Vend set the ale mug down and looked right in the bartender's eyes with a fixed expression of emptyness.
"I don't think you understand me, Seamus. The man's already dead, he's living on borrowed time. You don't stop Mormenar. At best, you delay him. But not forever."
The ponytailed, bearded man behind the bar looked at the burglar sitting opposite of him in the empty room of the Forsaken Inn. He did not give him that much to drink, but if he was being serious and sober - and his eyes, the only facial feature visible, were focused - then that Warstang type really had his days numbered. Suddenly, he felt more appreciative of his profession than he ever was.
The masked man pointed to his empty mug and sighed as the bartender refilled his drink. The man lowered his mask once more, revealing scars that would make most men at least raise a lip in disgust, and drank a swig from the bitter ale.
"Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I needed to leave things be, and who knows, they may have turned out alright"
"That's what you said about joining the Rangers, and that turned out better than the alternative"
The barman was right. He had said that about the Rangers, when he was considering not joining. But in his mind, he couldn't be worse off joining them than being stuck in the streets of Gondor, stealing and slitting throats. What future awaited him there? Murdered in a gutter? Rotting in prison cells? Initially, it was a selfish choice. He took whatever got him away from the streets and into a better future, or even the possibility of it. Now, he had a family, and a home in the Rangers. It was more than his future. It was the future of them, of Middle-Earth.
The burglar caught himself thinking these thoughts and snorted sarcastically. Who would've thought. He necked the rest of the drink, left a few copper on the bar and tapped two fingers on the bar, as he always did as a goodbye gesture to the barman, got up and walked outside. He had to ride back now. The Rangers needed to know of Mormenar Falathrimon, and what it meant that he had returned...or rather, that he had released him back unto the world.
The Dark Fire of the Falathrim had looked at him for the first time with wide eyes, ablaze with fury stemming from some cobwebbed, dark forsaken corner of his mind. His voice had changed, as if borrowed from someone else.
"I ride now....for wrath, for ruin, and a red dawn"
Vend had not heard a lot of things in his life that made him quietly shiver. At that moment, that thought was not there to give him confidence.
