A Ballad for Eros

Chapter 1: First Impressions



He should not have agreed to this.



Dominique shuffled into a round booth in the far back of the tavern, taking up as much of the seat as he could manage. He sat his violin and pack down on either side of him and pressed back into the seat cushion. He didn’t want the strange man to sit beside him, or at least not too close. Not that he wasn’t grateful or anything, but he knew all the stories, you know the ones, the crazy… horrible innocent traveler and rapest/slasher stories. Of course, most of them where about pretty women, but Dom knew better than to assume that shit didn’t happen to male travelers as well. He stared hard into the dieing light of the lone candle that stood in the center of the round table and chocked down butterflies.



After a few moments he noticed the man had not yet sat down. Becoming uncomfortable in the tension he was creating, Dom looked up at him and squinted to try and see his face in the dim room. The man immediately turned away and wandered over to the center of the room; Dom pushed further back in his seat. – Great - he thought as he watched the man order something at the bar – this decision just keeps looking better and better… I’ll bet he’s going to poison me, or drug me, or…- The paranoia express was abruptly derailed when the man thunked a tall, thick glass down in front of him, its contents fizzled in disapproval.



“What is this?” Dom asked suspiciously.



The man cupped his own drink and peaked up at him from under his hood with unnaturally green eyes.



“Cola.”



“What do you have then?” Dom pressed. “I thought you where buying me a drink.”



“You don’t look old enough to drink.”



The bard scoffed, looking affronted and eyed the other man’s drink again.



“I have the same as you.” The stranger finished.



Dominique frowned.



“At least they let you in here, don’t draw attention to yourself, ok kid?”



“I’m a MAN!” Dom snapped at him.



The other man stood quietly for a moment, as if debating if this where true.



“You can’t be a day older than 17.”



The young bard was uninterested in finishing what promised to be an un-winnable argument and tapped his nails against the table impatiently. Never had he won this argument. Apparently bards didn’t get to be real men, so say the swordsmen.



“I want that glass.” Dom nodded to the glass the stranger was holding.



“Excuse me?”



“You said they where the same thing, so I want that one instead.”



The man eyed him strangely before replying “No, that one’s yours.”



A red flag went up in Dom’s mind.



“What do you care? They’re the same. I like that glass more.” Dom lied.



The cloak man glared down at him a moment, Dominique glared back.



“Fine.” The stranger slammed down his own glass in front of Dominique, who jumped a bit and flinched away from the glass. The man took the glass he had given the bard and downed it in one go. Dom watched quietly as the stranger set the empty glass down on the table in front if him and stared back down at Dom.



The bard eyed his new glass cautiously and took a sip.



“What’s your name?” The stranger asked calmly.



Dom looked up over the rim of his drink at the cloaked man “Dominique”.



The stranger sat down in the circular booth beside him and pulled his hood down. “My name is Conner.”



The man was not what Dominique had expected him to look like. From his harsh tones and sharp movements, the bard would have figured him to be a thick, old, built swordsman or some such, with a large square chin, bushy eyebrows and beady eyes, maybe with an eye patch and crazy scar… and hook hand. Ok maybe not a hook hand, but Dominique had a habit of mistaking imagination for observation in his speculations. Instead, he found Conner had a surprisingly gentle face. His skin was a bit darker than the locals, but not enough to make him look foreign, more like he spent a lot of time in the sun, but from the lack of tan lines near his collar and even tones all around he guessed it was naturally like that. His hair was not the gruff, bushy mass he had pictured it to be, but rather strait, soft and well groomed, falling carelessly into his face, it was slightly darker than his skin. A set of horns, not unlike those of a succubus curled elegantly over his pointed ears and down along the line of his cheekbone, but stopped short of his temples. Small, rimless reading glasses sat casually but purposefully halfway down his nose and Conner looked down through them into his empty glass. All in all, he was surprisingly calming to look at, in the way it is to look out into serene woodland landscape. He didn’t look any older than 24, but when it came to the demonic, looks could be deceiving.



(http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/61055073/)


The bard began to feel very out of place beside the man, with his own darker skin, wild orange hair, eyes and tiny, underdeveloped horns hidden among his tangerine locks. It had been a long time since he had met another person of the ‘demonic persuasion’ and he suddenly felt very inadequate in comparison. Dominique ran his hand through his hair in what he hoped to appear as a casual manner in an attempt to hide his underdeveloped horns from the older demon.



Conner seemed to sense Dominique’s discomfort and glanced over at him curiously from behind his glass. Dominique at first expected him to ask a question but the older man remained silent. Dom decided to ask a few of his own.



“Why did you bring me here?”



Conner watched him a moment before answering, as if listening to another question.



“Because you needed me to.”



The bard eyed him. “I don’t need you. And I don’t know what you want from me, but you’re not going to get it!”



(http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/61055131/)


Conner shrugged his shoulders slightly and pulled the corners of his mouth back in an almost smile. “You don’t owe me anything.”



“I have a hard time believing you brought me here out of the goodness of your heart.” Dom glanced over at the candle and set his glass in front of it to watch the light in the dark liquid.



The other man sat up strait again and inhaled deeply as if to sigh, but held onto his breath. He set his empty glass beside Dom’s and looked over at the bard with his eyes.



“Truth be told, I didn’t.”



Dom glanced over at him as Conner looked away and to his glass, pushing his glasses up a little as they began to slide down his nose.



“I had a dream…” he continued. “I’ve been having this dream for months at a time. About myself. But not as I am now, as I was when I was younger.”



Dom raised an eye brow. “What happened in your dream?”



Conner looked back at him a little, but was uninterested in disclosing the details in question and promptly ignored it.



“I heard you playing in the rain.” He continued



“I wasn’t playing anything.” Dom set his hand on his violin case.



Conner smiled a little, sadly, ignoring the bard. “It was the same song I was humming in my dream.”



“I wasn’t playing anyth-“



“I followed it” Conner cut him off. “Through the streets, from the Prontera sanctuary, down to the ally behind the old swordsman’s guild… and I found you. I found me; I thought I was watching my dream again.” He sighed a little. “What a strange thing to find, a lone bard playing my song…”



“I wasn’t playing anything” Dominique insisted.



The older man’s smile deepened. “A bard should know not all music must be audible to be heard.”



Dom stared at him for a long moment. He wasn’t really sure what to say. At any other time under any other circumstances, he might have thought it a line and up and left, but something about the way the other man spoke told him otherwise.



“Can you hear it?” Conner asked, almost shyly.



“I don’t hear anything.”



“You will never be able to write your own song if you can not hear your own music.” He frowned, leaning back into the backrest of the booth and looking out over the room.



Something about the way the man had looked away suddenly felt very nostalgic to Dominique and he squinted a little, looking for a clue on the man’s face as to where it could have been.



He didn’t find it.



“Have we met?” he asked hesitantly.



The older man didn’t bother to look back at the bard, or give his question a second thought. “I should think not.”



Dominique was unsatisfied with this answer. He was about to protest when he noticed a small group of knights enter the tavern. They examined the locals as the walked slowly by their tables purposefully. Conner seemed to also notice them as Dom watched him pull his hood back up over his head out of his peripheral vision.



“We need to leave.” Conner whispered.



“Huh?” Dom turned to him quickly, alarmed by his comment.



The knights looked up and over to where they where sitting in the back of the room. Conner flinched and pretended not to notice them.



“Hide your quiver and your violin!” He whispered again, this time in an alarmed tone.



Dom snapped to attention and moved to do as he was told without thinking. As he reached for his violin a gloved hand grabbed his arm from across the table and pulled it back.



“Well what do we have here?” The knight smirked, pulling roughly on his arm, forcing Dom to face him. “You thought you could hide from us, little musician?”



Dom pulled back on his wrist feebly as 4 more knights came up behind his captor.



“I-I don’t know what your talking about!” Dom stammered. He really didn’t. He had never seen these knights before and he had never done anything wrong. Hell, he’d never even been in Prontera before!



“Pretending to be a bard, how clever! You didn’t think we’d figure it out?” He growled.



“Let me go!” Dom began to panic, he flailed, knocking over the two glasses and candle on the table as the knight dragged him out of the booth and slung him by his arm in front of him. Dom stumbled and grabbed the knight’s tunic to keep himself on his feet. The knight backhanded him off him but kept a solid grip on his wrist.



“You’re in A LOT of trouble now… you won’t be able to get out of THIS one with your little tricks” The knight threatened “… Search him!”



One of the other knights began patting him down, seeming to search for something specific. “No cards or knives sir!”



The knight who had him seemed satisfied in that. “Good” he smirked. “Come with us quietly and you won’t get hurt… too badly.”



Dominique let out a small yelp when he felt the knight tighten his grip on his arm. He looked pleadingly to Conner in the hope that the other man might somehow save him from whatever was going on. The older man sat still and silently, calmly watching from under his hood. Dom was forced to look away again as the knight forced him ahead of him and began dragging him to the door.



“Let’s go Conner.” The knight ordered.



“W-what!?” The bard cried.



Before he had any time to correct the swordsman, he was interrupted by a loud yell from one of the other knights. The other four turned quickly to find their companion trapped within a stone curse. Dom immediately looked back again for Conner, but his companion was no longer sitting in the booth. Another cry from one of the four remaining knights gave away Conner’s position as he ran one of Dominique’s silver arrows through the back of the knight’s knee. Before the knight had a chance to defend himself he was beaten over the back of the head with Dom’s violin. The knight hit the floor as the remaining 3 drew their swords; Dom’s captor tossed him aside to give his full attention to the other demon.



Conner smirked as he absently shuffled an odd deck of cards with one hand, violin and two more arrows in the other. “Come now chief, no one needs to die here tonight…”



The youngest knight of the lot rushed Conner, thrusting his sword towards Conner’s chest. The demon danced to the side, dodging the blade and flipping the first card on the top of his deck face up. “The Devil” was thrown into the knights back as he fell forward with the force of his momentum and dropped to the tavern floor, unconscious . Conner snatched his card from its place, suspended in the air where he had hit the young swordsman. Without missing a beat, He loaded an arrow into the violin and whipped it into the neck of the second knight with a fierce melody strike as the knight had begun towards him.



He loaded the last arrow between the strings of Dom’s instrument and looked back up calmly to the last remaining knight.



“Chief, your companions don’t need to die here…”



The knight glared sharply at Conner, and then to Dominique, who stood frozen in shock and terror at the scene before him. Dom let out a small squeak as the knight grabbed his wrist once again and he was yanked close to the knight.



“Neither does yours.” The knight hissed.



Conner straitened a little, but otherwise gave no indication that he cared. He lifted his left foot and set his metal clad heel on the back of the youngest soldier’s neck.



“Do you really want to play this game with me?” He muttered, idly flipping through his deck of face down tarot cards.



“After all these years… If I had grown tired of this game I’d have left you long ago.” The knight growled, shifting his grip to Dom’s hair, forcing the bard’s head back.



Dominique let out a small whimper as he felt the cold steel of the swordsman’s blade against his bare neck.



“Come now chief, that’s not very knightly of you.” Conner hummed, uncaring of the bard’s discomfort with the situation. He pocketed his cards somewhere under his cloak.



“Drop your weapon.” The knight ordered.



Conner stared at him a moment, as if trying to decide if he had heard the command. “Oh come now chief, what cou-“



“Drop it.” The swordsman pressed his blade harder against Dom’s skin.



Dominique could feel the cold steel mix with the warmth of his blood and he shut his eyes tightly. The other demon hesitated a moment before letting the instrument drop to the floor in a dissonant clatter of cheap wood and disturbed chords.



“Good man.” The knight smiled, drawing his sword away from Dom’s neck and pointing it at Conner. “Come now little clown, let’s not make anymore of a scene…”



Conner spared a quick glace to the door, where the frightened customers had long since escaped, he could see a few crusaders and a high priest now blocking the exit. He may be a clown, but Conner was no fool, he bowed his head a little and took a few steps towards the knight.



“You win chief, let the kid go.” The minstrel raised his hands lightly to his shoulders, palms facing the other man in a display of submission.



The knight smirked and pulled Dominique behind him roughly by his hair and let him go. The bard stumbled back and caught his balance on a table, never taking his eyes off the scene before him. The knight drew back his blade and lunged for Conner! The unarmed minstrel shut his eyes threw up his arms to defend himself as Dominique cried out “FREEZE!”



The room fell silent.



When the impending blow didn’t land, Conner opened his eyes slowly. Lowering his arms he stared in surprise at the knight frozen in place before him, blade inches from his face. Without further hesitation Conner ducked under the knight and grabbed the bard’s wrist. The high priest was now quickly thawing out his companions, and the minstrel was not about to let this opportunity go to waste. He began for the door, but stopped short when the priest turned towards him suddenly, book open and raised.



“Shit!” Conner shuffled to a halt. Dom almost ran into the back of him as the minstrel turned on his heal and bolted to the back of the tavern. The bard stumbled helplessly behind Conner as he swiftly jumped up onto the back of their former booth and through the tavern’s stained glass window!



Dom could barely keep his head about him as he was dragged through the nocturnal allies of Prontera, he was out of breath and felt like his heart would explode. Rounding the third corner into the maze of backways he could no longer take it and collapsed behind Conner. Digging his nails into the minstrel’s skin he dragged the older man down with him.



Conner fell backwards ungracefully onto his back beside Dominique and looked over at him quickly. Dom had himself propped up on his hands and knees, struggling for breath and battling a panic attack. Conner sat up slowly and place a hand on the young bard’s back.



“Are you alright?” He asked quietly, somewhat out of breath himself.



“I… I can’t…” Dom made out shakily.



The minstrel took his shoulders and pulled Dominique back upright. “We can’t stay here..”



Dom opened his mouth to try and say something, but nothing came out. Instead he collapsed against the other demon, lapsing out of consciousness.