Role

Chapter 7

Galadon

Ikso followed the smell of wine to the bards guild where she inquired
of the guildguard what would be required to join their ranks.
He laughed, his breath stinking up the air. No Drow, he said.

"But I can sing and dance and act and perform!" Said Ikso.
I am born to do this!

"Tell you what," said the bard guard, "get thee to a shapeshifter's guild
and learn to become a robin, and perhaps I'll let you perch
on my cock and sing to me."

Ikso turned on her heel, her red dress fluttering in the dust on
Holy Road as she trudged away.

An animal? She thought. Is that what they think of me? I shall show them.
She marched down the High Road with a Duergar marching song trailing
in the air behind her. She arrived at the shapeshifters guild, took one smell
and marched back up towards Market Square, this time in silence.

Ikso had learned of the guilds of the surface. At least the ones that mattered.
She obviously had not been taught the way of bards, and the Orcs were
certainly a mystery to her, though she had seen one, once, stinking of the
swamp, creeping past her Duergar captors one night, stinking of blood and murk
She would have alerted it if it had not clearly been startled at the sight of
her and fled into the darkness in a manner much improved from most of
the fleeing she had seen up to that point.


Gritting her face she did her best feral felar impression. She hissed and
walked west. West, towards the transmuters guild. She would change her body.
She would strike at their minds. Her spells would be songs on her lips,
the somatic components dance in her body. She would perform for them.
But whom would she be? Edgar the sniveling coward?
Kruk the scalpel sharp brute? Ahteli the long dead queen?


She would perhaps start as herself and see where it went from there.

The guildguard put away his fist of lightning and welcomed her,
the blade crackling in its sheath beneath his robe.