August DWC 2025 Day 1 - Ethereal, Calculate
The tournament was many things: a spectacle of competitions, a parade of performances, a marketplace bursting with trinkets, food, and drink. But for Ryland, it was mostly an opportunity.
During the day, he wandered among the crowds, glowing as usual with his glitter-dusted skin, while flashing that devilish smirk that made merchants lean over their stalls and fighters forget their footwork. He watched duels, sampled the various cuisines from all over Azeroth, reveled in performances, and visited with old friends he saw but a few times a year.
All the while, he was cataloging it. Not the fights nor the stalls, but the people. The way the soldier looked when flustered, the way a vendor licked their lips when they thought no one saw. He calculated every exchange with quiet intent, tracing the night’s potential partners the same way he would chart stars; deciding which ones deserved to be studied and then chased once the sun went down.
Night was a different sport entirely.
Icecrown might have been cold and haunted, but the nights around the tournament tents were anything but. The fires burned bright, ale flowed freely, and Ryland moved through it like a god of mischief draped in glitter and sin. One by one, tents lit up behind him. The game was simple enough, never the same body twice. Someone called it “tent bingo” once. Ryland had laughed so hard he nearly spilled his drink, then immediately adopted the title as if it were part of his résumé.
Wednesday night alone had earned him a diagonal line across his mental bingo board: a shy merchant he had flirted with earlier in the day, a particularly bendy performer, and to his great amusement, someone who insisted they were ‘just here for sparring’. He was well versed in spotting and unraveling those lies.
By the time the week began winding down, Ryland had a little map of memories traced across his body in the form of bite marks, scratches, and bruises. Well-earned trophies that didn’t need to be rewarded at the closing ceremonies. On the final night, the tournament’s fires cast the tents in a warm, ethereal glow, a strange contrast to the naughty promises and stifled moans exchanged inside them. That was the beauty of this place; it looked refined and respectable from afar, but the real stories were written after dark.
Ryland left Icecrown with his voice a little raspy, his lips swollen, and his muscles and bones pleasantly tired. He had crossed every corner of that mental bingo card, with a few bonus rounds to spare. Not bad for a week in the frozen north!
@daily-writing-challenge
