3. Dermin's trifles

Dermin's trifles


  • The following pages are part of the lackluster briefcase of Dermin. The entries lack of dates in the top and may hold stereotypes of every kind. These are random notes written with an average calligraphy. Although at times it seems that the curved lines of the manuscript are disseminated among the ocher stainis of the paper, undoubtedly it was written with care.

    1

    What seemed like an adventurers' guild mission in search of an axe in the crypts became a nightmare. Caitlyn was the name of the woman that we were supposed to help, apparently she was a battle priestess who just arrived to the Land. The party consisted of the magicians Elena and Corwin; Romulus and Nailo as our archers; the priests of Ilmater sir Allestor and lady Hope; the energetic hin Tressa 'Junior' (who left us soon as we arrived to the entrance of the crypt in exchange of an appointment at the Silver Valley) and I as the warrior –yes, it must be said-- a faithless one. Anyway, we departed from Norwick carrying the sun over our shoulders without further delays. The weather was perfect (as most of the times) to travel. We passed across the old Norwick's ruins and then we arrived at the mausoleum's hole at dusk. It didn't take long to crawl between earth and rocks after hearing the usual advices of veterans in our group. And we reached the slit and stone plaque in the main hall. A smell of putrefaction and death filtered through our noses. We were at the crypts, the filthy foul crypts.

    We advanced cautiously. We finished every undead stepped on our way. On my own knowledge, it is difficult if not impossible to find an axe down there. I've only seen armored undeads wielding sword and shield. But it seemed as if Luck was on our side to smile us, although in the end she stabbed us in the back. Then it happened. In the narrow bridge that brings to the main chamber, we were ambushed by a dozen of undeads and a stinky mummy whose bandages resembled coiled snakes that would spit rotten worms instead of poison. Or at least that was what I saw when I had the mummy face to face and forced me to withdraw myself. The mummy started pushing every undead in his way until he finally reached Caitlyn. He struck her in such a manner that sent her swooping to the lower floor of the crypt. Eventually we ended the twisted lives of the undead by swinging our steel and with the unshakable faith of our clerics. Then we decided to climb down through the precarious rope. We crunched downwards to go after Caitlyn.

    What else is there to say that everything was chaotic down there?. Each one for himself. A group dissolved in retreat. We fought against giant undeads and the collective anxiety. That Hope and I fought back to back against death to protect the vulnerable Caitly. Yet I was thrown against the wall then crushed by one of the big feet, rancid and stinky, of the giants. "That's it", I thought, "I'll snuff it out and there is no coming back". When I came to I could not move. My back was broken. The purulent giant foot had shattered my spine. Hope and Allestor were struggling to heal it but that day it was beyond their means. It was a difficult time. The moan of an inminent death groaning through the corridors of the catacombs. Suddenly a winged woman appeared among the shadows. She was so white. So Fresh and glowing. Her wings had ivory feathers that improved the unbreathable atmosphere with each flutter, although there was some malice in her eyes. And she went straight to the point: She proposed that in exchange for a small favor she would take us away from those crypt's bowels, she would fill a vial of blood then teleport us to the exterior. Without hesitation she pointed at me as the favored candidate.

    Was there another way out from that cursed place with a broken back when your comrades refuse to abandon you down there? Could I refuse to that offer? In blink she was behind me with her dagger prepared. She made a small incision, but sharp, in the back of my neck. Then she filled his vial.

    Romulus, Hope and Allestor were barely enough to carry me all the way to the Temple of Chauntea. On the road the great cleric Raryldor offered to heal my spine with their superior divine arts. And he did. Lying down in the Temple of Chauntea, with the care of lady Hope and sir Allestor, elder Raryldor pleaded to his divinity for a regeneration blessing upon my back. I felt like every vertebrae in my spine aligned, as every splinter of my vertebra recovered its ancient place and how each piece of bone was aligned and healed by his art. I felt that till the wound in my neck started to get worse rather than heal and I fainted.

    I found myself behind the bars of a sweltering and violet cell. I was disoriented, a headache about to explode. In front of me there were babbling all sorts of undesirable things. I could not see their faces, nor recognize them. Only the winged woman outside the cell spelling the word "specimen" then laughing.

    When I opened my eyes I was back in the Temple of Chauntea and lady Hope was taking care of me, wiping my feverish sweat and shameful line of drool in the corner of my mouth: known consequences of a person that faints.

    Lady Hope, the priestess of Ilmater, her kindness touches me.


  • 9

    So now that the siege is mostly over and I survived the rampage of demons, fel orcs and dragons, I'll spend some time here where I am, near a lake, near a tower, amid plenty goblins that fear me on sight and flee deep into the Rawlins. Lady X is years afar from myself now. I don't bear any more the scar behind my neck that the bloodbargain left on me. But how could I say for certain if I bear it no more? Anyhow, that's less than an idea that fades out into a shadow sky.

    I wait here and will do until I get a sign from that goblin. Was his name Gurt like a grunt? I spared him in our last duel but agreed next one there wouldn't be a spare, it would be a duel to death. Could I spare not again such a impressive warrior? Could he not spare me if he gets to think the same way as I do? Words are words. One gives words the meaning they mean for chance. And this is a chance to prove myself on what the latest battles make me learnt by blood, gore and pain.

    I'm waiting for you, chieftain, little agressive goblin. I'm ready now for our match Gurt.

    So at least I think.


  • 8

    I lay here, between the prow and poop of a ship, within its riggins, amid a waving cold ocean nearly arriving to the frozen city of Peltarch. Not so frozen ever since the friendship I’ve built over the last years warms its streets. Are they still there? Whatever, the icy breeze that traverse the city shall allways be there to chill out the plates of my armor.

    There is half a ream over my lap that I browse ceaseless; the other half is packed behind me, with triffling words on it. I lie. Right now I hold this piece of paper, sea stained, and this quill pen to write what I’m writting. I’m going to keep it in my dull briefcase when I finish eventually. Afterwards indeed there is going to be just the half ream over my lap. While then I only write and write to shorten the time between me and the city, to bring closer that place.

    My sudden dissapear from the land explained by a vain attempt to finish writting an endless story, to finally have a book about my old days as a gondar. Pointless. The ream on my back shall veil the words for a long while. I thought going to Damara I would find a tranquil place to stay, drinking and wrintting, however that didn’t happen. In the other hand, I also thought I could get some good training with my shield, refining the blocking skills with my liquorice shield. When will be the day I get to properly block the incoming attacks of my opponets, raisin high the translucent sheet of my shield instead of rushing wild with my sword on top towards my enemy? That day is still too far from me.

    Too far as she: the winged woman, Lady X. Who’s nothing more than an idea now, another memory added to the list of my lived years in the land. The clouds won’t swirl over my head, or prehaps swirling became a habit for them so it’s unnoticeable for me. Swriling, waving. A waving ocean shaking the ship I lay in port to starboard. But I’m almost there. I can barely see the smoky docks of the grey city in the horizon. Home. There is a friendly inn waiting for me with its mead and dwarven stout over the bar.


  • 7

    There is a dream. A nightmare perhaps. That disturbs my sleep at night. Lately. Just by closing my eyes I return to the uncertain place. Boiling the blood inside of me. Laying within the undesirable sorts. Back at the beginning. Inner in my cell. Confined myself. Watching her outside muttering nonsenses; a word; more nonsenses; someone at the back; and once again nonsenses. Then every wall goes narrower so suddenly till crush me. Untill there is nothing else. Only an eternal return. An impossible vortex. The same jail. The same violet instant and blurred. Fog. Steam. Boiling blood. And smoke. I have to say. No, I can’t. Something. I must write. Yes, I must. I’m on fire. I want to continue, to twist the bars of my cage, to pass through them. To break them down. To create a hole there or inside of me and to escape. But once again. The same weirdos. That reject me; that reject themselves. Closer you come. She, with her decisive wings. Outside of my cage. Next to a burning sky. Muttering. Between the sweltering heat and my fumble. ‘Specimen’. That’s it. That’s what I am. A proof? Something that boils me from the inside. The cage? Once again and narrower. You're outside and I'm inside. I'm out. You are within me. The cage. Twisted bars and I lay on a dissection table. Unconscious. It comes from me. With an incision in my chest which is open wide and ribs shatter. Aren’t you the dream? Am I not the nightmare? Once again the vortex coming out my lungs. Now the despicable weirdos drool over me. They burn me with incandescent saliva. Then I'm not myself once again. A word. Two words. They hover in my mind. ‘Specimen’. ‘Bard’. The bard. The cursed bard. Who says them? You, the other, someone else? It doesn’t matter. The echo comes from the outside. Not from you. From your volatile lips I just take out more gloaming wings. Somebody. Something drills a hole in the back of my neck. That sticks thorns in me. Under my skin. Scrapes my tissues. Tears the muscles of my neck. Like an arrow piercing through my throat.

    I wake up.


  • 6

    So the distances can be shortened so suddenly. We were returning from the crypts after a risky training session. The arcanist Mystic, the warrior Andrew, a bronze guy named Theron, Nailo as our marksman and me. None of us had emerged unscathed, nevertheless, the healing balms kept us alive. Sweaty, weary we went through the old ruins of Norwick. Night was falling when it happened. The clouds swirled in your path. And an extraordinary furrow sponsored your descent from the dusky skies. You wore the night on your shoulders auguring who knows how many mysteries. In the blink of an eye the uncertain months of your absence had fled in retreat.

    You greeted me in the most natural way, as an old acquaintance. And that we are, somehow, old acquaintances. As strange as this combination may seem: a faithless warrior and a winged woman. And you blurted out the biting question; you wanted to make sure that I had not forgotten you. In that way. As if I had interacted all this time with winged people every day to hide your memory below their faces. Maybe at some point during these months I wanted to do so, but the nature of women that surrounds me would have failed me: Which of them has white wings like you?

    You said you would need for my skills in time and inquired if I had found a fortune teller in my path. Indeed, shuffling her way in the city of Peltarch an old hag appeared in the commons. I could not start a conversation with her though. My curiosity was over her and over myself but someone distracted me with nonsenses. When I regained the awareness of my issues, the old hag was gone. Now I wonder what she would have said to me if I would have glimpsed in the misty landscape of fortune. Although, I do not know whether you settled down some concern in you, or you only wanted to put the cards on the table. How relevant can be my fortune?


  • 5

    I’m alive, I keep myself alive. Somehow I find myself eluding the cloak of death since our last meeting. Many months, almost a year I’d dare to write, have passed. I don’t watch the skies anymore. Waiting for swooping surprises nevermore. Perhaps that’s the key to evoke you: to wait for nothing and…

    The last words seem to have been deleted from the manuscript.

    No. I’m exaggerating things. I never deposited a hope in you. Your uncertain appearance and the unknown purpose over me were the things that attracted me. Everything has changed now. You are time far from me and in a distance which memory evaporates. I’m sure you still have my blood. You can look for me but I can’t look for you seeking a response. Who knows how reckless I was. But I had nothing to lose. I still have nothing to lose.


  • Parenthesis and the following text it’s nothing but a folded paper amid the briefcase that looks like a rough draft old enough to be counted as a delivered letter a while back.

    I offer an apology to you Jin for our early conversation if I wasn’t clear at all with my words. But then, it’s just that the fact of being from a distant western land makes my words to tangle themselves in the tip of my tongue. Hence, I suppose I’m better for explanations on writing. Then I’ll try to explain myself through the next lines about ‘The down-n-up choosing woman system’ in specific terms. A system which consists in three steps –we talked about two of them already- and is divided in two taxonomic parts: 1) the physical, and 2) the poetic –according to some bards; a terminology which I happen not to understand very well but it’s worth the try, don’t you think so?- Let us get started.

    Physical part:

    1. If you always thought that things with women must come first from above to below, just like deities live in the sky and the wretched mortal people on the ground, let me say you are wrong. As a man (also applied to elves) who looks for a woman, one must look below first then above. So it’s said that the first thing you should think about is in the female’s leg. The first glance over a woman should aim her legs, i.e. to see if she’s one of your likes or dislikes. And with this I mean to say that you ought to examine if her legs are in the correct shape; all fleshy, nicely-shaped and got the precise skin tone of your deepest and strongest dreams. Ever dreamed with the huge grotesque legs of an orange female ogre? Or maybe dreamed with the slender but cozy and tight legs of a woman in which you could lean your head over her lap and spend hours and hours, even days all warmed and comforted, just to recover all your energy after a weary night in the Underdark? If shape is good, then you should have a look on the way she walks. With this, I mean, one have to inspect thoroughly her way of walking. Then you’ll realize whether she walks all straight and hard as a thick tree that never have moved its roots from the place it was planted; or she walks swinging hips, haughty but discreet, graceful as an air elemental or a water-nymph.

    Once she passed that little test, you can proceed to the next, or you can hold back and send all to trash.

    2. The middle part: woman’s breast. This part it’s maybe the simplest one since most of the women (I’m thinking in odd possibilities too) have two breasts. You can choose between a perky swollen breast of a female in which you’ll be always allowed to drown your woe and sorrows as in childhood; or a tight and hard breast of an athletic female instead in which you could rest your head to think in sunny prairies filled with the joy of nature.

    Poetic part:

    3. The last part and maybe the most difficult to understand because it’s the last part you should have in mind when you are like giving the ‘last’ step on a relationship. This part I came up with reading few bardic books, most of them twee and corny, but yet it’s a matter you don’t want to ignore when choosing woman. As said before, this is the ‘above’ part and it corresponds to the eyes of a woman. When looking woman’s eyes you have to look further than the physics matters. Further more than if her eyelashes are bushy and dark forming a knot of beauty in the corner. You must see in the iris; through the iris. “You must look at yourself reflected in her sight and also go beyond yourself in that reflection”. (I’d make a parenthesis here just to make clear that I don’t even discern what the heck that means since I’m just quoting bards’ proverbs. Still I know this can work on some people, but ought to see in which ones). I think that in general, that reflection of you into the female’s eyes has to show you a part of your new coming life. Something like seeing the future, just as you thought you've seen a vision from the future in which Ardent was in danger in the illusionary wall’s tale that you told me. I.e. see yourself with the ideal girl inside a peaceful farm’s shack surrounded by yellow wheat ears at the orange light of sunset. Colored tablecloths in checkered of red and white. A tray full of purple grapes. Freshly baked breads. And a woman, in the distance, scattered among the shadows of the evening, in front of the kitchen’s desk, preparing dinner of roast venison with leeks and fresh sliced tomatoes. You’re sitting in a chair. She’s cooking. You’re looking at that woman's amazing legs till the last. She’s cooking. Then she is. She is the chosen one because of her legs, her chest and her eyes. And that’s all.

    Maybe the last part was a so human vision of a desire. But I bet you can translate those human feelings to elven feelings. But, again, this is just what bard says, pure theory. Hope it works to you somehow. See you around, bud.

    Dermin L.


  • 4

    I spoke with Hope. I had to tell her, or at least I bore the necessity to. Yet she was there when the winged woman chose me. I don’t see it clear, I don’t see it. It’s like rubbing your own eyes among shadows to open them among smoke. Hope was concerned or seemed to be… No. I cannot doubt in her heart. Like her eyes hold bushy eyelashes with knots of beauty in the corner, they also hold the sincerity of a priestess of Ilmater. She was concerned. The pain in the back of my neck is dormant. Nonetheless some things must become clear to me. The hidden purpose about the winged woman. The woman that holds a secret.

    Hope made more obvious to me that the “Lady X” is not from light. I know I can’t be that stupid to think on her as a creature of light but I had to hear it from Hope firstly. Maybe the winged woman is a creature from twilight, maybe... No. I’m falling again in the same pit.

    “I know not whom you pray, Dermin, but... seek their guidance. Invoke their name in her presence and tell me if your heart does not tell you that she reviles them." These were her words. If I only knew who is this I’d pray. Were to seek the faith? Under what stone it is? How many holes should I dig to reach it? The only hole I’ve dug is within me and I found gloom and uncertainty.

    “One who has faith is never fully defeated, Dermin. ‘Tis never too late to set out upon the right path and redemption is always offered. If... if you believe you stray, you need but to go about setting yourself right again.” I don’t feel defeated. I feel like a doll. I just feel standing on the gallows waiting for my turn. I’ll never forgive myself if a twisted path forces me to harm my comrades.

    I may hold gloom inside me, but I can stand it. I’ve stood it for years over years since I left Amn. I told Hope once among the trivial sense of my trifling words that I think about gloom like a shadow, a pit-fiend hidden beneath your feet who awaits the accurate moment to grow strong and stab you right in the back. Still, I thank Hope for having heard me.

    “...if the Gods are not enough, I shall be close at hand.” In fact, her words came to from within her lips like a fresh breeze blowing gently on sea sand, her voice was a caress.


  • 3

    A few days ago I had an unexpected visitor. As I'm so broken in money matters I went to the Kobold's fields to do a patrol. The fog prevailed in the swamp and many of the reptilian ran in disarray as they spotted me. The humid climate favored some of them to surprise me but nothing I could not handle. I was almost finishing my round there when, near of a waterbody located to the east, swooping her way down the winged woman came to me. She landed. Again the beauty before my eyes. Who knows how many foolish words I spoke, empty verbiage, in order to circumvent in a way the fact that, yes, I actually recognized her. She spoke to me by my name. I left my weapons down.

    It was a brief conversation, an enigmatic one. I was in high ground and she was in the low ground. She said She needed my mind and body healthy, in short, she needs me alive. I inquired about her purpose but she replied at once that a woman, with no secrets, is not a woman. I could not formulate more queries. She handed me two potions I had to pick up from the ground and it forced me to abandon my place. I should call her "Lady X", she spoke.

    Lady X, you watch me from who knows where. From the top or among the clouds. From below in the bowels of the earth. Maybe even from within me, because a bargain of blood is a blood's bargain. And despite having been reckless down there, I am now a man without his blood. Whom my own blood belongs?


  • 2

    The ache in my neck can become unbearable. I went to the hobgoblin's fields with the dwarves Gnarl and Beourn, Lence went with us too. We interrupted a sort of hobgoblin's romance when Beourn slain a lonely one in apparence. "No, my love!" screamed another from the trees then tried to kill us without sucess. "Homewreckers we are", spoke Beourn. Hobs also make love.

    We made a second patrol around the woods and found more of them. We charged them. But I felt an intense ache in the back of my neck that made me stop. I had to drop my weapons over the ground to stand the pain. I held my neck with both of my hands and bent my legs. The dwarves and Lence handle the goblins. Soon they worried about me. I told them briefly about the incident in the crypts and their faces adquired a wary look. They thought I was bitten by a vampire. Gnarl told me to put belladona in the wound as it is the procedure after the bite. And I did. Just to please them.

    I'm sure something is coming. Something will reveal itself as it is then trouble. I'm starting to think how reckless I was in the crypts.