((Closed to Lavinian Pride.))
Malagen was in the elven land of Raiaera for only a week and already his aversion towards it was reaching the unbearable level. By and large it was because Raiaera was in so many aspects akin to Audelas. Audelas and its enmity towards the Dram. Audelas and its majestic towers, endless green pastures and condescending folk that were always right. Audelas from which his kindred were exiled ruthlessly. Audelas that the Dram swore to conquer. Ever since he was able to understand the spoken word, he was fed the information about the land that was rightfully theirs, that the Audelans took from them. And through those long years of training in the frigid northern realm of Ferioh, Malagen has grown bitter towards anything that even remotely reminded him of the stories of Audelas. Needless to say, once he actually found himself in such an environment, his already hostile volatile mood could only grow worse.
He wasn’t here by his choosing though. After breaking from a Salvar prison with a wench that went under a peculiar name of Skyler, he wasn’t the most welcome person in the wintry realm. And since going north from Salvar got a person pretty much nowhere, south was the only option. And south meant either Alerar or Raiaera. Since the latter was closer, he opted for it and regretted his decision ever since. Melodic voices and pretty-pretty folken that just shone with fairness and wisdom were a bit too pretentious for his taste. Not to mention the picturesque buildings. It seemed to Malagen that every single piece of stone and brick is set so it was to be artsy, and even those that loved art knew that there was much and there was too much. And Malagen wasn’t even a big fan of art in the first place.
Unfortunately, he needed to scrape up some money to proceed further, perhaps westwards to Alerar and the dark elves. Malagen knew nothing of Alerar, but the fact that they were dark elves seemed far more promising then the jolly milieu he found himself in. Luckily for him and his line of work, even lands as fair as Raiaera had the much more knavish side to them, a perforation that ran deep beneath its foundation. All you had to know was where to look and soon enough you were knee-deep in tasks that took place on the blind side of the law.
So after a brief search thought the dirtiest foulest corners of Eluriand – that were, of course, the crummy low-profile taverns – he found himself sitting at a table with a smoothie with slick black hair and a toothy grin. He presented himself as an independent business man, but judging by his sly demeanor and the roguish twinkle in his eyes, he was as much of a business man as Malagen was a housewife. But that was irrelevant right now. What mattered was that the man had plenty in his coffers and he was willing to part with some of it if the Dram did a task for him. Apparently recently there was a minor earthquake in Eluriand and while there was no visible damage to the Raiaera capitol, something was stirred beneath the surface. More specifically, the tremor caused a crack in one of the sewer pipes and it led towards a crypt that supposedly contained a powerful artifact. There was other information about it, particularly about the artifact and the configuration of the crypt that the man found simply amazing, but Malagen didn’t share the enthusiasm and let it go in one ear and out the other. All he knew was that he had to snatch the artifact from some fruity elven archeologists, kill some guards and get the money to get out of this hellhole.
So once again, his fate led him to the sewers. A person would think that elves shat flowers, but their dung reeked just like everybody else’s and Malagen had to struggle not to allow his face to display his reaction to the stench as he made his way through the canals. Luckily for him and his olfactory senses, there was a walkway that saved him the trouble of walking through the foul stream and the entrance to the crypt wasn’t too far from where he entered the sewers. Beside the crack in the wall stood a pair of sentries, mumbling something to each other under the shimmering light of the two torches mounted on the wall. “Tough luck...” Malagen thought. “...for them.”
“Who goes there?” one of the guarding duo asked, a gold-haired lad that didn’t seem a day over twenty. But then again, that could be said for most of the elves. His pointy ears and amplified vision spotted the dark figure approaching fairly soon though, granting both sentries ample time to brandish their longswords. Malagen paid no heed to their warnings or their steadfast posture. They were both fairly inexperienced with blades, he could tell that much, and it came as no real surprise. Why waste a pair of veteran guards on guarding some pencil pusher archeologists that dug through the dirt?
“Stop right there, stranger!” the second of the two – a lad with his brown hair arranged in a pair of silken braids - added once he noticed that there was no intention in the mysterious figure to stop its approach. Malagen kept sauntering forwards. In his left – that was now the significantly weaker of the two hands – stood a sheathed saber, his right loose at his side. However, instead of coming straight at him, the blonde guard whispered something, his eyes going out of focus for a fraction of a second before he reaffirmed his stature. Unbeknownst to Malagen, the sentry’s whisper was actually a telepathic call for reinforcements. Something neither of the two lived to see.
Because once he was within what he liked to call Battle Circle – which was really just a perimeter some ten paces in diameter – the Dram barbarian was like a predator. He charged at the pair of greenhorns, his right hand finding its way to the hilt of the saber and pulling it out in a blistering motion. The golden-haired elf managed to parry the first strike aimed at his chest, but the force of the slash pushed his blade downwards and away from the proper blocking position, opening him up for the quick slice that tore through his groin tendons and opened up his leg artery. He fell to the ground with a loud yelp, but a slash across the face shushed him effectively. His partner was already out to avenge him though. The strike was precise, finely measured and aimed at Malagen’s chest, but the dark man pushed it aside with a sideways single-handed parry. His left hand caught the wrist of elf’s sword hand, keeping it away long enough for Malagen’s saber to thrust through his neck. The elf looked at the indifferent azure eyes with disbelief, with profound last-minute agony, before he slumped to the ground. It was a look that Malagen saw countless times before.
He sheathed his blade with eerily calmness, like an executioner that just did his work and had no regret about doing it, and entered through the ample crack in the wall tilling. The passage to the crypt was well lit by torches burning in a soft azure glow, enlightening the cavern-like twist and turns that led to the rather large burial chamber with three stone caskets. The walls were covered with ancient frescos – depicting a scene in which an angel handed down a small chest to what looked like three people – and writings that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. He didn’t need to, fortunately. There were three rather elderly gentlemen with ashtray-thick glasses that surely had the answers he sought.