Journey to the Darkest Dungeon

Night

With the work being done in your absence, you went on your way to the bar for some much needed reprieve and distraction. Ever since your fingers had first made contact with that journals eerily smooth binding, since your eyes had began so ravenously consuming the pages content and their wondrous, worrying implications, there had been this tension building within your bones that you found yourself unable to shake. Even finally pushing the book away, burdening someone else with its yet unplumbed, troubling ballast had merely dampened the feeling, not quelled its source. It was very much alive inside you and as you wandered the mostly vacant city streets you could hardly shake that damnable sense of being watched. Beheld, by something, somewhere in the general leaning of that ruin atop the hill.

Grateful, you pushed open the tavern gate. You had made it. The room behind looked exactly as you remembered. Dim lighting illuminated a few mostly inert silhouettes, hunched over tables, sprawled in corners. The only new contrast was the highwayman who had joined the dormant patrons at the bar, glass in hand, with a stoic stare and poise that blended all too well in with his surroundings. You would not have been able to tell him from the locals had he been a stranger to you. Silently you took a seat next to him and motioned the keep to serve you a glass of the offered lukewarm distraction.

Usually when that familiar thirst for diversion arose within, you had shared the chosen spirit with yourself and the evening alone. A silent moment in much needed solitude, allowing you to reflect and think and be on your own. Drinking around people was not a quality you had been known for, much less around the more... common folk. A tall jug was set before you. You eyed the mixture suspiciously, then took a large gulp. The murky liquid splashed against the back of your throat and it was so utterly revolting. You had expected something of a less refined quality, but this emulsion was as off-putting as it was nondescript. No singular taste emerged or made itself identifiable, it all collided within a swirl of stale, alienating murk. Quickly overwhelmed by horrid taste and numbing sting from the drink, you understood that intoxication was not an act of provocative stimulation here, nor a funny, social affair. It was a patch of long expired medicinal bandage, pressed with might on a septic wound that simply would not stop oozing. But instead of mending the wound, all the people here could do was press harder.

The rogue next to you emptied the rest of his drink in one large swig and motioned the barkeep to fix him another. "You did a good job out there in the forest" you finally spoke to him, your recognition lined with a fine layer of your cavalier disrespect, "so thank you." To your surprise, the man next to you showed no reaction. Stoic gaze turned ahead, thoughts wandering down some distant road, limbs and body firmly rooted in this place, with his drink and with you. But otherwise absent. The glass was set before him and finally, he returned from his mental retreat.

"You could've died out there, y'know that, right?" he finally replied without turning his head. You felt your eyes narrow in confounded irritation. "No, that's what you were there for," you returned, making no effort to mask the aggravation in your voice. The rogue took notice. "You weren't prepared for the ambush. Had there been another, you would be dead right now," he said in a flat tone, again draining more of that vile drink into his mouth. You felt as if someone had smacked you against the forehead. What was he talking about? You had paid the man for your protection, it had been his job to protect you. Was he now telling you, he could not have even done it? There was no containing this anger. 

"So what you are telling me is that you are unfit for the task, highwayman?" Dismas finally turned towards you. His stone-faced demeanor betrayed only by the deep scorn within his eyes. "You are not prepared for what lies ahead," he spoke, "You haven't the faintest clue what you have gotten yourself into."

You were stunned. "You should be careful how you speak to the person lining your pockets, rogue." But the cutting bitterness of your razor-sharp tongue found its target inexcusably intact. Without turning towards you again, Dismas emptied his second glass and got up from the bar. His back turned on you, he scaled the shaky wooden steps towards the upper floor and retired to his room.