Snippet #2524682

"What's that song?"
Richter's concentration was broken when Rahiq suddenly sneezed; he had assumed that she had been asleep as she had been lying on the floor with her eyes closed for the whole time. The surprise was enough for him to look down, causing him to blow straight into the flute, interrupting the song. He wondered how long she had been awake for, but it was nice that she had wanted to listen to his music.
"It is the Ballad of Roland the Indomitable." Richter replied, the tone of his voice making it quite evident that he wasn't going to just stop at answering the question, "It is the tale of one of Gar's greatest heroes, for Roland and his ten companions defended Gar from the savage Boneshaper Clan many years ago. They've never dared to come back into Gar since." Richter took a moment to return his flute to its case before realising that Rahiq, as a Dharan, probably had no idea what he was talking about, "The Boneshapers are a tribe of savages who inhabit the mountains to the south. They've committed every atrocity against the divines imaginable: twisting wildlife into mockeries of nature, making deals with dark spirits, murdering innocents and eating the corpses of those they don't drag back from beyond the grave with their foul necromancy. It's impossible to pass into Akhar by land because of those damnable monsters; they'll kill anyone who tries to pass through their mountains. In fact, I've heard rumours that Duke Emeric was murdered while trying to pass into Akhar recently and that the Boneshapers took everything he had on him. Apparently he was quite attached to foreign curiosities, Dharan ones in particular. Not that the Boneshapers will make any use of them, they'll probably just smash them since they're not made out of people."

Richter clipped his flute case back onto his rucksack and slipped his feet back into his boots, but he wasn't about to leave just yet.
"Do you know what you're going to do now?" Richter asked as he returned his attention to Rahiq, "You weren't doing very well before, and I doubt you'll do any better if you just go back without any idea of what you're doing."