Something is wrong.
This was his first thought.
Something is catastrophically wrong.
This was his second.
Eyes snapped open to panic, fragments of a whirling perspective. The wind was loud in his ears, so loud, deafening, and nothing made sense. Where was down? What was down? What was this feeling, this ripping terror in his gut coupled with a terrifying weightlessness-
... oh, spirits.
He was falling. He (for he had just awoken to this scene, and was entirely too absorbed by the gripping terror of free-fall to remember who exactly he was) twisted uselessly, desperately. His perspective spun again, sickeningly, churning his stomach; had he the time to even consider the vertigo, the falling man would have compounded insult on injury by vomiting all over himself. But he had no time, as there was a great mass of something rushing up to greet him. A great mass of several tall, pointed somethings...
Trees, he thought, seconds before the topmost branches caught him in the chest and snapped, a hammerblow that cracked several of his ribs and bruised several more. Now there was pain, crushing pain, coupled with a whipping arc of the sky as the impact spun him- and the next branch took him low in the spine, bowing his back and ripping a strangled gasp from his throat. His mind shattered again, images lost in a sea of white-hot agony and terror. The broad trunk of a massive cedar, mere inches from his face. Branch after branch after branch, splintering, twisting his body this way and that. Loam, leaves... was that the ground?
A bone-crunching thump, a second moment of weightlessness, of suspended time as he bounced, eyes empty but that image stayed with him. Sunlight filtering through a heavy copse, a single sunbeam illuminating his battered form, from the hole he'd just torn in the canopy- and then the second thump, and there was nothing.
~~~
He awoke some hours later with an agonized groan. Reflexively, he tried to sit up- and was immediately forced back down as his cracked ribs and battered spine howled in protest. His whole body was a throbbing mess of pain. Slowly, and with great care, the unfortunate newcomer began to shift his limbs incrementally, wincing and cursing as each strained muscle and bruised bone slowly began to respond. He did this mechanically, knowing that he had to make sure his limbs worked, but not knowing how he knew. It hurt, everything hurt, and the trauma of the crash seemed to have affected his memory... no, wait... there was something...
~~~
A haze of thick, sickly sweet smoke choked the dimly lit tavern of a world far removed from Valucre. Hard-eyed men huddled around crooked tables, nursing drinks of vile liquor and picking through meals of gruel and bits of unidentified meat- the brown, if you will. Set back in the far corner, beneath a hanging lantern with all but the lower four slats drawn, was a longer, rectangular table. The men who sat around this table were not, perhaps, as immediately as intimidating as the men who typically patronized the nameless tavern, but the intelligent set of their eyes and the way some few carried themselves spoke of a danger deeper than physical violence.
These were powerful men, players in the seedy underground. Scattered around the table were gang leaders, fences, loansharks and silent hired knives. As a whole, they muttered and cursed beneath their breath, shot dark glances at the man sitting in their midst- a Tsingano, one of the swarthy, travelling gypsies that drifted their errant way across the land, tumbling, tinkering, and performing in hamlets and villages to eke out a meager living. There was one unspoken rule where these drifters were concerned, a rule that these hard men were currently engaged in breaking.
Never play cards with a Tsingano.
The Tsingano in question was a special sort, though none outside the circle of gypsies had ever heard of his kind before. He was Gadjo, wind-blessed. And, as the brilliant white smile he wore and the pile of dented, dull marker chips before him could attest, he was winning. His skin was a burnished olive, lashes dark and long over dark yellow eyes, flecked with bands of green. Woven into dark, shaggy hair were beads and bits of glass, the unruly mess dotted here and there with a small, ornate braid. His face was aquiline, features sharp and precise, though something about the slant of his eyes hinted that he knew some great joke, a private secret that kept laughter dancing behind those unsettling yellow eyes. He dressed as one would expect a gypsy to dress, a time-worn grey wool coat over a battered wool shirt, throat wrapped in scarves and bandannas. Both ears were pierced multiple times, and tattered, fingerless gloves covered long-fingered hands.
"Ha!" He cried, and his voice was musical, expressive, and robust, "My pearls, my friends, my boon companions, it grieves my tender soul to say this, especially to you, those closest to my heart, but, alas! You've all got shit for cards, and I daresay unless you fold now I'll be forced to wipe the floor with your coinpurses yet again!"
Dark eyes glared from across the table as the dealer took up his cards. A thin, heavily tattooed man who wore no shirt to display the intricate whorls and patterns of scars that marked him as gera, one of thousands scattered across the land whose business was gambling, had not said a word when the Tsingano sat down, though his lips had tightened imperceptibly. His wrist flicked once, twice, seven times, expertly skimming the cards face down along the tabletop to their owner's waiting hand.
The gypsy's smile widened as they flew, and tiny, flickering, whirring lights blossomed across the tabletop. Unseen to any but the swarthy man, those lights swirled, ghost-like and wavering, touching each card in turn and then swirling lovingly up the arms of the Tsingano, whispering in excited, tinny voices. A tiny frown tugged at one corner of the gypsy's lips, and D'eon (for that was his name) snapped his gaze back up to the table.
A florid, heavyset man sat across from D'eon, cards clutched tight in thick fingers, forehead drawn down into a constellation of wrinkles that spoke of nothing more than anger and frustration. His poker face was excellent, apparently, even as he flipped the card that gave him teth, a winning hand in all but two circumstances. His craggy face barely twitched as the realization hit home, but D'eon was already looking elsewhere. Why watch your opponent when his cards are yours from the moment they're dealt? Foolish.
That smile widened in turn as his earnest gaze was met with black stares and outright rage, which conveniently focused their attention away from his hands. With a quick, nigh-imperceptible flick of his wrist, a new card blossomed between his hands, swiftly replacing the dealt card as his palm fell over it. Drawing the false card into his hand, D'eon's expression never changed, and he slid two chits into the center of the table.
"Hold!" He announced irrepressibly.
The betting continued counterclockwise, and the florid man was fourth. He carefully flicked five chits from his dwindling pile, adding them to the growing stack in the center.
"Raise." He growled. (It should be worth noting, I think, that this speaks nothing to his emotional state. A regular of the tavern, no one had ever heard the man speak in anything but a growl.)
Seven cards in, the pile in the center was impressive- almost rivaling the size of D'eon's own. While it was widely known that Tsingano were absolute murder with a deck of cards, it was that vaunted reputation that forced the men to play harder and more cutthroat than they ever had- which worked just fine for D'eon, as ordinarily careful, cautious men could be goaded into risking almost their entire fortune on a single hand. D'eon had conned nobles, stableboys, innkeepers, and clergymen, but rarely had he the chance to heap this much coinage on the table at once. The pile in the center totaled nearly thirty golden dragons- three times a guardsman's monthly stipend.
Cards began to fall, clockwise this time, and the florid man trumpeted something intelligible, tossing his cards down on the table. The men between he and D'eon had folded a two cards ago, and he turned beady black eyes to the gypsy, victory writ in every crag of his visage.
D'eon's smile vanished momentarily, as he glanced from his own hand to the teth hand laid out to his left. Instead, his face fell, as if some great tragedy had befallen him.
"Oh, my friends," He wailed, clutching his cards to his chest, "That I must do this to you once more pains you more than I should ever know! If I could wager the happiness of my eternal soul to Lady Fate that I might not have to wreak such terror, I would, but alas, alas!"
And with that he tossed his cards onto the table, landing fanned- and displaying teth-ka, the rarest hand, and an unbeatable one at that.
For a long moment there was silence, violence building in the air. When it happened, it happened all at once, the men at the table surging up with murder in their eyes. The man directly to D'eon's right struck out, and abruptly D'eon's world blossomed with light as thousands of windsprites surged to life, and in a split second surged into his chest, filling his form with power. The air was a caress now, and he saw the blow before it happened, the afterimage of a fist filling his vision.
D'eon pushed himself back from the table, the blow missing him by a mere inch. As the elbow passed he snatched it with his left hand, lifting out of his stool and driving his right forearm into the base of the man's skull. Twisting at the hip, the gypsy smashed the man, nose-first, directly into the table.
Releasing his grip and planting one hand on the back of the chair the man had vacated and the other on the table, he whipped himself up into an impossibly perfect handspring, flipping in midair and bringing both feet down perfectly into the shoulders of the man behind the first, who was both rising and turning at the same time. The chair beneath him shattered as the full force of the blow smashed him back to earth, and D'eon landed on his shoulderblades, drawing his knees up towards his chest.
Rolling under the table, he lashed out again with a scything low kick, tangling the rest of the party on the other side of the table in a mess of falling bodies and chairs. Tucking the momentum of the kick back into himself he rolled backwards, surging to his feet with a shoulder under the opposite edge, upending his winnings, the cards, and the table itself on the mess of toppled men.
Wealth abandoned, the moment lost, D'eon turned on his heel and bolted for the door. The hard-eyed men ringing the tables were frozen, as men often are when confronted with brutal, swift violence- but these were men who lived and breathed killing, and they were halfway to their feet when a commanding voice boomed through the tavern.
"Down!"
D'eon glanced over his shoulder, precious feet from the door, and caught sight of the florid, craggy faced man, on his feet, one hand outstretched towards the fleeing gypsy, wreathed in green, crackling energy.
There was one unwritten rule among the Tsingano. One that D'eon had unknowingly, tragically broken-
Never cheat a wizard.
The spell took him in the lower back, ripping the poor gypsy from his feet and accelerating his motion, sending him whipping through the last few feet with sickening speed. Terrified, D'eon squeezed his eyes shut, but there was no horrible impact, no shattering of bones and death, only blackness, a great yawning chasm of dark, and then...
~~~
And then falling. D'eon groaned, both in pain and in displeasure, sprawled broken and injured in the soft loam of the forest. There was no time to ponder what had happened, no time to even think where he was. He needed medical attention, and badly. All his limbs, thankfully, seemed to be in working order, but breathing with cracked ribs was becoming increasingly difficult. As if the fates had blessed him, not far was a heavy branch that he had torn free as he plummeted to earth.
Teeth grit against the pain, the gypsy began to inch himself towards the fallen limb. Several times, white agony exploded behind his eyes, and he had to stop to regain himself, regain his breath. Finally, after long, agonizing seconds, he managed to lever the branch into the ground and haul himself shakily to his feet. He breathed deep, and spoke a word into the air. A word that has no meaning, no sound as we know it, a word of deep and ancient magic, the word of wind-blessed, call to the spirits.
There was nothing. Nothing at all. D'eon screwed his eyes shut against the implications. He was Gadjo, bonded to wind, blessed, beloved of the spirits. Could the mage have robbed him of his power? No, it could not be. You cannot withdraw the blessing of spirits, and he had done nothing to earn their displeasure. Perhaps... no, almost certainly. D'eon lifted his eyes to the skyline, a great desolate pit opening in his stomach.
This was not his land.
He stood like that for some time, tears running silently down his dirty, battered face. After an indeterminate stretch of moments, he became aware of another wetness, a growing wetness, and glancing down he was confronted with a wet, red stain growing at his side, already soaking through the wool shirt. Fear and terror raged within him, badly wounded in an unknown land...
If he wanted to live, there was nothing to do but walk, and walk he did. He had no direction, no aim, merely a fierce desire to live and, not to be discounted- a healthy dose of Tsingano luck.
Reply With Quote
