Arryn

Medea led Wyll and I out of the industrial district and into the commercial district through a series of back alleys and shortcuts that I would either avoid for fear of being mugged or had no idea were there in the first place. I’d tried to make excuses about going home to feed my cat or pick up a package, but she didn’t buy it. When I tried to sneak off, a metal hand grabbed my tie and dragged me along. I eventually gave up resisting, and followed her to a restaurant on the western edge of the city. The place was called “The Firesong Bar & Grill”, and frankly looked a bit like a dump. The faded sign depicted a cartoon dragon breathing fire onto some steaks and it was painted, of all things. It was almost hard to spot the place without an illusory hologram advertising it. Wyll seemed to have perked up since his outburst during the lesson, and was now looking over the tattered paper menu posted on the front window.

“No way, they sell Kraken meat here?!” he exclaimed, pointing out a section of the menu where “Kraken Kalimari” was written in faded ink.

“No, they don’t. That’s just squid and deceptive advertising.” replied Medea, who sent her flying gauntlets to open the doors for her. “Tastes good though. Kraken is too tough.”

The inside of the restaurant was admittedly nicer than the outside. A handful of round tables took up most of the floor, each with a warm magelight floating above them. A long, L-shaped bar took up the entire left wall, and stood behind it was a burly-looking dwarf wearing an apron with the cartoon dragon emblazoned on the front. He was putting some bottles on the set of backlit shelves behind the bar, and balanced precariously on a stepladder. I hadn’t met many dwarves before but this one was just a mass of muscle and hair, wider than he was tall. His bald head was tattooed with some kind of geometric tribal pattern, and his long orange beard was stuffed into a hairnet. His arm hair too, by the looks of it.

Aside from the burly bartender, the place was empty. It was just before midnight, usually peak mealtimes, but the place was completely dead. Maybe they only catered to dwarves - they went to bed as soon as it got dark, which seems pretty inconvenient if you asked me. Medea didn’t wait to be seated, instead striding across to the bar and sending her gauntlets out to pour her a drink of some kind of alcohol that smelled like a chemical spill.

“If you didn’t tip so well I’d ban you for that.” Grumbled the dwarf. His deep baritone voice was slightly muffled by the hair net over his face.

“Oh quiet, you. It’s been a day.” grumbled Medea back, finishing her drink before sending it to a sink behind the bar, where the gauntlets began washing the glass.

The bartender turned around, giving a curious glance to Wyll and I, who had just been hovering awkwardly.

“Oh yeah, these are some new friends of mine. Arryn, Wyll, this is Pips.”

“Pleasure,” said Wyll, a bit stiff.

“Is it now?” said Pip. “I suppose you’ll be wanting a private booth?”

“Aye, the full works if you could.”

Pip gave us another look, as if seeing us differently. He grunted an affirmative to Medea, then hopped off his stepladder and made his way around the counter. While his back was turned, Medea sent her hands to grab three large bottles of booze from the shelf and pass one each to me and Wyll, then taking one for herself. I gave Wyll a look, and he shrugged and followed behind her.

We were taken through a bead curtain over a doorway at the back of the restaurant, with dimmer lighting and a more dignified decor. The cartoon dragon was nowhere to be seen, instead the walls were lined with sectioned off booths with candle lighting instead of the harsher magelights. I assume this is more for special occasions and dates, and part of me was glad it wasn’t just me and Medea here.

Pip pulled some menus from his apron and placed them on the table. Curiously, he placed them with some careful consideration in a seemingly random location, adjusting the angle ever so slightly before seemingly being satisfied with the placement. I was about to ask why when as the last menu was placed my ears popped and I felt the static-like feeling of a ward springing up. Medea sat down in the booth and gestured for us to sit too. She spoke too, but no sound came from her mouth before I stepped into the booth.

“-reful you don’t knock the menus.”

Pip quickly excused himself, leaving the three of us alone in the warded booth. Medea didn’t say anything, instead producing three small glasses and pouring out some drinks.

“I’m guessing by all the extra security we aren’t just here for the Kraken Kalimari.” I said, taking one of the glasses. I noticed it fizzed slightly, but the bubbles glowed faintly pink as they popped. Was this carbonated using ether?

“No. We need to talk without him there.” said Medea. “I want to know who you are, how you know him, what you know about him… We need to know what we’re dealing with here.”

Wyll took an investigatory sip of the drink, and his face scrunched up like he’d bitten a lemon. “What’s the alcohol for then?”

Medea took an unflinching sip from her glass. “As I said, it’s been a long day.”

---

An hour or two later and three bottles in, we had exhausted everything we could think of about our mysterious benefactor. I was struggling to remember what was said, as the room had begun to spin about two bottles ago. Medea, for all her bravado, was looking fairly rough too. Her long white hair spilled out over the table as she rested her forehead on a gauntlet, which slowly dipped in the air before pushing back up again. Wyll was managing the best out of the three of us, possibly sobered up by the giant plate of Kalamari and garlic mayo dip he was devouring.

“So, uh. We know knowth- nothing.” mumbled Medea, lifting her head to peer down the neck of one of the bottles and scowling when she found it empty. “Bloody shit all except he can yank yer heart out from the other side of fuggin Adleth. Good to know. Gooood toooo knoooow….”

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“I can’t believe you thought I was working with him.” I said, taking care not to slur my words.

“Mmph, I just said you might’ve.” said Wyll, wiping his hands with a paper napkin. “We didn’t know each other at all. Still don’t, really.”

Medea snorted. “Arryn din’t even know that Elves shake hands.”

“I was trying to be polite! I don’t know! Sorry if I made it awkward…”

“Pssh.” she waved him away with a gauntlet. “I’m barely an elf. If I’ve been to the ol’ red woods I don’t remember it.”

“Ah, were you born here?” asked Wyll

“Maybe. I ‘unno. Ani found me when I was like, five or something. Who knows before then.”

“And…” I thought carefully about what I was going to say next. “How long ago was that?”

Medea looked confused for a second, then burst into laughter. She laughed so loud that I was sure the wards wouldn’t dampen it, and continued to do so for a good minute. Eventually, she managed to wipe the tears from her eyes and gasp out “Do ya- do you think Elves live millenia?”

My face flushed red. “I, um, I thought-” whatever words of defence I was trying to scrabble together only set her off laughing again. It was infectious, and soon Wyll and I were in hysterics too.

“Heh, sorry. I’ve had a pretty sheltered life I guess.” I said.

“I mean, it’s a daily common misunderstanding I suppose.” Wyll spoke like he was reciting a lecture. “Elves’ appearance stays the same as they get old, and their healing magic is world famous, so I guess that’s where the idea of them living forever comes from.”

“Hah, enjoy getting all grey and wrinkly, losers. I’m gonna be hot forever. Well, another like 60 years or something, unless this Wild Magic stuff is even better than I thought.”

“Is this stuff common knowledge? I’m surprised you know so much about it, Wyll.” I observed.

“Ah, well..” Wyll looked a bit embarrassed. “It’s part of basic training at Brimstone. For uh, dealing with the natives in the war. Also a bit of personal research recently, as I was reading up on Elven medical magic to see if I could heal my burn scars.”

“Hmm, I wonder why that hasn’t spread outside the Woods. I figured Brimstone would be dying to get their hands on that kind of info.”

“Well, it’s not that simple. Elven medicinal spells use a lot of blood magic. To heal these burns, I’d have to practically bathe in the stuff. Not really battlefield applicable.”

“Hmm, I think you might know more about my people than I do.” chimed in Medea, sending a hand to steal a squid ring from Wyll’s plate. “Anything in that book of yours about growing arms back?”

“Oh, I thought that if anything you would know about that…” Wyll looked quite uncomfortable talking now. “As I said, one of the reasons that this kind of stuff hasn’t spread is that it’s a bit… extreme. For regrowing limbs you’d need to graft on a limb from someone else. Usually an infant, which can be grown to match your other arm perfectly. I was wondering if that was…”

I glanced over at where Medea’s arms should be. The stumps cut off about a third of the way down the bicep, and were uncovered, showing smooth skin and no scarring whatsoever.

“Eh, I don’t really care about that stuff.” Medea said casually, through a mouthful of fried food. “I reckon I’m pretty fine without em. Bet with your crappy flesh arms you can’t steal booze half as well.”

To punctuate her point, she floated the last half-full bottle up to her lips and took a swig. She went to give Wyll a smug look, then stopped. Wyll and I stared at her, mouths agape.

“What’s the matter with yas?”

“Medea, look at that bottle again.”

She turned to look, and stared in shock. The bottle was floating, sure, but her gauntlets were still resting on the table. As if spooked by the attention, it dropped from the air and poured all over the table, filling the booth with the eye-watering smell of alcohol.

“Aw shit, but oh shit! I did it!”

“Did you really do that without even thinking about it?” I said, reaching for some napkins.

“I ‘unno. I just did it. Maybe the drink helps you forget to doubt it, or something.”

“Try levitating some more stuff.”

Medea looked around the booth for targets to practice on, and her eyes found the remainder of Wyll’s food. With no sign of effort or movement, the rings of fried batter began floating up one by one, gently spinning in the air.

“No way. It’s that easy?” Wyll gasped.

“It’s just like moving my hands, but less… flexible. Muscle memory, y’know. Ooh, wait, lemme try something.”

Most of the rings dropped down to the table, landing right in the liquid I was trying to mop up, except for one that floated right in front of Medea’s face. Suddenly, it split into three equal segments. Just like Fyron’s phony artifact. Then, they compressed together so tightly the grease was squeezed out in drops. Wyll and I watched in awe. I was a little disappointed, privately. For a while there I had been the only one of the three of us to succeed with this new kind of magic, and now Medea has gone and completely outdone me.

“Man, I really have to step my game up. I can actually do magic, and you two have already overtaken me.” said Wyll, poking the compressed ball of food in the air. It didn’t budge.

“Maybe that’s the issue. You have to relearn how stuff feels.” I guessed.

“Yeah, maybe. Fyron must have picked us for a reason.”

“That is curious, actually. Why did he pick us? For that matter, why the time that he did? I don’t know about you, but had he shown up much later I, uh, wouldn’t have been able to make it.” I said sheepishly.

“Well, I don’t want to pry, but yeah, he caught me at a suspiciously good time too. What about you, Medea?”

We turned from our conversation to see Medea slumped back in her seat, mouth open and snoring softly. Several balls of compressed Kraken Kalimari gently bobbed around her head.

“Might be time to call it a night.” Wyll sighed.

“Yeah, maybe. But, uh, this was fun. I’ve not hung out with people like this before.”

Wyll smiled. “Well, we’re in this shit together now, for better or worse. I’m sure there’ll be more ‘strategy meetings’ again soon.”

We woke Medea up, and were thanked by compressed food pellets pelting us as soon as she woke up. A few attempts later, we left the restaurant. Medea apparently lived behind a Well of Wonders Emporium nearby, so Wyll and I decided to walk her home. Despite her intoxication, Medea stumbled through the same complex back alleys and side streets without any sign of getting lost, so we trusted her to lead the way.

We’d almost made it back to the main street, when our path was blocked by a towering bald man with some kind of symbol tattooed on his forehead. His arm glowed with fiery orange cracks and dripped molten rock onto the ground, and he was staring daggers straight at Medea.

“Sorry to interrupt yas like this.” he growled “But I believe we have some unfinished business.”

I barely had a moment to register what had happened before I heard a quick chant coming from an adjacent alleyway and cold blackness swept over me.