Secret of The Blades

ONE

MARKKUS

My grandfather used to tell me stories that confused me as a child. His temperament and arsenal of words did not help my immature understanding of what he spoke of, much of what he said flying high over my head. I understood, however, that he spoke of war and demons, of tyrants and kings, the unending struggle between good and evil, as well as the best mead in the city of Vita.

21 years of age had passed me by and the only one piece of information had stayed by my side the whole way.

The Tinkerer's Tavern, the best mead in Vita by the advice of my now late grandfather, had been my nightly home for the past few days after the closing of my market stall as I mourned the loss of my prized hunting dog and friend, Gorn, whose death had pushed me back into the bar once again. A stout bull of a thing he was, the dog stood 2 and a half feet off the ground, with muscular legs, pointed ears, a gnarly smile, and a friendly attitude towards most men. It was not necessarily the death of my dog that had made me sad, but the fact that I would never have him by my side again. We had not been hunting together in weeks, seeing as his health began to decline around a month ago, and he was finally lost to me of old age, having lived a full and mostly pampered life by my side since my 10th birthday when my mother had bought him for me. It was safe to say that she also mourned his loss, as unless I was hunting, Gorn was at home with her. Now, in my absence, the house is just empty.

A different side of the story, however, was the mead. My grandfather was right about The Tinkerer's Tavern having the best (or almost the best) drink in all of Vita, and only two blocks from my home in the city. The tavern owned a building that was about as wide as your average shop, but extra deep, as they housed one of the only distilleries within the city walls. This meant, however, that anything they made was always fresh for the customer, straight from the pot to your empty stomach. The honeyed taste lingered on my lips after each sip: not too dry, not too sweet. I was certainly enjoying every second of that feeling before the time began to edge the day towards darkness, signaling my return home.

The barkeep was also the owner of the Tavern. He knew me well by now as I'd been a fairly loyal customer over the years following my father's, and now my friend's, deaths since my 18th birthday. I paid him and thanked him once again for the mead, to which he replied that he'd better not see me again tomorrow. I told him I'd try my best, though he and I both knew that my words carried no weight.

Autumn in Vita was breezy and temperate, considering our city was a port city. The ocean winds, cut down by the tall buildings, tried their best to press on down the avenues and streets, pushing the smell of sea salt and water onto the occasional pedestrian. The most notable fragrance that normally permeated the air, however, was the food, especially in the evenings. A mixture of fish, bread, alcohol, and cheese permeated the air as some of the stronger smells that the city emanated, on top of the occasional fruit basket and pile of horse manure.

The angled sunlight hit many of the buildings at awkward angles, creating dramatic shadows across brick and cobble in the orange-pink lighting that many of our citizens would completely ignore on a day-to-day, most simply just not thinking about the beauty enough to truly see it. Many streets were straight shots downhill facing the harbor, which always provided breathtaking views of the sun setting over the Eastern sea, falling behind the islands in the distance. My home was at the end of a city block, directly facing the sea, but by the way the astronomy and the sun moved, we would only get direct sunlight straight down the road at the end of fall and in the wintertime.

My home was a two story townhome on the more middle-class residential side of Vita. It came with three bedrooms, a den, a kitchen, and an abundance of windows on the two sides of the house that weren't attached to another. A retired court mage's assistant, my mother spent most of her time in the kitchen or the den, cooking meals or working on her current home project; a tapestry depicting one of my hunts. When I entered my house that day, I knew that she had been working on the former, as the entire place smelled of bread, cooked fowl, and vegetables.