Chapter 40: 40 – Street Performer

A knock on the counter and a call of “Ey, barkeep!” was all it took to call the humanoid manifestation of positivity out of the kitchen, his smile shifting ever so slightly at the sight of her. 

“Late sleeper, huh? I take it you want to have breakfast ‘fore you deal with the beastie,” he accurately predicted as he dusted his hands off on his apron. 

Zelsys gave a nod, asking, “What’s on offer?”

“I’ve got meat pie and mashed potatoes with gravy sauce two gelt a portion, or fish chowder one gelt a bowl,” he offered, his eyes glimmering with a strange knowing spark. “Drink of the day is cider, got couple barrels in just this morning. Same price as ale.”

She couldn’t help but stare him down for a little longer than was normal, nonverbally questioning. He broke after just a few seconds of this little staring contest, reassuring that, “I ain’t hear nothing. Thanks for helping me find a leak in the insulation with that Fog of yours, though. Now what’ll it be?”

A small chuckle escaped her at that. “I’ll have the chowder and a mug of cider,” she chose, reaching for her Tablet and retrieving two coppers. Her breakfast arrived as quickly as the barkeep could power walk in and out of the kitchen, and to no surprise at all, the soup was obviously just the main course from yesterday recycled. He swiped the two coppers off the counter, and left to attend to other customers. 

Upon actually eating a few spoonfuls, Zel found herself pleasantly surprised by the fact that it actually wasn’t as she thought at first. It had the same type of fish and similar herbs, but that was where the similarities ended. The cider was as any good cider should be, fruity, light, and refreshing, what little alcohol it contained barely noticeable. In a few minutes she had banished her hunger and left the inn, with the intent of making her way down the street towards the very gate through which they had entered the town. 

However, something distracted her. When she stepped out onto the street, she heard a somewhat distant voice bellowing out to what sounded like a small crowd, down the street in the same direction she was going. The source of the noise soon came into view - a heavily scarred, rugged looking Ikesian man, sat atop a suitcase with a five-stringed acoustic instrument in his hands. Not quite a banjo, not quite a sitar, and not quite a lute, but rather some strange elongated amalgamation of the three. He idly plucked away at the metallic strings, noodling a melancholic melody as he adjusted his tool’s many tuning pegs. At his feet, there sat a large drum that reached up to his knee, a steady pounding rhythm emanating from it with each tap of his foot.

Zel’s curiosity drove her to come closer, to mingle with the crowd and observe the street performer up-close. He wore a loose, beige-colored cotton shirt and patchwork, dirty-green trousers in the Ikesian military style, held up by suspenders. A single double-pupiled eye sat in his left eye-socket, its pupils the same unnatural emerald-green as pure Viriditas, while where his right eye had once been there was just a gaping hole of scar tissue marked by an unnaturally even cross-shaped scar, some sort of brass medallion in the shape of a rune plugging the hole left by the absence of the optic nerve. Though at first his facial hair seemed to be cut into a strange pattern, it wasn’t so - his face was, in fact, covered in perfectly symmetrical scars that forced his facial hair to grow in this pattern, as if his cheeks had been scored by a man made replica of a bear’s claws in a cross-hatched pattern.

The crowd was the expected mixture of young and old, of Ikesians and Grekurians, but there were a few standouts. A few fighting-age adults, all well-dressed and clearly well-off enough to have avoided the draft, and a few soldiers in uniform that stuck together and stood out like sore thumbs. Their skin was light yellow, their faces round, and their eyes tilted and exceptionally narrow - one of them looked like he was perpetually squinting. They carried clean, well-maintained wheellock rifles and slim, straight shortswords.

They chattered amongst themselves in a melodic tongue that she couldn’t understand, much to the audible annoyance of the Grekurian bystanders. The Ikesians didn’t seem particularly happy about these foreigners either, but they kept quiet, averting their gazes and mostly focusing on the performer.

After a few minutes passed, the performer seemed pleased with the tuning of his instrument and began playing a loose, but clearly practiced melody, taking a deep breath in the first few seconds. 

“So go and kneel in wait, and join the herd...” the man sang, patriotism dripping from each word. His words resounded with a superhuman volume, echoing through Willowdale’s streets and shaking the cobbles under the audience’s feet, and the brass plug in his eye began glowing a faint orange as wisps of red Fog rose from the empty socket. 

“You know a million sheep will be dispersed, by one dragon’s roar… By one dragon’s roar...”

The man’s voice seemed to snap, his face wracked with a cocktail of emotions. Anger, resentment, physical and emotional pain both, patriotism. His single eye snapped from face to face, burning holes into each and every bystander regardless of race as he continued playing, taking another deep breath before he belted out another verse.

“Either step aside for every god knows, everything will crumble under his blows! You think yourselves weak, pathetic and overrun, that all you’ve bled for is now coming undone!”

What was singing quickly became a shouting declaration, the man’s eye exclusively looking to the Ikesians who made up over half of the crowd. He took another breath and repeated the first verse, with twice the intensity as before. 

“So go and kneel in wait, and join the herd! You know a million sheep will be dispersed, by one dragon’s roar, by one dragon’s roar!”

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