A.K.’s Advent 2025 – Day 4

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A Party Walks Into A Tavern
Part 4
Roguish Reverence and How To Ruin It

So much blood. Hot and thick and everywhere. But there wasn’t pain. Surely there was also supposed to be pain when a direrat sank its teeth into one’s…wait, where exactly had Fiorella been bitten?

She eased open her eyes, a droplet suspended from her lashes, but enough sight was unobscured to see the two furry halves of the thing that had been a direrat twitching at her feet, the leavings of its rending splattered all over her front.

There was a paladin too, bloodied sword in hand and breathing hard, face twisted into terror. “Oh, madam, I very much hope I didn’t get you.”

Fiorella snorted, and a stringy something that had once belonged to the dead creature flicked off the end of her nose. “I think if you got me, I’d look a lot more like that.” She let her gaze dart down once to the thing that had been got and then back up at the getter.

“Apologies for saying, but…” He didn’t say, but he did gesture to the blood and direrat detritus all over her front to suggest maybe she did look a little gotten.

“At least I still have on my apron.”

The footsteps that came from the basement stairs then weren’t of the frantic or rodent variety but were of two upright trudgers. Drex was scowling, Sylvir was smiling, and they both were spattered in direrat innards.

“Well, Syl burnt the nest to a—” Drex sucked in a pained breath when he reached the top of the stairs. “Did you get her?”

Fiorella wasn’t sure if she should be offended by the repeated question or by its nonchalance, but when she lifted a hand to her face, it trembled so much she forgot all about offense. Apparently, it took much less than a bolt to her thigh to get her whole body to shake uncontrollably.

Valen made a quiet grunting noise of dissatisfaction. “She’s not injured, but that doesn’t mean damage wasn’t done. Can you two do something about the door?”

Sylvir immediately began flicking through his book as Drex ran a hand over where the hinges had been. “Korthak’s work?” the dark-haired man asked.

“Unfortunately.” Valen sheathed his sword and gestured down the hall. “If you would allow me to assist, madam, let’s find a place to clean you up.”

***

Drex picked up a hinge and weighed its heft in hand. It was one of the bulkier ones Korthak had conquered, old and well-made, though the orc probably wouldn’t revel in his triumph this time. He sighed—there was very little triumph-reveling lately. Spirits were meant to be consumed in celebration not in sorrow, and yet…

A familiar weight landed on his shoulder, a flicker of black feathers filling up his periphery. “Returned just in time to be lauded, eh?” he muttered to the bird.

The crow bobbed his head up and down.

“At least you didn’t make it worse. Though you could have made it better by getting eaten.”

There was a peck at the side of his head.

Drex swore and slapped at the bird, but his hand shifted right through its feathers as if the crow was an illusion. If only he was always so incorporeal.

“I don’t know how we’re going to reattach this.” Drex turned back to the broken basement entry. “Not without a whole new—what the fuck?”

Sylvir was sitting on the ground, legs crossed, book open in his lap. His long fingers danced through the air drawing unseen shapes, wisps of light trailing after. Bits of wood floated before him, tiny slivers and chunks as big as his hand, each shifting about and slowly fitting back together. It was magic—damn good magic—but it hardly compared to the serenity on his face.

The elf’s skin wasn’t pulled taut in deep concentration, his eyes weren’t glassy with frustration, and sweat wasn’t beading on his forehead. In fact, his thin lips were drawn into a subtle smile, and he was humming. The fucker was actually humming. And that song…

Green eyes shifted to Drex, and his heart pounded a little harder. Was that a flicker of recognition?

“Oh, there it is,” the elf said in an unstrained but also unaffected way, and the hinge slipped out of Drex’s grasp of its own accord to join the amalgam of floating wooden pieces. Without tools, the metal locked itself into place, and Sylvir laid his hands flat to receive what he had made with ether alone.

“How…” Drex heard his own voice like it was far away, felt his mouth fall open, and even the crow’s head twitched ponderously.

“Spell,” said Sylvir simply, wiggling the reformed hunk of the door. He flipped to the next page in his book, then back, and finally frowned. “I don’t know what comes next though.”

Drex brushed black strands out of his face to survey what was left scattered in the hall but didn’t really see the pieces. Sylvir’s last spell had been cast by a messy wave and garbled words and had blown up a stack of crates in the basement. The spell had also taken out the direrat nest, which was helpful and probably Syl’s intention, but it was luck that had kept them all alive in that closed-in space with conjured fire. Luck they had never needed before.

But this suddenly composed Sylvir, this was an elven mage who didn’t need luck.

Drex picked up another piece of splintered wood. “Think you can do that one again?”

***

Fiorella sat on a stool at the bar. She’d yet to sit on one—here at the Fitzwright Inn or in any tavern for that matter—and though it had never occurred to her to do so, she could see the usefulness in it then, observing through the eyes of a guest. There was a table that should be moved a few inches to the right, a window that needed a curtain to block the sun at exactly this time of day, and the taxidermied wolpertinger over the door could use a good fluffing. Also, all of that helped to distract from the direrat blood covering her arms and chest and face.

“Again, madam, I am so terribly sorry.” The paladin moved in front of her, blocking the bothersome ray and much more handsome than a curtain, even with the leavings of the minor war he’d won in the basement worn on his features. He placed a tankard on the bar and a bowl filled with wet linens beside it. He wrung one out, but before she could take it with her shaking hand, he brought the linen directly to her face.

Gentle warmth pressed to Fiorella’s cheek, wiping so very carefully from just beside her nose all the way to her ear.

Oh. Soft. Nice. Wow.

Then Fiorella gasped and pulled back because she knew so very little of kind gestures and intimate moments that they were even scarier than being attacked by a homicidal rodent.

“Sorry,” he said again, but this time his voice fell to a whisper and his gaze to the floor.

“Oh, it’s all right!” She stuck her still-trembling hand into the bowl, sloshing the water but managing to grab another linen with only a small amount of spillage. “Being covered in direrat insides is better than being inside one of them.” She squished the linen up against her face to cover it completely with just enough pressure to make it leak into her lap. At least she hadn’t abandoned her apron yet, and it could catch a multitude of sins.

He snorted, a pleasant, humored sound. “That is a cheerful way to look at things.”

“Thanks!” She rubbed at her eyes and blinked them open, lashes no longer encumbered. “It’s sort of necessary what with”—she gestured at the emptiness around them and sullied water flicked off the rag—“everything. And also, I really am grateful for your help. I couldn’t have ever taken on those direrats, especially not the one coming right at me, so a little blood is a very small price to pay to still have all my fingers, and really I’ve never seen someone cut through anything with a sword like that—not that I’m totally sure I saw you do it either because I closed my eyes when I thought I was going to die, but I can imagine how heroic and brave it was when I saw you standing there, all sweaty and breathing hard and…”

Rarely did Fiorella slow her speech or lose her runaway carriage of thought, but she became exceptionally aware of what she was saying just then and how it was turning her face redder than when it had been spattered with blood.

“Speaking of your basement,” he said, saving her once again. “It is not…as it was.”

“That’s good! I don’t want to run an inn for rabid monsters unless they can keep their rabidness under control and can communicate without biting me or any other guests. Regular monsters are okay, is what I’m trying to say, and really monster is such a loaded term, I probably shouldn’t have even said it at all.” She moved to dip her linen into the tankard, but it was quickly pulled away.

“This one was meant for you to drink.” The paladin hesitated then offered her the cup.

Fiorella hesitated too but not because she was afraid she might contaminate its contents. It was just that…he was handing her a drink, one he had poured specifically for her, and that felt…odd. But eventually she did curl her fingers around the tankard’s handle and bring it to her lips for a fruity sip.

“Thank you,” she whispered into the ale’s froth.

“Perhaps don’t. What I meant to say about your basement is that we may have blown it up. A little.”

“Oh.” Fiorella placed the tankard back on the bar and rubbed absently at her arm with the wet cloth, gaze trailing over the shelves of intact goblets and bottles. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

“It’s not.” Valen huffed as he ran a hand through the short length of his russet hair and then down to his beard where he plucked out a piece of something pink and gooey. “We shouldn’t have cursed this place with our presence.”

“You think you cursed this place?” Fiorella laughed and scrubbed harder at her arm. “I have to beg the windows to open every morning, my pies keep coming out of the oven with spooky sigils burnt into them, I can’t get the mirror in my bathing chamber to stop insulting me, I swept a storm cloud into existence in one of the bed chambers—don’t ask how, it’s a spell probably, but it’s still there—and I haven’t had a single guest until you.”

The paladin gave her a sympathetic look then, even more intense than his usual bent brow and sincere eyes.

She thought she should be embarrassed, but that familiar feeling didn’t come. Instead, she let her shoulders sag and took a moment to truly feel sorry for herself. “My aunt said I had to come here because the Fitzwright Inn needs my magic to function, but I’m not one hundredth the witch she is—I’m barely a witch at all. She did it all on her own, but I’m so unskilled, I would need a whole staff to keep this place running. I was so excited when I got her letter. I thought I would have a purpose and maybe even some answers, but it hasn’t been like that at all. Even though this place has my name—or I have its name—I still don’t fit in.”

Valen reached out a hand and placed it gently on her shoulder. Fiorella might have pulled away, or she might have stayed under it to experience what kindness felt like, but she would never know because a great snuffle broke into the air and made them both jump.