Fhenryl's Forray

The small room they had rented in the run-down inn was stuffy and smelled of mold, stale sweat and cold frying oil.
And he was once again waiting around for his brother.

Sdion had barely taken time to eat before running off once more into the streets, shouthing something over his shoulder about a game of cards he had the opportunity to be part of, or some other such nonsense. Fhenryl suppressed a sigh... Whoever their father and mother may have been, they certainly wouldn't have been proud of this scene: he, a fierce warrior of the Forest Tribes, his body taut and lean from running down mountain lions, his courage tempered from taming wild boars, he, the strongest and most feared among the young Llyrthian braves... waiting around for his kid brother, flopped down on a mangy matress probably full of vermin and mopping about like an old crone !

This would not do.

With a grunt of irritation, he jumped to his feet and quickly checked his equipment, making sure all was ready for their imminent departure. He knew everything was there and in good order, because he had checked and re-checked a number of times during the course of the day, and the days before that, in his impatience to be done with this hellish city. To start with, the whole place was built inside a crater, for Ivanyll's sake ! Only Man coud stand to live in places as vile as this.
Once again, Fhen surprised himself attempting to imagine how their father could have met - and beyond that, managed to seduce - a fine sylvan maiden such as their mother, as the Elder had described her. And once again, he failed. What a sensible soul, as she must undoubtedly have been, could have wanted with the human way of life was a mystery he had vainly tried to decrypt, ever since the day he'd entered Redgorge to find his brother. That was about three man-moonsprings ago.

Back then, he'd had only ever seen human hunters' settlements before leaving the Great Forest, and even their bare, spartan living arrangements seemed noble and positively inspiring in his mind's eye, when compared to the quiet misery and putrid decadence of what Men so pompously called their "civilized territories"...
He'd found his brother sitting at his old adoptive father's kitchen table, busy taking apart a jumbled pile of what had then seemed to Fhenryl nothing more than some bits of broken machinery and a few gears covered in soot, but that Sdion had later proudly qualified as "a magnificent piece of workmanship and a very nifty mechanical discovery", even though it finally turned out to be nothing more that a complicated device designed entirely to prevent a certain sort of greedy men to steal from other, evidently equally greedy ones.

"Here I am again: Grey Bear would say I am pontificating to the five winds, and he would be right. Some action is needed. Now."

Methodically and purposefully, the grim-looking ranger secured his gear, tightening the straps that held it in place around his taut, compact frame and made his way down the rickety, dusty wooden stairs with the dangerously intent and fluid manner of a big, badly-tempered forest cat. He remembered his brother saying something about a tavern down Magma way. If that was what it took, he was gonna get down there and drag the scrawny, ungrateful scallywag out of this pox-filled hole of a town by the scrape of his smart-aleck neck. That same neck Sdion was so intent on sticking out of his depth by meddling with other people's affairs. Too often these turned out to be the wrong sort of affairs and the wrong kind of people.

Fhenryl already knew the two of them were too vastly different to ever see things eye to eye, nevertheless he'd be damned and chain himself to the Broken Chariot of Ymmrir if he let this young fool waste his life away on card games, gambing debts and dubious "career plans", as Sdion liked to call his little deals with money-lenders, wandering charlatans and other unsavory types.

Swearing copiously in elvish under his breath, the whiskered tracker nervously tugged at the bone ring pinned on his left ear and took off at a brisk pace along the quickly darkening streets, his fur-lined long cloak wrapped around him, both to conceal his armament and to keep him from the icy evening drizzle.

October 29th, 680 S.R.
Gelded Unicorn Tavern
Hour Of The Owl

"Wait a minute, you just can't barge in like this and disturrr*aaaarr-ckhhh...!!!" Banuhr's voice tightened abruptly, along with his air intake, as the stranger's gnarled fist squeezed a little more around his windpipe.

Everything had been just peachy a few moments earlier: he'd been taking the best pickings around the table, lining up Fellowships and Color Flights with the maestria of the consumed Ante player - and professional cheat - that he was, when the hirsute, pointy-eared freak had burst through the door of his tavern's supposedly "hidden" backroom.
A more appropriate description could have been "exploded through", as it was pretty much what had happened to the door, that had been smashed to smithereens by the intruder's massive stone hammer in a few vengeful, well-placed blows - even in his state of utter shock and surprise Banuhr had admired the performance, albeit at the same time strongly questioning the workmanship of the two-bit carpenter who'd built the damn door, and for a split second he'd reflected sadly on the difficulty of contracting competent craftsmen at a decent wage in Cauldron these days, and how this had been a real problem ever since the recent salary increase had been enforced by the Dwarven Syndicate.

Then the table exploded as well.
Now, that had scattered all his recent winnings all over the floor, which had greatly upset him. But not as much as when the beastly-looking half-blood - he'd realized the creature's mixed blood heritage precisely when its bloodshot, yellowish, slanted eyes had bored into his with something alarmingly close to murderous intent - suddenly lowered his weapon to grab him by the throat with his free hand, dragging Banuhr across the remains of the card game and remorselessly choking the life out of him.

Which brought him to his current predicament: Banuhr Longgtwyst really meant to exerce his Gods-given right as a citizen and voice his discontent at what he considered to be both an unfair treatment and a hasty judgement on his person, without forgetting a clear case of breaking-and-entering, and an invasion of his personal privacy. But there was the small problem of him not being able to really breathe at the moment, much less speak. In fact a tiny, desperate gurgle, followed by a humiliating squeak was all he'd managed to utter sofar. Also, he could literally feel his whole head turn purple like a turnip. A very unfortunate turn of events in what had started as a perfectly fine evening, all considered.

The tavern owner and inveterate gambler gave a panicked look around the room, trying to croak for help, just as his head started to swim - undoubtlessly due to the lack of oxygen to his brain, he reflected, surprising himself at how part of his thought processes seemed to remain detached and even crystal-clear in the face of imminent death - and he could see from the corner of his eye that none of his co-players had remained in the immediate vicinity, after the raging apparition had busted what was to be their evening of entertainment. "A pox on these cowards !", Banuhr thought, his legs weakly wiggling beneath him as the brute now started to bodily lift him off the floor, "I'm glad I cheated them of their last coins, serves them right for not helping a friend in need !"
He felt slightly comforted by what he surmised was to be his last thought, as little sense as it made, seen in the actual context.

Yet his immediate concerns became tinged with the smallest of hopes, as his assailant suddenly released his iron grip on his windpipe, not without having shaken him enthusiastically first, prior to throwing him bodily against the wall on the far side of the small storage room, which was now littered with his Dragon Cards, an impressive quantity of playing chips - most of which he'd won almost fair and square - and wooden debris of various sizes and shapes.

"Where is my brother ?" the Beast growled in a guttural, husky and frankly quite sinister tone of voice. Banuhr detected the familiar lilt of elven speech in the man's accent, but it had a strange rhythm and intonation, almost as if each word had been wrung out on an old tree trunk and left out to dry in the sun for too long.
"Sdion Amu, also known as 'Ginger Jim': I know he came here for regular games and this is where he was last seen... Speak, you filth !"

Banuhr relaxed a little: this wasn't as bad as he'd first feared. If this inbred was wee Jim's older brother, he knew how to handle the situation. The words "Thank The Gods He's Not From The Tax Office" flashed in big fiery letters in Banuhr's mind's eye. The tavern boss innerly gave a huge sigh of relief, as he thought of all the doctored receipts he kept locked inside a small cedar box in his bedroom upstairs.
"My good man, you're...erhkh..." Banuhr coughed out a little gob of flegm slightly - and worryingly - pink with blood and cleared his aching throat before proceeding: " You have been mistaken, this establishment only has the greatest of respect for your... brother, is it ? Congratulations, my Good Sir !... Like I said your, er... brother is one of our most esteemed clients, or should I say game partners and we would, meaning I... would never even consider harming a hair from his scarlet scalp, truly you must believe me when I guarantee you that... ooowf !"
Banuhr crumpled in a ball on the floor, a searing pain radiating from the exact spot in his lower abdomen where Fhenryl had unceremoniously punched him.

"Enough barmaid talk. You have 5 seconds to tell me everything you know." the Ranger hissed, his face a mask of contained fury.

"Oh Great Gods of Oerth ! This is gonna be one of these times, then..." business owner, professional card player, wine connoisseur, master forger and occasional fence Banuhr Longgtwyst reflected philosophically, before spilling the proverbial Kobold Beans without another moment's hesitation.