Welcome or Unwelcome?

[drunken_mage]

Winks the goblin sits, despondently, on a stool behind the bar in Stran's training warehouse. Wiping down the bar with a rag, he lets a sigh escape his dirty cracked lips. He had already done his daily training routine, and taken the render on its walk to make sure it gets excercise. Now he's bored, and a bored goblin infused with the essence of the shadow plane can be a dangerous thing.

Looking for a little excitement, even though he knows it won't work, he tries to use his innate ability to travel the planes to head to the Plane of Shadow. All it does is give him a headache for his effort.

"Gods-damned mage. Keeping me here. And even if it's none of his doing, may the gods damn him anyway...Of course, maybe they already have, and that's why he's here in the first place too. It's bad enough he got trapped here, but did I have to get involved too? To say nothing of his family. I almost wish for the old Stran back. This one almost never DOES anything. The old Stran took money to kill people, and then when that dried up went out to kill demons because he felt like it. Got some damn good training too. I don't remember too many people that were better fighters than him. Well, in a fair fight anyway. It's a good thing I make it a point not to stab friends in the back, figuratively and literally."

Winks turns around and fills a mug from one of the tapped ale-barrels. After draining half of it he tops it off again and turns back to the bar.

"Nope, the only one I could think of that could match, or exceed, Stran in a fight would be Ret. That damned drow taught him a lot of what he knows. But as they say, 'no teacher teaches everything.'"

A voice pipes up from in front of the bar, "tell me about Ret'indall, Uncle Winks."

Winks almost chokes on his ale as the voice catches him by surprise. Looking over the bar, he sees Serin, Stran's eight-year old son. The boy has dark hair like his father, but streaks of gold are just beginning to peek out on random strands on his head. Winks would find this contrast interesting, if he didn't already know that those of Stran's race, Magiks, always manifest a gold tint somewhere on their body. Stran's gold is in his eyes, Winks thinks to himself, and it looks like Serin's will be in his hair. Serin has a glass ball, which he efortlessly makes float in the air between his two hands.

"You really wanna know about that drow, boy?"

Serin nods, "Father never talks about him in front of me, and when I ask it's always 'when you're older.' Can you tell me anything about him Uncle Winks? Father always says that you and Ret were the closest things to friends that he had before he met Mother."

Winks scratches at an itch above his eye with a long gray fingernail. "Well I guess you will figure some of it out eventually. Come on." The goblin jumps down from his stool and walks around the bar to meet Serin. Wow, he thinks, the boy is almost taller than me. He's going to be tall like his father I'll bet.

He leads Serin to the back of the warehouse, where four portraits hand on the wall. One is of Stran, another Winks, and another of a woman. The fourth has the image of a dark-skinned elf, a sword strapped to each hip. Winks looks at the boy.

"Now, you know that your father didn't have so easy of a life before he met your mother, and even then things weren't all cream and sugar," Serin nods, "but do you really know what he used to do?"

"He was...he...," the boy lowers his head and mutters, "he killed people for money."

"That's right, and I know he doesn't want you to know about it but you're a smart boy, you overhear things and figure it out from there. Me, him, Ret, and," his hand absently waves at the portrait of the woman, "we were all part of a group of killers, a guild. It wasn't one of those fancy guilds like the blacksmiths or the merchants that's actually recognized by a city, but everyone knew about us anyway. We had our hands so deep in the city's pockets they'd never do anything against us. Now Ret, he was the head of our guild, the guy in charge. When it came to killing, he liked to do it face to face, as opposed to people like me that would sneak up behind you and stab you in the neck. He was in the full favor of his god too. The Dark Warlord loved his brutality, the fact that he looked into the face of his victims before cutting it off."

Serin squirms a little from his seat on the floor, obviously not comfortable with the imagery. Winks smiles, getting into his story.

"I'm sure your pops has told you a watered down story of how he got his book back from the crazed mage-priest, and how the four of us tried making a 'peaceful' life for ourselves outside of the city. Yeah that lasted about as long as an elf in the Goblin Woods. I left first, and didn't see your father again until I showed up here, but luckily he filled me in on what happened with him and Ret. See, Ret saw something in your father I guess no one else did. Up until then he relied on his magic to get all of his jobs done, even though you can tell he's a pretty good physical specimen. So Ret decides to get him trained proper in swordsmanship, and takes him to the drow homeland. They refuse to train him so Ret does it himself. The two of them forged something during that time, and I wish I knew what. Friendship is the wrong word for it I think. But anyway, they both joined a purification squad, you know, those groups dedicating to ridding our world of demons, and one night they were ambushed. Your father was the only one who survived, even though he never found Ret's body. I believe it was...vrocks, that's it, and those things are known for completely destroying everything around them. That was actually right before he met your mother."

Serin looks from Winks, to the portrait of Ret, and back to Winks. "Uncle Winks, is that a good picture of him?"

"Well," he looks at it for a moment, "it's alright. They got him right, but they got the most distinctive part of him wrong: his weapons. That one's got him with two longswords, that's not what he used at all. I remember clearly. In one hand he always had a saber with a jagged tip, and the other was a shortsword with a groove in the middle that held liquid mercury. Made it cut harder or some such."

"And those are exactly what he used?"

"Yes, boy! Why do you...keep...asking..." Winks' eyes glance at his right shoulder where the blade of a saber, the tip horribly jagged, is laying on top of his vest. A glance at his left shoulder shows the blade of a shortsword in the same position. He can feel the weight of them bearing him down, and looks back at Serin, a frightened look on his face. "Well, this is a surprise..."

To be continued...

[drunken_mage]

Winks sails through the air to impact with the wall with a dull thud. Falling to the floor, he rubs at his cheek, which has turned a darker shade of grey. He looks up at the figure approaching him slowly.

"You kick harder than I remember, Ret, and you're a little quicker too. What say we just talk about thisHEY!"

The dark elf picks up the small goblin and hurls him across the room to crash behind the bar. After a moment, Winks manages to climb back up so that he's looking over the bar at Ret.

"You know, if you wanted a drink you could have just asked."

A saber flashes out at the goblin's head, but in an instant, he is no longer there, and instead is hanging from the rafters directly above the elf. Ret'indall looks up and smirks, then whips his left hand out in an arc, sending four throwing knives sailing at Winks. Winks disappears again, and reappears on Ret's left, dagger at the ready; but Ret already has his saber there to parry, as well as his short sword, catching Winks' dagger and turning it aside. His right arm, still holding the saber, snakes out and around Winks' neck holding him in place; while he switches the short sword to a downward grip and holds the point to the goblin's chest. He hisses in a dark voice.

"Where is Tannish?"

"Stran? I don't know. Why?" Winks struggles to breathe and free himself, but Ret's right arm just tightens and he presses the sword point a little deeper.

"That miserable mage left me to die at the hands of the vrocks. I was lucky to get away. Then I start hearing stories. Stran the archmage. The traveling grove. Stran the family man. Then Stran disappears, without a trace, his family gone as well. I searched him out, and finally made it here only to find you working for him?!"

A small metal sphere clunks against his head, breaking his concentration. Still holding Winks still, Ret turns and sees Serin, the metal sphere floating above one hand and a look of determination on his face.

"What have we here? A mage in miniature. You must be the son I've heard about. Serin is it?"

Serin begins trembling, his confidence slightly broken. Ret smiles, but before he can do anything more, something larger hits him from the other side, throwing him away from Winks only to catch him and hold him in the air upside down. He looks, and there in the doorway, hand upraised, is Stran. His face an expression of disbelief that quickly passes as he clenches his upraised hand into a fist. Ret can feel the bones in his ankle breaking and looks up, to see nothing there holding him. Disbelief now shows on the dark elf's face as he looks back at the mage.

Stran's voice is filled with calm, "I don't care who you are, or how well I've known you...NO ONE threatens my son." He opens his hand and Ret falls to the floor, immediately clutching his shattered ankle. Stran reaches with his right hand and a sword flies from the wall unerringly into his grasp. The crosspiece is decorated with five different colored stones. Ret looks at the weapon and smirks.

"You still hold the Elemental Blade I see. What are you going to do, run me through?"

Stran stops ten feet from the dark elf, the calm never leaving his face. A twitch of his eyebrow, and bars materialize around Ret, with a metal floor and roof, imprisoning him. The magical cage then rises into the air seemingly under its own power, to remain suspended in the exact center of the room.

"I'm actually going to just leave you there for now until I figure out exactly what to do with you." Stran turns and walks out of the warehouse with his son next to him. Ret's curses follow him. Winks just sighs, rubbing at his bruised cheek once again, then goes back behind the bar for another pint, trying to tune out the elf's harsh yells.