Glass Dolls

Of Heroes and Humanity - 1

"And ohhhh the mortals sink down to Elysium

The mortals fly up to Valhalla

A draught of beer for the men up here

A cuppa Ambrosia for the ladies

And it might be because I'm not alone

But it's never been simpler to make merry.

No, it's never been simpler to make merry."

-The chorus of Hestia's Feast, composed in a drunken stupor by Loki and Prometheus.

Level of Refraction: 274 degrees.

"So yeah, basically I had a rock-worm in a chokehold in one arm, and then I was using my sword with my other hand to fend off like a dozen reanimated corpses. By the time I had exhausted them the witch was too drained to summon any more dead..."

Mold sips from her mug of ale as the man to her right yammers on and on. She looks down the bar in the other direction, but there's no one else that she could escape to. Just the fat old barkeep that is wiping down a glass.

"...but then it turned out that the gold was cursed. I felt it in my head, but I've dealt with this sort of thing before, so then what I did-"

"You know I can kill you whenever I want, right?" She interrupts him.

"Oho! You have some spunk, huh? I like that." He licks his lips.

Okay then.

Mold thinks, kicking his barstool out from underneath him. As he is in the process of gasping for air she twists her leg again, catching his with it. The pretty boy spins through the air once before he slams into the stone floor nose first. He lets out a high pitched scream, and the bartender runs to a back room.

"Oh, you don't have any spunk then. I don't like that." Mold says, reaching towards his stomach. He flinches back, but she just grabs his coin purse from his belt. "Thanks for the drinks. But not the conversation."

"P-please don't hurt me! I'll do anything!"

"Yeah, I know. Don't worry though, I won't. I just wanted your money." She says as she tosses the entire purse onto the counter."

"Thank you! Thank y-"

The man's words are drowned out by his own screams as Mold's fingernails carefully pluck out the tendons in his arms. She stands back up, sneering down at the whimpering man before waltzing out of the tavern before the barkeep can get back with whatever magic weapon she was retrieving.

Not that it could have done much.

The sky that greets her is cloudless and blue. Only the occasional wyvern passes by overhead, searching for a goat to snack on in the mountains over the horizon. Despite the perfect weather, Mold has a headache. It puts her in a foul mood, and she rubs at her star-crossed right eye as she walks through the alleys of the tiny river town. The reason for the ache makes her look down on the adventurers milling about in the town even more.

How about you look up? She thinks. Maybe there's something up there that's actually worth hunting.

"But do you think they'd actually be able to do anything about it?" A throaty voice emanates from an old woman next to her.