Waiting Game

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The Dragon’s Den was a place few men would be caught dead, a place even fewer would be caught alive. The smell of blood on leather or steel was quite familiar to the tavern. The companies of rogues assembled this particular night were no strangers to death and murder, many of them mercenaries and thieves. It was a season when one struggled to keep his steel clean. Drunken laughter roared through the seedy low-beamed common room. Rough looking men sat huddled around circular wooden tables, nursing clay mugs of cold malted ale. A hearty fire burned in the bricked hearth and hot-liquored breaths steamed the frosted windowpanes in the late winter months.

Brigands stole anxious glances over their shoulders at the farthest corner of the room. There, in the deepest shadow that pulled on the collective unease, sat a figure hooded in thick black cloaks. The hooded figure leaned back in his chair, his feet kicked up on a table, but no shadow betrayed his uncommonly dark and delicate features. Only his solid glowing yellow eyes pierced the darkness like torches burning in the night. The tables immediately around him sat vacant, forming a solemn court where no man dared trespass.

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