Time: 4 days 16 hours 22 minutes
A feast was prepared at the tavern, its tables brought together for a community supper. What they had expected to be a jubilant affair instead became a somber repast. All of Wenderton gathered together, a meal of lamb, turkey, pork, squash, mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, finer eating than any of them had done in a long time, laid out on platters before them. But the day’s tragedy turned its flavor to ash.
With her appetite undiminished by grief, Nahlia tore through her full plate with gusto, nudging Joren beside her when she noticed his disinterest. “You need to eat,” she reminded him.
Indeed, the overlay confirmed this, reading minutes before his hunger ate away his own health. But he felt discomfort at the prospect of eating these villagers’ food in front of them when they could not bring themselves to eat.
A greater discomfort twisted in his stomach, overcoming the first. He lifted the turkey leg from his plate, sank his teeth into it, and ripped a chunk away from the bone. As the semi-chewed hunk of meat descended his gullet, the warning faded from his consciousness. His thoughts, hitherto knotted by food’s necessity, gradually arranged themselves into a more orderly stream.
He took this opportunity to orient himself. I’m in Eldaviir, in a little village outside Virii Forest, with four and a half days of life and a contract to murder five bandits that will allot me additional time once complete. Laid out thusly, it almost seemed reasonable rather than absolutely mad. Madness was witnessing the wholesale destruction of the world at the hands of one hubristic man. In contrast, a few numbers attending combat appeared quite rational. By extension, the design of the gods who instituted such a system, whereby alien warriors thinned creation, must follow logically. It was a logic inaccessible to Joren, and spending more than a handful of seconds in pursuit of its evasive reasoning would drive him into hysterics, but nevertheless he submitted to its ineffable sense.
Because the experience of gnashing juicy meat between his teeth, the warm comfort of its presence in his belly, the heat from the fire on his face, and the beauty of its light blooming and fading from the faces at the table with every gyration of its red-orange tongues collaborated to produce something greater than any of these individual sensations. Life, Joren knew from a decade in the suffocating presence of death, was priceless.
A fist slammed against the table, rattling the plates and silverware, their collective sound resonant with anger. Joren looked up from his meal to the angry young man, easily spotted as the only attendee besides Nahlia and himself with any color in his face. He passed his fiery glare around the table, between villagers who sought the meaning of his outburst. A few of them, upon feeling implicated in some yet to be revealed conspiracy, returned his glare with reproachful squints of their own.
“What is it, Henrik?” questioned a spindly woman seated halfway between him and Joren. Exasperation overshadowed sympathy. She did not look eager to address Henrik’s unrest.
Before Henrik had the chance to explain himself, Erik rose from his seat, stealing the room’s attention. “As fiance of the deceased, I think the responsibility falls to me to say a few words, especially given her loved ones all perished beside her.”
“Vivienne has yet one loved one who still draws breath,” muttered Henrik.
Erik stared daggers at his fellow villager before saying, “And let him expend it on a fond remembrance.”
Henrik kicked away from the table and stormed out of the tavern. A burst of light silhouetted him as he passed through the door, the full moon tracing his muscular frame with a thin line of silver. Then the door swung shut, and the funereal silence resumed.
Nahlia leaned into Joren. “Imagine that fellow harbored affections for the headless girl, too.”
He only cut his eyes at her in reply, in his glance both a recognition of the likelihood as well as a silent reproof. She glared, but fell silent.
Erik cleared his throat. “Vivienne possessed a limitless beauty…”
“You think she slept with both men?” Nahlia whispered to Joren as Erik droned on.
“I think these people have graciously invited us into their village and such conjecture is rude,” he replied, careful to keep his voice at a whisper.
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“You’re a curious sort. When we met, you were concerned about decency, then diplomacy, now manners.”
Joren finally turned to face her. “Is that so curious?”
Her eyes roamed his placid features, then replied, “For a warrior ferried between worlds for the express purpose of killing, yes. It is very curious. Had I not seen the aftermath of your battle with the bandits, I’d have thought Morrii made a mistake. But you practically split that one man like a log, so clearly a killer lives within you.” She planted her elbow on the table so that she could rest her chin atop the back of her hand. She leaned closer, her eyes flicking between his. “How’s that man live inside this one?”
A twinkle in her eye betrayed a fascination. But Joren didn’t have an interest in discussing the disparate modes he inhabited. Largely because he had never reconciled them. Instead, he said, “Careful with mysteries. When you pick at others’, you end up drawing attention to your own.”
A smirk upturned the corners of her mouth. “There’s no mystery here, Joren. I’m fairly naked with my motivations. Right now, I want to live. I want to stack my Time, then concern myself with money. Then, of course, comes power.”
Joren scoffed. “Is that all? Voracious little elf.”
Nahlia scowled. “All life consumes, Joren. Both its purpose and its pleasure.”
He considered debating her, positing that life offered more than appeasing appetites that would never be satisfied, but even the thought of endeavoring to sway her exhausted him. Joren sighed and returned his attention to Erik as he delivered the conclusion of his elegy. “...so let us raise our cups to their memory—” Tears sparkled in his eyes, emotion threatening to interrupt his speech, but he bit them back and raised his glass. The table acted in kind, Nahlia thrusting her cup into the air with such enthusiasm Joren assumed it to be sarcastic. “To the family Veckson.”
“To Vivienne Veckson!” Nahlia shouted.
To Joren’s relief, the villagers reacted to her toast as if it was wholly earnest. They drank. Joren sipped, Nahlia emptied her cup.
With a little help from the wine, the villagers gradually crawled out from beneath the pall that had fallen over them. A din of conversation filled the tavern. Though the denizens of Wenderton stole glances at their Morriim guests, none engaged them in conversation, seemingly too afraid. Nahlia noted their fear with a snicker while Joren tried to soften his appearance with a welcoming smile. By the end of the meal, the pasted grin achieved only an uncomfortable strain in his cheeks.
Samson led them back to his modest home where he showed them the accommodations meant for the Vecksons. It was a single bed in a room at the back of the house. He apologized for the fact it was the only free bed in Wenderton, “We don’t get many visitors, no reason to waste the materials on frames and mattresses.” Then he left them to sort the issue on their own.
Nahlia immediately stripped out of her clothes, piling them on the floor beside the bed. There wasn’t a trace of bashfulness in the pale elf as she stood nude before Joren. He tried to recall the last time he laid eyes on a woman’s body as his gaze carelessly wandered her breasts, abdomen, crotch, thighs. “Suppose that makes us even, hm?” she said, then slipped beneath the covers. She looked back at him, standing in the middle of the room. “Have you already forgotten what I told you of my past life? Take your clothes off and get in. Keep your prick pointed the other direction and we won’t have any problems.”
Joren removed his outfit, which was in fact old man Veckson’s outfit, and laid his weary body in the narrow bed beside Nahlia. Their sides touched and he was overcome by the warm smoothless of her hip and breast. He realized then that he had abandoned the thought of sex ages ago and its sudden reemergence made him aware of a deep ache. He could smell the woman beside him, the faint musk and feminine scent. His body tightened.
Nahlia’s eyes drew his attention to his arousal, pressing up against the blanket. “If you need to take care of yourself, just turn away and watch the elbow.”
“I’m fine.”
She scoffed. “That’s it, then.”
He furrowed his brow as he turned his head to look at her. Her blonde locks sopped up what little light the room contained. “What?”
“You bottle it up. Pack it down deep until you find the right moment, then you chop a man in twain.”
“Goodnight,” he said curtly and turned his back to Nahlia.
“Keep it to yourself, by all means, but I trust you never lose control of that beast hunched within you?” When he did not respond, she prodded the small of his back with her index and said, “Joren?”
“Are you trying to test my control presently?” he replied.
“Alright,” she said. “Don’t sleep too deeply, only a few hours. We ride out before dawn.”
Joren shut his eyes and opened them again after what felt like an instant but which his Time confirmed was more than three hours. The room was still dark, the village quiet but for the babbling river just outside Samson’s home. Nahlia had rolled into him, her breasts pressed beneath his shoulder blades, thighs up against the backs of his legs, slick with perspiration, flesh adhering to flesh. He felt her breath at the nape of his neck. Her arm crossed over him, hand laid over his abs, fingertips brushing his pubic hair.
“Nahlia,” he whispered in an effort to rouse her gently.
A jolt passed through her, causing her hand to clasp his abdominal muscles for one brief moment before slipping away from his body. She rolled onto her back without comment and plugged the balls of her thumbs into her eyes to scrub the sleep from them.
Joren turned to face her. Thoughts of her beauty fell silent beneath the growl of the beast within. “Time to go.”