Round 3: Dorian vs. Madyrn

This battle will end on Wednesday, May 23rd, at 11:59 PM EST.

Have fun, and good luck!

((I'm re-using my previous intro from Round 2. I had originally written it because I hoped to, you know, actually USE it, and so I asked Atzar and he said I could do it again.))

"There he is, the mighty Ionos!"

The words came almost instantly as Dorian entered through the magnificent gilded doors of the Dean's office at Glissando Conservatory. He hated this part: the congratulations, the brandy, the backslapping. But it had to be done; the world of music was a world of politics. He put on his brightest smile, took a few steps forward, and made a shallow bow. The room, filled as it was with overly wealthy gentlemen and overly smarmy scholars, filled with a polite clap. Perhaps half of it was sincere.

Dorian rose from his position, and the Dean strode forward and clasped Dorian's hand warmly, gushing, "The fugue was magnificent, Doctor. I speak for all of us when I say that your ability to expound a theme across myriad instruments and varied mediums is admirable."

Dorian inclined his head in appreciation, and said, "Thank you, Dean Sommersmith."

The Dean said a few more words of appreciation, but Dorian had long since learned to drown out such platitudes, nodding and beaming in just the right places, and murmuring assent based on the tone of the Dean's voice. And then it came, the Dean finished his tirade, and the crowd began mingling. It was always a celebratory atmosphere after a premiere, and before long Dorian found a drink in his hand. And then that drink was gone, and another was there.

Suddenly, amidst the hazy atmosphere of alchohol and general frivolity, there was a tug at his shoulder. He turned to see who it was. Oh. How disappointing.

Standing there was Jared Sommersmith, the Dean's son. Just shy of Dorian's own age, the composer knew Jared well. They were both students at Glissando, but had taken different paths in graduate work. Jared was more interested in the magical side of music, whereas Dorian preferred music itself. Their last years at the school together had been punctuated by a series of fights that had ended all hopes for friendship between them.

"So, Doctor Dorian. I'm glad to see you're enjoying yourself. I hear your premiere went well today; it's a shame I wasn't there, I might have had a few memorable things to say."

Dorian could see this was going badly. He made to interject, but Jared cut him off. "Did I hear from someone that you almost didn't make it to the printer's? I heard the spectacle on the street was quite amusing, the way you hit that man with your little magic stick, and were nearly dismembered for your cheek. Why don't you tell them the story, Dorian? Tell it to them, I'm sure they'd like to hear it."

Jared was speaking louder now, and more people were starting to listen in. And Dorian still had the faint traces of a bruise on the side of his head where the Radasanthian guard had cuffed him good in the scuffle. How did Jared know about that? Dorian had a few drinks in him, true, but they hadn't quite hit yet and he was still level-headed enough to know that it wasn't time to get in a fight with Jared Sommersmith. It was time to bow out gracefully. If he wasn't around to defend himself, perhaps Sommersmith would leave the party as well. It would remove the target.

"I would tell you now, but I'm afraid I must be getting home. I have a late dinner date with a friend, you know how it goes." Dorian positioned himself nearby the door, prepared to make a run for it.

But the Dean was there in a heartbeat. He turned to his son, a look of surprise on his face. "Jared? Is that you? I didn't know you were coming! Tell me, son, what brings you back from the School of Turlin?"

Jared grimaced, and said, "That's not important, father, Dorian was about to tell us a story, weren't you Dor--" He turned towards Dorian as he spoke, but trailed off, his eyes now open in wide-eyed disbelief.

Doctor Dorian Ionos was nowhere to be found.

~*~*~*~

Crouched just outside the building in the darkening air, Dorian sucked in the growing nighttime chill. Pulling from his pocket one of those new things that had just started coming in from the coast -- a sort of plant wrapped tightly in paper -- he fumbled with his other hand to hold both his Song Stone and his magic baton. A note sounded in the frigid air, a stream of fire shot from the baton, and the paper lit. He didn't particularly like these things, but they worked wonders with his nerves. And after running into Jared, he needed something to quiet an aching headache.

Walking away from the Conservatory grounds towards his apartment in the city, he was both angry and apprehensive. How dare that little brat come back just to embarrass him on his celebratory night! But how did he know of the scuffle in the street? It was a brief brawl, barely begun before the city guard broke it up. It shouldn't have excited much interest.

He walked slowly across the bridge separating the conservatory from the rest of the city, stopping for a moment to admire the scene, letting the smoke fill his lungs and calm him down. The street below him stretched out in one direction, cobblestoned paths heading towards the market district. Behind him lay the real grandeur of the city, all its towers, the Dome of the Citadel, the manors and fine homes of the powerful. But in this direction, facing the marketplace and the simple folk, there was another beauty. It lay not in power, but in hope.

He coughed, hard. These fiery little wrappers made him feel good, alert, but at the same time he couldn't stand the coughing. There was no way they were good for his singing voice.

He tossed the flaming stick off the bridge and walked on. He didn't bother to take care where it landed. That would prove an unfortunate mistake.

((I kill you with pointy thing, k?))

Madyrn gently snubbed out the fire with his toe, the repulsive smell wafting up to his nose and spawning a disgusted expression. Beneath the bridge he stood, leaning restfully against the stone wall, watching nothing but the occasional passerby to whom he would tip his head forward.

He was hungry, and gold seemed to be leaving his pockets as the days wore on. The fiery stick told him things, though. It told him that there was a figure above, rich enough to throw away a luxury few folk would afford themselves. More importantly, it told him the figure was approaching what Madyrn knew to be a long, narrow pathway that branches off into several alleyways.

“Might as well,” he muttered, knowing the dangers of attacking someone so blatantly. Impatient to a fault, Madyrn didn’t want to wait for a better opportunity to present itself.

He mounted the wall and the bridge itself, finding footholds and using his agility to quickly scale the surface. It was a simple plan with simple motivations, so he planned to go about it in a simple way. Dorian’s back was to him, moving slowly along the road in what looked like a comfortable trot. Madyrn had little time before Dorian would reach the marketplace, so he made no strong effort to disguise the noise as he ran forward, drawing his kukri. The elf reached the man quickly and swung the butt of the blade for his temple, looking to knock him senseless.

Dorian paced leisurely across the bridge, descending the gentle slope towards the place where the city paths split. One way led through a better part of town and eventually towards the southern gate -- his house lay there, with all its comforts and amenities, and nicely paid for as a perk of his employment. And to the east, not far off at all, the city gave way to the road, which would take one to Concordia if they walked that far.

But right now, Dorian didn't really feel like home. He felt like strolling through the market stalls as the embrace of evening strengthened through the world. The moon was slowly climbing in the sky, full and bright, the last vestiges of twilight nearly gone; it was already a beautiful night. Perhaps Dorian could find some trinket to give to an admirer, some shopkeeper who had stayed open late.

Reaching the fork, Dorian paused and groped in his pocket, hunting for change. Pulling out a few GP, he counted them and grunted. "Huh...only 20 pieces. Oh well, perhaps I can get a bit of fruit from a night owl." He was about to put the coins back when he noticed something else in his hand -- his song stone must have been in his pocket. Suddenly, the stone started glowing.

Frowning, he peered closer. He had never seen this before! The funny little object made noise when he wanted it to, and with his magic baton it could work funny tricks, but it had never started glowing on its own accord. Suddenly, it emitted a high pitched shriek. Dorian jumped up, startled, then the shrill, earshattering sound ended and he heard something else: fast, urgent footsteps. And out of the corner of his eye, he saw the glitter of metal.

Dorian turned in fear, reaching madly for something, anything, that would save him. But he had nothing except a wooden baton and a handful of gold coins. In desperation, he flung the heavy metal pieces directly towards his attacker's face, but it was too late.

The blade's blunt end struck him heavily on the side of the head, and Dorian crumpled like wheat sheaves before the thresher's blade. The last things he saw were his attacker's feet as kaleidoscopic designs invaded his vision, and then the world went dark.

Madyrn cursed shortly, the coins flung into his face. His attack followed through, however, bringing the desired result as the human collapsed like a building with no foundation. The elf moved quickly, sheathing the kukri and bending low, wrapping a hand under each of the fallen man’s arms.

Watching carefully each entrance to the narrow road, Madyrn pulled Dorian out of the open walkway and into a small alley between two houses. Smelling of urine and containing scattered parchments and disposed fruit – likely the remains of a merchant’s spoiled, unsold wares – the alley was a dead-end, dark section of the city where Dorian could sleep off his little headache. Madyrn, meanwhile, would make off scott-free. For such a simple idea, it was working out rather well.

He left Dorian against the wall, contemplated cutting his throat, but decided not to. For a human, he dressed and looked well. That didn’t absolve him of the hatred Madyrn had for humans, but the elf’s mood was better now; this man had potential to make the humans around him feel inferior. Something about that appealed to the mercenary.

“Twenty coins, he’d said,” Madyrn muttered as he moved back into the street. He, of course, had heard Dorian easily. His eyes scanned the ground and picked out various shining, golden coins, and found more as he scooped up the discovered ones.

Soon he had a fistful of gold. He took a final look at Dorian, still unconscious and out of any convenient view, then began to make his way toward the market. Twenty gold pieces would get him at least two decent meals, which would serve as enough until he found more work. His last two jobs had been failures, causing him to reevaluate his way of going about assassinations. For a little while, he would stick to more basic work.

But only for a while.

He didn't know where he was.

As his eyes opened, the world turned. It seemed as dark with eyes open as it had in that netherworld between waking and sleeping. What lights he did see floated and twirled, as if struggling to swim through thick honey. There was a throb in his head, a dull pain that seemed to pulse right underneath his skull.

Leaning forward heavily, he turned his head and nearly vomited. The spinning world, the swirl of lights and bricks merging and blurring into one, it was too much for him. His stomach churned, and he coughed violently, each wracking breath sending a jolt of jarring pain through his head.

He stopped moving for a second, just sitting there, head still, resting against the back of the wall. It was dirty here, his dinner jacket was probably ruined. One hand rested in a puddle that was sure to be riddled with all sorts of diseases, and his other hand felt gingerly along his head. There was an enormous bump there, but nothing was bleeding. A good sign, at least.

He waited another few minutes, the sickly-sweet odor of rotting fruit mingled with more offensive scent slowly blending into one unrecognizable stench, then fading from his mind as he grew accustomed to it. After a few moments, his head still hurt, but he could see better. The mortar and bricks of the alley walls were now more inclined to keep their separation instead of blending into a sickening universal singularity.

Rising groggily to his feet, he staggered out of the alley. It was definitely darker than before, the evening now well on its way to the darkness of a cloudy midnight. It would be a rare merchant with his stall still open this late.

All the better that I don't have my money anymore, there's no one awake to sell anything to me anyway. Dorian groaned; it hurt to think so hard.

Struggling back to the fork in the road, he glanced around to find none of his coins. But he did, luckily, see a strange stone lying there. To anyone else, it would look like a mere rock, a cobble knocked loose from the street. But Dorian breathed a sigh of relief and picked it up. Thank God whoever that was did not steal my songstone!

Walking unsteadily down the path to the market, Dorian found the first open-air cafe and sat down in one of the chairs. No one would care at this hour whether he sat down without buying anything, and he needed to rest his head for a moment before heading home. Pulling out a grubby, damp piece of paper from his coat -- it must have gotten wet while he was laying half-dead in that dismal puddle -- he laid it out on the table and began to write on it with a pen produced from his coat pocket.

Dorian was upset. He was cold, tired, and his head was about to kill him. But in the past, nothing could ever soothe his tired nerves like musing with notes on paper. So now Dorian mused.

Round 3 is concluded, judging will follow soon!

I had hoped that this battle would finish. At the beginning, it looked as if it was a given.

Anyway, Madyrn had nearly ten days in which he failed to reply. Therefore, he is disqualified.

Dorian gains 150 EXP and advances to Round 4!

Madyrn gains 50 EXP.

(((Finally, one of Cyrus's characters is gone.....)))

EXP added.