Power Trio

They haven’t gotten many fairfolk in their audiences. It’s a change for Thekla, seeing a crowd of homogenous shapes and sizes after the motley New Laytham crews. The further they get from home, the more stark the difference.

The shitheads that Anise warned them about are crawling, now and then, from their caves. Carlos and Tarik ensure nothing scary happens, but they get the occasional sharp look or drive-by knifehead! hurled their way.

Carlos takes to disembarking from the bus first, walking a brisk circle around every rest stop they hit. Twice he comes back shaking his head: “Keep it moving, amigos. Not the spot.” After their Baltimore show, as they cruise through small-town Maryland, a cop car follows them through a sleepy suburb, its lights and siren dormant.

“Just making sure we don’t stop,” Tarik tells a nervous Thekla from the van’s back seat. “And why would we want to? Ain’t a thing going on in this kgakr’kor dump.”

That incident is scary, sure; but Thekla isn’t rattled these days like she used to be. Something inside has changed. She looks at the lumpy scowls and thinks: you don’t know what I know. You have no idea what I’m capable of.

Magic is a tool. She repeats that to herself. Magic is a tool in her tool belt, one that’s gotten her what she wants. Thinking of it has gone from nauseating to intoxicating.

Conna hops into the van during one leg of the trip, and it’s nice to shoot the shit with a fellow musician. She makes them promise to let her feature on a song once everyone’s back in New Laytham. “You’ve been tearing it up,” she says. “I need to be a fly on the wall in the studio. Like put me to work! I mean New York? That was some witchcraft, babes.”

“I didn’t realize we’d get that kind of crowd,” Thekla says. “It’s been a comedown since then.”

“Yep. NY, they really show out for fairfolk these days. Y’know, our first time there, we were opening up for GreenAche. Playing in a basement in the East Village. But this time.” Conna shudders, feathers flickering. “This time it feels like we’re part of something major, doesn’t it? Like there’s a movement going down.”

“And you brought us into it.” Kell twists round from shotgun. “I haven’t thanked you enough for this, girl. Anise told us how you went out on a limb. It means everything.”

Conna beams. “I didn’t go out on anything. I correctly diagnosed you as the shit. That’s all. You really wanna thank me, write us a song and let me sing with you on it once we’re at the Vail, girl.”

Thekla never tires of seeing the glow on Kell’s face whenever the Vail crosses her mind.

Richmond is the last stop on the tour. That’s both a shock and a relief. They’ve been going as hard as Nathan warned they would, spending every hour of every day traveling, working, or crashing. The schedule is so rigorous that most days they haven’t even had sex, just gotten to the hotel and passed out. Thekla is ready to see New Laytham again, ready to smell the funky air of the Shed and hear the buzz of the Labyrinth tattoo guns.

They play in this self-consciously country-fried spot, fake animal heads up on the walls and straw on the ground. It’s a fun juxtaposition to fill this rollicking hootenanny zone with a bunch of black clad punks and rockers.

And not a single fairfolk, Thekla thinks. Every ear in the place is round. This is Legendary’s first human only audience.

Still, no hate to the round-ears. They love the show, whistling and stomping and starting a mosh up during Thunder Thighs.

They really love Field Fire. Lighters come out and get to swaying as Evan sings. The band takes the audience’s cue and cuts the noise some, returns the song to the ballad it began as. Just goes to show, she guesses. You get a southern boy up in front of his peers singing that blue-eyed soul, and even the self-proclaimed metalheads get Mountain Mama misty-eyed.

There’s a tradition they started around Newark. Every city has at least one nonhuman enclave somewhere inside it, and Kell takes it upon herself to look up the most fairfolk bar she can find to gather everybody at. In New Haven they partied stupid hard with a den of halflings and Sion got higher than he’d ever gotten. In Richmond, it’s a spot called Fat Boar, a ramshackle dive with a parking lot full of motorcycles and windows full of neon.

The baroque hardwood bar in here is covered in nicks and sticky spots, and the beer/shot combos are fabulously priced. The tour rolls in and takes up full half the place. A scarlet hobgoblin mans the bar, stone-faced and efficient; Thekla orders for everyone in Goblin.

“Lo, confederate. Have care.” The hob’s accent is bitten and martial as he nods Thekla’s attention to a couple of booths filled with leatherclad orcs. “Yonder dwells the South Richmond pack, and woe betide the unwitting traveler/tunneller who makes of that doughty brotherhood its enemy.”

“Sagely you advise me, mighty confederate; my thanks. I recall now one final concoction for mine own delight. Pray provide this humble she-goblin a vodka soda, thanks.” Thekla tugs on Kell’s wrist. “Heads up, girl. We wanna give those biker dudes space.”

Kell glances their way. “Pfft. Those meatmen? Didn’t have to tell me that.”

They shuttle the next round back to the crew, frosty steins of cheap beer and dripping shotglasses. “Toast!” cries Sofia, who gets bubbly and maudlin when she’s had something to drink. “A toast to Legendary. The motherfuckers with the fittingest names in New Layth.”

Conna raises her glass. “We’re gonna miss you, bitches. You better not burn the city down before we’re back, kay?”

Kell lifts hers. “Shrike and Legendary, baby. Beasts of the East.” A musical clinking of glasses as the two bands cheer each other and down their drinks (except Tooth the gnoll, who’s outside calling his wife again).

They swap jokes and war stories. Olaf tells them about a time he was in the orchestral pit during The Skein Saga, one of the great dwarven chant cycles that made it mostly intact over from the old world.

“It’s me on the timpani, right, and this goblin named Trule he’s on the triangle. All night he’s just doing these little ting ting noises. And he’s getting so excited, because during the last number the prince reveals that he’s been a dragon the whole time, shapeshifts into this big fuckoff black dragon, and we had a whole dragon animatronic based on the Berenson manuscript. And when that happens, there’s an anvil hit. Big thing in chant cycles. Reserved for the big, big moments. This is the only one in the show. And that’s Trule. He’s been playing the triangle all night but now he gets out this big fuckoff mallet, big as he is, and he totters over to the anvil—”

Olaf imitates it, cracks the table up. One of the biker orcs over at the far booth glances up at the noise.

“He totters over,” Olaf says, “and WHACK. Slams this anvil so hard, I swear to the ancestors, the head of this mallet breaks off and goes flying, right into this expensive robot’s fucking snout, and it’s rigged to fall off, you know, when the skald casts his spell on it, and it triggers the whole thing early. Middle of the transformation. This big black dragon wheels in and its skull pops off. Immediately.”

They burst out laughing, except Sion, who’s swirling the straw of his Kentucky Mule.

“Do you suppose it was real?” he asks. “The Skein Saga. I wonder. Story or history?”

Olaf shrugs. “I mean, who knows with old world stuff, right? But you gotta wonder, even if dragons were real, how’s a dude supposed to turn into one and back. Where does he keep the rest of…” He burps. “…him?”

“If it’s magic, it don’t gotta obey the rules of conservation of bullshit or whatever it’s called.” Kell taps her forehead. “Trust. I happen to be magic myself.” Another chorus of laughter. Kell catches Thekla’s eye and winks.

One more round and Conna stands up, stretches her plumage. “All right, my loves. We’re gonna need to rally for Raleigh in the morning. Early start for the next leg or Anise is gonna pluck me. But I demand hugs from everyone.”

They take dutiful turns. When it’s Thekla’s, the harpy holds on extra-long and whispers in her ear. “I see you, okay, Thek? You’re fucking fierce. Look after our girl.”

Thekla kisses her pierced cheek. “You got it, Con.”

A choir of fond farewells and scooting chairs as Shrike and their tour personnel disembark. Then the Legendary foursome are alone at the table in a thicket of empty cups.

“And that’s the ball game.” Kell swirls the dregs of her ale. “This was everything, guys. You ask me, we showed those Warcry suits we mean business.”

“Quite the sprint.” Sion picks at a nail. “A promising first outing, once we shook out the initial kinks and Anise found us competent venues.”

“It feels like a big step, doesn’t it?” Evan says. As the DD, he’s sipping a sprite. “It’ll be odd going back to New Layth and playing the bars again.”

“Nah, man.” Kell gets her phone out, shows off their page. “We got, what. 5k followers now. We’re gonna fill the bars. I’m tryna…” her expression falters as she glances past Sion’s shoulder, then recovers. “Trying to play Ringlet Hall next.”

“Commendable confidence, Kellax.” Sion peers at the account. The latest post is a grayscale photo of Kell mid cymbal-hit, captioned only Power. Dalma’s got a weird way of posting, but it’s working. “It occurs to me at this moment that I ought to follow us.”

“Sion. Sion.” Thekla’s head is full of candy-colored fuzz. She tugs his cashmere sleeve. “Can I tell you something? Can I whisper it?”

“Very well.” He humors her, leans an ear in.

“Guys,” Kell says.

“I am ready to be a wizard now,” Thekla tells Sion. “I’m convinced, okay? But we have to be good wizards.”

Sion allows for about a half dozen genuine smiles a year. He spends one on the goblin now. “The best,” he says.

Kell’s hand lands on Thekla’s leg. “Guys.”

A chair screeches across the bar floor. An orc slides into it and kicks a pair of dusty leather boots onto the table. She’s broad, broader than Kell, and lime green.

“New Laytham.” She shows her tusks. “Long way from home, se’kva.”

The hob at the bar has frozen.

Kell levels with the newcomer’s gaze. “We were just about to get going.”

“Just about to skip town without paying your respects to the herd. Not good, New Layth meat.” Lime Green sweeps her legs off the table, heel knocking a leftover beer onto its side. The last gulp of it flows out. “R’vaiek j’ai, kral’gvak.”

Another orc makes his way over from the South Richmond pack, and another.

No talk in the bar anymore. The butt-rock soundtrack is a skin stretched over a hollow drum.

“This ain’t the fight, se’kva.” Kell’s calves tense. “Three on one?”

“I count four.” Lime Green sneers. “I see pink. You have fun playing music for the humans?” She lowers her shorn head, stares daggers at Evan. “Being good little fairfolk for papa pinkskin?”

“What you want,” Kell says. “You want to see the kind of orc I can be? How about you and me. And we leave the rest out.”

“See, I don’t think so.” Lime Green rolls her shoulders. “You move with them, you obey them. You think they’re worthy of that? You stand with them, se’kva. Ranva k'vulo, see?”

“Ranva k’vulo,” Kell echoes.

Nobody moves.

“Fossil Fuel.” Kell squeezes Thekla’s leg. “And we’re out.”

Lime Green’s grin widens. “Fossil what?”

Under the table, Kell’s foot taps out the first four beats of their opening song. One, two, three,

four.

Kell’s chair slams on the ground as she stands, knee bashing into the table and cascading glassware into Lime Green’s lap, head connecting with the chin of the orc standing behind her. Evan’s up at the same time. Sion dolphin-dives to one side, skitters on all fours for a second to grab his guitar, then bolts for the door.

Thekla’s legs aren’t long enough for this shit. She swipes her gig bag, breath hissing through her teeth, feels an arm close around her midsection. Kell?

No. That’s pack orc number three, boosting her up into the air. She twists her head down, sinks her teeth into his forearm. He bellows like a bull, but his grip doesn’t slacken.

A resonant crack and a bellow of pain and Thekla’s popped loose, passed like a football into Kell’s arms. The bar is a blur as the orc carries her into the night.

Kell roars to Sion, who’s already scrambling into the van. “Back door! Back door!”

Sion throws said door open and Kell dives inside, shoulder-rolling to cushion Thekla. Evan skids into the driver’s seat, pushes his gig bag into Sion’s lap, and guns the engine. It turns over, chokes.

“Oh, you piece of shit.” Evan twists the keys again, and finally the engine coughs to life. He floors it. The highbeams slice into the night.

Thekla scans wildly for pursuit, heart in her throat as she listens for Harley engines. Nothing.

“Sion.” Evan holds tight to the wheel. “I need you to open my bass bag and tell me if it’s okay.”

“What happened?” Sion feels around for the zipper.

“I hit an orc with it.”

Oh, no. Thekla remembers the sound she heard. She scoots forward, heedless of the seatbelt, as Sion uncovers Evan’s prelate precision.

A crack extends from the shoulder of the bass to the bridge. Thekla stares in horror as Sion gingerly lifts the bass, and the fissure grows. That thing's nearly in two pieces. Sion lets go as if it’s white hot to the touch. “Evan,” he says. “Are you in a place where you can receive bad news?”