Since I had decided to bum around the adventurers guild for the night I had to order something. I walked up to one of the desk/bars that didn’t have many people at it. It didn’t seem to have a menu so I just asked what they had to eat. “What can I order?”
“Well we have a lot of alcohol and some side dishes to go with the alcohol,” said the young bartender. I cringed at the talk of alcohol. I had always heard horror stories of Treants dyeing at the hand of alcohol.
“What side dishes do you have?”
“Well we have assorted nuts, onion rings, and pretzels.”
“I’ll have the onion rings.”
“That will be 2 Copper just sit at any table and your food will be brought out.” I thank the man and try to find an empty table. I’m not that fortunate thought, and settle for a table with one other person sitting down.
Most of the people in the bar and merry, but the person on this table was very glum and looked drowned in their drink.
“Mind if I sit here?” I asked.
“Sure go ahead. Not like anyone else will sit there,” she said almost angry about it.
I sat down at the table. Other tables were crowded with many people standing, but it didn’t look like anyone would want to sit down at this table because of this girl’s atmosphere. I wasn’t confident enough to start a conversation with this depressive person and my food was taking a while so I decided to practice my flute some more. I still wasn’t very good, but I didn’t care who heard me. The last thing Herold taught me was a short little song. I hadn’t had much time to practice it and I was tired of the scales so I started playing the short melody that Herold taught me.
♬ ♫ ♩ ♩ ♫ ♩ ♫ ♬...
I played the tune once through before I realized that it was the only sound in the guild. When I saw that everyone was staring at me I stopped playing.
“I’m sorry I’m still not very good.” I hung my head in shame. To think I was so bad that everyone was shocked silent.
“Hey kid start playing again we were about to hit the chorus,” said a big man with a bigger drink.
“Huh?” I muttered. What was this guy talking about?
“What? You were playing a drinking song. More so it's my favorite drinking song. So go ahead start playing again.”
“I’m sorry I only know that much.”
“HAHAHAHA kid you know all of it. After all it just repeats after that. So come on play your heart out.”
I was encouraged by the burly man and started playing again. This time people started singing right away. The burly man was right the chorus and verses changed, but the short melody I was playing just repeated the entire time. Everyone in the bar was singing together. After a while everyone stopped singing, but I continued playing not realizing that the song had ended. When I finally realized the song was over I embarrassedly looked away towards my newly arrived onion rings. Everyone briefly laughs at my mistaken continuation of the song before returning to their previous conversations.
I was looking down at my onion rings starting to regret ordering them. I expected them to be mostly onions with a bit of fried oil covering them, but you couldn’t even begin to see the onion under the fried oil. I wasn’t hungry and only order them to stay the night, but they still looked awful.
“Do you think adventuring is some kind of joke?” I looked up to see that the other person at my table was looking up at me for the first time. She was very pretty by human standards, but she had long ears characteristic of an elf so I wasn’t sure how pretty she was by their standards. “Only adventures are allowed to eat here. The whole point is to meet other adventures and create ties that can help you on quests. You don’t have any weapons on you, and you seem to like music better than adventuring so I’ll ask you again. Do you think that adventuring is some kind of joke? Like anyone can do it?” the elf said.
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“I’m an adventurer because of a quest from the Goddess of Nature, and I use music as a weapon so it's good that I’m this good at music.” I said a little peeved at her insult.
“Ok I must have had too much to drink. I could have sworn you said that you use music as a weapon,” the elf said before taking another sip.
“You heard right I use music as a weapon.”
“If that's true then I have got to see it.”
“Me too,” the burly man from earlier walk up behind me and asked to see my ability along with the elf.
“I would like to show you my ability, but isn’t it a bad idea to use magic in the guild hall?” I asked while I was worried about getting in trouble.
“No need to worry. I’m actually the guild master. So go ahead and use your magic I’d love to hear it.” Reluctantly I began to play a song. I chose to play Song of Hunger since it didn’t sound too destructive and I wanted to find out its effects.
I started playing the song with the three of us as the targets. The song sounded a bit like the drinking song from earlier. As I was playing both the guild master and the elf started drinking more, and ordered another drink. I myself got hungry, but wanted to finish the song before eating some of my onion rings. When I finished my song I realized that not just us three, but everyone in the hall had eaten and drunk all their food and were ordering more.
“Was that it? Nothing happened!” said the elf.
“Yes it did that was called Song of Hunger it made you hungry,” I retorted.
“Bullsh*t, I just got hungry normally it had nothing to do with your music.”
I got mad at the elf for not believing me. “Fine this next one will hurt!”
“That's fine boy. I know that your music worked, but be careful with that song most people wouldn’t like to know that you’re forcing them to eat more. That said how many songs can you play?” asked the guild master.
“Four although I’m not sure what one does,” I said.
“I see. Alex you and Odis will be going on a quest tomorrow.”
“WHAT!! Why do I have to go on a quest with this kid!” shouted the elf girl: Alex.
“Because I said so. He’s still new so as the guild master I can make other adventures take him on quests to gain experience,” said the Guild Master.
Alex kept complaining so her and the Guild Master were arguing while I was eating my onion rings while listening to them argue. The oil was too much for me so I ended up taking the onions out to eat them. It was so odd. There was so much fried oil that it made a little cocoon around the onion. It was decided that I would be going on a quest tomorrow morning with Alex, but I had to do everything she said. I stayed at the bar for the rest of the night. Shortly after midnight most of the bartenders left and were replaced by a few new people. I was glad to see things quieting down after that, and others sleeping on the ground or on tables. I ended up taking a nap on my chair.
*********
“Wake up!” shouted Alex into my ear. I fell off my chair from the scream. “Good to see your up now then let's hurry up and finish our quest.”
“What is our quest anyway?” I asked.
“The Guild Master gave you the choice of three here they are,” Alex handed me three pieces of paper. The first was for collecting some rare plants near the city and had a high reward. The second was a goblin subjection quest and had decent pay. The last was to help find a lost cat and had a low reward.
(Your choice 1. Plant collecting 2. Goblin subjugating 3. Cat finding. Vote in the poll highest one wins. Comments on each quest may change what happens on it.)
(Author's note: This is actually a side project. I wrote because of writer's block. The quick chapters is because I have only been editing them. So in short updates are going to be slow from here until my main project finishes.)