Runesight

2 - Tavern Resonance

Nightwind tavern was bustling in the later hours of the evening. Eliax entered the door and for a moment just stood among the obnoxious students of Starsbane, a local academy, hearing their laughs and excitement. She heard the playful melody of a folk song from the piano at the edge of the room, a Tuvei with four arms was sweeping the notes out majestically as several drunkards sang along with blue-flushed faces. There were even a couple of humans here and there.

Overall, it was just like every other tavern that Eliax had been in in her life. Estin had a strange fondness for the places that she really didn't understand. She was fine with them, but only if no one was disturbing her ability to get things done.

At the moment, it was far from her ideal tavern experience. She couldn't concentrate on the resonance, but it was definitely feeding her new memories as the moments ticked by.

She remembered a certain table, moderately out of the way, near the edge of the room. It was more worn and beaten up than the resonance thought it should be, but as she passed it, she ran her hands along the carvings, seeing one of those cheesy graffitis with a stylized AxF in the center of a heart.

The resonance shuddered at that for some reason, sending a volley of new memories at her. Eliax tucked them away for later examination and sat down at the table, glad it was vacant.

The piano player started a new song, the type with a catchy tune that Eliax felt like she'd heard a million times on the way to Reiaran. It wasn't a terrible song, but it felt off to her that the piano was alone in it, usually, she heard it with a multitude of instruments, stringed ones mostly. That or voices, singing in a chorus together. Most Tuvei were at least partially tone-deaf, but the piano player clearly wasn't one of those as her four arms swept across the keys skillfully and theatrically without a hint of written note to go off. It was almost as entertaining to watch her as it was to hear what she was creating.

Eliax nodded pleasantly at the waitress who approached her table, ordering something based on the resonance as a test. Usually, those memories were accurate as to what types of foods she enjoyed, and it wouldn't be the end of the world if it was wrong for once.

In fact, she was waiting for it to be wrong for once, that would give her some points of data to work off.

The waitress left with her order and Eliax killed time by practicing the space-bending trick. According to everything she'd read, she might eventually figure out how to make gateways. Of course, that would be sped up significantly if she had a teacher of some sort, but until she resolved this whole resonance situation, she wasn't entirely certain how much she could learn.

So Eliax compressed and stretched the space between the window and a fork, it was more difficult to do without her hands as one of the reference points, but it was still entirely manageable.

After a couple minutes of that, Eliax looked up with surprise as a stranger sat down across from her. The distortion unraveled as her concentration was subverted, though he probably wouldn't have even noticed it without magesight. His skin had the red tones of a human, even if it was quite a bit lighter than what she was used to seeing. His ears were small and round, and his arms almost bulged with muscle.

Eliax frowned at him, feeling the resonance scream at the audacity. She would destroy him and his entire bloodline for- No no, stop it. She forced herself to relax and plastered on a supremely fake...moderately pleasant face. "Who the sparks are you?"

Okay, so that was the nicest she could manage. Whatever. She was probably glaring too.

"I saw you sittin' alone. Figured you might be lonely?" his country accent was so obviously fake, she could hear the tones of upper class nonsense lurking beneath. He was probably some kind of noble, not from Reiaran or even the surrounding land since the queen would never give a human a noble title.