guessed they were all in denial — perhaps they would point at the cliffs of broken earth that towered above them and proclaim them gifts from the Pattern. More shade for their courtyards, on hot summer days.
A particularly potent gust hit Dallen like a kick from a mule, throwing him off balance. He tripped over the uneven ground and stumbled, just barely stopping himself from falling face first onto a stone. The wind let up for just a moment, and he was able to catch his breath.
Devils, but he was tired. He hadn’t realized just how bad it had been until he had stopped. Now, the thought of moving again filled his gut with a weary dread. His feet were sore and numb. His face burned from the constant wind. His shoulder ached dully where the cool, hard material of his right arm burrowed deep into his flesh. And his stomach grumbled, declaring its emptiness.
He’d lost track of how long he’d been walking. He did that a lot, these days. Walked and wandered, as if in search of something. Just trying to focus on moving. As if the next place he arrived at would somehow be any better than the last.
He knew it wouldn’t be. But he kept walking, regardless.
But now, across the cracked hills lit by a broken moon, he saw lights in the distance. A little pocket of them, huddled together. And looming over them, a modest castle silhouetted against the far cliffs. Dallen’s hand tightened on his cloak. The sight of a town filled him with a sort of dread. Anywhere that people were, there was likely to be some evil lurking underneath, or just out of sight. That was just how the world worked.
Dallen’s stomach rumbled again. It made a fair point: at least in a town, there would likely be some food. Maybe even a stiff drink. He needed one of those, and didn’t feel like breaking into any of the bottles he still had on him. Those were for special occasions. He’d find somewhere that would feed him, find somewhere to get a drink, and then…well, who cared what happened next. It’d probably be terrible, but at least he’d meet it with a full stomach. Or die trying to fill it.
Another breeze rushed from behind him; this one was warm, like a gust from a smith’s workshop. It was gentle, but resolute. It pushed him forward, and he caught himself with a step towards the town. Well, that was it decided, then. He wasn’t going to waste a good step changing directions now. Not with how his feet felt.
Dallen set off towards the lights.
----------------------------------------
Before he knew it, he was drunk again.
Dallen didn’t mean for it to happen; he rarely did. But the drinks here were strong, and despite tasting like water from a muddy puddle that someone had mistaken for a latrine, they kept finding their way into his hands. And this was apparently their best stuff, too. Served to him in a glass, like it was a fine brandy from the king’s own cellar.
It didn’t help his state of drunkenness that every time he looked around the tavern room, he felt the distinct urge to down another glass. It was fairly crowded, for a town this size. And people were going about their lives within. Discussing trivial things. Spilling their drinks. Stewing in somber sadness. Laughing at jokes. That’s what made it so hard though. All he could see when he looked around was a panorama of ill fates waiting to pass.
All of them in the room were doomed to one of them. But which would it be? The whole town burned by some terrible serpent? Raided by an army under the banner of some pointless cause? Blown to bits by a wizard’s spell gone wrong? Swallowed by the rogue Evergrowth? Perhaps the land itself would simply open up beneath them, as it was apt to do in this region, and send the whole town plummeting into the depths of the earth.
That was the way of the world now. The two great gods in all their infinite power and wisdom couldn’t find a damned way to coexist, and had to fight one another to prove who was better. Like two big ego-drunk men at a tavern. And the dumb bastards couldn’t even do that right; they had both gotten themselves killed in the process. And all the lands and people left over when the dust had settled were left with nothing but their corpses and the bloodied battlefield that was now the entire world.
Selfish jackasses.
Dallen pushed his long hair back over his forehead and raised the glass to his lips again, the last few drops of the dark brown liquor managing to mostly make it into his mouth. The rest landed in his unkempt beard, where they wouldn’t do him much good. He heard brash laughter from the center of the room. Men laughing, even though the world had already ended and was just waiting to catch up to them. There was something poetic in that, perhaps. Grimly inspiring, despite the harsh snorts and foul language that accompanied it.
Dallen set his drink down and heard a shattering sound. He tilted his head downwards to see the glass in pieces.
Shit. Still getting used to the arm, after all this time. It was unforgiving when it came to fragile things, and he was currently operating with a good deal less coordination than usual. He wiped the shards on the table, and began shifting his body, preparing to stand. Preparing his brain for the tilting dizziness that would come with it. Just one more drink, and that would be it for tonight.
As he rose, the room was filled with the sound of a body hitting the floor and wooden cups clattering. Dallen looked down, to make sure he wasn’t the one who had fallen. But no, he was standing just fine, arm braced against the table for support. The culprit was a man sprawled across the floor in the center of the room, clutching the back of his head. A bigger man stood over him, approaching slowly.
Dallen eyed the big fellow over. He walked with the sort of confident drunken swagger that could only belong to low-lifes in positions of power. From the assortment of armor and clothing — which was all good quality, but all mismatched — Dallen guessed he was a bandit of some sort. Probably in a decently successful gang, since he didn’t look like he had crawled straight out of a gutter and into this tavern.
He squinted to see the table behind the bandit. It came into focus slowly, the surroundings shifting and tilting into place. There was a whole big table full of them. Men of similar demeanors and with similar pieces of clothing and armor, all red-faced from drink and all watching the situation in the center of the room unfold with baleful amusement. But mixed within were other men, who looked much the same except for one important distinction: they wore a crude crest of the Pattern stitched into their tabards and shoulder capes. Town watch, then, mingling with the bandits. Dallen couldn’t say he was terribly surprised.
There was another player in this scene that Dallen was just now noticing; a woman, standing just to the side, not quite in between the bandit and the man on the ground. Pleading, it seemed.
“...didn’t mean nothing by it, good sir,” she was saying, voice shaking. “I swears it, he—”
“He was being awfully rude,” the bandit said, slurring and loud enough for the whole room to hear. His eyes had a sick glee, and he did not take them off of the man on the floor. “Not offering us a drink when we’re guests in this town.” He shook his head. “Ain’t none of you know a thing about hospitality, do you?”
The woman sputtered, unsure of how to respond or just too fearful. The men at the far table jeered and voiced their agreement, holding up empty mugs. A grin that could spoil appetites spread across the standing one’s face.
“In fact,” he continued, his own amusement growing, “I think the best way you can make up for it is to treat the whole table to a round.” The men cheered at that, slamming on the table to drive their assent home. “It would only be right, eh?”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
The woman looked distraught, but nodded her head.
“Aye sir, aye, it’s just…” Her eyes quickly widened with a growing panic. “Aye, it’s only fair, it just — we don’t have much in the way of coin, but we can give you, erm, that is—” Shaking hands fumbled with a small satchel as her words devolved further into nonsense.
The man on the floor had regained himself. He added his contribution to the conversation: a large glob of spit, right on the bandit’s shoe.
The whole room went deathly quiet, save for Dallen letting out a quiet sigh.
“Fuck off,” said the man on the floor. The words were spat almost as much as his previous input.
The bandit looked calmly at his shoe, wavering slightly, then lifted it up and slammed it directly into the man’s nose. There was a crack as his head hit the floor again, and the woman let out something between a choked scream and a whimper, stumbling to read out towards him.
The bandit casually battered her aside to send her tumbling, and leaned down to grab the man by his collar, pulling him in close. Blood was trickling down in a steady stream now from his flattened nose.
“Care to repeat that there, friend? I’m a little hard of hearing, you see.”
The man’s head rolled lazily, rising with some effort to face the bandit head on. Then he pursed his lips and spat out a healthy dollop of blood right into the bandit’s face. The bandit dropped him with disgust, wiping at his eyes.
Well. He had asked him to repeat himself, after all.
Dallen raised his glass, looking for a drink, only to remember that it was empty, and he had just ruined it moments before. All he had now was the base, with a few broken shards sticking up from the sides. That wouldn’t do.
The woman had regained herself and tried once more to rush in. The townsman himself decided to try a tactic other than spitting, raising a fist before he even brought himself fully to his feet. It was a pointless gesture. The bandit was bigger, more experienced, and uninjured.
So it went just as Dallen had expected: the bandit backhanded the woman away once more, took the man’s weak punch to the chest, and grabbed him by the throat. Then, the punches came, big meaty blows that gave little chance for the first man to respond, not even with another volley of spittle.
The room had grown restless now. There was shouting that Dallen couldn’t quite make out, much of it coming from the table full of the other bandits and guards. They looked around, savoring the experience, practically begging someone else to interfere. And in the center of the room, the big man roared with drunken fury now, the facade of joviality dropped completely.
“Fucking dog! Who do you think you are, you little weasel! You little fucking mud grub! You make me sick you weak—”
Dallen had been enjoying his night decidedly more when there was less commotion. And if he was going to listen to this shit-brained brute prattle on and stomp around the tavern like a drunken toddler, he would need another drink himself. He started towards the barkeep.
He was not three steps towards his destination when the whole tavern froze once more. The sudden shift made him stop, and he realized he was right in the middle of the room, drawing the focus of every pair of eyes.
A perimeter approach might have been a little better. But when drinks came in, strategy went out.
Dallen briefly considered how he must look at this moment. A stranger, cloaked in tattered clothing, standing alone in the center of a tavern mere moments from tearing itself to pieces. Maybe he would have looked like a hero, were it not for the slow wobbling that belied a drunken mistake more than an act of heroism. The thought of it made him laugh a little.
The bandit dropped the bloodied man and faced Dallen, head cocked sideways in irate disbelief.
“The hell are you doing, eh?” He stepped around the injured man, coming towards Dallen.
Dallen lifted his broken glass up casually in his left hand.
“Defective glass. Going to get a new one.” Devils, it was hard to talk straight. The words came out, just with effort.
The bandit’s eyes flicked towards the glass, then back towards Dallen. No reply. Dallen couldn’t blame him: talking was probably tough for one like him, and he had been doing quite a lot already tonight.
Dallen rocked his head towards the broken glass, grinning.
“You seem keen on buyin’ newcomers drinks, eh? How about you fetch me one.”
Dallen tossed the glass to the bandit. Well, in the cardinal direction of the bandit. It went wide and cracked against the floor, rolling slowly away. Probably for the best; it would have been hell to catch.
Dallen absently glanced down at his fingers, noticing that there were still some glass shards on them. He wiped them against his ratty cloak, and a few pattered softly against the stone floor. Almost sounded pretty.
Music of the Pattern, maybe. Dallen chuckled at the thought.
Something walloped Dallen on the side of his head, and the whole room flung into a wild, star-streaked spin. His feet moved and stumbled with no input from himself, and he slammed into a wooden beam that stopped him from ending up in a crumpled mess on the floor. His cheekbone flared with pain, and his head rang like church bells at noon.
Dallen tried desperately to reorient himself. While the punch had certainly set him alert, it had also sent the room spinning so rapidly that the focus did little good.
The bandit was approaching him, saying something stupid about how he was going to make Dallen pay, and what he was going to do to his face, and so forth. Devils, he had already gotten a solid punch in, and it proved a decent enough point. How many fights could be avoided if people could just leave well enough alone?
Then again, Dallen was one to talk.
His cloak was suddenly pulling him backwards, yanking at his throat and spinning him around. There was a tearing sound and the pressure released, sending him crashing onto a table. The patrons sitting at it scrambled away as best they could, spilling their drinks and food.
That was twice now that the furniture had saved his balance. And that was a new cloak he’d have to get. If Dallen were watching from the outside, he would have bet on the other man.
A voice, seemingly more sober than the rest of his thoughts, spoke with disdain in his mind.
Come on, you sad sack. You’re going to let this piss-poor excuse for a bandit beat on you? You’ve taken on ten times stronger than him a hundred times over. Show some damned spine.
Dallen gritted his teeth, the hard fingers of his right hand scraping into the wooden table. The spinning of the room seemed to slow. Senses seemed to come back to him. The bandit was still talking, so loud that Dallen could tell where he was even while facing away.
A hand grabbed him on the shoulder, spinning him. The bandit threw a haymaker with all his body weight, right at Dallen’s head.
Dallen ducked, planting his feet wide and solid into the ground. The man’s stomach bumped against his shoulder, then retreated as the big bandit stumbled back, thrown off balance. Dallen served an uppercut with all he could muster, connecting right under the chin.
It felt like punching through a melon. The bandit’s chin split and folded up into his mouth. His eyes were wide with surprise and unfocused, squinting at a distant nothing. A spray of broken teeth and blood shot out, arcing into the air as the man’s head jerked back with a sickening crunch, practically lifting off of his feet.
Then the bandit’s body crashed to the ground and was still.
Dallen stood, frozen. All eyes were on him. No…on his arm.
The loose, torn cloth of the sleeve had fallen away, revealing the arm underneath. Not flesh, but not the metal of armor either. It was a soft semi-luster more like ceramic. Slate grey and polished smooth. It was subtly stained with a dark, fractal pattern, and the fitted, interlocking pieces looked almost as if the arm had once been a solid sculpture that had conveniently cracked along and between the joints, rather than being assembled separately. Though Dallen had never known a thing that could even leave the slightest scratch on it. Under that hard outer shell, devils only know what magic and constructs of the Makers went on to make it move.
There was a moment of tense silence. Devils, was this tavern good for anything but silently gawping at every little thing he did?
Then the bandits started closing in on him. Perhaps he had been too quick to judge the still silence that had preceded.
Dallen let out another sigh, looking around. He’d left his sword by the table where he’d been sitting. That was stupid of him. These men had knives. Hand axes. Clubs, of both the smooth and spiked variety.
Dallen raised his fists. They would have to do. The right one could take — and deal — quite a beating, after all.
Four bandits, three town watch, closing in. Or…four town watch, three…
Dallen blinked, looking around. Why the hell did they all have to move so much? And so…whirly like.
Three. Three town watch. Four drinks in him. No… that wasn’t right, far more than four. Right? He must have—
Must have…
Dallen slumped against a table, and vomited onto the floor.
Doom on the bloody land, certainly far more than four drinks. His mouth burned worse than when he had been swigging the liquor, and tasted almost as bad.
He coughed, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. No matter. Temporary setback. He’d faced worse odds, he just had to—
Something clobbered him on the back of his head, and Dallen fell face first onto the hard stone floor.
Then, all went blissfully dark.