The dark-haired drow-- who, unlike his younger brothers, never much cared what people called him-- took extra care grooming himself as he walked into the tavern.
A good place to gather info regardless of hunger or thirst, though the pair of humans at his side-- one pale, redheaded woman and one tanned, dark-haired man-- had come on their last luxury stop before their great bandit hunt and dog-retrieval. “Remember,” the brunet told him. “Please try to order on your own.”
If it would make those brown eyes stop pleading at him, Tazennin replied with a smile, “Yes, sir. Of course.” The two humans sat down, but he walked along a little further. Further and further still until he sat closer to another of his kind than he sat next to his actual adventuring party. He sighed heavy, rubbing at his eyes as he stared blankly at the bar.
“I don’t recognize...” Hm, no. Wrong train of thought. “What city are you from?” he asked the stranger-- Possibly the most familiar person in the room right then.
“You don’t have to keep picking the same things I do every time we eat at a tavern.” Leaf’s words interlaced with the same pleading eyes Udita had given, time and time again as she asked him to make his choices.
“You don’t have to prepare my tent for me, or tell anyone else off if I’m not happy with something, or...” The list went on and on, describing every one of Tazennin’s failures in minute detail.
Tazennin just stood and nodded at each one. A yes sir, I’ll stop after Leaf was finally finished.
He sighed, and returned to his bedroll... wishing he could smash his face in with his own warhammer.
The adventure would end after they found this dog.
Tazennin felt cold steel against his back. Though he saw nobody there on the street, he could feel someone’s warm breath on his neck, and he could hear that annoying high pitched pipsqueak lob a question his way:
“Guess who?”
Morennil.
The sigh he heaved seemed to be enough for the assassin, who jumped out in front of his little brother and tossed the random chunk of metal he’d found out into the street.
Morennil’s eye caught on the book Tazennin held in his arm. “Ooh. Your mistress lets you keep that, huh?” He gave his usual annoying giggle at that. “I thought the whole point of training weapons was because wizards are too powerful to be cute, obedient lapdogs? Or does that book belong to her?”
Tazennin ignored it all and began to walk past. A dagger pressed up against his neck.
“Don’t ignore me,” Morennil whispered. The cheerful lilt returned to his voice in a matter of seconds, after his weapon fell away from his brother’s neck. “We’re having a family reunion here, you know?”
“I don’t have a mistress,” Tazennin said simply. While he was stuck here, he might as well comb out his hair. So he did. Regardless of the disgusted wince on Morennil’s face-- or perhaps because of it.
Morennil started to take in the sight with a hint of curiosity. “Oh? A master then. You must be get--”
“No master.” One section of dark hair smoothed out perfectly. Taz moved on to the next.
It shut Morennil up for a second. Then two. He managed to get to three seconds of total stunned silence, before his lips grew into a cheshire cat grin. “Oh... Oh gods.” A pair of chuckles emerged from his chest as his eye fell down to the tiniest protrusion on Tazennin’s stomach. “You even got chubby! Holy shit. Congratulations! You finally grew a will of your own!”
Tazennin sucked in a long, deep breath between gritted teeth. “Oh, yes, I’m exactly who you want me to be,” he drawled, as his eye lazily regarded the little munchkin in front of him. “I finally realized I should please the little pissant who made my life hell instead of anyone who could keep me warm at night.” As his arms crossed, he regarded Morennil’s silence and continued: “I want to fuck. All the time. It’s one of the two ways you come out of finishing school, isn’t it? Either you end up like me or you end up like you. But you’re so mad I didn’t turn out like you. None of us turned out like you. You must feel so lonely.”
“Shut up.”
Tazennin’s eyes narrowed. “No.” His eye shifted on the glint in Morennil’s hand. “Hey, do you want to know why I’m doing this? Using spells, wandering off on my own? Because...” He leaned in to whisper, straight into his elder’s ear, “That’s what my team’s leader likes.”
Morennil could have stabbed him there. Whenever the eldest showed his weapon, it had always meant he was serious-- until it didn’t. Until the punch he wanted to jab into Tazennin’s stomach dropped and his image disappeared, replaced by the coming forms of Autumn Rainstorm and Leaf Swordhammer.
“Who was that?” Leaf asked, searching around for the missing rogue.
Tazennin’s eyes rolled dramatically. “My older brother,” he answered, more of an irritated sigh than a sentence. “He’s upset I didn’t turn out the way he wanted me to.”
Autumn nodded knowingly. “Yeah. My mom’s kind of like that, too.”
“The Dark Skull Gang went west,” Leaf chimed in, getting back down to business. “You got your three spells?” At Tazennin’s nod, Leaf pointed down the street. “To the west!”
Autumn raised her eyebrows, sighed, then turned Leaf around. “West is that way.”
Leaf pointed even harder and exclaimed louder, “To the west!”
Tazennin flipped through the pages of the great, near-empty tome on the table. What specialization should I be? he’d asked Autumn and Leaf. Leaf didn’t mind any which way; he wanted a wizard for a divination spell and all wizards could divine. Autumn added on that diviners only needed to spurn one other school instead of two and that if Tazennin was set on specializing, but didn’t have any real preferences, that would be the best idea.
It was less choices on his part anyway.
What spell did you need again? he’d asked. Leaf answered that they needed scrying; something Tazennin would have to study more to be able to use.
It didn’t make him useful in the near future.
“What do I learn...” he whispered to himself, sat in a lobby between walls of tomes and literature while his team scoured the streets for information.
He buried his face in between blank pages and groaned.
She didn’t have to be so happy about it. She didn’t have to give him a friendly farewell and wave him off with a smile, just because he left by his own choice.
Tazennin wanted her to recoil, to fight back when he gave her what she wanted, in a way she didn’t want... but that wasn’t the kind of person she was. She wanted him to be free, whatever that meant. Swallowed up by the openness of it all when all he wanted were walls and a ceiling. Security and comfort.
Whatever. He had the freedom to choose that life, he guessed.
He’d found it more comfortable out on the wilderness, to an extent. It might have been cold, might have been too open, but he knew what he was going to eat next, knew where he was going to sleep next--
The nearest wild animals and safe plants. The nearest shelter.
Then, when he set foot on the dirt path into town, his hair all ruffled from the excursion and his body covered in sweat... He stopped. He couldn’t be seen like this! It wasn’t presentable!
He pulled his comb out of his pouch and began to straighten out his long, black strands, section by section.
After an hour of this, he was finally satisfied with the way his hair fell and walked between rows of buildings, all so oddly designed! People would give him strange looks or turn away and whisper, but that wasn’t any different from his treatment in Myazhe, now was it?
He’d check the bulletin boards around the town for a job. Someone wanted a farmhand... That wouldn’t get him closer to his goal. A quest to go kill some owlbear... He wasn’t strong enough for that.
Looking for fighter and wizard! Inquire with Leaf Swordhammer and Autumn Rainstorm at the Firebelly Inn.
At the bottom were a pair of very good sketches of what appeared to be a young man with a bow and a young woman with a dagger. Both human.
So he ventured to the Firebelly Inn, a quiet place in the mid-afternoon, and searched the near-empty room for a ranger and a rogue. The two sat at their table, Leaf with his luscious brown locks slightly curled and his dark eyes focused on the elf who just came through the door. “Autumn, he kinda looks like a good fighter,” he whispered to his redheaded companion, pale and blue-eyed and covered in freckles.
“Elf though,” she protested. Then she kept on that track and whispered, “Drow though... They’ve got fighters...”
Tazennin approached the pair and bowed his head.
Leaf perked up. “Are you here about the advertisement?” he asked, his voice lilted up at the end like an excited puppy’s.
“Yes, I am, sir,” Tazennin replied, simply and respectfully. “Is the fighter position still open?”
“Yes!” Leaf leapt from his seat and extended a hand out to the newcomer, who shook it without a second thought. “Hello! Leaf Swordhammer! Nice to meet you!”
“You’re coming on a little strong there,” Autumn scolded. “Autumn Rainstorm. You are?”
“Tazennin Hun’ar,” the fighter answered. “Do I need to pass a test for this job?”
“What? No.” Leaf shook his head. “I mean, look at you.” Leaf motioned to Tazennin’s armor and weapon with both hands. “Now all we need is a wizard...”
Tazennin’s brow rose. “I could be a wizard too. If you’re having trouble finding one.” This got Leaf to squeak like a little girl who just learned her favorite bard was in town.
“Would you!? Oh that’d be so great!” Leaf paused. “Oh, but your armor...”
Tazennin shook his head. “It’s old and ratty anyway.”
More and more tests kept coming. Which do you want? Thing one or thing two, but he’d learnt the right answer for these people was both. Even if it made him feel sick, made him greedy, got him to gain fat. Weight was good, but fat?
What good male was fat? He could pin a pig’s tail on his arse and nothing would change!
But the correct answer was both.
Until it wasn’t.
“You’re just trying to avoid the choice, aren’t you?” asked the fourth matron, whose name he finally remembered. She’d picked a silly surface name-- human name-- Udita. She was free to make her choices however she liked, but he wondered:
Did she wish she was human?
By the frown on her rose-painted lips, he knew both was the wrong answer. It always had been. He debased himself all those times, fattening and taking, and had nothing to show for it!
“I won’t punish you,” she told him. “I promise.”
“I know, ma’am,” he replied, sat perfectly on his knees as he did his very best not to look down at the bit of stomach padding that he wanted to cut off--
“Then, please, won’t you choose one?” If he hated feeling like a greedy little pig, he despised it when Udita looked at her with those begging eyes.
In the first show of anger Tazennin might have made over the course of his entire life, he gritted his teeth together and seethed. “No, ma’am. I won’t.” He took in a breath and continued, washed over by eerie calm, “Why should I let you shape me into the kind of male you want? You already have a patron. You aren’t interested in replacing him, and if you were, definitely not with me. I’m the kind of male you people hate.”
A callous smirk started to grow. “I liked the old ways, but you can’t stand that. You call me brainwashed and hurting, you pray for my recovery, and you give me all of these tests... You want me to tell you what I want...? You want me to be a selfish little pissant about it? Fine.” He lifted off his knees and stood above her, unbidden, without permission.
She wasn’t his superior anyway.
“I want someone to provide for me. I want to be her obedient pet-- Actually, no. I’ll even take a male at this point. I want to be their obedient pet. I want to hold or massage their feet when they’re feeling tired. I want them to fuck my brains out whenever and wherever they want. I'm not going to get any of that here. So you know what?” He grabbed his ordinary warhammer and started strapping on pieces of leather armor. “I’m leaving.”
She’d placed down a pair of small bowls, one filled with rice and the other filled with porridge. The dark-haired male looked down at the spoon between the two, then up at her-- The matron of the new fourth house, whose name he wanted to kick himself for forgetting. She kept her hair in a veil of curled braids, sewn together in a line down the back of her head.
“Tazennin, which do you want?”
His gaze returned to the spoon. It was just another test, just another exercise the New World Order gave him so that he’d become a productive member of their society. They’d all learned that a broad decision left him lost and confused, worried that out of the myriad choices he could make, there was only one right answer.
So they moved on to a small list of choices.
To four.
Now, to two.
Maybe it was only a matter of time before they left him with one and shoved him in that ‘Rehabilitation Facility’ of theirs.
He’d never seen the inside. Maybe he would have liked it there. Maybe, if he couldn’t handle this strange new world, he could live there and stay forgotten.
Something told him that he’d only get that if he didn’t ask for it.
“Tazennin?”
His eye lifted from the silverware, just to show her he hadn’t gone anywhere.
“I don’t know,” he answered. The wrong answer, judging by the frown that fell from the fourth matron’s face.
“Would you like to try both, would that help you decide?” Her offer, coupled with the pleading stare she gave him helped him figure this puzzle out.
He picked up the spoon and he finished off every scrap of food before him. Though he felt overly stuffed, like a rotten, gluttonous little pig, he could be satisfied. This had been a trick question all along.
