Tales of Runeterra: Bunkering Down

 Tales of Runeterra

Chapter 16:

Bunkering Down

                “You know I can’t follow you up there, right?” Quinn asked Her eyes traced the sky as Valor stretched his wings and took to the air. His wings, blue and immaculately kept, spread wide as her partner screamed a challenge to the open, empty sky. He flew off, caring very little for her words as he went to take his place among the clouds, and for a second Quinn could only watch with a smile as her friend enjoyed himself.

                It wasn’t very often nowadays that he got that kind of unrestricted freedom. If he was flying, he was either hunting or working, which itself was just him keeping an eye out for anything he could find and reporting it back to her. He never got to fly for his own enjoyment anymore, and she wanted to give that to him whenever she could.

                He would be up there a while, and that was okay. They didn’t have anything else to do for the rest of the day, so even if he didn’t come back until after sunset they would be okay. Knowing him, he most likely wouldn’t.

                “Long day?” someone asked. Quinn turned, coming face to face with a captain. She wasn’t sure of his name—Quinn wasn’t in the city too often, so she didn’t bother to remember names—but that was something that could be easily fixed.

                “You can say that,” she responded. She tried a smile, but she wasn’t sure how it looked anymore. She had spent the last few months in the wilderness, with nothing but trees and bugs and an eagle who couldn’t tell a good smile on her face no matter how well or far he could see it. “And you…?”

                “Captain Harfaith,” he responded, a much more natural smile showing through on his rather angular face. There was a bit of stubble there, making him look rugged, if not unkempt. “And you are… Quinn, correct? The ranger?”

                “Ranger-knight,” she corrected, though she wasn’t particularly upset by it. Her designation was rather unique, after all.

                “Yes,” Harfaith said. “My apologies. And also… Yes, you can say that.” He chuckled, then moved to lean on the wall. They were currently at the top of the great wall surrounding Demacia, looking out over the surrounding farmlands and off into the horizon. The sky was already starting to turn orange from the setting of the sun—something that Quinn herself found beautiful. “Patrolling the wall has its dull moments, but it is still a job I take seriously. Protecting the people always comes first.”

                “Aye, aye,” she responded, the old soldier’s words bringing a small smile to her face. Seeing her reception, Harfaith smiled as well. The waning sun ran over his bronzed skin, highlighting the difference in tone between his face and his graying hair. For a second, she found herself wondering if she would still be in service when she was his age.

                It was something that she would have to think about another time.

                “Still,” the senior continued. “As much as the honor of protecting my people does fill me, I could still use some entertainment from time to time.” The soldier’s stern voice took on a whimsical nature as he turned from the setting sun. “Tell me, young’un, do you have any good stories from outside the kingdom?”

                Ah, Quinn mused. The age-old tradition of storytelling. Well…

                “Only if you have some good stories for me as well.”

                Harfaith laughed. “Well, I have a few. I’m sure some of my soldiers have a few as well. Would you care to join us?”

                Quinn looked back to the sky, and for once it took her a few seconds to find her partner. He was off, far from the wall, circling some unknowing prey on the horizon. He was a dot to her now, though she was sure that he was unrecognizable to any other person looking for him. It was likely that he would be out for a longer time still, and if he returned before she did he would make his presence known.

                She turned back to the captain with a smile. “I am feeling rather hungry. I could take a bite.”

                Harfaith smiled, then turned to the passageway she knew would lead them down to the mess hall. He walked with a limp, and Quinn made a note of asking about that story.

XxX

                The mess hall was as she remembered it: quaint and unassuming. There were lanterns hung on the walls, the fires in them burning bright and illuminating the room in a dull tone. Wooden tables littered the floor, with all manners of soldiers laughing and yelling around them. Mugs made dull thunks as soldiers carelessly slammed them onto the surface, spilling ale and water every which way as they relaxed after a full day of patrolling or training.

                She was sure there was food involved at some point, but it was the time of the day where most soldiers just wanted to relax. Ale of some sort was the preferred thing to imbibe, and the mood of the room certainly reflected that. Energy seemed to spring into Quinn’s bones from the very second she entered, and it took every part of her to resist the urge to run over to the tap and fill her own mug.

                She had been out in the wilderness for so long that she had almost forgotten what it felt like to unwind. She had made sure that Valor got his chance, but she had almost spent the entire night on the wall, unconsciously scouting the entire time.

                “Sit where you’d like,” Harfaith said. She had forgotten he was there, so lost in her own thoughts. That, too, was a luxury that she hadn’t afforded herself in a while. To be lost in thought was to be inattentive, and that could cost you your life outside the walls of the capital. “I’ll grab you some food and some ale. Though, I have to warn you, there isn’t much of anything good at this time of night.

                Quinn smiled at him, then nodded her head. The old soldier nodded back before wandering off, leaving her to her own devices. She looked around the room, seeing the random assortments of men and woman laughing around tables and drink, and walked over to the nearest one with an open seat.

                She wasn’t sure if they would welcome her, but she didn’t have long to doubt her decision. No sooner had she sat down did one of the soldiers—a bulky woman that was wider around the bicep than her head was thick—walk over to her. She put one of her tree-trunk arms around Quinn’s neck and pulled her over to the more populated part of the table.

                “Look at the little ranger!” she cackled. Quinn tried her best to free herself from the hold, but the woman’s grip was absolute. She didn’t even budge against Quinn’s struggling, and instead laughed harder as her compatriots handed her another full mug of ale.

                The ranger-knight despaired as she watched the woman bring the mug, not to her own mouth, but to Quinn's.

                “Wait, no, I can drink on my own, I’ll be fine oomph!”

                Quinn’s words were drowned out by the amber liquid streaming down her throat. In terms of drink, it was ghastly, burning her throat on the way down and stinging her tongue with how bitter it was. There was a hint of sweetness there—likely some bartender’s attempt at making the swill palatable—but all it did was offer a bit of oasis in a sea of vile, refreshing her palette just long enough for her to lose any sort of resistance she might have built to the disgusting drink.

It did, however, make her feel light and heady, though, so it was apparently strong.

“You rangers are all the same!” the big knight woman bellowed. Her voice was loud, easily drowning out every other voice in favor of her own. “You are all so serious and moody. If someone doesn’t force you into a good time you’d flee from it like an enemy in the field.”

Quinn found exception to that, but she couldn’t deny its truth. She couldn’t physically deny it, either, because the woman was still funneling the vile drink down her throat. She tried to ingest it all, but even she wasn’t able to keep up with the speed that the woman was pouring. It wasn’t for another minute that she was able to finish the ale, and when the woman finally released her from her hold it was to rapid, out of breath gasps.

“You know… I could have drank that myself.”

“I disagree,” the warrior-knight responded. She spoke like a true Demacian soldier—all pride and self-assurance. “The last time I trusted a ranger to—”

“Ranger-knight,” Quinn corrected.

“—the last time I trusted a ranger-knight to drink ale it took them an entire hour to finish their first mug. That isn’t fair to the rest of us, who are dutifully putting away our portions.”

“Have you ever considered that perhaps this young ranger preferred their drink in their bellies and not spilt halfway onto the table?”

“And whyever would they prefer that?” the knight asked, her voice dipping up an octave, genuinely confused. “That is hardly as entertaining.”

She burst into laughter once more, with the table quickly following suit. Ale filled mugs once more as words and jeers—the two possibly being one and the same—circled the room. The warrior-soldier clapped her on the back, and Quinn once again found herself struggling to breathe.

The world started to spin as the ale quickly caught up to her, but it was nothing that she wasn’t used to. If she paced herself, she could ride the buzz all the way to the end of the night and fly off with Valor to her next post and—

Another mug, this one new and freshly filled plodded down in front of her, alongside a piece of bread and some soup. Like Harfield promised, the food was hardly anything to look at, with the only real worth of it being the steam of the warm soup that wafted gently into the air.

“I see you’ve met Hilna,” he said as he sat beside her. His eyes roamed over her head, and Quinn already knew that he was looking the monstrous woman in her eyes. A smile spread across his face as they did so, before roaming back down to Quinn. “I suppose I should have warned you about her hospitality.”

Quinn wanted to respond, but her face was being buried somewhere in the woman’s chest.

“In my experience, you probably don’t want to fight it. She’ll just fight back harder. Drink your ale and eat your food and we’ll see where we can go from there, hm?”

Quinn wanted to object, but the way Hilna all but slammed her into the seat before the food told her that it wasn’t an option. She picked up the bread, wincing at how hard it was, and took a bite. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, but she had eaten worse.

“Try dipping it in the soup, girl,” Harfaith said. He then took his own piece of bread and did just that. He made sure to hover it in the broth for a few seconds before taking his first bite. He didn’t grimace the same way she did, so she could only assume the soup softened the brick-like texture.

Sure enough, when she followed his example it was much easier to eat. Much tastier too. She wasn’t sure what the soup was made of, but it was tasty. Tastier than dry bread, at the least. She continued her dinner, making a side note in her head to indulge in breakfast tomorrow, before looking up.

The rest of the table was happily partying away, Hilna at the front of the procession, laughing loud enough to fill the entire room. Her teeth showed through her smile, and her arms spread wide enough to grab every person sitting on her side of the table if she wanted to.

As Quinn was on her side of the table, she sorely hoped that such an event did not come to pass.

“And then, with his silly little staff held high in the air, he screamed fireball! I didn’t bother to lift my shield. I threw it to the ground, stabbed my sword into the dirt, and laughed. When his stupid little fireball became a candleflame I walked up to him and snatched my shield out the dirt. As he trembled before me, I hefted it in the air, and do you want to know what my words to him were before I slammed it through his skull?”

Quinn couldn’t tell whether the other soldiers wanted to know or not. They were all laughing so hard that any answer would have been loss in the noise. Hilna, of course, cared very little about their answer. She continued her story.

“I told him Petricite, then splattered his brains across the soil!”

The laughs just seemed to get louder, and Quinn had to grab her mug of ale to prevent it from bouncing off the table. The other patrons were slamming their palms into the wooden tabletop, barely able to contain their mirth as is. Quinn found herself alarmed, at first. Then an overwhelming jubilance overcame her, and she found herself chuckling quietly alongside them.

Years of conditioning in the field prevented her from ever being louder than she needed to be, but it was still nice to experience that indulgence through others. That pure, unfiltered joy was something she hadn’t felt since… well… Since times long ago.

“Ah!” Hilna bellowed. A tree trunk arm came springing out once more, and Quinn found herself wrapped up again. This time she didn’t try to free herself, and was rewarded with less of a vice around her throat. “Look at the little ranger! She’s learning how to fun!”

“Ranger-knight,” Quinn corrected, though more out of habit than anything. She brought her ale to her lips and took a hefty chug. “And I’ve always known how to have fun, thank you.”

The look on Hilna’s face told Quinn that she didn’t believe that. She continued to laugh, bellowing around the room and silencing all lesser voices. She pulled at Quinn once more as she continued her laugh, and to Quinn’s slowly ebbing horror, everyone else laughed with the giant of a woman.

“Ranger has some guts!” the woman screamed, and Quinn’s earlier thought of revealing her rank flew out the window. The woman holding her hostage likely wouldn’t care for it, and the people who would wouldn’t be able to oppose Hilna’s energy.

Quinn took another sip. It wasn’t as if she would like it that way, anyway.

“We party all night!” Hilna screamed to the crowd around her. The soldiers raised their horrible drink in toast to such an occasion, and Quinn was forced to look at Harfaith. He was the highest ranking soldier here, after all. The man, after giving a wry smile, raised his drink as well.

“I want all of you bastards in bed at a reasonable time. I’ll be waking you up for drills whether you fell in bed at sunset or sunrise, understood?”

Quinn couldn’t tell if anyone heard the man, but she could guess that at least the ones sitting nearest to him did. Still, none of them reacted, so she was sure that there would be a bunch of stone-dead tired soldiers manning the walls tomorrow morning.

She’d take a shift with Valor, too, in that case.

“To the little ranger-knight!” Hilna bellowed. The knights around her bellowed as well. It was against her better nature—to be loud in her field was to court danger, after all—but she wasn’t out in the field, and it was only right to be indulgent.

Valor was out there enjoying himself, after all. She should as well. As she knocked back her drink to the reverie of her newfound friends, she could already feel the extreme fatigue she was going to experience the next morning.

And, for once, she could feel it was worth it.