Epilogue Jora

“A glass of your most expensive liquor, bar wench!” came a deep booming voice. “And a little something for my brothers too. What do ya want, Barba?”

“Beer, boss! We want beer!” said a spindly man with a scar on his forehead.

A deep, booming laugh shook the floor. “Ya heard that, wench? A round of beer for the boys! And keep it coming until I say so. We’re getting smashed today!” He kept laughing.

The woman behind the bar stopped cleaning her glass. She looked over to the rowdy group of men who had taken all the seats in the middle of her establishment. She brushed aside her long silver hair, and leaned forward over the counter. “You’re asking for a lot of expensive stuff, customer. I’m going to have to ask you to pay for some of it up front.”

“What?” said the large muscular man with a deep booming voice. He snarled. “You think that I, Ironfist Darbe can’t afford some beer and liquor?”

“Maybe at other bars,” said the bartender. “But we have some pricey stuff at the Silver Moon bar.”

The spindly man, Barba, chuckled. His laugh sounded like a wheeze. “Boss Darbe is a famous adventurer. A feared warrior, who even went to the famous Academy! A bar wench like you dares refuse his request?”

Darbe chuckle then raised a hand to stop his men, who had been inching closer to the counter with hands on their waists. “It’s alright. This is a tiny bar in a rundown part of town. They don’t hear about famous adventurers around these parts. Heck, they probably don’t hear about anything at all down here.” Darbe walked forward, the floorboards creaking under the weight of his massive footsteps.

The other customers in the bar didn’t look over. There were only a couple of them to begin with and they were both wearing robes and sitting in dark corners of the room, nursing stale drinks, and keeping their eyes trained on their own tables.

Darbe ran his eyes over the dusty ceiling, the grimy walls, and the strange assortment of drinks behind the little bartender. The bartender wasn’t very tall and she looked kinda young. In her late twenties, or maybe her early thirties? Definitely in Darbe’s strike zone.

Darbe smiled. He licked his palms and ran them through his unruly hair, making a bigger mess than before. He leaned onto the counter, his face inches from the bartender who was also leaning forward and who had been staring at him with an empty expression as he had walked over from his table.

“I’m sorry. I think we got off on the wrong foot there. Please, let me start over. The name’s Darbe, Ironfoot Darbe,” said Ironfoot Darbe as he got even closer and started to whisper. “My friend’s and I were just looking for a good time, that’s all. I’m sorry if we troubled you. Here. Perhaps this will persuade you. Might even make you, uh, look after us a little better.” He rummaged inside his pocket, making sure to jangle it a little so a heavy clinking sound could fill the air. He pushed a single gold coin across the counter. He smiled, winked, and gave her an expectant look.

“Your breath stinks,” said the bartender as she punched him in the face.

Ironfoot Darbe fell backwards, covering his face with his hands and flailing on the ground like a fish.

“You wench!” shouted Barba.

“How dare you punch our boss?” shouted another one of Darbe’s goons.

Darbe’s posse of seven unsheathed their swords and stood around their fallen boss. They stared intently at the tiny bartender, giving her menacing looks. Barba stepped forward, snarling.

“Come on boss. Let’s show this stupid wench what it means to disrespect the Ironfoot Bandits!” said Barba, with a twisted smile.

Muffled sounds. As if somebody was trying to say something with hands over their hands. The floorboards creaked. Barba flinched. He snuck a glance down at his flailing boss, and the rest of the bandits followed his gaze.

Ironfoot Darbe writhed and struggled on the floorboards. He didn’t remove his hands from his face for even a moment, screaming and shouting into his own hands, until his what little could be seen of his face was all red and blistered, and his own hands were scratched and bloody from the many times he had bitten them like a rabid animal.

Barba’s face paled. His eyes widened and he turned around to the bartender. The grip on his sword loosened. “What did you do to him, you wench? Was it poison? Are you an assassin? Did somebody finally try to go after our bounties?”

“I knew we shouldn’t have come back to the city,” said another bandit.

“This is a no name bar in the shadiest part of town. Nobody should have known we were coming!” said Barba. His eyes widened. He bit his lips. “Unless!” He swung his sword around and slashed at one of his bandits.

The bandit stepped back but the front of his clothes got cut, and a deep red gash appeared on his chest. “Barba, have you gone insane?”

Barba slashed at another bandit, his eyes wild, his slashes weak and unable to do much more than slightly injure a couple of bandits that had been caught off guard.

“I knew it! Traitors! That’s why this assassin knew we were coming!” shouted Barba as he pointed his sword at each of his own men.

“Barba, what are you talking about” said a bandit.

“None of us would ever betray the boss!” said another.

“Lies! You are all liars and traitors! You’ve had it out for me since the day I became the boss’ right hand man!” said Barba. His mouth was foaming and his eyes were rolling around in their sockets. He swung at another bandit, who easily parried his blade. “See? How else could you maggots get good enough to block my sword. You’ve sold out me and the boss for some sort of potion! Tell me. Was it the Academy? Are they mad that the boss never finished his training and became a bandit instead?”

Barba’s statements got wilder and wilder. He began going over the course of Ironfoot Darbe’s actions since he left the academy. Explaining, in excruciating detail, all of the vile and evil things that the Ironfoot bandits had done over the years. Throughout it all, he kept slashing at the other bandits, wildly and without inflicting any damage.

However, no matter what the other bandits tried to do, they couldn’t harm Barba at all. He dodged every strike. Blocked every blow. And he did so at insane angles and by stretching his body to its absolute limits. He didn’t strike nearly as ferociously as he defended. And he wasn’t defending only himself.

“You wench! No, you witch! What have you done to Barba?” cried one of the bandits.

“And to the boss too!”

“Yeah, the boss isn’t moving!”

“Is he dead?”

“No, he’s still breathing! But Barba—”

“Enough, I’m done. Get out of the way, the rest of you!” said an older bandit who had been hanging behind the rest of them. The older bandit revealed a large stick from inside his sleeves, and he raised the stick towards the wild Barba, who was also standing right in front of the tiny, but calm, bartender.

“We would never betray the boss, but you’re right! We never liked you, Barba! You were a puny, pathetic snake. You climbed onto the boss’ lap with your silver tongue. There’s no place for you in the Ironfoot bandits!” said the older bandit as his eyes flashed blue and a blue light appeared at the end of the wooden stick. “Take this! Frozen Spear of Bone Chilling Coldness!”

A chill went down Barba’s back. He had lost his reason but hearing the name of the spell had rocked some sense back into him. His eyes cleared and opened wide. He let go of his sword and jumped to the side even before the spell materialized.

The spell took a whole minute to materialize after the older bandit was done shouting out its name. The old bandit was still holding his stick out, his hands trembling slightly, and the blue light was slowly forming into a blunt-edged icicle.

“Ha!” shouted the old bandit, collapsing to the ground.

The foot-long icicle shot forward at a reasonable place, casting a slight chill in the room, and making for the still calm looking bartender who hadn’t moved an inch despite everything that had been happening in front of her.

The bartender sighed. “I let you guys in because I needed a laugh today.” She brushed the hair out of her eyes. The approaching icicle appeared in her silver eyes, somehow looking tiny against her pupils. “But this was so pathetic, I can’t even laugh out of pity.” She raised a hand and waited for the icicle to get right next to her.

She put a finger on her thumb, waited for the icicle to touch, then flicked.

The icicle shot through the air with a loud whizzing sound. A boom racked the bar. The floors, the windows, the ceiling creaked and shook. Glasses fell and shattered and drinks spilled everywhere.

The icicle crashed into the ground behind the old bandit, sending splintered wood and shards of ice spraying all over the bandits.

The bandits cried out in pain. The splinters had even reached the cowering Barba and the still writhing Darbe, and the entire posse of pathetic bandits began to roll around on the ground, trying to take out all the splinters that refused to leave their skins as if they had been glued in.

Noel sighed. “You caught all that, right?” She was facing one of the figures sitting in the corners.

The figure started. “Yes, ma’am! I recorded it like you instructed.”

“Good,” said Noel as she tossed Darbe’s gold coin at the figure.

“Ma’am, this is too much!” said the figure as he flailed around for the coin and looked at Noel with a worried expression. His eyes strayed to the still writhing bandits, and he gulped a little too loudly.

“Too much? That idiot on the ground tried to my best liquor with gold coins. That isn’t enough for a whiff of Silver Moon Essence!” said Noel, with a bored expression. “Besides, I wasn’t paying you for the recording alone. You need to take them to the police station too.”

“Ah, sure thing! I might need to make a few trips since there’s so many of them. Or I could ask some of my friends—”

“Nah, my son will help you out,” said Noel as she glanced at the other figure in the corner. “Ya heard that, you lazy bum?”

The figure crossed his arms and pouted. The bar was filled with a silver glow now and the young man’s face was revealed from under his hood. “Why are you in such a sour mood anyway, ma? You know you could’ve left these idiots to me. Better yet, why’d you let them in at all? Did your magic barrier finally get too weak?”

Noel laughed. “If you think my magic can get weak, then you should ask yourself how I was able to make you come to life, boy!”

“Ah, great, here she goes again,” said the half-elf with a sigh.

“DNA spliced from my own cells, mixed with a completely synthetic blend of human DNA! A marvel of magic and science, a true son born purely from magic and data! Tell me, isn’t that the pinnacle of magic?” said Noel, some life finally creeping into her eyes.

The half-elf scratched his chin. “Whatever you say, ma.” He sighed. “So, just these guys, right?”

“Yeah,” said Noel. “Oh, and don’t bother coming back here tonight. I’ve got somewhere to be.”

The half-elf’s eyes widened. “You have somewhere to be? But I thought you didn’t have any friends.”

Noel narrowed her eyes. She raised her hand and the half-elf boy jumped. Before he could try to run away, he was picked up by the back of his shirt, and dangled from the air like a lion cub picked up by a mother lion. “You can go back to the house dimension when you’re done. If you forget the key magic, you’ll have to wait for me at the Academy. Now beat it!”

Noel threw her son and the bandits out of the door of the bar. The other robed figure had been watching everything with his jaw agape, but when Noel looked at him, he scrambled with the recording magic ball in his hand, and began running for the door.

When he stepped outside, he put a hand against his head. He swayed. “Wha—” He blinked his eyes and when he opened them, he had a focused look again. “Right, deliver bandits to the police, and go back home with the prize!” The recording magic ball in his hand glowed softly, then it crackled with static, and whirred with a strange sound, as if something was being re-recorded or re-written.

The grumbling half elf hid his ears and face with magic and picked up all of the bandits with magic. He ignored the impressed looks that people were giving him, and walked with the other robed figure to the police station.

Back inside the bar, Noel waved her hand and all the damage disappeared. The bar was still a dingy mess, but there was a set-like feel to it. Noel smiled slightly. She raised a hand.

And snapped.