Jonik arose to the sweet sound of birds chirping, and young children playing in the street. Despite his moderate headache and incredibly dry mouth, he was excited to start the day.
Would he see his beloved again today, and finally taste the impeccable sweetness that is her name gracing his lips? Would they plan to be wed in the spring, when the Juniper berries were in bloom? There was only one way to find out.
Quickly grabbing his coat and hastily strapping his shoes to his feet, he was out the door. Only to quickly come back inside after realizing he forgot his coin purse.
Wouldn’t want to leave that at home on the day of a festival.
Once again he was out the door, stepping out into the streets of Kinubar. Taking a deep breath in through his nose and exhaling with a smile and a light nod, he was off to find his love.
As Jonik walked gleefully down the main road connecting the residential district to the marketplace, he passed by Dekrams home. He paused for a moment to appreciate the beautiful work that Rohe had done with the flower bed in front of the house, and decided that he could think of no one better to share his good spirits with besides his best friend and their fiancée. So he strutted up to the door, and with a few loud knocks, announced himself.
“Dekram, Rohe, it’s a beautiful morning! Are you ready to head to the festival?”
Jonik found it strange that he didn’t receive a witty remark from Dekram about how “beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this beholder isn’t a morning person” or something to that effect.
After a few moments, Rohe opened the door in a morning robe. Rohe was a beautiful woman, even straight out of bed. With wavy brown hair running just past her gentle shoulders, and skin so perfectly smooth and soft it was as if she was an angel in human form.
“Oh, good morning Jonik, it’s good to see you. Have you seen Dekram?”
The slightly worried look in her crystal clear blue eyes was accompanied by a disapproving pursing of her delicately plump lips.
“I thought he made it home last night?” Jonik replied, toning down his giddy excitement for the moment. “At least that’s where I assumed he was heading after leaving the Inn”
As he said this, the look of worry that was on Rohe’s face lightened a bit. This wouldn’t be the first time Dekram couldn’t make it all the way home after drinking all night at the Inn.
“That man is quite the menace to himself sometimes, and I’m not sure that he even realizes it.” Rohe said with a sigh. “Well, I’m sure he’ll show up at some point.”
Seeing the matter become more of an inconvenience than a problem, Jonik decided to let his excitement back out.
“Are you planning on attending the festival?” he asked as his eyes lit back up.
“I sure am” Rohe replied as she opened the door further
“Now come in, you’ll be my escort until the incredibly irresponsible love of my life returns”
With that, Jonik entered the house and took his coat off. “Now wait there just a moment while I get changed.” Rohe said as she slipped into the other room.
“And he didn’t say anything about going somewhere first before returning home last night did he?”
Rohe shouted from the other room as she was changing.
“Not that I remember.” Jonik replied. “Oh wait, I think he said something about getting you flowers.”
Rohe crossed the threshold of the doorway, still only half dressed to grab something from a nearby shelf. Jonik averted his gaze quickly.
“Well flowers would have been nice, but I would have appreciated him waking up in our bed more so than a bouquet of posies” Rohe says in a criticizing tone as she steps back into the other room to finish dressing.
“I’m sure there’ll be a good reason as soon as he sees you.” Jonik says, trying to save face for Dekram. Rohe emerges from the room, and saunters up to Jonik still adjusting various bits of clothing.
“I’m sure there will be” She says in a lightly critical tone, “Well, let’s be off then!”
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Dekram comes to in a dimly lit room with stone walls and a lone candelabra that appears to have been changed recently.
He is bound by his hands and feet in a kneeling position and his body aches as he looks around to gather his surroundings. There was not another soul in the room, and there is an eerie quiet adding to the grim atmosphere.
To one side of the wall,there are several chairs, and a pile of rope in the corner. Besides that, the room is bare. There is a wooden door in the opposite corner from the rope, and a light trail of dried blood from the door to the area he was placed.
Dekram takes stock of himself to assess his injuries. While he has a roaring headache, he doesn’t appear to have any open wounds. It’s possible that some of the blood on the ground came from his head, but he has the feeling that he isn’t the first person to be dragged through this route unconsciously.
Who has kidnapped him and what do they want? Dekram doesn’t have the slightest clue. He doesn’t have any major debts, beyond a few coins here and there for favors and small gambling losses. Surely this couldn’t be reason enough to knock him unconscious and drag him into this dungeon.
He doesn’t have any real enemies. The person to dislike him the most to his knowledge is a shipwright who still holds a grudge for Dekram accidentally dropping a crate and destroying the shipwrights blueprint when he first started working at the docks.
Dekram ponders his situation for a few minutes before his thinking is interrupted by the sound of the door slamming open.
Dekram snaps his head to the door and sees a figure wearing a red robe and a copper mask adorned with two large horns sticking out the top. From the body shape it must be Man, Elf, or Mer as he doesn’t see any extra appendages and the figure is roughly the same size as Dekram.
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Without saying a word, the figure approaches Dekram and begins to rub a foul smelling paste on his face in some sort of pattern.
“Who are you and what do you want with me?” Dekram demands, his voice showing more anger than fear. There is no reply. “I said, what the hell do you want with me? What have I done to you that is so horrible to justify doing something like this?”
The figure finishes applying the paste on Dekram and leaves the room, slamming the door just as loudly as he opened it.
“Well that didn’t get me anywhere” Dekram thought to himself. “And what in the name of Aldir is this disgusting substance?”
The paste smelled of rotten food scraps that had been sitting in the sun, and old wine that was just on the verge of turning to vinegar. This was it, he had to find a way out of this damned dungeon. He needed answers, and by The 9 he would get them.
He began to jostle his hands to see how tightly the rope that bound him was. He had some play in it, but the person who tied him obviously wasn’t a novice in the trade.
He typically kept a small knife attached to his belt, but it seemed the mysterious party had taken notice of it and confiscated it before throwing him down here. He would need to think of another way out of his binds, and fast.
With no tools on his person and nothing in the room that was useful, Dekram began to panic slightly. He wasn’t sure what would happen when the masked figure came back, but he knew that he would like to be in a less vulnerable position when he found out.
Looking around again at the mostly empty room as if the action itself would make a blade appear out of thin air, he noticed something. One of the stone bricks that made up the floor was sticking up a few feet away from him. It’s no blade, but it will do.
Dekram flopped his body onto the side and wriggled his way over to the brick. Moving with his hands and feet tied was much more difficult than he had imagined it to be.
He made his way to the brick and began furiously rubbing the binding on his hands against it. He could tell that this would eventually work, but that it would be a slow and draining process.
He was still hungover from the night before and had a relatively bothersome head injury. All he could do was pray that he managed to get the binds off before the figure in the mask came back, and that he wouldn’t be too tired to fight afterward.
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Jonik and Rohe strolled through the festival, perusing the various vendors and performers. They stopped and watched as a man juggling daggers recited the tale of High Priest Duraine Invoril, who went mad after the loss of his wife during a raid on Primden in the Orcish War.
“A truly sad story, that of High Priest Invoril” Jonik said, shaking his head.
“I couldn’t imagine what I would do if I ever lost Dekram to those savages” Rohe agreed in a wistful tone.
After a short reflection, they continued on to be greeted by a wonderful display of Elven trinkets at a merchants stand set up for the festival.
“Only the most amazing and tantalizing curios and mechanical gadgets! All the way from Asdenvale” the stall owner proclaimed as they approached.
“Oh this is incredible” Rohe said in amazement as she held up a small gyroscope that flashed a moving picture as it’s gimbals spun.
“Yes, what can I say? My people truly do make the most fascinating contraptions don’t they?” Jonik said with a slightly smug smirk as he adjusted his coat.
“As if you could ever build something like this.” Rohe retorted as she stuck her tongue out at Jonik with a sneer.
“Well maybe one day I’ll go back to Asdenvale myself and learn from a world class artificer. Then I’ll make gizmos and gadgets that’ll wipe that look right off your face!”
“You say ‘go back’ as if you’ve ever left Kinubar in your life, my woefully uncultured Jonik” Rohe rebutted, at this point trying to get a rise out of the poor Elf.
“Ah yes, because visiting Raven’s Peak a handful of times makes one so much more cultured than I” Jonik cracked back, showing the stall owner that there wasn’t an ounce of traveled blood between them.
This made the stall owner muster every bit of restraint he had for the devious smile that wanted to shine through when he heard Rohe inquire, “How much do you want for this?”
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Dekram hears a noise from the other side of the door. Shuffling, movement, there seem to be multiple people. It sounds like someone is lugging something heavy around. He needs to quickly finish separating this rope binding.
It’s hanging on by just a thread when something heavy knocks into the door. His whole body fills with adrenaline. With a snap of the rope his hands are free and he quickly starts to untie his feet. It takes a few seconds to do so, but it seems that the bump on the door was simply a mistake rather than an intentional action.
This gives him some time. How much time? Who’s to say.
With his feet free, Dekram has a full range of movement. That’s good. Now he just needs to find a weapon. He takes a look around. Still just a few chairs and a length of rope. Well, now one long length of rope and several small pieces from his previous bindings.
He decides to wrap the longer bit of rope around his forearm and grab a chair. While breaking a chair over someone’s head may work in a bar fight, he doubts that it would be terribly effective against the masked figures with unknown intent. Dekram has a decision to make.
Does he break the chair to use the broken legs of the chair as stabbing weapons, knowing that it will alert the guards outside the door? Or does he simply wait for them to enter and hope that the surprise attack will catch them off guard enough to escape?
Dekram decides to go with the former. There’s no way to know how many more there are outside, or the layout of the dungeon and its escape routes. With an overhead swing and a large crash, Dekram busts the chair on the stone floor. One chair breaks quite nicely, with still enough length to be used at a distance, but a jagged enough tip to inflict some damage. The other leg however is not as clean.
A large chunk of the seat of the chair still hangs onto the end of the leg, and before he can hit it again to knock this off the predictable happens.
Two robed and masked figures come barging through the door, with what look like ceremonial daggers in their hands. Without time to think, Dekram reacts. He charges forward, and throws the less useful chair leg at the masked figure in front.
As soon as he does this, he follows it up with a swift jab with the other leg. The masked figure puts both of his hands up to block the debris from hitting his head, and then brings his hands back down to meet a large stream of blood coming out of his stomach. He falls to the floor.
The second masked figure sees this and starts swinging the dagger wildly while advancing forward in Dekrams direction. Dekram manages to block the first few swings, but gets caught in the arm with a follow up.
He retreats back a few steps and assesses the damage. It will bleed for a while if he doesn’t wrap it, but it doesn’t hurt too much.
He needs to think of a new plan, and quickly. While the masked figure doesn’t seem to be a master swordsman by any means, Dekram has never had any real training in swordplay. Or, chairplay in this case.
He drops the chair leg and unwraps the rope from his forearm. While he’s never tended livestock, he’s seen the trade being done. “How hard can it be?” He thought to himself as he started swinging the rope around his head.
The masked figure had paused briefly to gather himself and try to make sense of the situation. As he decided to return to his assault tactic, Dekram threw the end of the rope like a whip, in an attempt to disarm the masked figure.
“Maybe harder than I thought”
The rope missed the dagger, the hand, the arm, and nearly the masked figure entirely, bouncing off of the masked figure's side before falling to the ground.
This was it, Dekram was nearly out of options. He could only make one last ditch effort, and it would be that out of a tale he heard once from his father.
He took the other end of the rope into both hands, bent down and leaped forward. With a motion so smooth and quick that neither Dekram nor the masked figure were sure what had happened, the dagger fell to the ground. Dekram had taken the rope and came up underneath the downward slash of the dagger, wrapped the wrist of the assailant, and jerked the hand back fast enough to make him lose his grip.
Both parties looked utterly surprised at the way this had played out, but Dekram was the first to recover from his astonishment. He quickly grabbed the fallen dagger, and thrust it into the chest of the masked figure who let out a quiet groan before joining his comrade, and falling to the ground.