***
There was a cluster of eyes overlooking Parcifal as she sat at the bar, pensively withdrawn over a mug filled with a sizzling, steamy liquid. The bartender was apprehensive, at best.
“Ye might wanna..” he didn’t finish his sentence and Parcifal stared at him with a killer’s gaze. He swallowed hard and barely found it in his heart to finish his sentence.
“Ye might wanna finish that lass. At least before the narnog eats through it.”
Parcifal wasted no time; she downed the mug in one go. The wooden bar she was sitting at though in no pristine condition to begin with, was now filled with holes of varying sizes. At some places, there were even small holes through and through, even down on the floor. Around Parcifal, as if there was somehow an area of effect about her nearly three feet wide, sat no-one. In a place as packed as the ‘Long Distance Mariner’, or El-dee-Em as the regulars called it, three feet was quite a wide berth.
Behind her there was a pile of smashed, half-eaten mugs that was almost knee-high. A couple of rowdy fellows were passed out right beside the pile; they had insisted that Parcifal was in need of some ‘good ole barnacle busting’. Feeling gracious, Parcifal had only knocked them unconscious - most of their teeth had already been missing.
After that tiny altercation, she had the El-Dee-Em’s attention. It was a place rife with seadogs, roughnecks, hands-for-hire, pirate wanna-bees and space drifters, shady characters and sultry maids with less honor than a judge. Everyone of them couldn’t help but stare at the feisty redhead clad in armor that seemed to have guts wrought out of iron.
“Keep them coming,” said Parcifal and put some more coin on the bar for the bartender to see. For a moment, he stared at the coin before turning his gaze on Parcifal. He looked the sort of the old, retired pirate who had enough of a mind and a leg left after all the groggin’ and the pillaging to settle down and go for the steady money of a sailor’s bar. He had grey and white strands of long hair tied together and a thick moustache that made drinking beer a waste of good foam. His skin was worn over time and the trepidations of playing one’s life on the line every day; but his eyes were an untouched sapphire blue and a shiny, pristine matter. There was a story going around that he had cried just once in his life, when his parrot died in a freak cuisine accident. This was only the second time then. His voice was an awed, trembling mess.
“Lass.. I’m all outta narnog. Brookladdie’s Oath, I’ve never run outta narnog. Not even when Ridj Van Allen’s fleet looted every cellar in Tallyflop. Not even after Wallie’s Skittoons had a pissing contest right here, on that stand,” he said and pointed with a white-knuckled, shaky finger at a tall drinking stand which sported a case of weird discolouring. The expression on Parcifal’s face remained that of a person wholly unimpressed.
“I asked around and they said the ‘Long Distance Mariner’ had what I was looking for.”
“Lass, my narnog is truly fit for cleaning cogs and brassheads.”
“As true as that may be, that’s not what I’m looking for.”
“I suppose you weren’t just thirsty then?”
“It actually doesn’t quench the thirst, does it? But that’s not the point in question. I was told there are people in here who might know people who know things. Lots of things.”
“Wot kind of things?”
“Things that go unspoken. Things that remain hidden. Secrets, lies, stories that could kill a man. Those sort of things,” said Parcifal knowingly with eyes filled with menace. The bartender looked at her then and his answer seemed all too clear to him.
“Ah. Those kinds of things.”
“I’ve wasted lots of time. And lots of coin. So I’m not asking twice; I know that you know where Bo and that stupid chair are.”
Parcifal let her words sink in like barbs. She seemed to be having immense fun. The bartender didn’t seem to share that view, but nevertheless, he was grinning.
“Well, if you’re that impatient, I guess you’ve found what you’re looking for.”
Parcifal was suddenly glowing with a bright blue light, from her waist up. She looked at Encelados; even through the sheath, it was flaring bright, almost blinding. When she looked back upon the bartender, the same sapphire blue eyes were staring at her; but all the rest about him was a dark-skinned nightmare, very much like Hobb. A maw lined up with tentacles reached for her neck.
With the serenity of a monk and the speed of a mongoose, Parcifal moved out of the way with her eyes closed, her head drooped down. In one fluid motion, she unsheathed Encelados with her left arm and with an upwards sharp stroke she turned the blade against the tentacles and the creature’s head.
Milky-white blood sprouted for the neck of the once perhaps human bartender. Encelados was still filled with violent light, the thick liquid staining its otherwise immaculate surface. She then heard a sound like no-other; it was as if someone was stomping grapes made of glass. Parcifal’s face showed some instinct other than self-preservation; it was sudden, primal fear. She knew things would not be easy, but she wasn’t prepared for this. Some more commotion; a number of thuds, a few croaks and the sound of flesh being robbed of life.
She turned around in time to see more than half the El-Dee-Em’s patrons on their last dying throes. Some were being choked by tentacles, others were already deadly surprised by a stab on the chest and most had found death while passed out drunk with their mugs in hand and their skulls cracked; brain matter oozed like a bag of spilled beans. The rest of the patrons had taken on their true forms; blue-eyed, tentacle-lined maws, dark of skin, devoid of heart or goodness.
“You should’ve stayed put. We don’t take kindly to prying eyes,” said one of them as they all approached her with a deliberate, unnervingly slow pace.
“I was raised a princess of the Kingdom of Nomos. I am Parcifal Teletha, princess regent to Lernea Teletha, Captain of the Gardens, and warmaiden of the Holy Mountain. Who are you?” said Parcifal, pointing the tip of Encelados’ blade at the walking, talking terror that kept inching its way closer.
“We are the Ygg, one and many; children of the void, bringers of The Day!” exclaimed the dark-skinned monster triumphantly. The others of its kind raised their otherworldly voices in a sickening hail:
“Uaaah! Ygg-shub-nab!”
“Save me the ritualistic malarkey,” said Parcifal sharply. She held Encelados menacingly, while her voice rang truly alone: “If you value your life, hand me over Bo the bunny, and the chair. I give you my word as a warmaiden of the Holy Mountain of Nomos, I’ll spare you; by Skrala so it shall be, Svarna be my witness.”
The monsters paused in their stride suddenly, no more than a dozen feet away from Parcifal. The Ygg that seemed to be their self-appointed leader spoke with a slightly trembling, quavery voice, filled with ghastly echoes of a hiss. It sounded like a deranged kind of laughter.
“Value life? You, give us.. Your word?” asked the Ygg, unable to understand.
“Is something wrong with your hearing?”
“There must be something wrong with your mind, human. Perhaps, as you say, that narnog went to your head,” said the head Ygg and wafted uncannily towards Parcifal. She noticed they were all floating now, in varied heights off the floor.
“How much do you know about Nomos?”
“Who cares about an insignificant little piece of rock?”
“Good. Then you haven’t heard of the legend of the dragonborn, have you?”
“Poor choice of last words,” said the Ygg with vehemence as it became poised to assault Parcifal, barely a leap away.
“Strange choice of words yourself,” said Parcifal and a gushing stream of fire flew out of her mouth, engulfing the Ygg in flames. The creature staggered in agonizing puzzlement as the flames ate at its flesh.
“Thoth ph’tagn! Kill the worm!” it screamed in anguish and rushed Parcifal, flailing its clawed hands wildly. Parcifal was already on the move, her senses helping her mind see her path against the threats all around her. The
next moment, two severed clawed hands were still writhing on the murky, white-blooded floor; the Ygg shot its short tentacles in blinded agony. Parcifal leapt gracefully into the air, wielding Encelados with exemplary strictness of form. An eerie shriek filled the ‘Long Distance Mariner’ - it sounded like the death throes of a stillborn sea giant.
“Anyone having a change of mind?”
The Ygg threw their heads back, tentacles writhing like livid fleshy flowers from a nightmare’s seed; they let out a massive hoary shout in unison, a terrible, maddening wail. And then they shot at her at blazing speed with their claws shining under the candlelight, their maws frightfully open, a depthless invitation to madness waiting at the other end.
“Thick-skulled bastards, everyone of them,” whispered Parcifal to herself and stood with Encelados raised, clasped with both hands in a defensive posture. As she saw her whole field of vision being filled with the terrible forms of the Ygg, her back against the El-Dee-Em’s bar, she had a fleeting moment of loneliness. Strangely, a flash of recollection overcame her. The words of Master Sisyphus came to mind: “The outcome of a fight is always precariously balanced; The struggle itself though, should be enough to fill a man’s heart. Now shovel that manure.”
Parcifal’s face shone with a grin, relaxed her grip on Encelados, and prepared for metal to meet the flesh.
“Skrala, lent me strength! Svarna, guide my hand!”, she cried with a terrible call as her glowing blade cut into livid, dark flesh.
She was dragonborn, not merely a man; she knew that nothing but victory would do.