Chapter Text
The tune is quiet, brushed out as it is by mere fingertips. Inyol uses his oud less and less, favouring hand drums more and more, but tonight he’s thinking back and ‘back’ means strings and strumming. His back is firm against his chair, the front two legs off the tent’s rugs, and his heels resting on the brazier heating the space to a degree many surface creatures find uncomfortable.
Further back means ‘warm’.
His orange eyes unfocus and his vision of the room blurs the sparks in the grate, the trunks of clothes and costumes, the hanging lamps, and the skull-faced girl that sits with her kitty doll and plays knucklebones with the steel game pieces he brought with him from back then. Back when he was the son of Ashrei the Fickle. General and tactician Ashrei, survivor of the destruction of volcanic Ilchathm.
Back then, Inyol was many things but there is a constant in this thread that is the same now as it was then: musician and killer.
His fingers continue to wander the strings and slide along the wooden neck, as Inyol thinks about those days below the earth. The sound of Skuld’s playing sinks into his thought and brings him to a specific memory:
Out in the field of battle, among the rocks and ruin of gained ground, he was playing songs of war and victory to keep the combatants’ morale high. His music was good for morale, but at the time, so was his mere presence as his mother’s standard-bearer. Like many other dark elven battalions, she and her company decked out their standard-bearers in expensive clothes and masses of jewellery to show their status.
He’d been young then and enjoyed the honour immensely of being the symbol of his mother’s troops. He revelled in being used to show Ashrei’s favour to other companies by being sent out to play for them.
There are many anomalies to consider in all those gestures of favour from his mother, but the one that comes to mind is that of the game of knucklebones.
He had gone up to the company of the evening, playing as he went, to find them at a moment’s leisure. This group was well-known for their discipline and in their leisure time, short as it was, they were known to be a bit wild even for dark elves. When they heard him, when they saw him, Inyol experienced the usual reaction: gestures and murmurs of respect. Faces brightened at the favour General Ashrei bestowed on them.
Most of the battalion ceased what they were doing to join in with Inyol’s songs, some kept to their duties but sang along all the same. But Inyol remembers most that the game of knucklebones may have paused at his appearance, but didn’t stop.
“What are you thinking about?”
Skuld’s voice has an ethereal quality, like she’s speaking from another dimension, and as such it doesn’t disturb the memory at all.
“A game of knucklebones I watched a long time ago,” Inyol answers without looking at her or returning his focus to the interior of the tent.
“Oh, your playing started to feel like something was happening.”
“I suppose it would,” Inyol quietly replies.
Skuld continues her game. Inyol continues remembering.
There were five of them playing and, one by one, they lost to distraction, looking up to watch Inyol, to enjoy the music and singing. But the last soldier didn’t look up. Inyol couldn’t see his face, just that his hair was short, a dirty sort of white that might have come from a dusting of fireball soot. His body was a broad bulk of wiry muscle and sinew; the body of a long-time campaigner. By the quality of his armour, he could possibly be someone of rank, though to ignore Ashrei’s favour didn’t speak well of him.
Even after he’d won the game, and money and trinkets had changed hands, the male soldier kept his face down and continued to play against himself.
Inyol was astonished to begin with, momentarily offended, but then worked around to highly amused. Why would a veteran male want to ignore him? Was this to slight Ashrei? Was it to slight Inyol? He certainly didn’t want to give weight to the male’s offense by drawing attention to it in a moment’s fury if that was the case. Besides, if he was wrong, Inyol would be the one to look foolish and would in turn make his mother look bad.
He decided to give no outward appearance of affront, but began to move with his music. In the warmth of the cavern’s war-heated rock and dirt, Inyol gave himself over to the music and the movement of his body in pursuit of it. His eyes half-closed, his gaze unfocused, and just as had been happening lately, his strumming led to percussive drumming on the oud’s sound box.
And the drumming, unusual in a land often roofed over by precarious stalactites, might have gotten the male’s attention right away, but he didn’t look up from his game until he must have realised: Inyol was strumming the oud to an improvisational song, with the rhythm being beaten out to the toss and catch of the knucklebones.
Inyol didn’t see when the male dropped the metal knucklebones, but he felt it, and he heard the low teasing voices, the open and stifled laughter. He came out of his musical trance with a smile, his eyes bright and his body sweating with exertion and victory. He saw the red of the knucklebones-player’s deep set eyes as he took Inyol in. There was something in the male’s gaze, something the music told Inyol was special, but on the surface of the male’s face looked like mere recognition.
Explicit mission and covert mission accomplished, Inyol chose to leave, but not without a wink aimed specifically at the male. Surely, young and handsome, with jewellery dripping from every limb, he made an impression.
It wasn’t until later that he discovered the male in question was Vice-Commander Absolom, one of the most disciplined and decorated soldiers in Commander Filarion's battalion.
“Are you thinking about someone?” Skuld asks. Inyol can no longer hear the knucklebones hitting the rug or being caught on the back of her hand.
He sighs. “Yes. Could you see him?”
“A little,” she says. “He felt very serious.”
Inyol drops his fingers from the strings and focuses on the room again. Skuld is looking at him, the strange, clear substance of her face reflects the orange of the coals in the brazier and creates an interesting visual effect. There are few sights stranger than this girl’s face and the floating skull visible behind it.
His fingertips begin to drum a soft, restless tune out of the oud’s sound box. “Is he dead?”
Skuld shakes her head and picks up her cloth kitty doll. She hugs it close to her chest. “I don’t think so. I have to know his name to be sure.”
Inyol turns his gaze from her face back to the brazier which would burn his feet were he not an Ilchathmyr. “His name was Absolom.”
Skuld’s reply takes a few moments, but it does indeed come. “I don’t know if he’s alive,” she says, “but he’s definitely not dead.”
Inyol turns a tired smile toward her and snorts softly. “Well, good for him, then. Gods know he’s had every opportunity to be worm meal.”
The substance of Skuld’s face turns up in a smile. “He was your friend, wasn’t he?”
Inyol blows a soft snort and shakes his head. “I suppose he could have been if he had tried and if I had stayed. Though, not long after we met, something unfortunate happened to me and it may have changed his perception of me for the worse.”
“Well my perception of you,” Skuld says, hugging her kitty even tighter, “is that you are a high quality sentient creature.”
With a low chuckle, Inyol flicks his fingernails across the strings just below the oud’s bridge. “Thank you, I think.”
Skuld smiles back over the top of her doll’s head. “You’re welcome, I think."
It’s late and the reminisces only serve to make him feel tired before he should be. Inyol packs away his oud, cleans up, and takes a few coals to bed with him in a specially prepared canister. If he remembers correctly, Absalom was, at least, warm for a dark elf not from Ilchathm.