Disclaimer: I don't own Neverwinter Nights 2 or the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. Those belong to Obsidian et al and Wizards of the Coast. Yes, the conversation in the latter half of the chapter is taken near-verbatim from the game - it says so much about Khelgar, no?
Sweetest in the Gale
Rocks in the Road
Lyssi smiled another brittle-feeling smile at yet another patron of the Weeping Willow who'd requested a song. The arrangement she'd made with Jorik, the innkeeper, was an arrangement as old as time itself - singing for one's supper saved valuable gold - but that still didn't mean she didn't want a break after a good two hours straight of songs, dances, and stories.
Thankfully, it wasn't that much longer before the crowd in the common room began trickling back up the stairs to their rooms. She thought she'd seen a flash of Galen's bright wardrobe, but that was probably just her eyes playing tricks on her; the man liked to talk, yes, but he was probably a good day and a half ahead of her, at least. Finally, there were only about four or five of them left downstairs, including Jorik, herself, and the shield dwarf that she'd seen ducking outside earlier with three thugs that hadn't come back in with the dwarf. A brawl, she thought absently, fingers coaxing a melancholy tune from her lute. She'd bet her extra strings on it.
"Here, lass." The stew smelled heavenly, and Lyssi couldn't help but flash a bright smile up at the innkeeper as she set her lute aside and plucked up a spoon. "You've earned your keep tonight, that's for certain."
"Thank you." She dug in eagerly, having felt her stomach wrapping in bows around her spine over an hour ago. "This is delicious."
Jorik tilted his head a little, rolling his eyes and walking back to the bar when the dwarf called for more ale. Lyssi looked over at the dwarf, wondering how many tankards he'd had. At least five, she thought, but that really wasn't her concern.
The sound of splintering wood was a bit more of a concern, though, especially when it was followed by a nasally hissing voice. "The Kalach-Cha! Find it!"
The dwarf turned around, and Lyssi could see his eyes go a little wider before a positively evil grin blossomed within his beard and he reached for the wicked-looking axe next to his stool.
And when the wave of bladelings and duergar cleared the little entry hall, Lyssi found herself leaping over the table even as her stomach plummeted through the floorboards.
Lyssi still wasn't entirely sure how she'd ended up trotting away from the Weeping Willow with the shield dwarf, who'd introduced himself, after the brawl, as Khelgar Ironfist.
Well, that might not have been entirely true. He'd introduced himself, commented on her mediocre skill with her blades ("Those flimsy little knives," he'd called them, then suggested she find something sturdier to swing. Like an axe.), and asked what had brought her out to the Willow. He'd sort of invited himself with her to Neverwinter after that; she'd gladly accepted because, really, he made a very valid point - two was safer than one, and a heck of a lot less boring. Granted, she would rather have "suffered" through this with Wyl, Bevil, or Amie - and thinking about her lover or her late friend sent sharp pangs straight through Lyssi's heart - but the dwarf wasn't too bad so far.
She was still deathly curious about how, exactly, a dwarf came to the realization that he wanted to be a monk, of all things, but she held her tongue and listened avidly to stories of some of the places he'd been as they'd made their way along the wide trail through the Mere that had the audacity to call itself a road. Mostly stories of bars. With epic-sounding brawls. But at least she was getting an education in Dwarven out of it, even if she did have to put up with Khelgar's commentary about how "flimsy" her sword and dagger were every time they had to draw weapons. Lyssi, highly annoyed with it by the time they'd crossed out of the Mere near Fort Locke, had finally snapped at him. The comment involved testing the "flimsiness" - was that a word? She thought it might be. - of her blades when they were rammed up a particular Dwarven orifice. Pointy sides first.
It amazed her, and probably would continue to do so, that Khelgar had just laughed and given her a lesson on how to properly swear in Dwarven. And Lyssi had to admit, it was a good language to swear in, all hard consonants and one of those languages that sounded angry even when one wasn't.
"Come on, Khelgar," she said when they'd stopped to rest after helping Galen with that pair of treacherous bodyguards, "please? I'm curious. Why does a dwarf want to be a monk?"
That started him off on a long and involved story about a fortuitous bar brawl with some "skinny robed humans" (Lyssi thought they sounded like those Sun Soul monks Brother Merring had hosted a few times), including a unique turn of phrase that she'd just had to jot down. It wasn't very often that the phrase "sailing like a drunk hippogriff" came into play, after all, much less when defenestration was involved.
"Can you imagine?" the dwarf said. Lyssi rather thought he sounded like a heroine in one of those two-copper romance novels Amie had liked so much. It was disturbing. "Lifetime devotion to brawling. It's their lives, their craft."
"So," she said slowly, one hand lifted to cover a smirk, "they were monks."
"They're monks, aye. Crazy water-drinking fools. Hmph. Hope drinking water isn't what makes them fight like that. Anyway, that life sounded like destiny to me. I mean, those skinny humans were good, and they spent their whole lives kicking the hell out of others. Training for it. That's when I knew that's what I wanted to do with my life. My purpose was clear."
Oh…oh gods, she was going to break something trying not to laugh… "I-I don't think," a slight snorting giggle slipped out, "kicking the hells out of others is the point of a monastic order…"
How did he not notice her sniggering? "Of course it is - well, as far as I could tell once my head stopped ringing."
"It's more," she had to pause to clear her throat, "it's more a state of mind and body." If what she remembered from Brother Merring was right, at least.
"You mean like head-butting someone? I already know how to do that, though sometimes I need to grab them by the beard or collar and yank their head down so I can hit it properly."
Sweet Lliira, the dwarf couldn't be that dense…could he? "It's not about violence, Khelgar."
"Oh, is that so? Well, I must have missed that part while they were wiping down the tavern with my face and throwing me through a window. Hmph… Shows how much you know about it. You didn't see them in action!"
Well, on the bright side, at least Lyssi had gotten a chance to perfect her impersonation of a catfish. One who was about to crack a rib from holding in her hilarity, but she felt the involuntary gaping she was involved in looked very catfish-y at the moment.
"…Never mind," she finally said. "Khelgar, would you excuse me? I'm just going to…over there…"
They probably heard her laughing in West Harbor.