The tavern was hot, but it held a slightly coppery and decayed pine aroma. Not blood, not exactly, but something that was in the very bones of the wood. Rain pounded against the shutters like a unwanted guest, and in the hearth was dying fire.
Rudra sat on the edge of a broken-down table, unwinding the bandage from his hand. The sigil under his skin had lost its luster since the battle along the Drowned Field, but the burn mark it left pulsed like an uneven heartbeat.
He hadn't said a word in hours. Neither had Tali.
Tali sat back in her chair, legs crossed, eyes slitted, her coat draped over the fire to dry. Her fresh tunic, linen, off-white, sewn down the sides, clung wet to her collarbone.
"You ever gonna ask him?" she grumbled.
Rudra didn't raise her eyes. "Ask who?"
She nodded slightly.
There was a man sitting by the bar. Hooded. Shoulder broad. Booted in flayed moss-skin, locally found in the ruins of Khar's Hollow, three hundred miles east. He hadn't given an order. Simply sat, breathing as if he could afford not to.
Rudra glanced at him, then away. "I already know who he is."
"You do not." Tali smiled weakly, scraping dirt from beneath her fingernails. "I've been observing him observing you since sunset. That kind of gaze could empty your spine."
"He's not here to fight," Rudra said. "If he was, I'd be dead."
The stranger stood up all of a sudden.
The tavern's chatter fell silent.
He walked over, slow, deliberate steps, and stopped just short of their table. The firelight painted only the lower half of his face, high cheekbones, ash-pale skin, lips that hadn't spoken in too long.
"I've come," he said quietly, "to return something that belongs to you."
He reached beneath his cloak.
Rudra's fingers spasmed towards the blade at his waist, but before he could grab it, the stranger produced a cloth-wrapped something and set it down on the table.
A necklace.
Fine chain. Obsidian feather pendant. Charred half-way through.
Rudra stiffened.
He hadn't seen it in years.
Not since the night the monastery had been overrun. Not since—
"How did you come to possess this?" Rudra said, tone low, flat.
"I tore it out of the throat of the one who took her," the stranger answered.
Tali rose slowly, hand on the blade of her dagger. "Who are you?"
The stranger looked at her, then back to Rudra. "That depends. On whether you remember what you are."
Silence.
Only the fire popping.
Only rain, pattering harder now.
And then, without a word, the stranger strode away towards the door and disappeared into the storm.
They departed the tavern at dawn.
Rudra was dressed in new attire, dark-grey tunic, leather bindings across the torso, travel-worn gloves. Tali had sold her old cloak for a shortcloak of river-beast skin, deep navy with a frayed bottom.
As they rode through the lower gate of the town, a boy ran screaming down the alleyway, pursued by an irate merchant flailing a head of rotten lettuce. Nobody stopped him. A toothless man hooted with such amusement that he tumbled off his crate.
Life continued. Even here. Even now.
"Do you think he's serious?" Tali asked as they rode into the foggy forest.
Rudra gazed straight ahead. "No."
Pause.
"But I want to."
Somewhere distant, far below the stone belly of the world, something changed in its sleep.
Not awakened.
Changed.
And at that instant, a single whisper carved itself into the dreams of five accursed bloodlines throughout Elarion:
The Feather has returned.