Shouting, banging, clanging, and all manner of raucous noise greeted Patrick as he slowly regained consciousness. He opened his eyes to find himself face down on a worn table made out of planks of a dark wood. Hands clutching at his forehead, he groaned, as the pain in Patrick's skull seemed to throb with his heartbeat. He tried to remember what happened to leave him like this, but found the pain a severe impediment to forming coherent thoughts. Glancing around without moving his head too much, Patrick saw what appeared to be a dingy, smoke filled bar, cluttered with old fashioned, carved wooden furniture mostly occupied. The small, dirty windows high up on the walls spoke of it likely being partially underground, something he remembered from the time he snuck a kiddy pool full of mud and frogs into the basement of his high school gym teacher's house on a dare. He awoke in a booth squeezed into a corner mostly cast in shadow by the sparse overhead light cast from chandeliers fashioned from some form of antler.
As the pain started to clear somewhat, Patrick remembered the community service on the side of the road, the strange little man, and finally the fire and explosions. His heart beat sped up as he realized at least the supervisor, and likely many others were dead. His head jerked up when he had that thought, igniting a new round of pain in his skull, only for it to intensify one more as two large dull iron tankards sloshing full of a dark alcoholic drink banged down onto the table in front of him. As Patrick flinches backwards, only to further add to his torment by slamming the back of his head into the hard wooden surface of the booth wall behind him, Seamus slides into the seat opposite him before grabbing the somewhat oversized mug compared to his hand, and took a long swig.
"Good to see you up lad, if you were still knackered after another round of drinks I was gonna stop shooing away those pixies. Damn pests can be pretty persistent, although at least they never go too far. Plus, can't lie, waking up with a troll wang scrawled across your face in indelible ink and with a pair of transfigured donkey ears is a good lesson to never fall asleep in a bar. Why I always make sure to find a nice forest or alley to blackout in. Why this one time-" Seamus kept rambling on why taking occasional sips from his oversized tankard. Patrick was having a difficult time following everything he said, but it was getting easier as the flashing disco ball of pain that seemed to be connected to his central nervous system started calm down into a dull background throb.
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"What in the name of all that is holy happened? Where are we? Last I remember was you showing up during my mandatory community service and suddenly things are exploding, and I wake up in some dingy bar. Did you kidnap me? Who are you working for? Is this some sort of modern slave ring thing?"
Patrick waited for the throbbing in his head to die down, and then for Seamus to take a break from his ongoing monologue to take a drink, before he interrupted with a slew of questions.
"Hah! Good one, like there is anything holy getting past the barriers of the Chizz Barrel. This is a proud Fae exclusive establishment my young friend, you wanna guzzle communion wine with a bunch of uptight light brites you’d need to find a neutral port, not like they ever let loose and party though." Seamus went to take another drink from his tankard only to find it empty, and smoothly swapped it for the full one still on the table. Taking a pull, he continues, "and don't worry your little carrot top, I had nothing to do with the unpleasantness earlier, you can lay at the cloven hooves of whatever Abyssal bastard that decides to do a little roadside explosive demolition. Twats are always going around blowing things up too early in the morning. You'll have to forgive me for not stopping to get a name from the irritable bloke but I decided haste would be less likely to get me wasted and I popped a quick fae ring to safety, and ain't no place safer than the pub." With a solemn nod as if he had just finished dispensing priceless wisdom, Seamus goes back to finishing off his second disproportionately large tankard of ale.
"I maybe understand like half of what you just said, and even most of that sounds like the Lucky Charms mascot got high on paint fumes and starting ranting conspiracy theories. And it doesn't begin to answer why you took me!" Still coming to grips with the fact that he had almost died, Patrick continued to stare fiercely at Seamus as he slowly lowered the rim of the drinking vessel away from his face.
"No need ta get feisty there fire crotch, and I couldn't leave a fellow Fae to those smelly sulfur goat-humpers now could I? And are you really saying you would rather I left you behind to wake up to being fully skinned, hung from the branches of a tree with your own entrails and slowly roasted over an infernal fire while your soul is stitched into your flesh so ya can't die till they turn your very bone to ash, like whatever poor saps were unlucky enough to survive the initial explosion back there?" Acting like he had just been asked a dumb question, Seamus scoffed and went back to drinking, not paying attention to Patrick's sudden paleness as the blood drained from his face. Patrick tried to say something, but nothing came out when he opened his mouth. He looked queasy, and suddenly lurched forward, grabbed the top of the empty tankard that had previously looked almost comically oversized in Seamus' hands. It had a circumference even Patrick couldn't fully wrap his hands around, but he still dragged it in front of himself as Patrick began to throw up violently into the empty tankard.