Page 2 of Bound to the Dorm Elf
“Back in a moment,” I tell my companions. “Try not to gamble away your shame while I’m gone.”
Voras mutters, “You’re an idiot.”
“An exceptional one,” I reply, and blow Kaedra a kiss when she groans and slaps her forehead.
I weave through tables, heat pressing close — roast meat, torch smoke, sour breath. The tavern’s laughter clatters against my skull like loose armor. Somewhere, a singer is mangling a ballad about a queen who loved a kraken; the chorus staggers and falls on its face. I pass the dice pit where a pair of sailors argue over a throw, one with blood on his teeth, both with too much hope left in them. The smell of the harbor rides every draft: brine, tar, fish guts, and the copper tang of old blood from the gladiator sands next door, tracked in on boots and pride.
The corridor to the back is narrower, stone sweating, torches guttering. The din of The Broken Fang fades two steps at a time. With quiet comes the buzz of my own thoughts — the priest’s look, the slick satisfaction in it, like a knife freshly whetted. It should put a chill in me. It doesn’t. I’m too warm with liquor and triumph to be properly cautious.
“Gonna die bold, then,” I murmur to myself, amused.
The lavatory sits at the end of the corridor: a carved stone chamber with a low ceiling and walls etched with old spirals of script, darkened by steam and time. A single torch burns in a cage high on the wall, its light licking damp stone. The commode itself squats in the corner like a patient animal — a deep, rune-ringed bowl, lip worn smooth by centuries of ignoble purpose. The air is ripe with piss-sting, wet lime, and the medicinal bite of some cleaner a zealous servant has poured in and promptly lost the war.
“Charming,” I say to the empty room. My voice comes back roughened by echo.
I plant my palm on the cool stone of the wall to steady myself. My other hand drifts, habit, to the runes carved into my own skin. They’re quiet tonight, a purr in the bones rather than a song — the drink muffles them. I lean over the commode, grimacing at the fumes.
That’s when I see the rim.
The carved symbols — a ring of faint, hooked sigils — are older than the tavern, older than any plumbing a sane person would carve with prayer. Easy to ignore at a glance. Easy, unless you’re me and your life has been one long conversation with the alphabet of power. They’re not the casual graffiti of drunks; they’re a wheel. A spell. Dead as dust.
The closest symbols give a moth’s flutter of light. One pulse. Another. A soft, eager heartbeat no one sane would find comforting.
I snort. “Absolutely not,” I tell the rocks. “Wrong audience.”
The pulse answers, brighter. The faintest vibration shivers up through the stone, into my hand braced on the wall. The sigils breathe—gods, they breathe—ink-blue brightening to ice-white, then dimming, as if tasting the air.
I straighten a fraction. The room seems a shade smaller. The torch’s flame goes tall and thin, then guttering low, like it too is holding its breath. The commode’s water — and what sits in it — begins to tremble.
“You were a latrine a moment ago,” I say, because talking helps some people and I’ve had enough rum to pretend stone listens. “Be a latrine again.”
Behind me, the corridor yawns, quiet as a grave. If the priest has followed me, he’s subtle. My spine hums like a plucked string.
I lean closer, curiosity wrestling sense to the floor and sitting on its chest. The air right above the lip feels colder, as if winter has been decanted into the bowl. A breath of frost kisses my face. Beneath the stink rides something else — a sterile, metallic tang, sharp as a new blade. It doesn’t belong to Vhoig, or to any harbor I’ve ever known. It smells like… rules. Precision. A world with corners.
“Is this your penance, then?” I ask the unholy plumbing. “A priest’s little trick? You’ll need more theatre.”
The runes flare, and the surface of the water slicks flat as a mirror. Not water now — a pane of light, thin as skin, rippling once and then settling into stillness so perfect it makes my teeth ache.
I should call for Voras. For Kaedra. For a servant with more fear than me. Instead, I grin at the mirror and tip forward, drunk enough to be brave, arrogant enough to believe magic blinks first.
“Fine,” I whisper. “Show me.”
I lean in.
Reality wrinkles.
It isn’t violent at first; it’s indecently soft, like silk pulled through a ring. The room folds at the edges, stone lines bending, torchlight stretching into a bright filament. A pressure, delicate and absolute, slides around my shoulders, hips, skull, the way the sea takes possession of a swimmer and says mine. The cold rushes out of the bowl in a single breath and slams into my face, fills my nose, my mouth, my lungs. My eyes water. The stink of beer and piss detonates into nothing.
Sound explodes.
Not the tavern’s rough brawl of noise — no. A howl of air, a ceaseless, high-throated roar like metal animals in a herd. A keening whine, layered and layered, rising and falling in waves. Beneath it, a far-off thrum, constant, merciless, like a giant’s heartbeat in a metal chest.
The floor is gone. Stone becomes something unforgiving and alien beneath my boots. I stumble, boots slapping down on a surface that isn’t stone at all but some kind of hardened tar, gritty under the sole and slick with a shine of damp. The torchlight is replaced by a white glare that bites my eyes raw. I blink, tears spilling, vision burning with floating sparks.
The cold clamps down. Not the damp chill of Vhoig’s night but a clean, blade-edged cold that slices through silk and arrogance together. The air tastes wrong — no salt, no smoke, no human rot — only that metallic tang, and beneath it another scent, acrid and oily, like burned lightning. It coats my tongue, crawls up my nose, and squats there, stubborn.
I squint into the glare.
