Chapter Sixteen
The Thief and The Driadon
DANTE – POISON ELEMENTAL
Bestowed by heritage with abilities
of a life buried in the past
“Bartender’s Son” is but a guise
of guises from whom Dante and
his descendants really were.
Dante, the young Thief Hunter,
With a sly yet still noble heart
Is destined in journey to unveil bloodline secrets
And restore in journey his bloodline’s honor.
DAYS HAD PASSED of conversing with the mysterious Rin, or of silence, as Rin disguised his ability of speech from any approaching prison guard. One night (or maybe day, as they still could not tell), everyone silenced their selves carefully, as the telltale dancing of the low hall flame lights indicated approaching persons. But no clumsy footfalls of guards, clinking of their armor, or off-key humming of a random soldier sounded at all.
“Hello, boys!” came a cheery, familiar voice. Down fell outside the cell window the tall, wiry figure of the Hunter’s Grove Tavern keeper’s son!
He smiled down in through the cell window at the bewildered three brothers. The three, caught completely off guard, responded in no words but a look of surprise.
The expression of the young man’s face went stern. “What a way of greeting help, right? Come all the way down here, and no welcome party!”
The boy looked upon Rhoin with his dark eyes, and beamed up again in a smile. “Hello to you, again!” he said.
“Very well on coming to help, boy,” Rhoin began questioningly. “But how do you plan to free us?”
“I’ve a trick or two up my sleeve,” the boy said with a wink.
“For my first trick: finding you! And I say, that was difficult!” he said mockingly, wiping pretend sweat from his brow. “Such skillful, non-stinking, clever guards they were, right?”
In response to his jester there was only a solemn silence. “Had we not been starved and imprisoned with beckoning death for these days and days, perhaps we would be lighter hearted,” began Seften.
“However!” He wrapped the small prison barred “window” with his knuckles and banged a dirty food tray on the ground with his foot. “I assure you such imprisonment is not the case of lighter hearts!”
“Tsk, tsk!” the young boy shook his head sternly. “Well, a lesson in manners to a guest will be taught of you later. But for now!” he reached into a pocket beneath his vest, pulling from it a leather case, and shaking it before the face of Seften, “Let us leave this place. Shall we?”
The boy knelt down before the metal prison door and examined its lock, in a rather practiced manner. Rhoin noticed this peculiarity. “You seem to know what you are doing?”
The boy only shrugged, and continued peering into the lock. “It’s not all to unfamiliar to me – ah ha!” he exclaimed, and pulled out three thin metal instruments from the leather pouch. “Tricky, but simple, this lock!” He inserted the instruments into the lock and began carefully prying in different directions, two of the instruments deftly held by one hand, the third one in the second hand.
The boy grunted and stumbled away from the lock as with a green glow and several soft pops, a few magically generated green darts successively fired from the lock’s opening, striking him. “A m-magic lock!” he uttered, gazing down at his chest where three darts were sticking out. The three brothers grasped at the small prison window and starred fearfully at the boy, ready to watch him die.
But the boy plucked the darts from his body, and after briefly examining them, cast them aside. “Poison darts!” he said, grinning up at worried faces behind the prison door window.
But ignoring their perplexed expressions, he went right back to work on the lock.
Rhoin peered down at him. “How did you stand the poison?” he asked.
The boy, not turning up to answer Rhoin, but still looking to his work, stated, “I’m an Elementual.”
“Poison!” Paetoric exclaimed. “You are a Poison Elementual!”
The lock made a metallic clicking noise, and the boy pulled the door open, now standing face to face with all three of the Me’Aer boys. “That is correct,” he responded.
“It is unusual that several Elementuals happen together, being the decreasing commonness of Elementuals this day and age. Poison, Wind, Water, and Esperential.”
The boy gave again his characteristic nonchalant shrug, and only said, “We’re free. Let’s go!”
Seften did not move. “Wait!”
His two brothers and the young thief turned back to look at him. “What about Rin?” He turned to the young thief boy. “You have the power to free him; he can come with us! Why leave him here to die?”
The two other brothers agreed, and so the boy strode over to the locked door that imprisoned Rin and knelt down to begin his work, the way he had the first locked door. With a sigh, he again pulled his lock pick set from inside his vest, examining the prison door lock knowledgably and began his careful work.
“Can we have our saviors name, or do we call you ‘boy’ always?” said Seften.
“Name’s Dante,” he responded, and with a delicate thrust of one instrument, that lock likewise clicked open, and he swung the door ajar.
Dante peered into the dark, his eyes first cast down, as though upon the prison floor, but then he moved his vision slowly upward, he began taking in the prisoner within, and eyes grew wide as he backed away from the prison entrance, at whoever or whatever this prisoner was that was moving toward this entrance from the inside. The casualness and jovialness very much wiped from his expression.
But the brothers shared the fear as Rin stepped out into full view, the Rin that they knew but never had seen beyond the unrevealing prison wall hole, but a fear that was restrained only because of their knowledge that he was a friend.
Standing two heads taller than any of them, with scaly brown skin, and massive, powerful hands that ended in small black claws instead of human nails, a face with sentient slits of bright blue small eyes that were otherwise a fierce dragon-like gaze along with slightly elongated, pointy ears and nose, was the Rin they had now come to know.
“I am Rin,” in his gravelly voice he introduced himself down to the astonished Dante, “and it is a pleasure to meet you, Dante. Thank you for freeing me.” He turned his fearsome but thankful, friendly yet pained gaze upon the three brothers, looking into each of their eyes, locking with Seften’s. “I am a Driadon, of the Driadonian people. I am a prisoner as my people are. Your heart now knows what your eyes and ears could not through the many lies and false tales there are about my people, the Driadon.”
“We can free your people, Rin,” Seften responded. “I understand. But for now, with Dante’s skills, we all must escape!”
Rin nodded once, giving a throaty grunt of an acknowledgement.
“This way!” Dante directed in focused tone, turning and starting in his intended direction.
And with that, the five of them, lead by Dante, took off down a torch lit passage way.
RIN - MUNDAINANT
Both the brave
and the kind-hearted,
he is sentient in mind
despite the physical appearance
and malicious rumors
of Driadoniankind.
Under the deception
of earning redemption from past sin,
their race was enslaved, willingly.
Rin sees through the deception
to it's evil source
and fights as a rebel for freedom
from the tyrany his race befell under.
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