Hustle and bustle. The smells of every other pub on the planet encompassed Ulrich in its stale embrace. The smell of sweat, alcohol, joy and loss was almost as universal as the colour of the sky. To the man in the corner, hidden from anyone who didn’t bother too look, it brought feelings of waywardness and sorrow.

But you don’t go to the local to dwell on your feelings of hopelessness, to get drunk and forget about your life. Ulrich didn’t anyway. When you’re bored and have nothing else to fill an otherwise empty night.

You go to eavesdrop.

A few years of intense training had honed his ears beyond what anyone would think was normal for someone who stared, empty eyed, at a full glass of ale. Dew sliding down the glass To rest on the beaten Yew table. His attention seeming to follow the liquid in it’s jagged journey.

A drunk couple were fighting with broken slurs over the best baker in the city.

Someone was singing their woes to a bored looking barmaid, too polite to say anything to the lonely old man.

Across the bar there was a broken line as someone new sat and discussed with the bartender, Discussing the weather and, Philosophy?

No, all of this was par for the course and not interesting in any way. As the weather worsened and lightning lit the streets in momentary, temporary photographs of the streets, it was always silence which caught the attention. You just had to know how to listen for it.
It was too rare for many people to find and if it found them then it was a horrid, clumsy thing to handle.

The wizard’s fingers twitched as his senses roamed around the bar. Trails of magic. The threads which Ulrich manipulated the world with flowed from the tips, like golden after images of his hands.

Someone wasn’t making much sound. Any sound at all for that matter, in the centre of the room. Ulrich had walked right past him when he arrived.
The gentleman had been surrounded in the cacophony of noise, like a cocoon against the world, but only a moment ago he had been interacting with it. With someone. The stranger hadn’t been alone.

Now, head drooped low he looked, in a passing glance to be asleep. But.

But.

Ulrich was up and weaving through a crowd of people and around another. A table of mis-matched wood and colour. In the centre of the pub common area. Ulrich, his back to the front door and the bar brought himself to eye level with the unmoving fellow.

The Blue lips, bulged eyes and swollen tongue. Already dead.

The silence that fell, was deafening.