If he wasn’t careful, Holsley was going to bring new meaning to the name Bard’s Drop.

He had jumped just as the assortment of instruments had snapped at him and had managed to leap to the supposed safety of the hanging chandelier. Unfortunately, this had left him dangling from his sweaty palms over a terrifying drop.

Holsley ignored the eager darkness below him and instead focused on working his hands along the brass branches and climbing towards the middle of the light fixture. In his head, he saw himself swinging over to the other side, but to make that happen, he needed to be in the centre.

HONK!

An invisible slice of wind raced past his ear. A second later, he heard a chunk of wall on the other side of the tower rupture as the shot hit it. Cement and stone crackled down from above him as dust shifted off its centuries-old resting place. The wolf-like construct wasn’t quite so ready to let him go.

BONG!

Another shot, like an invisible arrow, sliced up the chandelier and sent brass parts and candles sailing into the darkness below.

When the chandelier steadied itself, Holsley doubled down on getting to the other side. He swung out his legs, then brought them in, willing the overhanging ornament to swing. It was slow going, but he kept it up, putting his strength into building the momentum necessary to jump to the safety of the other side.

The chandelier suddenly dropped an inch.

‘Whoa!’ Holsley exclaimed.

His weight was pulling it out of its socket. The device hadn’t been built to handle the load of a desperate bard carrying an extravagant lute on his back. Any minute now, any second even, the chandelier was going to drop, and his only legacy in The Bard’s Drop would be as the kid who found a shortcut to the ground.

BOUNG!

A drumbeat. This one louder and more impactful than the others. It hit the chandelier like a giant fist. Crystals exploded, spattering him with tiny cuts, and the brass frame became severely twisted and bent. Another shot like that, and he’d be a goner.

‘Focus,’ he told himself, folding his legs in once again and then out at the height of his swing.

It was working. The chandelier was large enough and low enough that he could sway right onto the other side of the Bard’s Drop. From there, he could rush down the stairs and make a quick getaway — well, a getaway.

The young bard was smiling with the latest swing. One more, he thought. That’s all it would take to escape the construct and be in sight of safety. He folded his legs in again, right at the backwards height of the swing, but this time, they snagged on something behind him, and the momentum immediately halted. It held him in place, unable to continue the oscillation.

He cringed as the chandelier dropped yet another inch.

Holsley, who had placed the glowing flute in his mouth for safety, turned to investigate what had happened. It became apparent instantly. The bard’s boot, and indeed his entire foot, had become lodged inside the mouth of the construct. Unnatural, drumstick-like teeth in that string-filled mouth kept him from following through on his final swing.

It pulled at him, eager to drag him back over, but couldn’t tear through his old leather boots.

This would be a weird way to die, Holsley thought then. Unique, certainly, but weird. To be killed off by an assortment of living instruments. Was that a good or bad way for a bard to go? He couldn’t make up his mind on the subject.

He wiggled his leg against the creature, but it was relentless.

OK, he thought, you can have the boot.

He got his free foot and quickly swung the appendage into the construct’s face as hard as he could. It connected with something solid, and he felt his heel driving into a series of instruments. The castanets for eyes, the drumsticks for teeth, the harmonica nostrils, and whatever else that made up the monster’s facial features.

Then, he slipped his trapped foot out of the boot while the creature was distracted.

Holsley wouldn’t get another chance at this; the next chance the monster got, it would be livid. The swing of the chandelier continued, following its previous path. It came close enough on the opposite side that Holsley’s feet could just touch the iron railings on the other side. He managed to grab hold with a toe, just enough to keep himself connected, then he pulled himself closer to the bars with his feet and then his legs and held on for dear life.

No matter what he did, though, he couldn’t bring himself any closer than his upper thighs. He tried pulling his legs in, which brought him within spitting distance of the other side but not close enough to jump or climb across the balcony railing. He was stuck. His hands were clamped on the now taught chandelier while his legs were wrapped around the balcony railing.

BOM! A thunderous drum erupted.

The chandelier, which had been strong and secure a second ago, became a limp tangle of metal and crystals. It dropped like a deadweight to the floor. Holsley had the sense of mind to let it go as he was falling with it. The chandelier left his hands, and he found himself suddenly dangling upside down by his legs.

Now, he was staring at the other side.

The construct paced about the balcony, watching him with sober eyes. He couldn’t tell if it was planning its next move or just charging its next attack. Either way, Holsley didn’t want to be here.

The young bard tried to pull himself up. He quickly gave up, breathless. Holsley wasn’t what you would call strong. None would ever describe him in such a way. They would probably describe him as stuck, though, in that moment. He was left dangling by his feet over a sheer drop without the athleticism required to pull himself up.

What would Marlin Mandrovi do? It was time to ask that question again.

For starters, he realised, the famed minstrel probably wouldn’t have gotten himself into this situation. He was probably also hench — at least enough to lift himself up to a simple balcony. Holsley would have to try something else.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

He thought about what he had.

The redrose lute was unbreakable as it was a magical item. He also had it on a strap around his back. With a sigh, Holsley retrieved it. The strap was fastened to two bolts on the lute’s upper and lower parts. It was also quite long. This gave him an idea. Holsley undid the upper bolt by unscrewing the cap, allowing the strap to hang loose.

With a groan, he pulled himself up again, straining his core, but this time, he didn’t need to go all the way. He held the lute by the drum and, while straining his entire body, fed the head of the neck sideways through a gap in the bars. Then he turned it. The lute became stuck fast, and he suddenly had an anchor to pull himself up on.

Using the strap as a makeshift rope, Holsley climbed up while anchoring himself on his feet. After that, it was a simple matter of manoeuvring himself into a standing position and climbing over the railing. That part wasn’t even difficult. His thundering heartbeat levelled as he tumbled over to safety, and he wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers.

‘I did it!’ he proclaimed, jumping up and taking the recorder out of his mouth. He pointed across the chasm to the construct. ‘How’d you like me now, sucker! Bet you weren’t expecting me to make a miraculous leap to the safe side of the tower, huh?’

The construct replied with a bellowing TWANG that completely demolished a pillar directly to Holsley’s left.

The bard had just enough time to pick himself up off the floor and see, or more accurately hear, the construct, across the way, gallop into action. It rushed towards the stone steps. Holsley’s breath caught in his throat. It would go down and back up to get him, and there wouldn’t be a convenient chandelier to rescue him this time.

The only thing for it was to race the creature to the bottom.

Holsley’s sprint was more of a stumble than a run. At every accidental opportunity, he barrelled into shelves and sent instruments awry, staggered down steps two at a time, and tripped over nothing more times than he’d care to admit. All the while, the construct, playing its mismatched melody, kept pace with him.

At one point, on a particularly silly stumble over seemingly nothing, the glowing flute he’d held in his mouth was sent soaring over the side. The bard didn’t have time to cast the spell again on a different object, he’d just have to move without it. This led to a great deal of bumped shins and banged elbows while he navigated the darkness. At the end of this, he’d be little more than a walking bruise.

If he survived.

Sweat was dripping off his forehead by the time he reached the second floor. He wiped at it constantly, but his sleeve was so soaked that he simply put more sweat on. All the while, that sickening cacophony of music rang throughout the Bard’s Drop. The awkward, unnerving music that he wished he couldn’t hear.

Holsley was just about ready to take his final breath when he reached the ground floor again — he knew it as the ground floor because it was covered in the broken remains of the chandelier.

There was no creature. He stopped, desperate to ease the stitch in his lungs. Holsley listened intently. There was no music. No sickening cacophony. The Bard’s Drop had become silent again. Did this mean that the construct had given up? Holsley didn’t think so. More likely, it was waiting for the opportune time to strike.

As he crossed the floor towards the door, he thought about this.

Bards didn’t come to the drop all too often, but he reckoned thieves were a little rarer. All alone in this dank and dark place, the creature must relish the chance for someone to come along with misaligned intentions. Perhaps, then, it was playing with Holsley? If he thought on it for long enough, he realised that none of its attacks had been aimed true.

That meant he was in real trouble.

Holsley rushed to where he thought the door might be, but his mind was racing. He shouted ‘minstrel’ repeatedly, but the door refused to budge. Then, just as he thought he might be in the wrong place, he heard the music. A low, thudding, BOM, BOM, BOM. The sound of a striking drum coming from within the surrounding darkness.

Thinking quickly, he pressed his back against the wall. The redrose lute was in his hand, and he ran through the spells he knew. There was still the animal one, the spell that allowed him to communicate with beasts. If he could talk to this thing, he could figure out what it wanted from him.

The construct stepped out of the shadows with a sneer. He could see it because it was carrying the lit flute in its mouth. It was also taking its sweet time to get to Holsley, which pretty much confirmed his theory that it was playing with him. There was nowhere he could go now, and the construct knew it.

So, Holsley began to play.

The song was awkward, and the strings didn’t obey his fingers. On top of that, the lute was also heavy, and Holsley hadn’t adjusted to its weight yet. Still, he did the best he could, trying, from memory, to cast the animal speech spell that he knew. It didn’t sound anything like what it should sound like.

The construct came to a stop and hung its head to the side. Then, in a hoarse voice that didn’t seem to emanate from its hard lips, it said, ‘I remember you.’

Holsley stopped playing. Before him, the construct changed. The instruments rearranged themselves at the creature’s whims, and it turned from the image of a wolf to the image of a man, reshaping its limbs into arms and feet with a silhouette against the dark that looked half-giant. The creature stood at a great height over Holsley, and he found himself backing away even further from the sight.

‘W-what do you want?’ Holsley asked it then, clutching the redrose lute closer.

‘You came here not so long ago, young bard,’ it replied. ‘Why have you come to reclaim that which was willingly given?’

‘I-I-I…’ Holsley stammered. Perhaps it was just best to tell the truth, he thought. His intentions were innocent, at least, and it had been him that had placed the lute down here in the first place.

Holsley straightened up a little. ‘I came to borrow the lute so I can save my friend. He’s going to be hanged, and, well, uh, I would use my own lute, but I broke it. I’d also just buy another one, but I’m so out of practice that I need a lute that can give me an advantage. This lute.’

‘Instruments given to the drop cannot just be taken,’ replied the construct. ‘You gave it willingly, which means it belongs here. Taking it turns you into a thief, and for that, you must be punished.’

‘What are you going to do to me?’

‘Play a song so powerful that your entire being will explode into particles of light.’

Holsley blinked. ‘Oh, wow.’

‘Prepare yourself.’

‘WAIT!’ Holsley yelled desperately. ‘I wasn’t stealing it. I was borrowing it with the full intention of returning it. That’s not theft. What would I have to do to simply give it back later instead?’

The humanoid construct pondered this question for a moment. Clearly, this had been the first time anyone had ever asked to borrow one of the instruments. In the silent moment that followed, Holsley wondered what exactly this creature was. The best he could gather was that it was a ghost of some kind — a supernatural entity, at any rate. In stories, ghosts often wielded otherworldly powers and were obsessed with protecting things.

‘You contributed the lute,’ the construct said at last. ‘This I know, so I will allow you to borrow it for a time. You may use it to save this friend of yours, but after you do, you must bring it back to the Bard’s Drop.’ The construct bent low as if reaching towards Holsley, and their voice took on an even more sinister inflection. ‘Until the lute is returned, young bard, you may not play another instrument. That is the price.’

‘Oh, well, that’s not too bad.’ The whole point of coming here was because he didn’t have another instrument to play. It shouldn’t be a problem if he used the redrose lute to solve all his troubles. ‘What happens if I play another instrument?’

‘It will burn.’

The construct offered its hand, and Holsey shook it after a tentative second. He had very little choice otherwise. No sooner had he taken hold of the drumstick fingers than the figure collapsed into a haphazard pile of old instruments. The creature, spirit, construct, whatever you would like to call it was gone, and once again he was alone in the darkness.

Without needing any other reason to leave, Holsley found the door and, this time, managed to open it by speaking the passphrase. He stepped out into a sky bathed in the dimmer light of late afternoon and realised, to his horror, that the day was gradually reaching its end.

The salt air hit him next, along with the spray of the waves. It was a fresh and welcoming feeling that he couldn’t help but bask in for a second.

Next came the hard part.

Holsley needed to win a magical ring off a seasoned gambler without knowing the first thing about gambling or even what game he would be playing. Holsley didn’t even know enough to cheat. What he did know, however, was that he’d need to look the part. His raggedy old clothes wouldn’t cut it in a gambling den.

Holsley needed to go shopping.