Those big light brown eyes and large curls forced Darmariq's mouth into a smile. He ran his finger across her cheek, feeling as if her innocence lessened the weight his shoulders bore, wanting to press his lips against her visage with the foolish hope that he could hold her once more, travel through the scroll and flee the wilderness that surrounded him, and with that lapse in the present moment, his respite was rendered transitory. A creak cut through the air and a draft hit his face. He sighed. Why he tortured himself so, he did not know. He rolled the small drawing of his little niece and placed it inside his backpack.
He glanced up at the newcomer, a young and dark-haired individual clad in armour, and faintly familiar. Silver and ornate, not common of rank, he suspected. As Darmariq was about to look away, the soldier advanced and betrayed his condition with a limp. Darmariq narrowed his stare and caught a glimpse of blood covering his hand. A healer at heart, Darmariq tensed and straightened his posture, though he did not rush to his aid. He could have been paranoid and startled to strike. Thus Darmariq waited, not so eager to cause every commoner to demand he cure them of their private aliments either.
"We don't sure you imperial dogs here! Not after the Fildren Massacre just last harvest!" barked the towering lupine fellow, the snarl ever telling of his heritage.
The attendants' faces suddenly shifted from merry to murderous. It was a wonder they did not inadvertently conjure a demon. If anything would do so, it would be a symbol of the Fildren Massacre standing defenseless before them. Darmariq knew little of the ordeal, but what he knew was nothing short of barbaric. Empires are bloody things, he remember his mother telling him. As will be this tavern, he responded inwardly.
"I come not for a drink. Please, I have important-"
The gathering crowd interrupted the young man, throwing their fists in the air and screeching like hawks.
"Behead the fucker!" one short woman proclaimed.
"Martross dog!" said a hefty, balding man as he pushed his way through the crowd.
The soldier held the expression of an individual painting the floor with his making. Mob justice, Darmariq thought with disdain, the biggest oxymoron of them all, and as another commoner was advocating a hanging, a muscular brute who appeared to lack an appreciation for armour hoisted a table in the air, sending an individual reeling, and brought it down on the young man's head, shattering the wood into dozens of pieces. No attempts to detain the young man. No attempts to interrogate him. Nothing.
Darmariq grimaced, but it was more a wince of pain from a lack of reason, not that sympathies were absent. The young man would be fortunate if the strike had not shattered a portion of his spine, or ended his life, and before the mess was cleaned, the same staggering individual began to madly prance around the soldier. Darmariq grunted and stood from his seat. He slammed the bottom end of his bladed staff—a circular brass—on the floor.
"So," he said with a hint of condescension, removing his hood and revealing his young, soft-featured face and tied curly hair, "did anyone pry from the man the source of his injury? Such information may prove useful."