The Lupine Curse: A Tale of Netherway
Chapter 17: The Past of a Highborn

Aside from the ache that still permeated his bones, he was beginning to feel some life return to him after he finally managed to leave his room. James’ clothes still fit him well, though he could not replace where the dagger was placed.

He was surprised to replace how confused the other patrons were to see him. He had been hogging one of the most expensive rooms for so many days, and it was expected that, somehow, he was the son of a highborn, or a traveling merchant.

Instead, as they got to know him, it seemed he was merely a modestly-dressed boy, who enjoyed watching the revelries from a corner, warming his hands around a tankard that would take him hours to finish. He devoured his meals ravenously, though, without any regard for how he appeared.

And so it went for many nights.

He stayed there for much longer than he planned to. The distractions of the tavern and its occupants proved delightful. The stories passed around were interesting, the bickering and occasional quarrels entertaining and hilarious. At the very least, he had something to eat every day, as Evara kept her own small crops and livestock behind the tavern.

“You’re a highborn,” Fenris said suddenly to Ash, one night, as they sat together at a table.

He raised his eyebrows. “I think that’s quite obvious.”

“So, what are you doing here in the Moonlands? You don’t belong here. I want to know this time, truly.”

Ash feigned that the words hurt him. “Who’s to say where I belong? You of all folk should know that ‘to belong’ somewhere is an odd concept.”

“Well, I’m certainly not the person to say who belongs where.” He stopped to drink. “But no Sun-elf leaves the luxurious life of wealth and comfort to be a bard, of all things.” Fenris laughed a little to himself, and Ash was in good enough spirits to join in.

“It’s not the most logical thing, is it?” he admitted. “Being born into a life of luxury is wonderful, in some ways. You have access to a wealth of knowledge, as you can hire as many tutors as you like. But where is the struggle? Where’s the suffering? It makes you soft, Fenris. To have everything laid out for you leaves you vulnerable, expecting. That is something I will never forget, and something I am glad you’ll never have to learn from experience. Since I abandoned most of my wealth, music has become the center of my happiness; the simplest pleasures are my bliss, the agonies of surviving my joy. And that, my dear Fenris, is the story. That is the tale of Ash the Bard traveling to the Moonish Lands”

Fenris cocked one eyebrow, folded his arms, and leaned back in his chair. The pose alone was enough.

“Do you really want to know?” He appeared distant for awhile. The memories were straws strewn about the floor of his mind, and he needed to collect them again. “Look at these men and women here,” Ash said after awhile, motioning toward the patrons. There were travelers, merchants, more farmers and farmhands than he cared to count, and a few unique looking adventurers. He shrugged.

“What’s your point?”

“Well, you’re not the only murderer in this room.”

That piqued his curiosity, enough. He tried to judge them all in an instant, and gave up. “Which one?”

“Me, of course. This is my story, after all.”

Fenris wasn’t entirely surprised. He remained silent.

“To tell you this story is to tell you that which separates us, Fenris. But also, what we share. Perhaps, it will be good for you, to know there is someone similar to you. Perhaps you won’t feel so alone.”

Fenris wasn’t interested in that. He enjoyed horror stories. He was one. “Perhaps.”

Ash looked down into his tankard, the way he did every time he was thinking about something deeply. “The people you killed, Fenris, well, they were strangers … they were strangers. That is the difference between you and me.”

Fenris moved in his seat uncomfortably. For once, the permanent smile on Ash’s countenance dropped, as if it had been natural to be hidden all along.

“You didn’t know those people. You couldn’t control yourself, and how could you? You’re one of the Cursed Ones; a rampaging pup. Vicious, but innocent, in many ways.”

“That doesn’t change anything. Lives are lives, whether or not you could—”

“Don’t interrupt a bard bearing his heart. When you killed those people and they looked at you, you must have seen two things: fear, and pain. But when I … when I killed my … well, it doesn’t matter who it was. What matters is the look in their eyes when they die by your hand, and how that look stays with you.”

“Why did you let yourself?”

“There is no true reason. It was madness. I was only a small, terrible fraction of myself. The rest was moondust, and spirits, and perhaps a lust for power gone misplaced. You think that, just because I was a highborn, that the only thing I stuck my nose into was a pile of books? No, my friend. Unfortunately not. And unfortunately for my wife, moondust was a substance more alluring than knowledge or wisdom.”

“But … how? Your own wife?”

“I didn’t know, Fenris! Just like you don’t know, just like you are when you’ve lost control.”

“It’s hardly the same thing!”

“Why, of course it is! Just because your bloodlust is passed down from some twisted deity doesn’t mean you have any more excuse than I do. At the time, I thought she was just another hallucination. I was up late into the hours of dawn, and she happened to come home around that time when reality is horribly misconstrued with a nightmare. It was only the next day, after I awoke, and my head was on fire, that I realized what I’d done. The blood covering my hands was not my own.”

“So you ran away, payed off the guards, and made a new life for yourself,” Fenris finished the story, feeling numb, burdened by a new kind of sadness.

Ash looked on the verge of turning over the table. Fenris wasn’t sure if his curiosity was worth satiating, not after seeing the suffering it caused him to recall the memories. The Sun-elf had been gripping the table, and after he let go, there were splinters digging deep beneath his nails. Blood pooled at the fingertips.

Curses. They fell in whispers from Fenris’ lips.

“So now do you see why I must help you?”

“Because you can’t help yourself?”

Ash nodded and slumped back into his chair, after which, Evara came—like a mother watching from afar—and ushered the wounded elf back to his room, who began sobbing while they ascended the stairs.

It was evident she had done this before with him.

Some of the patrons stared at Fenris, expecting an explanation, but he was just as blank-faced and stunned as they all were to have watched someone—so seemingly stable—crumble like a castle of sand.

“I suppose he told you his story, then,” Evara said, later, when business slowed down, and Fenris had had enough cider that he was staring sleepily into the fire, dangerously close to dozing.

“Just about.”

“You know, sometimes it seems like he’s the boy and you’re the grown man. You’ve been dealing with your curse a handful of weeks. He’s kept those memories for a handful of years, I reckon.”

“He never told you when it happened?”

“Gods, he never even told me his real name. I don’t suppose they called him ‘Ash the Bard’ up in the Runelands, do you?”

Fenris laughed. “I would certainly hope not.”

“Well look, Fenris. You can’t stay here forever, we both know that. But I think Ash plans to keep you here until you feel the urge to shift. He wants to see if he can try and convince that demon to stay locked away just like he locked his away.” Evara looked up at the banister of the second floor as if she was staring at the elf himself. “… though you see how well that went. You can’t just lock it away. You have to bring it out, and face it.”

Fenris scoffed. As if someone could really ‘keep’ him anywhere. It was strangely comforting, how he could draw so much confidence from his curse. “It makes me wonder, Evara, what do you keep locked away?”

The innkeeper gave a nervous chuckle, as most people are wont to do when they are asked to examine themselves. “Normal folk like me don’t have big demons like yours, Fenris,” she said, provoking a smile with the playful look in her eyes, the smirk on her lips. “Just a lot of tiny ones that occasionally nip us in the ass when life gets dull.”

Fenris laughed harder than he had in a long while. In the wake of all the sadness, it was more comforting than the fire. “They keep things interesting, then?”

“Precisely.”

In spite of his smile, as he watched the logs crumble and the embers splay gray fingers around the hearth, he found himself wishing that it, too, would engulf him, turn him into a pile of ash.

“Something on your mind?” she pressed softly.

For once, he didn’t feel like lying. “Yes. Many things.

She didn’t pretend like any amount of talking would help. She just reached for another log and tossed it into the fire, dusting her hands on her apron as the cinders sprang out before the flames ate up the fresh wood.

“Throw them in with the rest of the firewood, Fenris. Let ’em burn. Watch them go,” she hummed, “watch ’em burn.”