Art by the awesome @tommieglenn!
Of Gods and Men Summary:
When the gods returned to Gielinor, their minds were only on one thing: the Stone of Jas, a powerful elder artefact in the hands of Sliske, a devious Mahjarrat who stole it for his own ends and entertainment. He claims to want to incite another god wars, but are his ulterior motives more sinister than that? And can the World Guardian, Jahaan, escape from under Sliske’s shadow?
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QUEST 05: MISSING, PRESUMED DEATH
QUEST SUMMARY:
Sliske invites all of Gielinor’s returned gods to his ‘grand ascendency’, claiming godhood. Instead, he uses the platform to pit all the gods against one another in a free-for-all that threatens to tear Gielinor apart. Their incentive? The sole survivor will be awarded what every deity is desperate for - the Stone of Jas…
CHAPTER 4: LOVE BITES
cdwqaqzJahaan stopped off in a small town south of the Tree Gnome Stronghold. The Stronghold was a planned pit-stop of his way to Prifddinas as it wasn’t too far off course, and he wanted to visit a couple of old friends from back when he aided in saving their sacred spirit trees from extinction. Secretly, he was hoping they’d glider him all the way to Prifddinas, but their policy of ferrying outsiders was very strict, despite his service to their race.
The town was rather nondescript, leaning towards the dismal side of things; Jahaan didn’t even know it’s name. At least it had a bank, so Jahaan could gather his weapons, armour and other equipment - things he didn’t like being apart from for too long. The armour was like a second skin by now. The locals weren’t exactly friendly, and most seemed rather disgruntled to be approached, but after asking around long enough, he gathered there was a pub he could get some dinner at, and just down the pathway was a hostel he could rent a room at. Deciding the room was most important to secure, he opted to go there first, and was relieved when they had just one room spare for that night.
Up the narrow staircase and last door on the left, he was told. Creaking the battered wooden door open, he took in his temporary lodging with a bite of his lip. Well, could be worse.
The room wasn’t small, but it clearly hadn’t been dusted since before Jahaan had been born. He hoped the changing of the bed linen was more frequent than the routine cleaning. Still, it had a quaint little ornaments cabinet, full of worthless trinkets, and shelves that housed much of the same tat. Someone was trying to go for a ‘homey’ feel in the heart of this drab town. It sort of worked.
Taking off his armour, he stretched out the creases in his back and shoulders, wishing for there to be a masseuse in the town, though doubtful there would be. He tucked it away inside the oak wardrobe, trying not to dent the fragile wood as he did so, before resting his bow and arrow quiver against the door if it, alongside his two shortswords.
The rune dagger, naturally, he tucked back into the holster in the back of his trousers. It’d become like another limb; wherever he went, he couldn’t be apart from it. It provided constant security, something that greatly comforted Jahaan.
First impressions didn't exactly leave Jahaan feeling comfortable in the surroundings. Glancing up at the old-style sign, chipped and scratched all over, he confirmed this was indeed The Red Flag that had been recommended to him, though some of the letters were too faded to make out. As he stepped toward the thick wooden door with dents in it, splintered no doubt from somebody's body or fist, two burly men stumbled out and would have careered straight into him blindly if he hadn't nimbly slipped out of the way. Watching them stroll off, his hand instinctively slid to the back of his trousers where he kept the small blade sheathed. A part of Jahaan considered trying to find somewhere else open at this hour, but the rumbling in his stomach ordered otherwise.
Taking a deep breath, he braced himself and entered the bar.
The place was unbelievably crowded, full to the brim with the local residents avidly spending their time and money at the crucible of the town. The counter was lined with roars of laughter and engrossed, slurred chatter, each customer at least two watered-down drinks to their name. Jahaan could barely hear herself think over the pounding noise. On top of that, sight was strained as the air was musky and thick with pipe smoke.
Suddenly, there was a clatter of glass, followed by a stream of profanities and sounds of a nearby fight. Snapping his head to the left, Jahaan noticed the darts game had quickly changed into a grappling contest involving half a dozen men. Some were trying to pull them apart, others were cheering them on. The rest of the bar casually glanced over at the commotion, then turned back to their drinks, apparently considering this the norm.
Sniffing a silent laugh to himself, Jahaan edged to an unoccupied corner of the bar. Catching the bartender's eye was enough to flag him over.
Three ales and a portion of lukewarm cod and chips later, Jahaan was finally starting to enjoy the place. The clattering had morphed into an almost comfortable white noise, and the beer helped buff up his courage slightly, just in case a brawl broke out in his vicinity.
“You seem to be running a little low there. Like a top up?” the voice came from a man who took up the bar stool next to him. Eyeing him up, Jahaan noted he didn’t look as gruff as the other locals. He was slightly better dressed, at least, a black jacket covering up a clean white shirt, buttoned all the way up to the top, save for the button around his collar. He was clean shaven too, his dusty brown hair the most unkempt thing about him. Almost as if he knew this, the man ran a hand through his hair, trying to straighten it out.
Peering into his glass, Jahaan didn't realise it was empty until now. "Sure, I wouldn't say no."
"That's the spirit!" the man turned to the bartender. "Two of whatever my friend is drinking."
After receiving his order, the man slid one glass across to Jahaan and remarked, “I didn't quite catch your name."
Jahaan took a sip of his drink, savouring the bitter ale on his tongue. "It's Jahaan. Yours?"
"Please to meet you, Jahaan," the man held his glass up. "The name's Charles."
Jahaan met the glass with a *clink*, drinking in cheers. "You’re not from around here, are you Charles?"
“What gave me away?” the man smirked. "True, I’m just passing through, but I like to think I'm from all over, really. What about you? Where do you call home?"
"I don't, exactly. I guess I'm much the same as you in that respect."
Charles raised his glass in another cheers motion. "Here's to wanderers and travelers. And good ale."
Grinning, Jahaan replied, "I'll drink to that."
Actually, they drank to a whole lot more that evening.
It didn’t take long before they moved onto something stronger than the cheap ale they’d been guzzling down beforehand. True, it was a lot more expensive, but it tasted good.
And with the more liquor the pair drank, the closer Charles became to Jahaan, and the latter had noticed. It was the occasional hand lingering on his arm, the half-lidded gazes, the extra laughs to his not-all-that-funny-if-he’s-being-honest jokes.
This time though, Jahaan wasn’t so blinkered. He’d gathered early on that this man wasn’t ‘Charles’, a random well-dressed stranger in a random dive of a bar.
This time, he was going to use the situation to his advantage.
Doing so was easier said than done though. He had to get the man to trust him back, to follow along to his ruse, and that involved returning Charles’ unsubtle advances. But it was all rather unfamiliar territory to him. At least, when you compared him with someone like Ozan, who took his nickname of ‘the most prolific lover in all of the Kharidian Lands’ very seriously, and lived up to it in full. Ariane was the only woman he’d ever stuck around for.
Jahaan, on the other hand, was rather… inexperienced. Inexperienced, as in, not experienced.
At all.
He wasn't much of a flirt, and could count on one hand the amount of people he'd kissed in his life. The whole ordeal just wasn't his cup of tea.
Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was his suspicions. Something pulled him forwards, and so it ended up being Ozan that he channeled when he leaned forward on his stool, tilted his head and formed a coy little smile. A gentle hand brushed the man's fringe from his eyes, and his forehead was warm to the touch. Hot, in fact. Radiating heat.
Jahaan forced himself not to flinch backwards, to swallow his reservations and softly cup Charles’ chin.
If I'm right, it'll be worth it.
“I think I've had one too many,” Jahaan looked up at him through half-lidded eyes, making sure his words were slurred. “I might need some help getting to my lodging …”
The man's smile grew, and he got up from his stool, motioning for Jahaan to lead the way. When he got to his feet, Jahaan legitimately staggered and swayed few steps as the alcohol caught up to him. It didn't take long for him to right himself though, and the pair made their way into the warm night.
The two walked in comfortable silence for most of the short journey, occasionally exchanging glances with one another that said everything that needed to be spoken. When the man linked his fingers with Jahaan's, his breath caught in his throat, but he fought to stay composed and on track.
Stay focused, he reminded himself, stroking his thumb over the man's soft skin. It seemed like the most natural thing to do.
Too natural. Too comfortable.
Jahaan led them up the narrow staircase and through the last door on the left, as he’d been told.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Charles commented, admiring the view from the scratched window.
Without a whisper or a sound, Jahaan slipped behind Charles. He wrapped one hand around the man’s waist and held the thin blade against his neck. Instantly, the man stiffened, tensing his muscles. With a nervous chuckle, he remarked, “So, this is a fancy of yours? A little warning would have been appreciated...”
Before replying, Jahaan tightened his grip around the man and held the dagger a little closer to the thin skin of his jugular, allowing it to bite there. Leaning closer into his ear, he hissed, “I know it’s you, snake…”
There was a long, uncertain pause.
Jahaan couldn’t see his face, but if he could, he would have seen a thin, unnerving smile break out. Relaxing his tensed muscles, he tilted his head to the side, allowing him to peer behind him as much as the blade predicament allowed. “Took you long enough. And here I thought we might get to know each other a little better.”
The low pur in Sliske's voice caused Jahaan to shiver, but he remained resolute. However, he couldn’t help but be walked backwards as the man pressed against him. “Yes, when you invited me up to your little humble abode, I was rather honoured by the prospect.”
Jahaan didn’t notice how far he’d been led until his shoulders knocked against the thin wall behind him. He tried to keep focused on the weapon in his hand, on the grip he was maintaining, but the combination of alcohol and that voice caused his head to spin. Therefore, he didn’t realise the mistake he’d made until Sliske slipped a hand beside his own, between the blade and his neck, and slammed it outwards, crashing the protruding bone into the sharp edge of the cabinet next to them. Howling in agony, Jahaan clutched his throbbing wrist, the dagger clattering to the floor, a secondary thought. Suddenly, he was pinned to the wall with a vice-like claw around his throat, choking the life out of him. Regardless of the body’s shape and appearance, Jahaan was undoubtedly looking into the haunting, familiar eyes of Sliske. The Mahjarrat’s eyes lifted in warning, a cold predatory glare accompanying his cruel tone. “Really Jahaan, if you’re going to slit my throat, at least have the courtesy to look me in the eyes as you do so.”
The grip around his throat tightened, causing any hope of a retort to emit itself as a strangled gurgle or, at best, a hiss of pain. Though he tried, he just didn’t have the strength to force Sliske back, and the thrashing of his legs only drew Sliske in closer as the Mahjarrat subdued his struggling with his own body weight. “Was that really the extent of your plan, hm? Or perhaps you considered luring me into your bed and making sure I never awoke?”
Fortunately, Sliske was too preoccupied with his smug rambling to notice Jahaan’s left hand stretch out and grab a china ornament from the shelf. Thus, the dull knock to the side of Sliske’s head came as rather a surprise. The Mahjarrat went cross-eyed as his brain registered the hit, and Jahaan was released. Desperate to capitalise, he took ahold of the long black hair Sliske had adopted and used it to whirl him face first into the glass cabinet. Shattering glass cried out, smaller fragments embedding themselves in Sliske’s stolen face as they mixed into the blood.
Not wasting a moment, Jahaan snapped to the other end of the room and picked his bow off its hanger, readying an arrow and leveling it at Sliske in a blink. While the Mahjarrat was still crumbled over the cabinet, Jahaan tried to steady his breathing from the shallow rasps he’d become used to, wanting to regain the normal flow of oxygen into his lungs. That, and the erratic pulsing of his heart was starting to make him feel sick.
“Turn around slowly,” he commanded, lowly, “or I’ll shoot.”
Sliske’s laugh was a grating scrape as he turned around, black blood trickling from his features, a crimson mask.
Jahaan tensed the bow, holding it steady. “Game’s over, Sliske. Drop the mask.”
Sniffing a laugh, Sliske’s expression grew dangerously wicked. “Very well. If you insist.”
With a click of his fingers and a slight transition of smoke, the borrowed persona Sliske had adopted changed into the depressingly familiar grey skin and purple robes of his Mahjarrat form.
Jahaan made sure to readjust his aim for the new height of his adversary, “Please, just give me a reason to put this between your eyes.”
“Relax, World Guardian,” the tone was too friendly for Jahaan’s liking - it didn't sit comfortably. “I'm not here to hurt you.”
Jahaan sniffed “I find that hard to believe.”
“Why would I hurt you?” there was an unfamiliar light in Sliske’s glowing yellow iris’. “Darling, my act is dead without you…” he carefully dabbed at the blood on his face with the back of his hand. “So, the chance for civil conversation has past then, I presume?”
“Don’t you think we had enough ‘chit-chat’ at the bar?” Jahaan’s tone was dangerously neutral, the hold on his bow steady and firm.
Chuckling hollowly, Sliske stretched out the kinks in his shoulders. “Congratulations for catching me off-guard. That’s not an easy thing for someone to do.”
“You’re not as good an actor as you think you are,” Jahaan spat, more venom in his words than he’d intended. Alcohol had a bad habit of adding kindling to his fiery temper. “So what was your plan? Were you really going to go along with all… all this?!”
“You mean, would I have become intimate with you?” Sliske raised an eyebrow, smirking. “Is that so wrong?”
“You disgusting, sick, perverted bastard - of course it’s wrong!” Jahaan was trembling ever so slightly, and he prayed Sliske wouldn’t notice.
Tilting his head to one side, Sliske innocently asked, “Why?”
“Because-!” Jahaan began before he ever had a response. “It’s… deceiving! That’s not your skin!”
Raising his eyebrows, Sliske knew he’d given Jahaan enough rope to hang himself as he replied, “So you’d rather it be my form?”
The heat in Jahaan’s cheeks might as well have signed him a mockery death sentence. “That’s not… why did you even try?!”
Shrugging, Sliske replied, “I was under the impression you humans love intimacy. Your friend Ozan certainly does. I must say, it is one of the many perks of the human body, one Mahjarrat aren’t partial to, unfortunately.”
Admittedly, this curiosity caused Jahaan to falter, but he still kept a tense hold in the bowstring. “Wait, what?”
“We don’t mate how humans do,” Sliske explained, casually, as if there wasn't an arrow targeting the crystal between his eyes. “We aren’t built for it. Mahjarrat reproduction is vastly different. How Lucien ever conceived with a human woman still baffles me to this day…”
This conversation was taking a radically unexpected turn, before Jahaan remembered that he was there to kill Sliske, not discuss biology.
“Irrelevant,” he asserted. “I don’t care if you’re disguised as Romeo or Juliet themselves - you stay the FUCK away from my love life.”
“And what love life, pray tell?” Sliske taunted, his knowing laugh cutting Jahaan deeply. “Am I so wrong in saying that you’ve never even been with another person?”
“So what?” Jahaan spat. “That's my business, not yours.”
“Oh, but your business is my business,” Sliske taunted, knowingly, “And remember, I know you better than you know yourself… the colour of your cheeks is an adorable shade on you, Janny.”
That didn’t help matters for Jahaan - he gulped.
Straightening up, Sliske’s smile evaporated and his face suddenly darkened. “Now, are you going to kill me, or can I sit down? My face hurts, and I’m sure your arm is getting tired.”
Regarding Sliske carefully, Jahaan’s throat became heavy. In all honesty, yes, his arm was getting tired, and so was he. Oh gosh, was he tired.
Whiskey had been a mistake, he thought to himself, bitterly. Always takes it out of me...
Hesitantly, he began to relax the string, waiting for Sliske’s next move. When the Mahjarrat made none, Jahaan edged towards the doorway and, with a nod of his head, motioned for Sliske to take a seat on the edge of the bed. Despite the string being lose, Jahaan refused to let go of the bow completely.
“How did you know it was me, anyway?” Sliske inquired, curiously.
Lightly tapping the space between his eyes, Jahaan replied, “Your brother.”
Sliske seemed to understand, smiling with disappointed acceptance. “All good things must come to an end, I suppose. I must say though, your little dance with Ozan back in Seers Village was rather something. I believe you scared the poor man half to death.”
Jahaan’s eyes widened. “So you WERE there!”
“Indeed I was,” Sliske confirmed, smugly. “I had a grand view of the performance. I all but called for an encore.”
Jahaan shot him a deadly look. “You’re not really giving yourself a reason to live, you know.”
“Oh, but you’re reason enough!” Sliske cheered, a wry grin cracking into his features, mocking and innocent all at once. “You’re the most fun I’ve had in years, Janny.”
Jahaan shot him a glare. “Don't call me Janny.”
“Why not? It's endearing.”
“Is it? Then perhaps I should go about calling you Sissy?”
Sliske clapped his hands together. “There you go! Now you're getting into the spirit of it.”
Rolling his eyes, Jahaan rubbed his temples, really wishing he could lie down before he fell down. “Just… leave, Sliske. I don’t want anymore of your games. No shapeshifting to get under my skin. You’ve had your fun.”
Sighing, Sliske replied, “I suppose this little game has run its course, especially now that you’ve found out how to cheat. Very well, I’ll just have to find some other way to entertain myself. Oh, that reminds me…”
Carefully, Sliske removed a sealed and stamped envelope from inside his robe, and held it out to Jahaan, who was in no rush to take it. Groaning, he held it out further and insisted, “It’s from Azzy. I told him I’d fetch you. See? Purpose for my visit after all.”
Hesitantly, Jahaan snatched it out of the Mahjarrat’s grasp and flinched backwards. “What do you mean, ‘fetch me’?”
Shrugging, Sliske replied, “How should I know? I’m just the messenger, and you almost shot me for my efforts.”
Sliske standing up from the edge of the bed caused Jahaan to falter ever so slightly, and he fumbled for his bow, which only caused Sliske to chuckle. “Is this the effect I have on you?”
The tone he used made Jahaan’s skin crawl, but he masked it with a nonchalant hand on his hip. “If you’re quite done, I’m tired. We drank half the bar, and I’ll bet Mahjarrat don’t even get hangovers. So, if you could please fuck off, I’d much appreciate it.”
Laughing sharply, Sliske flashed his teeth. “Well, since you put it so politely, I guess I should get going. Directing a war of the gods requires a lot of attention, you know…”
Sliske looked as if he was going to cast a spell, but then he stopped, and looked pointedly at Jahaan. “You know, if you weren’t so stubbornly hostile, you and I would make a good team.”
Jahaan opened his mouth to respond, but didn’t quite know how.
Then, with a cackle that faded away as he did, Sliske vanished from the room in a crack of purple energy.
Letting out a pent up exhale he’d been holding in for gods knew how long, Jahaan noticed he was still shaking, squirmish in his own skin. Scattering his bow and arrow to the floor, Jahaan stumbled over to the bed and collapsed on the top sheet, asleep within seconds of hitting the mattress before he could realise how alone he now felt.
The letter from Azzanadra remained unopened on the duvet beside him until the next morning.
DISCLAIMER:
As Of Gods and Men is a reimagining, retelling and reworking of the Sixth Age, a LOT of dialogue/characters/plotlines/etc. are pulled right from the game itself, and this belongs to Jagex.
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