Chapter 4: Story 1: Of Death and Metal, part 4

Nico slipped into the graveyard, her thoughts wandering to the first time she hummed that familiar tune. Had it really been six years since she first learned it? She couldn’t help but smile as she whistled.

She whistled an old, familiar tune, remembering her hometown so far away, and she felt excitement bubbling as almost visible energy swirled in the air around her. The sound of it was like a raven’s feather in the moonlight, and she loved it.

A chill ran down her spine as she waited by the headstone, her cloak hiding her as she sat. A familiar voice soon pierced her thoughts. “Took you long enough! I thought my bones would start to creak again before you got here!” 

She had to stifle a laugh as the hunched form rose through the ground, a grumpy old tortoise-like specter floating before her. 

“It’s hardly my fault, the tinker couldn’t get the strings to stay tight,” she replied. The form gave an indignant huff. “You’re still working on that silly steel lute of yours? If you make that thing work within the year, then my name isn’t-” 

“-isn’t Baron Barry V. Borrison, I know, I know,” Nico said with a chuckle. “I know I can make it work, I just- I just know it. It just needs more time.” “Bah, all you got is time. Not me! Don’t you waste a moment of your life, you hear me? I had a thousand years and then some and I still didn’t get everything done, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.” 

Borrison paused, trying to remember something. “Speaking of living your life, what was that girl you always talk about? Verify? Vatican?”

 “Her name is Verith and you know it, you old coal.” “That’s her! How long has it been since you saw her, anyway? You’re still in love with some girl you ain’t seen for . . . six years?” 

Nico stood up much too quickly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she answered, her cheeks darkening to an almost obsidian color. The specter laughed. “Sure you don’t! You told me exactly what color her favorite ring was, the book she was looking for, all the ways she thought the sorceress could’ve-” 

“Alright, maybe you have a point.” 

He chuckled, suddenly much more serious. “Listen here. If you let her get away from you, you’ll always wonder what coulda been if you took your chance. Doesn’t matter what she says, go find her and shoot your shot, you’ll be better off for it!” 

Nico laughed but not for very long. “She’s long gone by now, remember? She left for Brahma that day.” She fell quiet. “Come now, take your mind off it. I’m sorry I brought it up, yeah?” the Baron said. “You can try to get my bones moving, you have my blessing.” 

Her sapphire eyes lit up with excitement, their grayish color having faded as she grew older. She slung her lute off her shoulder without hesitation and started to play; a song of dance in her native language that intertwined with the chords of the strings as she began to weave music into magic. 

A sound might have been heard from beneath the ground were it not for the melody that caused it, and a skeleton seemed to boil up through the ground. It matched the Baron floating above perfectly, right down to the scars on his shell. 

She laughed with delight as it assembled itself upright, and the skeleton danced this way and that as the ghost that once surrounded them sank back into the earth with an old, tired smile. 

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Verith moved swiftly down the street, glancing behind her to make sure nobody followed her. She hurried to the place that melody came from, picking up speed. She wouldn’t get a chance like this for a long while with her father coming home the next day, and she had to do something now before she lost the nerve. 

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The half-orc woman rounded the corner and smiled at the sound of music, her tusks jangling slightly from their decorations, similar in style to her menagerie of earrings. Her fine cloak didn’t do much to hide her but it gave her the air of somebody not to be trifled with, so it worked anyway. 

She was panting by the time she reached the gate, and she stopped to catch her breath. A moment later, Verith put a hand on the cold iron and pushed, taking care to let the creak of it resonate out only far enough to let the secret musician know she was there. 

The creak of the gate startled Nico out her reverie, and the bones clattered into a pile that was pulled back to their resting place by a pair of ghostly hands. The stone-born woman stood hurriedly, shrugging her instrument back over her shoulder, pulling her hood low and starting to make her escape before a single, quiet word from behind stopped her in her tracks. “Wait!”

Nico ran through excuses as she stood there, frozen, trying to find a plan. “I . . . I didn’t think this far ahead.” The tusks gave the half-orc’s voice a slightly open sound as she spoke. 

“I-i . . . well, I’ve been listening to your music for . . . oh, I think two weeks? And . . . And I wanted to meet whoever was singing and playing that wonderful music to . . . um, to say thank you.”

“You . . . wanted to thank me?” Nico took care to keep her voice quiet and low, to make it harder to recognize. “. . . for what?”

Verith laughed softly. “For the music! I thought that was obvious. My, um . . . my father makes me move around a lot s-so I usually have a hard time falling asleep, nothing’s really ever comfortable, a-and I always have to get to used to sleeping in a new place, and then right when I’m used to one place, w-we have to go somewhere else, a-and-”

“Do you often ramble like that?” the woman in front of her asked. 

The half-orc made a small noise of surprise and started to apologize hastily. “I-i’m sorry, I don’t mean to, I just . . . I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be. It’s rather nice.”

That stunned Verith for a moment, and she felt her cheeks grow warm. “Th-thank you.”

The two stood silently for a moment, and the only sound was the wind lightly teasing at the jewelry adorning Verith’s tusks.

The only sound, that is, until the sound of a bell tolling midnight rolled across the graveyard.

“Oh, hells and ash- I-i need to go, I’m so sorry-” The half-orc rushed out a half explanation before running back the way she came, her cloak flicking and swaying behind her as she went.

“Who was she?” Nico jumped and nearly tripped, at which the Baron laughed heartily. “I have no idea, and don’t sneak up on me like that, old man.” He continued to chuckle, but the goliath woman couldn’t shake the feeling that the two had met before . . .

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