Elan Pt. 02 - One Drink too Many

One Drink too Many

--

It was another cold night in northern Isbrygga, the chilled air bringing more snow on its currents as the winter set in. Torvald didn't much care for the northern winters - as most didn't - and decided to shelter in the town of Vitvarg rather than braving the frosty weather another night.

Vitvarg offered the prospect of a warm bed and warm food for the man, a veteran mercenary-turned-adventurer. Not only that, its lively inn also offered him a good chance of sharing that bed with a warm northerner woman as well.

Torvald scanned the wooded hall of the inn. The room had a large firepit in its center which illuminated the interior with the pleasant glow of warmth. The occupants of the inn were shouting, playing games, and not least drinking merrily as they made the best of the cold night in this inhospitable place. A bard occasionally offer a song to the inn, playing with the strange string and percussion instruments of the barbarians.

Torvald was especially pleased at the sights of the local womenfolk. Blonde-haired all, they dressed in clothing that the adventurer would expect to find in much warmer climes; short dresses of tan or brown linens and covering their shoulders with the furs of some dead animal. The serving wenches were mostly slave-folk - easily identifiable by their leather collars - and wore more well-used dresses as they scurried between the benches and tables of the inn. Torvald noted that many of the men of the inn would grope or slap the servers as they passed, proof of a slave's position in the world. Torvald grinned at the sight. He could see himself owning a wench or ten himself.

However, he was an Imperial. And his former mercenary captain had assured that Torvald would never own a slave in his life, unless he wanted to live here in this inhospitable land or travel to the far west where the dark-skinned people lived.

The man took a swig of his drink as he undressed a free woman standing near the bar with his eyes. No man around her, no one to challenge his rule over that particular conquest. She had the thick thighs that most northern women had, and a shapely ass that caused her dress to ride up to the middle of her thighs.

Torvald reminded himself of the few northerner words that he knew, and devised a plan to get her in his bed for the night. He took another gulp of ale just as the door of the inn opened, the howling frozen wind of the outdoors making its presence known for a moment, before an interesting pair of adventurers entered the hall.

Torvald had, of course, inspected the woman first. A tanned, thin girl, with a pretty face and the curves of an angel. Torvald decided to shift his conquest towards the inn's new occupant before inspecting the man at the woman's side.

Well speak of the devil, he thought.

Torvald inspected the man, and instantly recognized him as his old mercenary captain. He observed the pair approach the bar, the woman falling in line just behind the intimidating man that Talos had become. His eyes shone with an undeniable confidence, and the sword at his belt looked positively terrifying. And expensive, Torvald mused.

Talos had been just a young lad with nineteen years of age when he disbanded the Blood Moons after three long years of marching through the Empire, taking the money of the rich to slay the poor. But now...

So much for that particular conquest, Torvald admitted to himself of the beautiful woman beside Talos. He watched as the pair exchanged currency and an attempt at small talk with the bartender before returning to the firepit with a mug of ale each.

"Do my eyes deceive me?" Torvald asked the air between himself and Talos, grinning as he looked at his old mercenary captain.

"Torvald," the man replied, returning the grin. "What the fuck happened to your face?"

Talos was, of course, talking about the many scars Torvald had accumulated over his hard years of adventuring.

"Fell into a rose bush jumpin' from your mother's window last night," Torvald replied indignantly. He saw Talos fighting against laughter as the man strode towards him, arms extended. Torvald rose from his table to return the greeting.

"Good to see ya again, cap'n," he said first, giving Talos a short but hard squeeze before returning to his seat. Torvald couldn't help but take another quick glance at the slender woman accompanying his old friend.

"To you as well Torvald. I'd like you to meet my close companion, Cass," the man smirked, gesturing towards her. "Cass, Torvald. He and I worked together for several years under the same banner."

"What he means to say is he bossed me and three thousand more around for two-er-three years while we killed people for him, sweet miss. How do ya do?"

"I do, uh-I'm doing well, Torvald. It is nice to meet you," the angel answered sweetly, lying through her teeth as she spoke.

"Drink with me, Talos. It's been too long."

His old captain accepted, Talos and his beautiful companion sitting at Torvald's table when they couldn't find enough reasons to say no.

-

The night was still young, and the trio had drank and laughed for two hours now as they each worked effortlessly to drink another.

"It ain't that I ain't tryin', Talos. It's the women these days. They don't care about havin' a strong man around a'ymore. They'd sooner cheat on me with some haughty lad like that bard o'er there than I could take a piss!" Torvald complained to the man opposite him while getting the attention of a wench for more drink with a raised finger. Talos' companion looked at him with reddened cheeks and a polite smile as Torvald wallowed in his own, undeserved, pity.

"I think ya just need to find a fuckin'... a fuckin' religious girl, Torvald. The religious ones don't cheat. Ya know?" Talos replied, slurring his speech only four ales deep. "Is what I did."

"Bah!", Torvald exclaimed, denying the statement. "The only religion my woman needs is the gods she screams for as I fuck 'er!"

Feeling a need to prove his point, Torvald smacked the slave-wench's ass as she served him another ale, the girl meekly yelping in surprise as he did. Cass glared at him and huffed as he picked up his next drink.

"Er, sorry lass." Torvald noticed Talos' companion staring off at the bard as he apologized, distancing herself from the conversation. A moment or ten passed before conversation renewed, the willowy woman having tuned out of the conversation entirely and tuned instead into the music.

"Well Torvald, you've always had problems with the ladies. Remem'er the Duke of Santaria?" Talos spoke, already chuckling to his incoming story. "He was shouting, nay, screaming for your head for cuckol'ing him in front of half the city!" Talos chortled.

Torvald returned the laugh, reminiscing of the good old days with his boss. "Aye, cap'n, tha' ol' prick prolly couldn't 'ave fucked a whore if he were the last man on earth with a coin to 'is name!"

"And then the old bastard," Talos continued, "thought he could yell at me to pun'sh you!"

"An' you axed him to show ya where in the lawbooks it said ye couldn't fuck a man's wife," Torvald roared in response.

"An' I told him, fine, look. Look, I'll give him a worthy pun'shment that meets the crime," Talos guffawed, throwing an invisible coinpurse over to the man opposite him.

"Good times, cap... Can't believe he kept the contract af'er that... The look on his face..."

The two men were nearing helplessness by this point, their fists slamming the table before them as they were reminded of the Duke's reaction.

Talos had, a decade and a half ago, thrown a loaded coinpouch to Torvald as reward for his accomplishment in front of the cuckolded Duke before declaring justice had now been served.

The two men composed themselves for a moment to chug their ale. Torvald noticed his old captain glancing over at his companion, the toned beauty swaying her head side-to-side with eyes closed as she enjoyed the bard's cheerful tune. Torvald just now noticed her pointed ears, her hood having fallen down.

An elf? Interesting, Torvald thought briefly before letting the notion go. He instead scanned the hall again, attempting to locate the woman he had been lusting for earlier in the night.

"So, Torvald. What in the fuck are you even doing this far north anyway?"

Torvald was far too deep into his drink to come up with a good enough lie for him. He decided the truth wouldn't hurt; Talos could have had him killed six times over back in the day, and Torvald figured he wouldn't start now.

"There's a mage, see. A beautiful mage down south who sent me up here to retrieve..." Torvald paused a moment and reached over to dig through his backpack, "... this thing, here," he finished, handing a dull, apple-sized, amber-colored stone over to the man.

"Interesting," Talos said inquisitively, looking over the stone in his palm. He glanced over to Casiama and realized she wasn't paying attention, then handed the rock back to Torvald. "Any idea what it is?"

"Said it was an, er, some sort of casting stone is what she said. Said it was worthless to anyone but 'er," Torvald answered, trying to remember the details.

"A lie, no doubt."

"Naw, naw, I'm certain she's right. Had that look 'bout her. You know the type," he argued half-sober. Torvald didn't see the need to add the part of the arrangement where he'd get to fuck the mage once he'd returned the stone to her. Talos nodded at him.

"Do I ever. A mage not four months ago had me go a lookin' for these worthless books..." Talos started, bragging about the time he met and fucked an auburn-haired sorceress.

And so the night continued, the two men sharing stories of conquests and well-earned victories accumulated over the years. Talos had let Torvald know that Sigismund Decatur was also doing well, having just seen him in a port city down in the Kingdom of Solais.

Torvald had, soon after, discovered that his conquest of the night was just about to leave the inn. He instead invited her to their table in a slurred, awful version of the northerner's language. Talos looked perplexed that the woman had actually accepted the invitation, but played along regardless.

They drank together for another hour or so, the elf even joining in between the bard's songs, before they saw Cass rise gracefully from the table.

-

Casiama's body felt as light as a feather as she rose to her feet.

The princess hadn't remembered standing up. Casiama, in fact, barely felt conscious as her stomach rolled as a calm ocean wave to the rhythm of a well-played lyra. She felt the notes pitch above her being and slowly raised her hands to reach them, her slender arms added to the slow roll of her body. She twirled through the melody, gracefully dancing closer to the notes to better entwine with them.

Then the pitch lowered to her hips, and she lowered and twisted her hands daintily to meet each note. They floated freely through the air around her as she twirled slowly to wrap the melody around her form. She soon had to lower her hips softly, gently, rhythmically, to avoid entwining too tightly. She bent at her knees daintily to ensure the tune granted her the space to work.

But the melody commanded her to rise once more. The notes told her to gyrate her hips softly, to twirl as light as a midsummer's breeze.

She floated through space as a leaf on the wind, her form slowly melting to the rhythm as the beautiful notes of a lute arrived in her ears. She rocked back-and-forth, swayed side-to-side to ensure she caught each one, listening closely to the wordless commands of the music on the air.

She smiled and bit her lip, displaying her happiness to the instruments as she gracefully spun her body and stepped confidently in all the right places.

A drum was then added to her symphony, a beat she met with arms stretched towards the heavens. Her head swayed enchantingly as she clapped softly, gently, rhythmically, just enough to match the percussions as her body danced through the heavens. Her delicate hands somehow sounded as if they were dozens, reverberating aetherius itself with its might.

Wait. Casiama couldn't do that.

The princess opened her eyes, intending to solve the problem. She soon realized she was not, in fact, assaulting the heavens with her hands, but instead dancing through the warm hall of an Isbryggan inn. The realization had not told her body to stop moving, and hadn't yet stopped her hands from clapping as a dozen and eight other hands matched her beat.

She would have blushed, then, had it not been for the copious drink that had forced her face to redden hours ago.

She looked to Talos as she sway, still sitting with his friend some four tables away. She looked to him for advice, no, for confirmation as her belly rolled sensually. Talos offered an outstretched palm, signaling his consent. Casiama smiled sweetly at him before holding up a finger to the now band of musicians holding various instruments, who promptly stopped playing in anticipation.

Free of the melody's grasp, Casiama was allowed to strut into a side room of the inn to change into a proper ensemble for the tune. She didn't question what thoughts raced through her head; that part of her being was already asleep. Half a dozen mugs of ale had told her long ago to ignore timidity and embrace confidence, but only half her mind was still listening.

She decided her corset was too restrictive, and so she banished it with a flick of her wrist.

Her cotton shirt was far too plain, so she replaced it with a bodice that allowed her belly and the top of her cleavage to breathe.

Her pants were too tight, so she transformed them into a soft miniskirt flanked by the longer skirt of her battle dress, which opened up in the center to allow better movement.

Her boots were far too noisy and took precious attention from her body, so those too were replaced with soft thigh-high socks.

Lastly, Casiama summoned her long white-and-gold cloak. Because she knew the inn wanted a show. She wrapped the cloak around her back and over her arms as she strut back into the hall, placing her hands on her waist as she looked over her captivated audience. They'd get a show.

Casiama basked in the moment, a hundred eyes on her as if Raelys herself stood before them. She then rolled her head towards the now five-strong orchestra, the ancient songs of Isbrygga promptly filling the hall.

The goddess of desire closed her eyes, feeling the melody permeate her soul. She raised only her arms at first. Casiama clapped once, twice, thrice, feeling the brutal beat vibrate aetherius once more.

-

Casiama awoke the next morning wrapped under the covers of a warm bed, still wearing half of her battle garb. She hazily recalled the events that had transpired the previous night as a thunderous headache consumed her.

"Ah good, you're up," she heard Talos declare from behind, stroking her hair calmly.

Casiama suddenly felt her guts churning and hastily rolled to the side of the bed, returning the contents of half a dozen ale mugs to the inn. Her head tilted back slightly as she felt her lover's hand holding her hair.

"One drink too many," was all she could croak out before heaving once more.