Chapter 12: The Broken Bard of Blackwater

Chapter 12: The Broken Bard of Blackwater

Once he was released back into the light of day, he was frantic. He made straight for the swamp’s borders, but he’d never really be able to escape from it. It was inside him now and his soul was as muddy as the velvet slippers he tramped through the muck with, and every bit as ruined. He fled upriver on the first barge that he could flag down, with promises that the count would pay them double for their trouble. They accepted of course, but no matter how fast they poled up river - no matter how far he ran from the terrible things he’d seen, the dreams kept coming. This chapter made its debut appearance via N0v3lB1n.

At first Louven Solovino tried to ignore them, but that was a complete failure. He wasn’t strong enough to ignore a nightmare when he could taste the muddy water as he was drowned or feel the way the fish devoured the fleshy remnants of his corpse. By the third night he was drowning himself in alcohol, which only dulled the dreams of murder and betrayal a little.

In the end, the only thing that did any good was to start telling the crew scary stories about the blackwater. That’s what he’d come to call the swamp because it had a nice ring to it. In truth he wasn’t sure it had a name. The night he told the crew about the fall of the Unwritten Rule was the first time he slept without waking up screaming since the day he escaped from the crypt of the swamp. It was still rough, without any of the flourishes he would need to add before he played it for anyone important, but it was a start. As long as he spent the day tuning his mandolin, and telling the swamp's stories, then he would be able to sleep at night. He’d still have dreams about the terrible history of the swamp, of course. The swamp still had to inspire him.

As long as he did as he’d sworn, Solovino would be an observer to the terrible history of the swamp rather than a participant; he would get to watch as the small fishing village of Triesten was torn apart by the hordes of the dead, rather than be forced to relive the agony of one of the victims over and over again. It was a devil's bargain, but he took it without ever once looking back. What he didn’t see was how his stories infected the minds of everyone he told them to. It was the smallest of sparks, but with each word, the influence of the golden Lich that was now his master, grew. The more the bard’s words spread, the larger that the domain that it was trapped in grew.

By the time Solovino reached the court of his patron, Count Garvin, he’d managed to whip up not just an impassioned ballad about how the brave warriors he’d fought beside had fought bravely he called ‘To The Last Man,’ but he’d also improved on the older song of ‘Riley’s Rotten Riches.' It had been out of favor, for some time, but now that Solovino had a new horror to link to the old tale, it seemed more relevant than ever.

In front of the court he delivered the sad news that even though the mercenary company was successful in purging the swamp of lizardmen, they were ultimately done in by another, far greater evil. The dreams made him think that some of the lizards had escaped, but that wasn’t something the count would want to hear, so Solovino glossed over it. The bard tried to tell them all about the Lich, but he was surprised to find he couldn’t. All he could tell the assembled court was that the undead rose from the ground and tore them to pieces. When he was asked for more information, he could only tell them about a few of the vile creatures, but no more. Some part of himself was no longer under his complete control, and that terrified him.

They never did though. They always begged him for another private show before he disappeared on the road once more.

He added new songs to his performances. Now whenever he sang about ‘Riley’s Rotten Riches,’ he sang about ‘Garin’s Goodly Gold,’ too. The swamp loved nothing more than when he tried to send brave fools to their horrible ends and rewarded him with an almost pleasant night’s sleep whenever he did such an awful thing. Solovino didn’t stop though, even though he knew it was wrong. It was the only thing that kept the darkness at bay.

Before the ill-fated trip to slay the lizard men of Blackwater Marsh he’d been like any other bard. He’d lived for wine, women, and song. Now though wine did nothing for him, women were only used to reassure himself that he wasn’t the monster he’d feared he’d become, and song had become a terrible punishment. He would have preferred that his mandolin was strung with blades rather than that he’d become the personal bard of the Lich that owned him now.

He’d tried to take off that cursed medallion so many times now, but each time the motion was met with the feeling that his heart was about to explode. One time he’d even tried to do it despite that. He’d gotten good and drunk and tried to rip it off as a perverse form of suicide, but he’d only blacked out from the pain and woken up in a puddle of his own vomit. He’d tried to confess to a priest, but even entering a church or walking near a cathedral was enough to make him physically ill now.

It hadn’t even been a year since his terrible brush with death, but he didn’t even feel like the same man he once was. Some days he didn’t even feel like a person anymore. He was a monster now, and as he completed his circuit through Abendean and Black Rock, before steering back towards Count Gavin’s seat of power in Fallravea, he could swear that he could tell if he’d sung one of his black ballads to the people he passed by on the high road just by the look in their eyes. It was a subtle thing, but more and more as he walked by strangers, he could see a darkness dwelling inside them where the spark of life and joy should have been. It was disconcerting, but even in the place where those darkened souls dwelled in great numbers the sky did not fall, and village life still continued as normal.

Normal for everyone but him. He played for harvest festivals all the way back to his patron to pay his way, but at each one he stopped at, they wanted to hear the older songs he was once known for. ‘The Maid, Waylaid,’ ‘A Pretty Witty Ditty,’ and other fun crowd-pleasing favorites. The fragile smile he wore to hide the monstrosity he’d become was much too fragile for such frivolity now though. No - he could feel them looking at him with concern now, but as soon as they figured out what he’d become, those looks would be replaced with outrage and pitchforks. He had to move on before that happened. He had to keep spreading the songs of his true master before all the awful things he’d done caught up with him.