The Tavern

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. At least, that’s what they were telling everyone. Inoriel knew better, of course. And she had tried to warn them. Every time she had caught a glimpse of huge dark wings overhead, or heard that familiar distant roar, she had alerted her father and the other elders immediately, though over the years she learned that she would only be ignored at best, and made to do hard labor at worst. She still shuddered when she remembered the time she had been sent to muck out the latrines. She had interrupted an important policy meeting that time, and Jarl Bergamund’s patience for her “impish nonsense”, as he called it, had long since run out. But no matter what she endured, she had always felt it was her duty to protect her home from the mysterious threat that only she seemed to be aware of.

Well, a fat lot of good it had done them, or her. Last night everyone had seen with their own eyes that she had been right all along. Inoriel sighed and turned over the piece of charred wood that she had picked up from the wreckage that used to be the tavern. And although she didn’t want to remember it at all, her thoughts were forced back once again to the previous evening.

She had been in the tavern, not far from the very spot where she stood now, enjoying mince pies and copious amounts of ale after a long day’s work. Rosie had been there, too, and the two of them had been in such high spirits that for once, Inoriel was able to ignore the way everyone else was looking at her.

She was used to disapproving stares. Even before she became aware of the dragons, Inoriel and her family had always been the odd ones out in Edvar’s Basin, or simply The Basin, as it was more commonly called. Her father had been well respected in his youth, being from one of the oldest families in The Basin. Then he had married one of the elven nomads who occasionally wandered through the Valley. That would have been bad enough, but then they had had a child. The only non-human child to be born in The Basin in a lifetime at least, perhaps ever. Inoriel had been the talk of the town for…well, longer than she could remember. Her whole life. Not that anyone ever made any effort to include her in conversation. She was merely the subject – a thing to be talked about, not a person to be talked to. And to make matters worse, her mother had fallen ill and died when Inoriel was still too small to remember, so she didn’t even have the solace of knowing that at least she wasn’t the only one who was different. She had no one.

Except Rosie. Ever since they were children, Rosie had been the only one to truly see her, not as Hadar’s brat, or the half-elf, or the abomination (she still teared up occasionally when she remembered overhearing that one), but as Inoriel. When the other children had mocked her, even going so far on occasion as to throw stones at her, Rosie hadn’t hesitated to turn their mockery right back on them. When they started throwing things at Inoriel, she had even taken up a large stick and beat them back. It didn’t earn her any friends, of course. In fact, she was widely regarded as almost as bad as Inoriel herself. But it never seemed to bother Rosie. Whenever Inoriel pointed out that Rosie could have been the finest socialite in The Basin, her friend would merely scoff, roll her eyes, and say that she couldn’t think of a duller life, and that being friends with the finest freak show in The Basin was much more fun. Inoriel had always thought that the novelty would wear off eventually, that Rosie would realize that she wasn’t worth massacring her social life for. But Rosie had always stuck by her, thick and thin.

Including last night. They had been having the time of their lives, throwing back mug after mug of ale, ordering more mince pies than they could possibly eat, and ignoring the disapproving sighs and head shakes of the tavern’s other patrons.

“This is great!” Rosie had shouted over the din of the crowd. “Why don’t we do this every night?”

Inoriel laughed, and responded around a mouthful of pie, “Because it’s hard enough for me to find work. If I became known as the town drunk, too? Forget it.”

“You know I’d pay your way.”

“I know.” Inoriel had become suddenly serious. “You always have. You’ve always protected me.” She stared long and hard at the table.

“Nori?” Rosie said, waving a hand in front of her face. “Come on, don’t do that to me. Maybe you’ve had enough,” she said playfully, stealing Inoriel’s tankard of ale and taking a swig.

“Oh no you don’t!” Inoriel lunged across the table, trying to grab her drink from Rosie, who laughed and held it just out of her reach.

It was at that moment that everything turned upside down.

It started with the screaming. Even over the noise in the tavern, everyone suddenly heard the most awful screams of terror from the streets. And something else…Inoriel’s heart leapt into her throat. She knew that sound. And there was nothing she could do…

Suddenly, the tavern doors burst open and a flood of people rushed in. Inoriel recognized the merchants from the square. They must have just been closing shop when they were frightened into the nearest building.

Dunstan, the cloth merchant, ran straight to the bar. He whispered something in Tomas’ ear. Inoriel couldn’t make it out over the chaos, but it looked like he said “it’s here.” The tavern owner went white as a sheet and immediately disappeared behind the counter. A moment later he stood back up, and to Inoriel’s surprise he wielded an enormous crossbow, and was loading a bolt into it.

He needn’t have bothered. The sound Inoriel had heard had become deafening. A steady, rhythmic beating and rushing – huge wings stirring up gusts of wind that beat against the tavern, nearly blocking out the screams of the panicked crowd. Just as Tomas managed to load his crossbow, the world – or to be more accurate, the roof – caved in. Huge chunks of crossbeams crashed down all around Inoriel, and she struggled to hold down her ale as she watched her neighbors being crushed underneath.

That wasn’t the worst part, though. In the very center of the room was a huge claw, the cruel talons stained red. Inoriel’s stomach lurched and, try as she might to stop it, she vomited when she saw the bodies that lay mangled under the giant claw. They were unrecognizable - shredded and torn and so…wet. She sobbed as she heaved over and over. They hadn’t been her friends, but still, they didn’t deserve this.

Across from the table, Rosie was shouting at her.

“What do you think you’re doing?!”

Inoriel swiped the back of her hand across her face, heedless of exactly what she was wiping off. “W-what?”

“You think standing there hurling is going to help them?” Rosie gestured to the bodies. “They’re gone, and if you don’t want to go the same way, we need to get out of here NOW.”

Inoriel nodded and stumbled towards the door. The shock combined with the outrageous amount of alcohol still in her system made it hard to walk. She’d barely made it a few steps when she found herself flat on the floor. When she opened her eyes, she was face to face with Tomas, the tavern owner. What was left of him, anyway. He had apparently figured out pretty quickly that a single crossbow wasn’t going to be much help in this situation, and had the same idea as Rosie. Unfortunately for him, he had dodged the giant claw only to be buried underneath the large lamp which had swung from the ceiling.

Inoriel sat bolt upright and tried to scramble away from the body, but there was so much wreckage, and such a crush of people, that it was hard to move. She panicked, trying desperately to get away from the horror of it all. Suddenly, she was being pulled roughly to her feet. A quick backwards glance revealed Rosie right behind her. As the two girls made their way towards the door, Inoriel realized that her friend was limping. She gasped with horror when she saw the blood staining Rosie’s trousers.

“What happened?”

“Never mind. Just get out!” Rosie winced. She managed a few more steps, then with a cry she fell to her knees.

“Rosie!” Inoriel stumbled back to her friend.

“You idiot! Do you want to die?” With the last of her strength, Rosie tried to shove her towards the door. “The whole place is gonna collapse.”

“Then get up!” Inoriel pleaded. Rosie gave her a sarcastic half-smile.

“You really are hopeless, you know that? Don’t you realize that I’m a goner?”

“Don’t say that…” but at that moment another section of roof collapsed, and Inoriel’s words were cut suddenly short as Rosie disappeared under a pile of rubble.

Everything went blurry after that. Inoriel could remember screaming – at least, she thought she could. Her throat hurt this morning as if she had been screaming, though that could just be the smoke making it hard to breathe. For not long after the tavern had been attacked, the fire had come, flaming down from above. Inoriel had a vague memory of the fallen wooden beams catching fire, but feeling completely helpless to do anything about it. And she seemed to remember being carried out of the tavern – she certainly couldn’t imagine leaving on her own, after what she had witnessed. But she couldn’t imagine who would care about saving her, besides Rosie and her father. Her father had been at home last night, and Rosie…

She shuddered as she thought about Rosie, and tried to put it out of her mind. Of course, that wasn’t so easy when she was standing right in front of the wreckage of the tavern. She wasn’t even sure why she was here. To look for survivors? It was pretty clear that no one was alive under the charred rubble. To say her goodbyes? There was only one person she wanted to say goodbye to, and she knew Rosie would have rolled her eyes and scoffed at the thought of Inoriel kneeling tearfully over her body. Besides, as cowardly as it made her feel, she didn’t think she could bear to see her friend like that.

Was she here to look for clues as to what could have done this? That wasn’t much of a mystery. Inoriel had only seen the one huge claw, but that combined with the fire and the unmistakable beating of wings that she had heard left no doubt in her mind. This was a dragon. But why had this one attacked now, when she had been catching glimpses of the beasts for years? They had all left The Basin in peace; the most that had ever happened was a dragon flying directly over the city. Inoriel still wondered how everyone had missed that one. It briefly occurred to her that that dragon may have been a scout, a kind of advance party, but she quickly dismissed that idea. She had spotted that dragon years ago, when she was still a child. No, there was something going on here that she didn’t understand.

Still, she was unlikely to figure anything out just standing here. She sighed, and was about to turn away when something caught her eye. She shuddered when she realized that it was a hand. It was sticking out from underneath the ceiling lamp; it very well could have been Tomas.

That wasn’t what caught her eye, though. The hand was clutching something; it looked like a letter, but it was strangely unburnt. Steeling herself, Inoriel approached the wreckage and tried to remove it. It wasn’t easy; the fingers broke as she tried to uncurl them, and she soon found herself dry heaving – there was nothing left to vomit. Afterwards, she took a moment to compose herself, and returned to her task. Finally, she managed to extract the letter.

It may have been unburnt, but even so, the letter was practically unreadable. The handwriting was awful, and Inoriel could only pick out a few words here and there. It was clearly addressed to Tomas. And then…there was mention of Jarl Bergamund…the word “mistake”…and…

Inoriel gasped. That was her name. She read it over and over, but there could be no doubt about it. Whoever had written this letter clearly knew who she was, and Tomas had been in correspondence with them about her. But why? And what was the mistake that this mystery writer mentioned? As she tried to puzzle it out, Inoriel remembered what Dunstan had whispered to Tomas just before everything collapsed. It had looked like “it’s here.” Had he been talking about the dragon? And the crossbow…it was almost like they had been expecting this. But that would mean…

She remembered every time she had tried to warn them, every time they had mocked her, sent her away, even punished her. Had they known all along that she was right? Worse, had they been one step ahead of her the entire time…and told no one? Warned no one about what was coming? Inoriel crumpled the letter in her fist, her heart pounding in her ears. Her father would know. She could trust him to be honest with her about this…right? She didn’t see what choice she had. Desperate for answers, she turned from the destruction, intending to head home as quick as she could.

Instead she took one step and froze, her heart in her throat. She wasn’t alone. Standing amongst the burnt buildings was an elf. Inoriel had never seen one in person, but she had pored over her father’s sketches of her mother, and there was no doubt that the person standing before her now was no human. The pointed ears, the hair that seemed to be blowing in a breeze, though the air was dead still…he was one of her mother’s people.

And he was beckoning her to follow him.