The Song Unsung (Fantasy Smackdown Round One)

Torn stood alone on the crowded deck.

The humans bustling around him were afraid. Terrified, in fact. He could smell it, a sickly-sweet perfume hanging over the entire fleet, filling his sensitive nostrils almost to bursting. Yet he did not begrudge the men their fear.  Not in this. It was right they be afraid. Fitting.

They sailed to make war upon a legend, after all. Soris the Unassailable, the Singing City. The first and last stronghold of the First Lords itself. They sailed to wake the wrath of the Sleeping God.

For anything sane and mortal, a healthy measure of fear was only reasonable.

Why then, Torn wondered, as he watched half-panicked scurrying of the humans around him, am I not afraid?

Torn was jostled from his thoughts as a burly soldier shoved passed him, making for the ship’s head. From a few feet away, the ship’s wizard noticed the careless contact.

Torn watched, bemused, as the wizard stepped forward and grabbed the soldier by the front of his uniform.

“Beg forgiveness from the First Lord, soldier.”

“What? Him?” The soldier’s brow wrinkled. “What would I do that for? He’s useless.” The man snickered. “What the hell good is a mute spellsinger, anyway?”

Torn raised an eyebrow. What good indeed?

The wizard lifted a long fingered hand and struck the soldier full across the face. The man fell against the ship’s railing, where he tripped on a taut line and sailed overboard.

No one made a move to help, least of all the wizard. Torn took a step toward the rail, watched the man’s feeble attempts to stay above the choppy water.

See how easily they murder, these humans. See how callously they kill their own.

Yet…am I any better? Am I not, in fact, far worse?

The wizard turned back to Torn, bowed so low his dirty brown hair touched the deck.

“Apologies, First Lord,” the wizard said, his voice an apologetic whisper. As though suddenly ashamed to flaunt the gift of voice. “Fools will be fools.”

Torn, of course, had no answer. He let the man squirm for a moment under the weight of his gaze before giving a barely perceptible shrug. The man let out of a relieved sigh and backed away.

The wizard knew the truth of one thing, at least. While the magic of the First Lords, the spellsong, was in truth denied Torn, there were other paths to follow. Darker paths.

And silence held a power all its own.

The excitement of a man overboard quickly passed, and the humans returned to their endless bustling. As though buffing the deck one final time might just save all their lives in the hours to come.

Not for the first time, Torn found his eyes drawn to Warchief Glavil, the man responsible for assembling the hundred ship fleet. A curiosity, there.

The giant of a man stood boldly on the prow of the ship, hands clasped behind his back, heedless of the wind’s incessant fingers ripping at his uniform and the white tipped spray soaking the deck around him. An island of calm amid a sea of fear and fury.

What compels you, Warchief? What drives you? Is it the simple lure of blood and plunder, as you claim? The spoils of war?

Glavil was only human, after all. Scarcely better than a savage.Yet, somehow, Torn doubted the man’s motivations were anything so simple.