Chapter 1- Cyanide tablets cost too much. I think that’s what Suicide pills are made of. (Yeah, wiki tells me that that’s what they’re called. Potassium Cyanide, if you wanna be technical)

Daire sat down, exhausted from the journey. He settled down in front of the bartender, a gorgeous young woman with large gazongas. The buzz from the alcohol had barely settled when he heard that voice, and Daire prayed to whatever gods he believed in that he had hallucinated it. But he didn’t and as he heard it again, Daire lost any faith he had previously had in the gods. It was like reading Wuthering Heights to him.

“Hey good buddy!” The same voice shouted again in his ear.

Daire momentarily considered feigning deafness, but he thought that the flirtative bartender would betray him, so he responded, completely without the enthusiasm of the other man. “’Lo Thomas.”

The other man’s smile fell, and his companion unsurprisingly laughed.

“Did you forget my name?!” “Thomas” asked.

Daire took a swig of the beer in front of him in response. “Maybe” he answered, as late as he possibly could.

“Dude, that’s messed up.” The man in black stated.

“Oh, be quiet, Leonard.”

“That’s not my name either.”

Daire muttered a curse under his breath. “What’re your names?” He was going to blame this on the alcohol. And the empty stomach. Not the twenty years that had passed between when he had last seen them.

“Thomas” looked serious for a second and pointed to himself and the “Leonard” as he spoke. “I’m Timothy, and he’s Luke.” He drew out the letters, enunciating slowly, as if Daire was a retarded three year old with hearing problems. Daire was none of those, though, just intoxicated.

“How’d ya escape?” Luke asked.

“Yeah! How’d you escape? Did you kill lots of people?” Timothy asked.

Daire wondered exactly how much violence it would require to get him thrown out of a pub in this rough neighborhood. Daire knew that he certainly had it in him.

“I was away.” He lied. Then, out of a minor curiosity, he asked, “Where’ve you been for the past twenty years? You ran away first.”

“Where weren’t we?!” Timothy answered.

Luke rolled his eyes at his friend. “Don’t ask. For your own sake, don’t ask.”

Daire wondered if he be able to shake off these two by pursuing this line of questioning. Then, maybe he could hook up with the hot bartender.

“Where?”

“We slayed nine headed monsters-“

“More like three.” Luke corrected, mid-sentence.

“Beat werewolves”

“More like regular wolves.”

“Killed the evil chicken killing monster.”

“He’s actually not exaggerating there.”

“Slaughtered this monster that was bugging this town.”

“That was the aforementioned regular wolves.”

“Luke, you ruin all the fun! Why don’t you tell the story, then?”

Luke shrugged. “I’m lazy.”

“Fine, we’re telling the story my way! The cool way, where we kill stuff and look way cool.”

Daire rolled his eyes, and then he noticed that the hot bartender was paying attention to the two, as were several other people at different tables looking at them. Daire was shocked that they weren’t snickering, after all, he was barely not laughing at the two.

“We also saw Cecil.” Luke added, more to Daire.

Daire thought that was a low blow. “And I suppose that happens at the end of your story?”

“Yeah. So, where should we start, Luke?”

“Start after the fall of Evansville.” Luke muttered, sitting down next to Daire. “You just had to ask, didn’t you?”

“Well… it all started with this guy…”

“Tim! What’s the rule?” Luke asked pointedly.

Timothy’s face fell slightly and he answered automatically, as if this happened fairly frequently. “I don’t get to tell our awesome tale until you drink your whiskey.”

“Good answer. Whisk- good service, here.” Luke said, as the bartender that Daire had been hitting on all night had handed the unordered shot to Luke. Luke drank the liquid easily, with no hesitation. “I’ve found that being half-drunk is a good policy for dealing with illiterate chicken farmers-turned adventurers.” He explained.

“Can I start now?” Timothy asked eyes aglow again.

“Yeah.” Daire downed the rest of his drink, ordered another, and began to listen to Timothy’s tale with a common commiseration, like an AP class forced to read crappy British literature written by females, completely obsessed with crappy romances, whose books could be abridged to a couple of pages instead of the Perdition-ish length they are now. Like the previous sentence. “Hey, Luke, is it worth it?”

“What? Listening to all of this?” Daire nodded. “Depends on how much you want to know about Cecil. And what we talked with him about.”

“Is the payoff worth the agony?” Daire asked.

“Honestly, no.” Daire was yet again reminded of British literature.