[b]Lior - Boar's Head Tavern[/b]

Lior awoke later in the morning then he usually would - on the streets, being up after dawn meant missing the prime begging corners and waiting too long to steal a fresh loaf of bread while it was still dim light. It was most definitely the fault of his thin feather mattress, which felt much akin to sleeping on a cloud after nights spent sleeping on street corners and between rooftops. Hurriedly he clambered from his nest of blankets, pulled on his shirt and slipped down the well worn wood of the stairs - the inn keep, Tessa, stood brusquely behind the bar polishing at the counter top. As he ascended she glanced up, and her stern face was split with a grin.

“Busiest we’ve been in a while, lad,” She says before placing a steaming bowl on the countertop from somewhere under the counter. The smell of cooked eggs fills the air, and Lior feels his knees nearly buckle with glee. Eggs.[i] Eggs[/i]. He was near giddy as he placed himself lightly on one of the tall bar stools, and dips his head in a little half bow.

“Simply glad to be of service,” He politely returns. Glad to be hired and fed, and sleep on a warm bed. He’d never had much of a knack for stealing, and almost always felt stricken with guilt after snatching a loaf or apple. He knew being alone meant having to lever the weight of the decision: being starved, or stealing a small profit from an honest worker. Perhaps, when he had been the rich lordling son he had once been, he would have considered it owed to him. He had found very quickly that with a ragged shirt and no coin, no one gave a rats ass whether you [i]said [/i]you were of noble birth or not. 

“If you keep playing like you did last night, I think I can cut you a deal with free lodgings and food,” Tessa continues, still wearing her grin.

Lior is halfway scooping runny eggs on top of warm porridge into his mouth and deep reverie, and nearly coughs his mouthful across the newly cleaned counter top. With a splutter, he suffices to answer with an enthusiastic head nod, and Tessa smiles before returning to polishing the wood of the bar, and tutting over one of the serving girl’s, who is apparently late for her mid morning shift.

--
[b]Lior - City Centre[/b]

With the Nightshade festival approaching, the tavern is slowed to near halting. Everyone has headed into the city proper to join in the cavorting, and Lior lets his feet take him with the sway of the crowd from the dirtier more disused sections of city.There is a secret thrill of rebellion as he imagines attending the Nightshade proceedings: his mother ever the diplomat had never been openly contemptuous of their teachings, but after they had attended the sermons and recitings with other nobles she would return him to his studies, and point out the hypocrisies and fallacies in their ruling. She spurned their cruelties and injustices, and mention the many lengthy crusades and massacres the church had funded or proceeded with themselves. She had been especially critical of their treatment of magic and its rulings, though he had little specifications why. The idea of joining in on that which his mother had so rebuked was an intoxicatingly new form of freedom he was ready to flex. He dodged out of the way of some other pedestrians, and noted that he was moving through to the better parts of town - those built more closely beneath the cliff’s of the castle.

His heavy harp and few belongings are left safely back at the inn and his shoulders feel light with the prospect of destitution no longer looming with the heavy certainty of a hangman’s noose. He squares his shoulders and walks a little taller. He had gotten this position all by himself - no mother leaning over his shoulder, pushing him this way and that. He was a free man. He could do as he wish. He was practically- 

There was suddenly a terrifyingly loud noise, the force of whatever caused it rocking through the cobblestones and up through his feet. He stares, eyes wide and alarmed as he notes the plume of smoke and the fire, chewing hungrily at the building before him. His ears are ringing, and the people around him and scurrying two and fro, there mouths opening and closing with yells and cries he can’t quite make out over the ringing. He puts a hand to his head as slowly the world seems to come back with a startling clarity, and raised voices which seemed but a whisper come back with a roaring coherence. People are clearing the way faster and faster, and Lior see’s why: beyond, he sees the well known figures of the Atropos. Dressed in their sharp military uniform, and bearing with them all manner of tracking beast, they buzz about the building like ants on a nest, but with twice the bite. From the crowd comes forth a man at least twice Lior’s height, and built broad and strong - his face mottled with scars, he brandishes a longsword with the same sort of deadly grace one might expect of a viper, or a cat about to strike. For a moment, he looks to have a single long talon - and he scrapes it down a cheek, blood running freely. With a deft swing, he runs a man and dog through. The action seems almost inhumanly fast - he is obviously skilled. The Atropos is sliced clean through, and the sight of it freezes Lior in place.

This was not the leisurely stroll of subtle defiance he had intended. He suddenly wishes he hadn’t had quite so much breakfast as the hunks of what was once human slide to the ground in thick wet pieces. He feels sick. He smells smoke and fire and sweat and grit all at once, and his vision seems to swim again. He needed to hide, to flee, to crouch or run. Whatever was going on, be it by Nightshade or demon terror, he wanted no part in it. Of all the places in the world he wishes to be, he thought of the small room on the top floor of the Boar’s Head, his harp nearby. Things had finally been going so right. He watches with a sort of fascinated horror as the flames seem to engulf more of the building, and one of the passerby’s jolts into him in their rush to escape, knocking him clean off his feet. Lior lands on his back with a soft ‘whoosh’ as the air leaves his lungs in a sudden burst. He lies there, shocked and terrified and grasping at the cobblestones with elegant musicians fingers. He prays he wont get trampled.