Runelords 03.2 - Shadliss Vinder

A few days after their original meeting, Virgil tracked down Shadliss as she walked through town, making deliveries for her father. A brief exchange of pleasantries held the agreement to meet behind the church in an hour. With furtive glances and cursory stealth, they met in the secluded graveyard and hopped the unattended city wall, and few words were spared as they disrobed each other, mouths already otherwise occupied. It was a brief affair of passion, and Shadliss was quick to redon her clothes and return to work, though her expression was one of satisfaction. Virgil lingered in the forest for a while, under the excuse of not alerting others of their meeting; he didn’t bother getting dressed while he languidly enjoyed a cigarette and the afterglow of their lust. 
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Virgil allowed three nights to pass before he crossed paths with the girl again. This time, Shadliss played coy, making the man work for her agreement to meet on the sheltered beach of the nearby cove. It was a game: both players were looking for action and excitement in a boring town, but neither could let on like they were desperate, not that either truly was. Like the first meeting and the second, there were no real words, only hands and lips employed in more carnal communication. When they finished, Virgil cleaned the sand off the woman’s skin with a smirk and a gesture. Shadliss complimented his trick, and pulling on her clothes, left him on the beach.
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The third liaison needed to be more; Virgil had too much pride to allow himself the image of one who took a lady for granted. He caught her in the street, not wanting to cross paths with her overbearing father, and offered to take her somewhere in the evening, if she would like. Shadliss complained that there was little to do in the tiny town, but suggested they meet at the Hagfish: a rougher, more ramshackle bar than the friendly tavern in the Rusty Dragon Inn. It was hardly a romantic spot, but it served alcohol and its clientele were unlikely to comment or gossip about their presence there. He agreed, and the two ate and drank on Virgil’s dime, the change from his previous loan from Luna. Virgil dominated the conversation, seeming to be an endless font of stories and tales of legends and heroes, of strange things and places he had seen, of daring and mystery and comedy and horror. It was difficult to tell if he was just a gifted storyteller, or if there was any truth behind the things he said.
When Shadliss began to show her tipsiness, Virgil cut her off, not wanting to be responsible for excessive drinking. He paid up their tab and left; Shadliss commented that she didn’t feel like being outdoors. Meandering towards the inn, Virgil spied Khyrralien, plucking languorously away at his sitar outside the front door. With some quick comments that suggested this was far from the first time they had discussed such things, Virgil employed his friend in keeping the others out of their shared room for the next hour or so. The night was still relatively young, and so Eamon and Luna were occupied with their own tasks elsewhere; for the four people who needed no sleep, keeping up appearances required that they spend eight hours in a small room with each other, with precious little to do. It was a task all four were happy to delay at the best of times. With a simple illusion covering the young woman, Virgil and Shadliss strode through the bustling tavern and retired to his room.
They sat on a bed, not paying too much mind to whose it was. They talked for a short while, Shadliss giggling and playing about. It wasn’t long before their clothes were abandoned once more. When they finished, Shadliss sighed; she’d rather not go home, but people would notice if she wasn’t back soon. Cloaked in another illusion, she left.
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Virgil sat near the ruined lighthouse, overlooking the ocean as he played a violin borrowed from a local. The three ravens who had taken to following him around, thanks in no small part to his generous supply of food, sat nearby on a chunk of rock. They cawed as they noted someone’s approach: Shadliss climbed the hill towards the lighthouse where Virgil sat. He continued playing blithely as the girl approached him, waiting for him to stop. When the song finished, he turned to regard her expectantly. She sat down, exchanging the short pleasantries that they had become accustomed to giving each other. A doubt tinted her expression, and when Virgil asked, she muttered that she had heard he was leaving town soon. He waved away her concerns, explaining he would certain leave at some point, but it wasn’t likely to be any time presently: he had little reason to leave, when there were still interesting things here and nothing calling him away. At her disbelief that anything could be interesting in Sandpoint, he explained that the lighthouse behind them was a ruin, a building with sunken secrets that he was itching to explore. He mentioned with a grin that he and his adventuring compatriots had been down the well, seen doors and halls, and he was only waiting for the resources he’d need to conduct an underwater investigation. 
She listened to him with a measured mix of interest and disbelief, marking her as one who wasn’t entirely lacking in good sense. They discussed adventuring, what it meant and what it demanded of a person. In Virgil’s opinion, there were three sorts of adventurers: travelers, who moved from town to town, learning of cultures and news; mercenaries, who moved from one fight to the next, selling their swords to whomever needed protection; and explorers, who found lost places, braving traps and dangers for mysteries and reward. At Shadliss’ question, he said he fancied himself the third, though everyone seemed to expect that all adventurers were of the second sort, so he was ready to wield a weapon wherever he went since that was what people were likely to hire him to do. Not that he often needed hiring: explorers tended to stumble onto all sorts of wealth, in one way or another. Shadliss scorned his tongue-in-cheek manner of speech: he spoke of fairy tales with a patronizing grin, making it difficult to tell if he was mocking her for rejecting his honesty or for believing his lies. She knew adventurers were wealthy, that was certain: Ameiko herself had left to adventure, and within a few years she had returned with enough gold to open an inn from nothing, but he talked of silly and improbable things, that all adventurers just seemed eventually stumble on. She couldn’t quite believe that, as she put it, they “just found barrels of pixie dust lying around”. He laughed some more, and called over a raven, who hopped over to them in the hopes of getting his just and tasty reward. Virgil stroked the bird’s feathers, talking of magic and how it was all very good and improbable, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen anyways. She watched him seem to speak to the bird, mimicking its caws while the animal responded, allowing him to touch it. With his permission, she touched it lightly, and the raven placidly permitted her to do so, while Virgil joked that birds very often had little of worth to say, and honestly, it was annoying most of the time to hear them yelling at each other. Shadliss asked with almost wonder how he could talk to birds, as the raven hopped back to join the others, but her expression turned to disapproval as he told with his smarmy grin a ridiculous tale of how he was made by avian fey magic for his father, another adventurer, who had saved a pants-wearing raccoon from a terrible fate. She dismissed his claims as silliness, thinking it in poor taste to keep believing a fanciful story told to a child whose mother had left them.
The whole time they talked, she lingered somewhere between intrigued and put-off. She said that she wanted more than to just stay in Sandpoint her whole life, that she wanted excitement and wealth and fame, but at the same time, everything Virgil said had a ring of impossible absurdity to it, and if nothing else, she had no interest in swords and battles. The man considered this, and questioned whether she had interest in learning magic: certainly, a town wizard would be afforded all sorts of wealth and leisure without ever needing to consider a life of combat. She scoffed at him, citing the wealth one needed to go to a school such as that. With his grin, he turned her around, and began to instruct her on a particularly simple spell; though his magic came from his soul and not his schooling, prestidigitation was not different whether cast by a bard or a wizard.
Shadliss repeated the motions and words over and over, sitting for nearly thirty minutes before she managed to produce something of a disturbance in the air, though not the spell itself. The puff of wind surprised her slightly, and Virgil congratulated her thoroughly: it took a lot of practice, but anyone with intelligence could learn magic if they tried, and being a wizard who could make and mend things by flicking her hand would certainly get her the wealth and respect she wanted without danger. She considered this, and folded her hands. She reiterated again that there was a rumour he was leaving, and he assured her that he would inform her before he went anywhere, and certainly wouldn’t leave until after he had found what was left forgotten in the lighthouse. With a snort, she told him to bring her back a barrel of pixie dust. Leaning in towards her neck, he whispered to her that he could bring her whatever she wanted. With his vague promises of wealth, and the doubt he sewed in the impossibility of fantastic things, Shadliss pressed her lips to his once more. The ravens sat quietly, with no one on the out-of-the-way nighttime street to mark them or the two people nearby, engaged as they were in their passions. Once more they finished and the girl dressed and left, leaving Virgil sitting where she found him, content as he was in the emotions she had unknowingly fed him on.
Category:Rise of the Runelords