The Hero in Purple

The streets of Flamecairn were shrouded in darkness, broken only by meager, intermittent torchlight.  Clouds kept the moon and stars from view.

“Please, don’t hurt me!” a rough male voice, made treble by fear, pleaded from an alley between a butcher’s shop and a tannery. “If it’s money you want–”

“Unless you can pay 200 gold on the spot, your blood is worth more than your purse, Tarian Silverblade,” someone else interrupted. “Say your prayers–”

His threat ended in shocked gurgling as a sword plunged through his throat. A figure in loose clothing with a billowing cape appeared in the alley, forcing itself between the cowering victim and his rough-looking assailants.

“Could it be…”

“The Hero in Purple?!” Lights from a passing coach outside the alley picked up threads of violet in the figure’s attire, confirming the guess. The figure’s sword flashed again, this time as a warning, stopping millimeters from a ruffian’s nose.

“Let’s get out of here!” he yelped, and he and his companions turned tail and scurried away into the night.

“Are you all right?” the Hero in Purple asked Tarian. Their voice, muffled by their mask, offered no clues as to their identity.

“I…I think so,” Tarian replied, then took a long, shaky breath as he checked his pockets and vitals. “Thank you–” Tarian stopped short. The Hero in Purple was no longer beside him. He looked up just in time to see a swirl of fabric trail onto the roof of the butcher shop.

“Go to blazes,” Tarian muttered before leaving the alley himself, hoping to make it the rest of the way home without any more trouble.

***~O~***

Soaring strains from a violin provided ambient background music for diners in the tavern section of The Plain Crow Inn, the city’s premiere resting-house. On a small stage in one corner of the room, a beautiful human woman wearing a vibrant flame-colored dress with a plunging neckline danced while playing the violin. Her movements were sensual, and more than one flash of her bare legs appeared to onlookers through the slits in her flowing skirts. A few in the audience clapped along with her song and tossed coins into the open purse at the edge of the stage.

“Show some more skin for us, Yolanda?” one called out to the performer.

Yolanda turned her back on him, then bent backwards while continuing to play her instrument in a mischievous, taunting melody. Her long, dark hair brushed the floor, but her violin conveniently covered her cleavage from lecherous eyes. After a few moments of holding her back-bend, she continued about her routine as if nothing had happened. Yolanda was used to such attention from audience members. Indeed, she encouraged it a little; the ones hoping to spend the night in her room often tipped well.

“Ho there! Good to see you up and about, Tarian!” someone shouted as a young man in roguish leathers entered the tavern. “Heard you had a rough go of things last night.”

Yolanda played a little softer, making it seem like a natural part of her song, in the hopes that she might hear any conversation to follow.

“Aye. Might’ve been a goner were it not for the Hero in Purple,” Tarian answered in a voice that seemed too rough and deep for his slight frame. Other tavern patrons crowd around him, clamoring with questions.

“You met him?!”

“Tell us everything!”

“Any idea what they look like?!”

“What happened?”

Yolanda continued to play, transitioning to an upbeat folk melody,  while Tarian told how he was being menaced by some thugs in an alley the night before when a figure dressed in purple from head to toe intervened. He had no idea what the hero looked like, beyond being a bit taller than him; the hero’s mask and cloak and the darkness of the night made sure of that.

“What a shame ye don’t have more to tell than that,” Llewelyn Tinkerhorn, a performer from another tavern in Flamecairn, grumbled from a table near Yolanda’s stage. “So much for singing the praises of that hero.” He nursed a large tankard of ale while his friends loudly agreed with him.

“None of us will ever win the bet at this rate!” Conaire Silverstrings moaned. “Why did it have to be purple?! Nothing even rhymes with purple! Can't write a song without a good rhyme!”

“And every week the hero goes and does something else worthy of commemorating in song,” Ailin Larksong added. “And here we are, full useless to do anything about it because we can’t make a rhyme with ‘the Hero in Purple.’”

“Shame all around,” Yolanda agreed, coming to the end of her song. She knew all the other regular performers in Flamecairn personally and had been part of these discussions more than once. “Any of you willing to take my stage for a bit so’s I can have some supper?”

“S’pose I don’t mind, if I get the coin that comes with it,” Conaire volunteered.

Yolanda smoothly scooped up her purse from the end of the stage and tucked it into her violin case with her well-loved instrument. “All yours, my friend. Thank you kindly.”

Conaire set out his hat with a flourish and pulled his lute off his back before hopping onstage and starting a rousing singalong of a popular sea chanty. Yolanda smiled to herself and made her way to the bar.

“Done for tonight, Yolanda?” Miriam, the bartender, greeted the bard.

“Aye, I think so. Bit tired tonight, and not up for the chatter,” Yolanda answered.

“I can understand that. You always put on a good show, anyhow. Your usual tonight?”

“Please.”

“Comin’ right up.” Yolanda settled her violin case on the seat next to her and leaned on the bar, enjoying the relative quiet. While patrons throughout the tavern were talking amongst themselves, most of them were still trying to pry details out of Tarian about his encounter with the Hero in Purple. Even the men who normally would have been trying to sweet-talk Yolanda out of her clothes were choosing to leave her alone, at least for the time being. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Yolanda savored the time to herself, jotting down fragments of verses onto scraps of paper from her pockets as inspiration struck her.

The serpent’s gaze turned men to stone

And surely none could slay her;

But woman’s song on soulful flute

Would one dark day betray her

True to her word, Miriam was quick to bring Yolanda a large glass of summery citrus sangria and a leek-and-potato hand-pie. The bard enjoyed her meal at a leisurely pace, still eavesdropping on conversations around her and writing lines of songs between bites of food.

“I think it was just last week the Hero in Purple brought half a dozen thugs down and left them tied up in the city plaza, right next to the fountain! The thugs had nothing useful to tell me about the Hero, either. But what a song that could have been!” Llewelyn griped.

“And I heard the Hero in Purple put an arrow through a drunkard’s head before he could knock his wife’s teeth out, few days ago,” Ailin said, admiration coloring her tones. “I would have loved to see it! That’s the sort of thing I want to sing about.”

As she downed the last dregs of her drink, a chill breeze swept around her, sending shivers down her spine. A quick glance around the room revealed that no doors or windows were open to cause such a breeze. A grim frown settled over Yolanda’s features. She paid for her meal and took her leave moments later.

Yolanda lived in a room in one of The Plain Crow Inn’s distinctive turrets, three storeys off the ground. It was far enough that the noise from the tavern didn’t disturb her when she wasn’t on duty, but it was still an easy commute to work. She carefully stowed her violin case in her wardrobe and counted the coin from her purse.

“Good haul tonight,” she murmured before secreting the coin beneath the false bottom of a drawer in her bedside table. Her life as the main performer for The Plain Crow Inn was certainly a comfortable one. But Yolanda feared it was becoming too predictable.

After making sure her door was securely locked, Yolanda quickly stripped to her skivvies and tossed her performance dress into a corner. Then she pulled a dark cloak from her wardrobe and began to hum a haunting tune. A light breeze whipped up inside her room, though all the windows were closed, and sparkling tendrils of magic emanated from her palms. The fabric engulfed Yolanda, taking the shape of a set of adventuring clothes that disguised her form and covered her face with a deep hood and a mask.

Once her song was complete, Yolanda was unrecognizable, covered in fabric from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. She took a sheathed sword from inside the wardrobe and buckled it to the belt around her waist, then took a quiver and bow from behind the curtains at one window. Moments later, she slipped out the window and onto the roof of The Plain Crow Inn, silent as a shadow, with her deep purple cloak swirling behind her.

***~O~***

The full moon was rising over Flamecairn, illuminating a purple-clad figure attended by a phantasmal, humanoid shape on a rooftop. The phantom glided towards a commotion a few blocks from The Plain Crow Inn. The Hero in Purple followed the phantom’s lead, quiet as a cloud.

Below them, a rowdy gaggle of drunken bards stumbled out of the inn.

“Watch yourself! Them cobbles are loose!” one of them slurred as another stumbled.

“I’m fine, promise,” the stumbler giggled. Then she looked up and all mirth left her face. “What’s that there, on the roof?”

She pointed with one shaking finger. Her companions all turned to look.

On the roof, a lone figure with a billowing cloak stood silhouetted against the rising full moon. A moment later, the figure leapt out of sight, their cloak flashing purple behind them.

“The Hero in Purple!” one of them gasped. They all ran to find where the Hero had gone, hoping to see them in action.

But the Hero in Purple was nowhere to be found.