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This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 116, Wedding Bells pt. 1
🕑 Added 2022-07-04 15:30:39 +0000 UTC~~~~
Verity was skeptical about going to confront the Other Pedders. They had crashed a party, yes, and there had been some kind of large brawl with upwards of three dozen participants, but she didn’t quite understand how Alfric intended to resolve it peacefully by going with a gang of hog farmers to confront the wedding crashers. They weren’t bringing a cleric along either, and Alfric was the only uninterested third party aside from Verity herself. Conflict resolution was not, so far as she knew, his strong suit.
They had nine people with them, including Alfric and Verity. It was Jo Pedder (the groom), his brothers, a few of their friends, and the Pedder family patriarch. Alfric had said that it was a gang of twelve that had come to the wedding, almost all of them Other Pedders, distant cousins to the groom. Alfric thought that when they went to the Other Pedders’ farm just north of the hex border, there would probably be fewer, which would help avoid things going south. Few people wanted to pick a fight when they were badly outnumbered.
Verity had seen the Pedder boys around, and Mizuki had pointed them out on temple days once or twice. They were all cast from the same mold, well-muscled men with coiffed auburn hair, thin noses, and full lips. She wouldn’t have said that any of them were conventionally attractive, but it was hard for her to tell, with men. Mizuki, at least, had at one point been quite taken with ‘the boys’. They were wearing their work clothes, not the formal wear that they would get into later, and that, more than anything, led Verity to believe that Alfric was the only one hoping that a fight could be avoided. That was, if Alfric was hoping to avoid a fight.
The Pedders were angry, and Verity listened, trying to get some sense of what the dispute actually was between these branches of a large family tree. The topic at hand was mostly the current offense, crashing a party, but the reason that these Other Pedders hadn’t been invited to the huge wedding seemed largely to be a result of a decades-long feud between them, and not inviting them was a slight, especially given how large the wedding was. The slight was, to hear Jo tell it, entirely deserved.
The farm was a large one, with a house that might have bordered on being a mansion if it had better styling. Certainly it must have had a dozen bedrooms or so, but in spite of its size, it was fairly rustic, with clapboard siding and simple shingles on the roof. As they came down the walk, Verity saw people appearing in the windows, and before their group reached the house, people were already spilling out of the house.
“Let me do the talking, at least at first,” said Alfric. “I need to let them know what I know.”
“Fine,” said Jo. He cracked his knuckles.
“We’re going to try talking first,” said Alfric. If the impending violence bothered him, he wasn’t showing it at all.
An old man with white hair and a sunken face came out from the house, pushing aside some of the men who had come out before him. He wore dirty overalls, but the others treated him with deference, and Verity had to imagine that he was the counterpart to the man they called Pa Pedder. He had to be at least in his eighties.
“What are you pissfarts doing on my farm?” the old man asked.
“I’m Alfric Overguard,” said Alfric. He was twenty feet from the front porch of the house. His voice rang out like a bell, clear and confident. “I’m a chrononaut. On a prior version of today, you went to disrupt the reception of Jo’s wedding, and there was a brawl between the two sides of the Pedder family. I wanted to make sure that doesn’t happen tonight.”
“Five hundred people,” the old man said. He pointed a gnarled finger at Pa Pedder. “And you think that you can get away with that kind of snub?” More men had come out onto the porch, and they certainly looked ready for a fight, though it was still early in the morning, just after breakfast.
“It’s our right to invite who we like,” said Pa Pedder. “If you don’t act like family, you don’t expect to be treated like family.”
“How are those hogs treating you?” the old man asked. “You’re sitting on a silver spoon and pretending you ain’t.”
“This house,” said Pa Pedder, gesturing at the enormous building. Verity had no idea whether all these men were part of a multi-family living situation, or whether some of them were farmhands. “Filled with your spawn, poor as ever.” That seemed to answer that question.
The two sides had started moving closer to each other. Verity kept counting the numbers, and it seemed like her side was outmatched. She wasn’t going to actually fight, and Pa Pedder was at least in his sixties, if not older, so he was probably out as well. Looking at the opposition, there were at least a dozen of them, and they were unrolling their sleeves and removing jewelry, clearly preparing for a fight.
“We can still solve this without violence,” said Alfric. He was still the furthest one forward. “I’m here to try to meditate. If we can come to some kind of agreement on what a resolution looks like —”
“I don’t even have any idea who you are,” said the old man on the porch. “You’re a chrononaut? Hired by them, more like, once they got wind we were coming.”
“No one hired me,” said Alfric. “I’m just here to make sure that the reception goes smoothly, and I’m hoping that we can do that by talking it out.”
“We’ve already done this once,” said Jo, stepping forward to stand next to Alfric. “We put you in the ground.”
One of the men on the porch stepped down and came closer to Jo and Alfric, and Alfric held out a hand. “Seriously,” said Alfric. “We did put you in the ground. You got your arm broken. Todd, right?”
Todd hesitated. “Bullsnot,” he said. He looked at Jo. Their resemblance was undeniable, though the man, Todd, seemed a bit larger. “I’ll break your face right now.”
“You try it,” said Jo.
Todd was the first to act, rushing forward to punch Jo, and it didn’t connect, but that was the signal for the two sides to rush at each other, throwing down in the dusty area in front of the porch.
Verity began her song, which she’d been waiting on. She hadn’t brought her lute, but she had her voice, and clapped a hand against her thigh, which was more than enough to get the magic flowing. She put half of it into Alfric, amplifying his strength and verve with the combined power of the party, and she watched as he grabbed Todd’s arm. Alfric’s elbow swung down on the outstretched arm and bent it the wrong way with a snap of bone, and Alfric pushed the man away, looking for someone else.
It was very quickly difficult to tell who was who, especially given that they all bore something of a resemblance to each other, Alfric excepted. Verity sang a song of strength and modulated it with the rhythm and flow of the fight, giving strength to her side when they were on the offensive, then trying to make their opponents weak as kittens when the tide shifted. It was difficult work, and the effect wasn’t as strong as she would have liked, but it was still force multiplication, which Alfric had always said was a bard’s job. Verity tried to think of the strength like a lever that she could switch off and on, making all the fighters weak or strong as she pleased, and soon she had gotten into a rhythm with it.
Her work didn’t go unnoticed for long, and one of the men came toward her, fists clenched and murder in his eyes. She kept up playing with a stoic expression, because that was what she’d been trained for. Alfric grabbed him by the back of his shirt, yanked him to the ground, and then punched him hard in the stomach. By the time he had started throwing up, Alfric was on to the next person.
Many of the fighters ended up in the dirt, some of them from a heavy hit, others wrestling down there, getting covered with dirt and sweat as they tried to get each other into locks or holds. Alfric stayed on his feet, throwing haymakers and lifting people up and tossing them to the side, using their own weight against them. People started giving him a wide berth, but he would race at them, too fast to be stopped, and usually land a hit that left them gasping for breath. He grabbed someone who was on top of Jo and punched them in the kidney, then threw them to the side and helped Jo to his feet.
The fight didn’t last long. In Verity’s limited experience, no fight did. Fighters got gassed and needed a break, and even if it was possible for them to pace themselves, there were only so many times you could get hit before tiring out. Some of the ones who’d been knocked to the ground stayed there, groaning or trying to catch their breath. Eventually, it was just Alfric and Jo, and Jo was unsteady on his feet, up only because Alfric kept pulling him up.
“Are we done here?” asked Jo. He was barely able to stand. “Or do we need to say it louder for the people in the back?” He was bleeding from his nose, bad enough that it was dripping down his chin.
“Go,” said the white-haired man, still up on the porch.
Alfric hefted Jo up, then they both vanished.
Verity felt anxious as they walked back down the road. Some of the boys needed support, and so there were limping pairs. She didn’t really understand what was to stop someone from coming after them now that Alfric was gone, but maybe Alfric had a better grasp of the psychology at play. The whole thing had seemed brutal, and while she liked brutality, it was also soaked in a machismo that she didn’t fully grasp.
Dueling was the closest thing they had in Dondrian, but that was more formalized, and never between large groups like this. People had grievances, and they settled them through violence, which wasn’t a terribly big deal so long as there was a cleric nearby or available through the warp, and so long as the guards weren’t cracking down on it. She hadn’t witnessed too many duels in her life, not street duels, anyway, but it seemed to her that some people needed something to do with a boiling rage that they were feeling, and sometimes a good fight really did seem to get it out of their system.
“Are you okay?” asked one of the Pedder boys. Verity had been introduced to them quickly, and wasn’t entirely sure that she could tell them apart. She thought this one was Fernard, who everyone called Fern.
“Fine,” said Verity. “I used to go watch bare-knuckle fights on occasion, in Dondrian.”
“And this was like that?” asked Fern. He was bleeding by his ear, and was cradling one hand.
Verity laughed. “No offense, but Alfric was the only one with anything like proper training. I’m sure that wasn’t your first fight, but professional it was not.”
“Well,” he said, looking at the carvings that marked the hex border. “If anyone asks, I was moving around like a tiger, alright?”
“Okay,” smiled Verity.
They all did the warp together, then moved over to the temple, which was nearby, so that the clerics could render healing. Verity came with, having nothing better to do. She was looking forward to her scheduled nap, but wanted to see how Alfric was doing.
“I’m fine,” he said. He was sitting on a bench in the main temple area. “I’ll need healing, but I wanted to keep the clerics open for the others when they came.”
“I was surprised that you used the dagger,” said Verity.
“Jo got it bad,” said Alfric. “I was worried he would collapse. Better for him not to take the hit to his ego or standing, not on his wedding day.”
He had scratched on his face, and was clearly going to be nursing a few bruises if the clerics didn’t get to him. Verity sat down beside him on the wooden bench. “Did you think that was going to end in a fight?” she asked.
“I was pretty sure it would,” said Alfric. “I’d already seen it play out once. Sometimes people are spoiling for a fight.” He shrugged.
“Were you spoiling for a fight?” asked Verity.
Alfric looked at her. “It’s not that different from dueling,” he said.
“I was thinking that,” said Verity. “But I also find dueling to be fairly stupid.”
“Are you okay?” asked Alfric. He was watching her closely, intent in a way that threatened to raise her hackles. But this was Alfric, and as much as he could take down men and monsters alike with enormous violence, he was only looking out for her.
“Did Isra tell you about my encounter with my mother?” asked Verity.
“No,” said Alfric. “I only know that you had a fight, since that’s all you told me. Was there more?”
“I shouted at her,” said Verity. “I used bardic magic, putting in as much negativity as I could. It was bad. Worse than if I had struck her, I think.”
“Ah,” said Alfric. “And you’re drawing a line between this and that?” He gestured with his fingers, making a little arc in the air.
“I don’t know,” said Verity. “I'm considering it. I’d have liked that entire brawl better if they had come to us, if there had been no provocation. It would be more defensible, more righteous. Instead, we went to them.”
“True,” said Alfric. He shrugged, then winced at the motion. “It’s just a fight. It’s normal, more or less. No one was actually hurt, not that I saw, or they were hurt but not in any way that a cleric wouldn’t be able to handle.”
“I felt awful for doing that to my mother,” said Verity. “I still do. I wish that it could have been like this, where you boys just fight, and it makes things okay somehow.”
“This solved nothing,” said Alfric. “It’ll contribute to the feud, even. But it will help the wedding to go off without a hitch.”
“I suppose,” said Verity.
“Hopefully,” said Alfric. “Fingers crossed.”
“Did it feel good, to fight?” asked Verity. She had never taken much damage to her body. Alfric’s knuckles were raw, scraped and bloodied.
“Yes,” said Alfric, straight and to the point. “I’ve said before that fighting a person isn’t really at all like fighting a dungeon monster, but it gets the heart pumping in the same way. I think having you along for extra power probably wasn’t strictly within the rules of engagement, but we were there to send a message.” He wiped a bit of blood from the corner of his mouth.
“Ah yes,” smiled Verity. “The ‘rules of engagement’ for a farmyard brawl.”
“There are informal rules,” said Alfric. “No one really wants to hurt anyone else, so you avoid the head, you stay off those who are down, you don’t use weapons, or entads, and arguably not magic.”
“I saw you punch someone in the face,” said Verity. “Last I checked, that was a part of the head.”
“I had an opportunity,” said Alfric. “Also I was outnumbered.”
“And you don’t think anyone is going to get in trouble for the fight?” asked Verity.
“It’s like a duel in Dondrian, I think, under the discretion of the guard,” said Alfric. “I don’t know the local custom.”
“Local custom is to call the men who do this sort of thing idiots,” said Filera, who had moved over to the bench where Alfric was sitting. “Do you mind if I diagnose you?”
“Be my guest,” said Alfric, holding out a hand.
She didn’t take the offered hand, instead touching him on the side of the face. “What I’m looking for is brain damage, which would explain why you involved yourself in a brawl.”
“Funny,” said Alfric. He waited patiently, not moving, a statuary look that he often had when Hannah was checking him over.
“If you’re asking about local laws, which you should do before committing crimes, this is the sort of thing that’s frowned upon,” said Filera. “But for the most part, no one will come after you, not unless it was unprovoked or there was some serious damage to person or property.” She brought her hand down from Alfric’s face. “You’re fine, but you’ll need Oeyr unless you want to be a walking bruise for the rest of the day.”
“Thanks,” said Alfric. “I was just trying to prevent an altercation.”
“So you brought a group of angry men with you?” asked Filera. She rolled her eyes. “You can admit that you wanted a scrap.”
“I actually already had a scrap, in an undone day,” said Alfric.
“So you wanted two?” asked Filera.
“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “I think if we’d gone in with mediators, we might have been easier, but this way, there’s no harm, and … I think it’ll make things better, overall.”
“Better?” asked Verity. “How?”
“You’ll say that it’s dumb, and it is dumb, but those guys went out and had a fight together, and I think there’s some camaraderie in that,” said Alfric.
“You’re right,” said Filera. “That is stupid. I believe you’re up for healing now.” She nodded to Hannah, who was coming over with a frown on her face.
“Don’t I patch you up enough when we’re in the dungeons?” asked Hannah. She clucked her tongue. “You boys.”
“I take no blame for my gender,” said Alfric. “Besides, I know you’re good in a scrap.”
“And was I scrappin’? No, I was not,” she said.
“How did the other matter go?” asked Alfric.
“Well enough,” said Hannah. “Not a thing to talk about in public, but well enough.” <Switching to party channel in the interests of privacy, I s’pose. I talked to the cleric of Kesbin, Li, and he seemed suitably abashed. Apparently he’d been writin’ letters back and forth with Bethany for some time, and the marriage caught him off guard, which I suppose Alfric must already know.>
<Aw, I think that’s sweet,> said Mizuki. <You have to try, right?>
<Absolutely not,> said Hannah. <Under no circumstances do you need to confess your love to someone on their wedding day.>
<Unless you’re the one marrying them,> said Verity.
Hannah was quite aggressive in her look of scorn. <There’s no reason that he couldn’t have done his confession earlier.>
<This was his last chance,> said Mizuki. <I just think it’s kind of romantic, that’s all. And if Bethany was thinking that she was making a mistake, if she just needed an out —>
<Well, she wasn’t thinkin’ that, was she?> asked Hannah. <Because Alfric already saw how it played out. Ay?>
<It’s not a good way to conduct interpersonal relationships,> said Alfric. <I agree with that.>
<You’re all no fun,> said Mizuki.
<Nothin’ fun about it,> said Hannah.
<Are you almost ready to pick up the flowers?> asked Alfric.
<Screaming through the air as we speak,> said Mizuki. <And then I’ll be back with a few hours to spare. Did you beat up some people?>
<He crushed them,> said Verity.
<Nice,> said Mizuki. <Is there any problem that violence can’t solve?>
~~~~
The party sat together for the wedding, in a place of no particular prominence. They were all wearing their temple best, which for Mizuki meant a long cream-colored dress with pink flowers embroidered so they looked like they’d been splashed onto her. Her hair had been done up with Hannah’s help, a nicely symmetrical style with two buns resting beside each other at the back of her head, and she was wearing makeup, which she normally skipped. She was feeling good, overall, though she had a little tightness in her chest when she looked to the front of the temple and saw Jo.
Jo was wearing a long-sleeved dolman, red silk and cotton with so much ornamental trim that in other circumstances it might look pompous. Whatever kind of trouble he had gotten in that morning, he was now all cleaned up, and she didn’t have a problem admitting that she saw the appeal. There was, maybe, some world in which he’d be waiting up there for her, and while she didn’t wish that was how it had shaken out, a touch of sorrow had landed on her heart, soft as a butterfly.
The temple had been rearranged for the event, and almost all of the benches were in use. Garlands of red flowers hung on them, which Mizuki had gone through quite a bit of flying to get, and there were more flowers surrounding the altar that the ceremony would be performed in front of.
Bethany came in on a giant moose, which had been cleaned, groomed, and fed. It was only able to fit through the main doors of the temple, and then only just, with Bethany having to briefly duck beneath the frame of the door. She wore a crown of flowers and a white dress with panels of two-toned green, and enough trim around the low neckline to look of a kind with Jo’s extravagance. Mizuki had offered her the sword that made eyes and hair glow, but Bethany hadn’t thought that it would fit in with their color scheme, which was largely reds and greens.
Mizuki tuned out a lot of the ceremony once Bethany had been helped down off her moose and it had started in earnest. They had picked Xuphin for their select god, a very traditional choice, which meant that Pann, the seven-foot-tall cleric, was giving the brief sermon about the marriage compact. In theory, you could choose any of the gods as your select god, but Mizuki had never heard of anyone picking Kesbin.
<Hey Hannah, what does a wedding with Kesbin look like?> she asked. It took a moment for her to remember that Hannah was not, in fact, sitting with them, and was instead up at the front of the temple with the rest of the clerics. <Oh, sorry.> Hannah had a serene, pleased look on her face, but she was looking at Mizuki in a way that felt somewhat like it held murderous intent. You were supposed to be able to talk during temple sermons, so long as you did it through the party channel, and kept it short, but maybe the rules were different for weddings.
Mizuki’s eyes went to the clerics up at the ceremony, and settled on the cleric of Kesbin. He was a short man, almost certainly having shortened himself in glory to his god, much in the same way Hannah had symmetricalized herself. He was young and attractive, freckled and clean-shaven. If he was experiencing any inner turmoil, he was doing a good job of hiding it. It was bad for anyone to have an unrequited crush, but it was especially bad for a cleric of Kesbin, since they were supposed to have pretty extensive training in letting go of things that weren’t good for you, or that could never come to be. She didn’t pay too much attention to sermons, but she’d paid enough mind to understand that. She hoped that he would be okay. Kesbin was God of Secrets and Silence, so she would have thought that a cleric would have that bit figured out. Then again, she also would have thought that he wouldn’t have fallen for someone unattainable.
She glanced at Alfric. He cleaned up nicely, she had to give him that. According to Verity, he’d been in quite the fight in the morning, though he had demurred and said that it was all down to the strength and fortitude of the Pedder boys. Mizuki found that somewhat unlikely. There was no trace of Alfric’s role in the fight aside from the way he’d winced when he sat down. Clerical healing couldn’t quite get everything, and she knew that sometimes in cases of ‘exuberant activity’ the clerics went a bit light on their touch, mostly in order to dissuade people from racing back out into danger.
Mizuki returned her attention to the front of the temple, where her mind was supposed to be. The sermon was reaching its end, and the knife had come out, held between the bride and groom. This had always been Mizuki’s least favorite part of a wedding, and she wondered how far they would go with it. The last wedding she’d been to had been just a pinprick, not even visible from the back rows, but given the extravagance of this wedding she suspected they’d go further.
When Pann was done talking, the bride and groom exchanged their own words. You were allowed to use stock expressions, if you didn’t feel good about speaking in front of a crowd, but the two of them had prepared short meditations on love and companionship, and the importance of the marriage union. There was nothing particularly profound about it, but Mizuki felt herself moved anyhow, maybe because she knew them both.
Jo took the dagger and cut Bethany across the palm, then she did the same for him, and they joined their hands together, grip tight, before kissing. Hannah came forward and healed them both, the blood pact over in only a moment, and without much in the way of complaint or wincing from either of them. It was a sharing of pain, a mingling of life, and a promise that they would see each other through good times and bad, and it felt too personal to Mizuki, like she was looking in on something private.
Then the clerics came forward, one by one, to say their own lines, to give blessings and power to the bond.
Mizuki had kissed Jo in the barn, pressed him down into the hay and laid her lips on his, like she was drinking him in. There had been a lot of flirting that got them there, and she’d only meant it as more flirtation, a teasing kiss, the weight of her body on him suggestive instead of a promise. That was how it had felt to her, anyway. To him, she realized only far too late, it had felt like they were boyfriend and girlfriend.
And now he was up by the altar, getting married, and though she hadn’t spoken with him except in passing, it was growing clear to her that he really had moved on, and maybe didn’t bear her any ill will anymore.
There was applause when the ceremony was over, and the bride and groom went down the center aisle together, hand in hand. A flock of white birds emerged from where they’d been waiting in one of the clerical alcoves and made a circle around the inside dome, then went racing out the door, all at once, just ahead of the couple. It was a lot, but they were starting their marriage in an ostentatious way, and it seemed to suit them.
Comments
Clarity Amaranthine
*No* circumstances? Are you suuure? 😉
fbt
weddings are often a bit (or a lot) silly, but the moose was just absurd. Riding a moose into your wedding? I think more checks for brain damage (or inbreeding) might be needed in this village...
WachTraum
Note to self: kissing someone doesn’t mean you are together, but under no circumstances should you kiss someone and then his brother and then their brother.
