This story started as one of those OC music videos that I think we all choreograph in our own heads when we listen to music--for this one, The Score’s Legend, specifically. Somehow my brain turned it from a music video to a comic, but since I can’t draw anything like what I was envisioning, I spent a lot of time thinking that there was no way I could really get across the visuals.
And then I realized that, y’know, it wouldn’t be exactly the same, but an outside POV might at least let me get all of the most important parts.
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One of the people who's supposed to save the village is at Margaret's stall, examining her apples. Margaret wasn't introduced to the adventurers, she's not that important a person, but she can't imagine any other reason an elf this fancy would seem so interested in her wares. This wasn't a good apple year.
She can't imagine this woman fighting off the bandits, either. She's got those delicate elfy features, skin so pale it almost seems silvery, and long blue hair falling loose and easy to grab. More than that, though, she's wearing a big poncy red dress, the kind with the skirt belled out by a structure underneath, and she's added a row of huge bows down the back of the bodice. There's a huge bow matching it on the band of her lacy, broad-brimmed red hat. But maybe she uses some kind of magic--elves are good with magic, aren't they? And there's a whole group of them, so hopefully the rest can actually fight.
Margaret smiles at the woman and makes sure not to fuss about the fact that she's blocking everyone else from the stall and not buying anything. She's just picking up little wrinkled apples, frowning at them, and setting them down, over and over. It's kind of a relief that she hasn't tried to make eye contact with Margaret. The wide brim of her hat mostly blocks her face, bent over the apples as she is, so Margaret's free to look over the rest of the market while she pretends to shop.
Everyone's tense, which is no surprise, and Margaret's not the only one who keeps looking down to the end of the market street where it leads into the green at the center of the village. All the children are there, from five to fifteen, just like the bandits demanded. That was what had gotten the squire to finally agree to actually spend money doing something about them, and not just keep appeasing them at everyone else's expense. The squire has two children in that age range, and they're the most well-fed and bright-eyed of the lot.
At least one of the adventurers is with them. The little bent figure has to be an adventurer, because Margaret's never seen her before in her life, and those pointed ears and hunched back and curling whisps of white hair pulled back into an untidy bun are all quite distinctive. Especially at her diminutive height. She's shorter than all but the smallest of the children clustered around her, exclaiming in amazement at the way the insubstantial flowers in her cupped hands change color at her command. More magic.
That seems a bit unbalanced to Margaret, if two of them are magic. Sure, magic's good for fighting dragons and griffons and such, she's heard tales of wizards throwing fireballs, but throw fire here in the village and they'll set it alight. Someone who can meet the bandits on their own terms seems much more useful. At least the tiny woman has a big dog at her side. Margaret would bet on a dog that big any day.
She's heard there's five of them, but no matter how much more Margaret looks around, she can only see the two. Hopefully that's a good sign. It would warn the bandits if they saw weapons out, so maybe it means the other three are the more usual kind of fighter, hiding away for the bandits to arrive.
It isn't a long wait, though it feels longer with the fancy elf-lady standing there wordlessly touching all of Margaret's apples. The bandits come swaggering up the road just before noon, all thirteen of them, their scar-faced leader and her arrogant lieutenant at the fore. They spread out as they arrive, each going to one merchant or another to shake them down, while the leader and the remaining three of them head towards the green and the children.
By Margaret's ill luck, it's the lieutenant, with his groping hands and his sour breath, who takes her stall. Though he doesn't seem interested in either her or her apples, at least, not with the beautiful elf-woman standing there.
"Hey, love," he croons, putting a hand on the elf's shoulder. Margaret sees her go stiff at the moment of contact. "What's a pretty lady like you doing in a shithole town like this?"
The elf turns her head just far enough to look at him sideways, her delicate lip curling. She doesn't answer, just reaches up--for a moment Margaret thinks she's going to try and grab the man's hand, for what good that would do with her slender fingers and delicate wrist. Instead she continues upward, grasping the broad lacy brim of her hat and raising it slightly off her head, almost as if she's tipping it at him.
As the hat tilts upward, it changes, suddenly, in her hand. No longer is it a lacy, bow-dotted monstrosity. The brim is still broad, and it's still red, but the decoration is much more modest, just a flat white ribbon for a hat-band, with a single pheasant's feather sticking out of it. Below it, the rest of her outfit falls away, the bows and the wide skirt vanishing. Under what Margaret knows just enough to realize was an illusion is a much simpler outfit, a loose knee-length violet skirt and some reddish-purple cloth around her chest and shoulders that Margaret isn't sure even qualifies as a shirt. It doesn't look any more useful in a fight than the fancy dress did.
Where the bows were, though, is a huge sheathed sword, straight down her back, the point of it nearly touching the ground, the hilt nearly reaching the brim of the hat. *That* looks useful.
The grabby lieutenant stumbles backwards, gaping, when the illusion drops away. He recovers quickly, though, his eyes narrowing as he reaches for the curved sword at his belt. "Trap! Weapons up, you lot, they've set a trap!"
It's the last words he ever says. The elf-woman, who Margaret sees now is silver-skinned in a much, much darker shade, a grey almost black, draws the huge sword and swings it in one savage motion, wiry muscles bulging in her back and shoulders and arms. She sweeps it right into his neck, but not through it. Margaret hears the sound of metal grating against bone, a sound she's heard during butchering, and knows it must have gone in at the wrong angle and struck a vertebrae instead of sliding between. Even only having half his neck cut through is enough to drop him, though, clawing at his throat as blood sprays.
Her long white hair swinging around her, the woman steps back and examines the new notch in her blade with a grimace. She says words that Margaret doesn't understand, presumably Elvish, but the way she spits them out makes their meaning clear enough.
Then the two closest bandits rush towards her, shouting, waving a club and an axe. She adjusts her stance, bringing her sword up to slant over her shoulder, and grins, fierce and wild. Her eyes are bloodshot, pupils so wide that Margaret can't make out their color, and her muscles knot up visibly under her skin until Margaret can see their veins bulging.
Margaret backs away as the woman meets the bandits' charge. They manage to strike her, both of them, but she hardly seems to feel it. She, in turn, wields that enormous blade against them with a strength and fury that seem disproportionate to her slight form.
Hidden in the alley behind her stall, Margaret dares to glance beyond the woman to the rest of the fight. The children who were on the green seem to have scattered, which is a tremendous relief, and the tiny old woman who'd been so delighting them with illusionary flowers is now surrounded by insubstantial... animals? Yes, there's two ghostly deer, a few badgers, and a profusion of rabbits. But they seem to be fighting for her, keeping the lesser bandits occupied.
Their scar-faced leader is up against the enormous dog. As Margaret watches, she swings her flail hard enough to cave in the poor beast's ribs, sending it flying to the side to the land limp on the ground. Margaret winces, feeling deeply sorry for the animal, who only was trying to defend its mistress.
But even as the dog hits the ground, it's changing, skin going scaly and spine lengthening and head doming up into a massive lizard's skull. The lizardfolk, wearing no more than a leather harness and scraps of a skirt, rises to their feet and lifts up a leafy branch in one hand. Vines sprout around the leader, coiling around her legs and waist and binding her in pace.
Closer to the market, more bandits are engaged with another figure, tall and burly and covered head-to-toe with hair. Margaret has no idea what he is, though the sharp tusks make her think orcish--orcs are grey-toned, though, not brown, and not nearly so shaggy. Whatever he is, he's clearly a warrior, and there's some comfort in seeing heavy armor and a sturdy shield on at least one of these wild folk. He's knocking bandits over like bowling-pins with his heavy morningstar, and the elf-woman has moved so that any try to get up again get the chop.
The adventurers work much faster than Margaret had expected. In the space of what feels like only seconds, surely a minute or two at most, all the bandits but the leader have fallen under their assault. Some die without seeming to be touched at all, though at one point Margaret sees a black streak flashing by one trying to get at the hairy man's back, and then that figure stumbles and goes down screaming. The four of them move to surround the leader where the vines still hold her tight. As they do, a small figure in a black cloak scuttles up to join them, making the full five.
"Question for you lot," the hairy one calls out, turning towards the market. Margaret isn't the only one hiding in an alley, but she inches out along with one of the other merchants at his call. "You want this one alive for trial or anything?"
Margaret looks over at Willard, the cheesemaker, and shrugs at him. He shrugs back. When she looks around at the rest of the market, no one else seems willing enough to emerge from their hiding places to get a say.
Probably the squire has an opinion. He'd love the idea of a trial, something fancy and formal that he could preside officiously over, to puff up his sense of his own importance even further than he already has. But the squire let these people swagger into town over and over again, because they never touched the squire, just all the regular folk trying to barter for what they needed in the marketplace. And even with his children here, the squire hasn't hung around for the fight. Margaret doesn't care much what the squire wants at this point.
"Kill her," she says, expecting her voice to come out high and shaky and surprised that it's, while not steady, at least clear. "She was going to take our children as her servants, and who knows what else she'd have done to them. We don't want her alive."
The hairy man nods and looks over at the dark little elf-woman. The others step back as she raises up her sword. Then she swings it, once, stepping forward and pivoting as she does so to put every bit of her weight into it. This time, it goes right through the spine.
As the bandit leader's head goes bouncing off onto the green, a ragged cheer rises in the marketplace. Children emerge from the shed at the edge of the green where the little old woman must have hidden them, and the lizardfolk quickly spawns more greenery with a wave of their hand to hide the worst of the carnage. Margaret takes a deep breath and realizes that she's shaking in relief.
"You folks get paid ahead of time?" Willard asks, once glad parents have rushed out of their houses to herd their fascinated children away. "Because I'll tell you now, the squire's gonna be stingy about it."
"Naw," the hairy man says, then grins, putting all his very sharp teeth on display. "That's what we've got Nan for."
Margaret looks at the others, expecting the lizardfolk or the little cloaked scuttling one to do something. Instead, it's the grandmotherly one, the little tiny hunchbacked old woman with her sparkling eyes and her deep smile-lines and her brightly-colored shawl. She raises a hand and points at the bandit leader, then swings it around to designate each of the dead bandits in turn. For each one, she pauses to tap her cane against the ground.
As she finishes the motion, she murmurs something in a high, cracking voice. Slowly the bodies of the dead begin to pull themselves upright, limbs dangling. The bandit leader's headless corpse stumps over to her head, picks it up, and tucks it under her arm.
"He'll pay us, if he wants them in the ground," the old woman says, giving Margaret and Willard a toothless grin almost as frightening as the hairy man's toothy one. There's a laugh in her creaky voice, like she thinks this is all one great grand joke.
"Th- that should work," Margaret stammers, backing respectfully away to duck back behind her stall. Amazingly, none of her crates of apples or jugs of cider have been knocked over in the fight.
The strange little band of adventurers start away from the market, across the green and towards the squire's manor, all the dead marching in front of them. As they head off, though, the smallest one breaks away from the rest, turning and scuttling straight towards Margaret's stall with his black cloak flapping behind him.
When he reaches her, he pushes back his hood, just enough for her to see a scaled black snout and huge gold eyes under scaly brows, a face almost more dragon-like than lizardy. There's a hint of orange at his throat, just above where the cloak is clasped. Kobold, she thinks, even though he doesn't look much like the skulking rusty-brown specimens that pop up now and then around here.
He points up towards the crates full of apples, even the lowest of them out of his reach. "How much?"
"Oh," Margaret exclaims, surprised that it was a question and not a demand. She takes a couple of the best apples from the top of her display and leans forward, offering them up. "You don't need to pay for these."
"No," he says, his cloak flapping as his tail flicks back and forth beneath it. "I pay. How much?"
"Um." Margaret would be mortified to actually charge the little creature. "The squire hired you, right? He'll pay for it."
The kobold studies her suspiciously for a long moment, then nods and reaches out, snatching one of the apples from her hand. It vanishes beneath his cloak, and then he turns about and dashes off to catch up with his friends without even a word of thanks. When he reaches them, he pulls the apple back out, holding it up for the taller members of the group to examine. The lizardfolk bends low to admire it.
At the rear, the elf-woman turns back to look at Margaret, giving her a nod. Margaret nods back, which seems to satisfy her, because she promptly turns her back. Margaret watches her go, walking calm and confident among the rest of her motley little crew. They saved the village from the bandits, so she can't not be grateful. But at the same time, she's glad to see the back of their strange group. None of them seem like regular sort of folk. People like that, they couldn't be anything else but adventurers.
