Masters and Mysteries

Flickering light and a hundred-year-old musty beer-soaked carpet-smell greeted the teens as they gingerly passed onto the rugged floor of the Lionbiter’s Arms. In such a dimly lit bunker of a place It was hard to say how many hush-voiced folkers were in here but there was a church-like hallowed silence to the long arched basement of a room they now found themselves in. Cubby holes of rough ripped leather seating lined the damp walls leading the way towards a bar at the end with its hungry-lion-eyed sign above clearly stating intent in its neon words ‘Always watching!’

The MOUTHS tenderly approached the bar watching their every step, determined not to create any more noise than then their anxious breaths already was already making.

On their way they passed a cubicle where two folkers with oversized cowboy hats were playing some kind of card game.

‘They must be from the Adventurer twat-head tribe!’ The Tower of a Girl muttered under her breath.

They watched as one of these gamers would draw a card and place it down in front of the other and just the sight of the Wizard illustrated on the surface would send the other into a strange frenzy as if they were experiencing all the effects of a Wizards power in their imagination.

‘Who knows what bizarre nut job dimension they stole that deck of cards from!” The Tower of a Girl remarked. ‘Adventurer’s love to travel and pillage the Universe for freaky bling!’ 

‘They’re a bunch of sneaky-prat skunk-scumbaggers all right!’ The Boisterous Alpha didn’t hold back with his inter-tribal hatred. 

All the time, as they got closer to the bar, the teens could feel a pair of pupils eyeballing them from between a line of hanging ale jugs and beer taps. They could just make out the gleam of a stocky hard-boiled bald head caught in the neon light, a pair of arms folded expectantly, waiting for them to state their business here.

‘So is that the Master then?’ The Quieter of the Crew whispered in a voice louder than intended.

‘I presume so…’the Tower of a Girl replied. 

‘Oh….so the legend that he has four arms is just a load of donkey!’

The boy had to stop himself. The man  behind the bar had just moved two things out from behind his back which turned out to be his second pair of biceps as a second pair of chunky hands pressed themselves firmly down on the counter, fingers drumming impatiently. 

This made the three teens go an even lighter shade of pale.

Another MOUTH, sitting on a bar stool meanwhile, looked up from his evening scroll through small reading spectacles and spoke to the bar keep. 

‘Would ever you hear this!’ He muttered with matter-of-fact joviality, ‘there’s a new Tuneland up for purchase on the Staff exchange!’ 

‘HOLD IT!’ The master spoke in his ice cold hateful snarl, ‘You SHHHHHH! Now. I’m going to have to stop you RIGHT there! You know we never talk about staff wielder’s in my bar!’ 

‘Sorry, bad habit, I can’t leave the day job behind sometimes.’

‘Well ya do in my bar when you speak about them pointy headed, staff wielding twats,’ he chomped out his words like a t-rex tearing flesh off the bone, ‘I know you work with them for some Twattypus reason…but I don’t want to know anything about those pointy hatted scumuggerers! UNLESS you actually like having a wet rag stuffed up you gob!’ 

‘Nor should we speak of F-a-i-r-i-e-s ‘s either in your company!’

The master now made a crude grimace, teeth creaking as he ground them together.

‘You know me all too well…the only thing I hate more then Wizards….just hearing the vowel Faaaa.. FAraaieeee AAAAH, it’s enough to makes my head feel all tense like a headbutt!’ 

The Teens were now far too close to this imposing man and the Masters frown was only deepening the closer they got. 

‘WELL….IF IT ISN’T THE RECENTLY POTTY TRAINED!’ He finally addressed with them with a voice that bounced up and down the room before battering them about the ears, ‘I can’t possibly think of any good reason three little folkers would be casting such slight shadows on my walls. Let me stop you before you get any closer…TRUST ME! You don’t want to be here to waste my time so you better have some other good reason!’ 

The teens now looked at each other as if they were hoping the other might speak first. There was a constricted feeling in all their throats that made it hard to breathe let alone speak. 

The master now picked up an empty pint glass and wrung it in two of his hands with his mouldy old cloth.

‘ITS RUDE NOT TO SPEAK WHEN SPOKEN TOO!’ The Master snapped, before slamming the glass roughly on the table, ‘And I like good manners!’ 

All three teens suddenly became aware of a dusty suit of armour hanging from a chandelier above them. It was the wrong time to wonder if there was the body of someone inside, kept alive by some ancient curse. The Boisterous Alpha nudged both of his comrades, trying to prod some words out of them. In the end the Tower of a Girl opened her mouth to speak, air rushing out about to form vowels when suddenly a new sound coming from behind them totally slaughtered her thought process. 

Their ears were beginning to twitch to a perfectly toned drone growing on the air, a mysterious sound that was resonant enough for its vibration to be felt in the chest. This drone was merging with a soothing yet dramatic music, tempered by dissonant, resonance being strummed over the drone making it feel dynamic and energised,  anciently-mournful yet eternally youthful. Eerie yet invigorating. At the same time there was a subtle omnipresence to this melody that made it feel as fundamental as the beginning of time. The tune sounded like it had always been there and now the right melody was being played in a correct key, this was drawing some universal sound out from its hiding place beneath the under garments of time and other such illusions of grandeur. 

Everyone in the bar was now looking for some source for this sacred music, while the  teens all breathed a sigh, grateful that they were no longer centre of attention. They tried not to look at the masters half-cocked eyes though, who were clearly already deep with accusatory hatred as if they might have something to do with the evenings second disturbance. But even he had to quickly conclude that this power ballad of mystery was too weird for anything a MOUTH might orchestrate.

As the music became more intense, there was an ambient vibration growling out of any object that could dance to it, making the walls shudder and the floorboards creak as if a metorite of melody was incoming. All eyes turned towards the double doors back at the end of the room where a flickering, gushing light was glowing through the patterned stain glass. For all intents and purpose this rushing light created the sensation of rapidly flowing water rising against the other side of the door. There was now a vocal moan coming with the music too, a moody wail of rhythmic devotion, haunted by ever so subtle micro-tonal ghosts with their pitch perfect deliverance. This was charging the air with every pang of its emotion while echoey cosmic drums started batter the earth with a frantic beat.

All this time the Masters forehead was deepening into frown, the rest of him going visibly stiff with rage. Despite the fact they were inside a building, drops of rain began to fall with the music, some of them falling on the masters head causing a red mist to form around him as the cool drops hit his boiling dome. This rain was soon driving down, saturating everyone else and bringing a darkness with it that little could penetrate except for the strange stained-glass light flowing through the doors. As this watery light created a kaleidoscope of floweriness the doors began to rattle against pressure being applied against them. Then it happened, a trickle of water started to dribble rhythmically through the crack between doors. This quickly this turned into a dancing torrent of frothy white water tumbling down the steps into the room. 

The teenagers cringed in horror with everyone else, but the Master was resolute. He continued to press his four fists against the bar, his arms with all the stoic rootedness of temple columns that had stood for millennium. 

Within moments the water had flooded the room drowning everyone in a another reality. The celling disappeared into the darkness of a new void above them. The space around them became breezy and open air.  The water that had been but a trickle coming through the door a moment ago was now a vast pillar falling down in foamy shafts funnelling out from a dark circular hole in a brooding starry sky above which had become the universe end to end. This thunderous cascade was interacting with a body-part like structure of limbs all over the falls which swayed back and forth in rhythmic cycles altering the course of the water all the time yet the only thing giving this liquid any structure. Some of these limbs were shaped into instruments, complete with strings that were strung between limbs and every leg or arm ended in the head of a cobra with rather sultry feminine lips. Many of these cobra-harp-limbs were wailing along to the music while other cobra heads were themselves strumming stringed melodies with their fangs and tongues. 

 As the water landed on the bar floor it rippled away into a great stormy sea of froth which filled the room but somehow didn’t drown its hapless victims any more, merely made them laden and sodden as the music continued to drill into their senses.

The Master now looked up at the great head above, spouting water out of its mouth. This hole was was as much like the rim of a hat as it was simply a void, a hat shaped like that of a cobras crest and capped with a great conifer of temple terraces and points which seemed to stretch up towards infinity. Finally of note was the many heavy-lined glowing eyes that rotated around the falling water spout each eye releasing a shower of tears. 

Far from of being paralyzed by the bizarreness of this moment like most of the punters in this bar, the Master looked now down at the two Adventurers sitting in their snug nearby before walking over to them and grabbing the deck of cards they were playing with.

‘As much as I hate you playing Wizard snap in my bar,’ He snapped flicking through the decks rapidly, ‘you’re being useful in this case…’

He stopped on a card and pulled it out of the pack.

‘I thought I’d seen this Wizard scum bag before.’

He held up the card to his eyes before looking up at the towering waterfall being.

‘Riverta of the tears!’ He matched the image on a card with the bizarre creature before them. ‘This is not a card you want your opponent to pull from their deck but personally…I don’t care if you are the end of time itself you can get out of my bar this instance!’ He roared up at the sorcerer, ‘BE GONE YOU TWAT!’

Quite unexpectedly and, as if the Master had a tremendous way with words, the Wizard suddenly stopped making its music. Its whole waterfall form appeared to freeze in time. The rain stopped and everyone stopped getting drenched with waves of foam. But, as for the next thing that happened, this only added another layer of folked-upness to the freak show.