30
He was the last to leave Shanty Town, having sent a horde of weeping, laughing, cursing or dead-silent others out, first. Mine-slaves, townsfolk, bedmates… all of them; any race. It didn’t matter, except that they wanted their freedom like a drowning victim wants air. That they’d kept on living, believing that Someday would come.
Even a few decent guards got out of that horrible cavern. The ones who never seemed to be looking his way while he struggled to patch up a teammate or dropped a few scraps of food in the Hole.
Word spread fast, and Shanty Town drained like a broken pot, falling silent beneath its false sun and arched, stony roof. Alexion didn’t go through the transport gate, though. Not yet. He cleared out the “mercy tent” first, saving whoever he could and dispatching the rest. Next cut across piles of tailings to the Hole, which was just past the assembly ground from that huddle of tin-roofed shacks.
Falk was there. Falk, who had broken Skarnralf’s nose and then paid for it horribly, in front of all those helplessly watching others. He wouldn’t leave without Falk, willing to drag the old human’s corpse to freedom if nothing else… but as it chanced, the gangly bard was still alive and cross-grained as ever. Near roasted, too.
“About time,” he grunted, as Alexion broke a lock, lifted the grate and then drew him up out of the searing punishment well. “Figured y’d get to me sooner or later, elf.”
Alexion grimaced. Next used his last “speak” of the day to seize hold of Falk’s vocal cords, saying,
“I like to wait for a nice, golden sear, and you weren’t fully done yet.” He’d spent his own time in the Hole, where only the desperate efforts of others (dribbling water and dropping in food) could keep you alive.
Falk snorted, shook off the speech-possession, and felt the stump of his missing hand. The one he’d used to smash Skarnralf’s nose all over his ugly face.
“Still amn’t,” he glowered. “Skarnralf will have to try harder next time. Speaking of which, where is that cast-off son of a mangy cur and a poxy troll?”
Alexion had no more “speaks” left… but he could talk for himself once again. The return of his name and his magic had also brought back his voice. Now, offering that skinny old human a flask of water, Alexion said,
“He’s fled, or else hiding. I wanted to kill him, Falk, but he seems not to want to be dead.”
“You talk, now?” blurted the human, surprised. In twenty-eight years, he’d never heard a single word out of “Chatter”.
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“It would seem so, yes,” replied Alexion.
His own voice startled the elf, coming as it did from within him, not out of somebody else. Sounding… so that’s what he sounded like? He’d forgotten entirely. Muttered a spell, working on replacing the hand that Skarnralf had burned from Falk’s arm with a torch.
Meanwhile, Falk finished drinking, then started to hum; summoning a few sparks of manna with hoarse, scratchy music. Took “I wanted to kill him, but he seems not to want to be dead” as the refrain to a scathing and accurate satire on the topic of drow overseers.
Alexion caught sudden movement… that whisper and wasp-hum of sound… just in time to snatch a black crossbow shaft out of the air. Elven reflexes being what they are, he caught the hurtling bolt just before it would have split Falk’s heart like an apple. Alexion tracked the thing’s flight, then flung it to the ground with a snarled curse.
Up, eastward and… there… behind a pile of shattered rock. Skarnralf, at last. Alexion misty-stepped, another thing he could do once again. Materialized directly in front of the overseer, who was struggling to jam a fresh bolt into his crossbow, fighting to cock the weapon. Too late. Too slow.
“Should have gone for me, not the bard,” he growled, before conjuring a sword and proceeding to do what he did. Precise and methodical, Alexion took his time about it, recalling all that had passed between Skarnralf and the helpless miners, until there was no more of that howling drow left to slice.
Decades of treating gangrene, rapine, starvation, burnt-away eyes and shattered limbs had left him without any mercy at all. When the matter was done, he cleansed himself with a spell. Tidied and healed his own outside, at least. Could only box up the pain and darkness that burnt him near hollow, within.
Alexion watched numbly as Falk toiled over the heap of loose, bloodied stone. Gave him a hand up for the last, really steep bit.
“All right, elf?” coughed the bard, whose lungs were corrupted with rock-dust and ash... just like everyone else's.
“Alexion,” said the freed miner. “My name is Alexion, and I was a prince of Karellon, once. Now…” he shook his head. “Something has happened. I am freed of exile and curse, but I… do not know what I will find when I get back to the city.”
He took a last look around at a false red sun and mucky, bubbling lakeshore… at the huddled rooftops of Shanty Town, and all that remained of Skarnralf. Then, shaking himself, shoved it all into the past.
“Let us be quit of this place, Songbird,” said Alexion. Tracing sigils in midair with growing confidence, he opened another gate. Sunlight, wind, flower petals and raised voices came through, stirring the musty air of the under-deep. “Ready?” he asked the bard, retrieving his water flask.
Falk spat on the biggest chunk that was left of Skarnralf, then nodded.
“I believe that our business here is concluded, elf,” he agreed. “And I would like for the last line of my epic song to be: And he drank and whored his way into the grave in his own time and manner, utterly free.”
Alexion wasn’t yet able to smile. He did pull back his cloak hood, though, revealing brown hair cut raggedly short, wide green eyes that were bleak, hollow and restless.
“I look forward to seeing your epic performed,” he said. Clasped Falk’s remaining hand then, pulling the bard along with him as he finally plunged through that glittering portal. That’s what he’d come from. That’s who he was, and what he’d just done… no excuses, not one regret… when the prince returned to Karellon. To the city and people who’d left him to suffer, alone.