Nyx
Have you ever wondered why things happen, why we are who we are? Sometimes, things destroy your entire future; what do you do when you can’t control what happens? Do you have to live with the outcome because you were too damn young to understand it? This story follows a woman who has no idea she is a gift from the gods and is needed far more than she realizes.
When Nyx finally woke up, it was a cold morning. She groans as she lifts herself out of bed and stretches.
“God, why did I drink so damn much,” she grumbled as he rubbed her throbbing temples.
Her room is simple and basic; wooden floors, stone walls, wooden log ceilings, and a boring wooden door. Hell, even the decor matches everything else in the room. An oak tallboy dresser stood in one corner with a shabby wall mirror next to it. A small wooden archway leads to the bathroom on the other side of the room. Her basic oak frame queen-sized bed is pushed into the corner to save space on the other side of the room. Its mattress was made of a woven mat material and stuffed with straw. This side of the room has the only boring and essential window. All the same dull shit brown color and off-white stone. This room was in a nice-looking tavern (other rooms and such besides hers) in the middle of the city, which was not necessarily the capital but its sister city in the empire of Ruina.
“Huh,” she sighs, looking around.
She finally decides to go to the bathroom and clean herself up; it’s not like she has anyone to impress. The bathroom is all stone except the ceiling. Like the rest of the place, it’s the same log ceiling. The bathtub was cheap and wooden, located against the opposite wall from her and in the corner. The sink was a small bowl and a spout for water to come out of. ( We had mastered plumbing long ago) Though we mastered plumbing, most couldn’t afford even plumbing, so they still had to use buckets. Of course, in the other corner from the tub was the hole for, well, you know.
Nyx goes to the wooden tub and scrubs herself clean. She wears light brown linen pants, a tight, long-sleeved linen shirt, and a deer leather corset vest. At the end of her bed, she has a pair of worn-out boots that go to her knees.
“Man, I need new boots,” she thinks to herself. It’s too bad I need other things in the tavern first.”
She left her room on the first floor of the tavern and went to the front of the building to see if anyone had risen yet. In the front part of the tavern were a bunch of wooden tables and chairs that sat empty. A cold fireplace was on the north side of the wall.
“Shit, no wonder it’s cold in here.” she thought to herself.
The fireplace provided heat in a few places, but most rooms in the tavern had fireplaces, and the floors were made of wood and stone. When you first come in, you will see a long bar behind a half wall that connects to it on your left side.
Behind the bar are barrels full of mead that Nyx makes herself. Underneath the bar, she has barrels of mead that are watered down and usually mixed with other drinks that people think she needs to have. (Sellers generally give her samples and occasionally buy them outside the market.) She calls this slug. Slug is all right; it leaves an aftereffect later when you drink it. She usually just serves this to the local ruffians.
Next to the bar is the kitchen door and a hallway leading to Nyx’s personal quarters, such as the room, storage, and the entrance to the cellar where the mead is. You will find the stairs on the left of you from the kitchen door to the second floor, where the rooms are located to stay in. Each room is numbered and has a key to match it at the bar. The second floor wraps around the first floor so that anyone on the second floor can see what’s going on on the first floor.
She had a young boy named Miteus who came in and put logs on the fires at night in exchange for food and lodging. The boy was an orphan kicked out of the orphanage from the kingdom across the sea. When he left, he stowed away and came to Ruina with nothing. Nyx found him begging in an alleyway with no success. Since then, he has worked there and used a small attic room with everything he needed.
She also employs a woman she found half alive in the forest as the cook. Her name is Moyra. She has a dream of being the best chef in the world. She helps serve food and drinks, especially when it’s hectic. She is always ready when it’s time to work. As she says, her dream is to be the best chef in the world. Nyx went about and cleaned the tavern up before the day got busy. The day moved along, and around lunchtime, a group of guards came in for the noon meal. The guards were not of high rank and seemed very obtuse and torpid. The first one that sat down was an average, square-bodied man who smelled worse than he looked. The second one that sat down was tall but garish, and he smelled as bad as the first one. The last one, she couldn’t believe he was a guard at all. He was short and well-fat. Nyx hurried to get them their meal and found their conversation intriguing for some odd reason because, normally, she couldn’t care less what people said when they conversed in the building.
The first one who sat down spoke with a whiny voice: “I swear the King could care less about us. He made us guard the front gate, for God’s sake; that’s dangerous.” He whined more.
“Well, at least it wasn’t patrol,” the Thursday one said with a loud belch. There is talk about riders and spies from Exalos creeping around.”
“Spy’s no good, the lot of em,” the second one spoke with a bearish tone, “I hear there nothing compared to Exalos kings bitch, I hear she is as foul and ugly as they come, but she sticks ya right quick being an assassin an al’ that.”
“Maybe, a good poke in the arse from a good man would set her right out,” said the third, “Maybe, we should send the king’s good-for-nothing seed to do the deed.”
All the men laughed and talked about the people coming and going from the gate. Nyx finished serving the food, told the guards the bill, and walked away before she did anything else. The anger she felt was justifiable but unnecessary. She felt it surge within her, and she needed to go and find something to do before she killed the ignorant guards.
