Category: Renado

The conversation began innocently enough.  They were sitting around the big round table in the Targon—Ren and his loyal subordinates—reflecting on how long they had been in Ith.  While Kazra and Virn were sitting at the bar, Renado had brought drinks over for the rest of his men.  Even Captain Urro and his First Mate were there, though the rest of the crew stayed at a less pricey inn some distance away.  As they sat about the table, their words turned toward what to do next. Continue reading Renado 51

“What do you think it is?” asked Urro, pointing towards the top of the district wall.  There were tendrils of smoke rising from the Norzeen District.  There was not an overly concerning number, but more than normal.

Renado looked over his shoulder at Virn and Asar, trailing him side-by-side.  Virn saw the look and patted the sword at his hip.  The injured warrior was continuing his recovery, but he would be ready for what lay beyond.  Ren glanced back at Captain Urro.  “I think there has been some fighting,” he said. Continue reading Renado 50

Renado and his alliance of mercenaries never did find Crollem’s body.  After the chaotic fight in the streets of the Norzeen District, they had searched for their fallen man.  King Turim—before his brutal extermination at Kazra’s hands—had tailed Crollem to the Verdant Drinkhouse, killed him, and then assumed his appearance with a twisted magic of which Ren had never before heard. Continue reading Renado 49

Unassuming, the Verdant Drinkhouse cozily welcomed its few morning patrons out of the drizzling rain.  It was nestled between a single-storey home and a bakery fallen into disrepair, shouldered by alleys, and casting flickering firelight through the streaky front windows.  The dark clouds lingering overhead pulled close to the world, oppressing a sense of night upon the mid-morning city. Continue reading Renado 48

Each minute tread slowly past Ren.  He sat with his back against a bar in Pranan’s Hill.  A cider sat on his gut, supported there by one hand.  Beside him, Kazra smirked at his impatience and drank from her own ale.  Captain Urro and Sarno’s men were playing dice, but each rattle seemed to remind Ren that only seconds had slipped by, and Woodro had not yet returned from the mysterious estate where reports placed Karsef and Crollem.  Caged. Continue reading Renado 47

In a moment of tranquility, Ren sat with his nephew on a porch chair in front of the tavern.  The passersby mostly ignored him, save an amiable wave here and there.  Rado was five months old now, and when he was awake he looked at Ren with big green eyes—their family’s emerald ones.  When he was asleep, like he was now, his wide furrowed brow slackened and his mouth started to drool.  Ren, teary eyed, looked back at the street side.  Would Rado ever know the full extent of tragedy that brought him into this world? Continue reading Renado 46

The first fight, after the Mage Kings fell, unfolded a week after Ren and his men had acted.  In the center of Pranan’s Hill, Renado and his men waited in the Targon Tavern, far from the action, but the story got to them.  A guardsman from the city watch, walking along Night Kra, brushed against an ex-slave.  The brush had been a shove to at least one party involved, and a fistfight had become a brawl, to all parties involved. Continue reading Renado 45

Renado stood up slowly.  He had fallen asleep beside Virn.  The resolute warrior had survived to tell the tale of their assault, but his recovery would be a bumpy adventure of its own.  The mental disturbance cast upon Virn by the late Mage King Pretar had faded after an hour, with a brief moment of lucidity to reveal Virn’s surviving mind.  The wounds the somber man had received were still be treated daily by the healer, an old man named Aganim. Continue reading Renado 44

The sun rose over Ith like an enormous crown, shifting from horizon shades of red to a pale salmon, and becoming a finally a radiant orange that sliced through the hazy clouds on the bumpy horizon.  Renado glimpsed it through the windows of the tavern as he strolled through the empty drinking room.  When he followed Virn down the steps out front, the heat was against his back, casting his shadow twenty feet tall in front of him. Continue reading Renado 43

Once again, a tiny inn room on the second storey of the Verdant Drinkhouse in the Norzeen District became a ring of chairs and a den of schemers.  The chairs were varied—some were battered and stained with soot from a chimney.  Others were built with sturdy arms and freshly washed cushions.  The schemers were the same; Renado felt worn out by the echoing streets and weeping citizens of the city, while Woodro leaned forward, eager for the plots to be determined. Continue reading Renado 42