“I swear, I would not have minded bending over for him and sucking his enormous—” 

David pauses midway of finishing his phrase and takes a swig of his ale. He blinks. Stares out at Markus, then mutters an almost inaudible, “Gotta pee,” as he rises to his feet once more.

Markus barely pays him any heed. “Go at it then, you fool!” he calls, before he wraps his arm around his wifeling, Sasha, who has—much to David’s dismay—made a palm over Markus’s erection.

The ex-mercenary and now travelling bard leaves them be. He wishes he could rinse out the image of Sasha whispering dirty secrets into Markus’s left ear out of his retinas, for as much as he loves his friends, David is not quite ready to watch them frolicking about; he doubts he ever will be.

A minute has passed. He has found a quiet place to do his business, down by a narrow creek. It is quite a nice view—the moon is reflected into the dark water. There is a small cave nearby, that watches over the sounds of droplets splashing against rock, which cover up the noises of David’s belt that falls to the ground as he undoes his pants, lets the velvet fabric drop by his ankles, then grabs his limp cock and lets out a content sigh once he is finally able to relieve himself.

The young bard kneels down to rinse his hands off in the water. As he begins to shake them dry, a feeling of unease tugs at his gut. Where giggles could once be heard, bouncing off leaves in the forest, now lives complete and utter silence of the morbid kind.

David does not wait in hopes of seeing what comes next. He immediately grabs his sword. Thinks, Something is wrong. Something is terribly, terribly wrong. And he is right.

An owl hoots above him. The cricket-song by his feet dies out. The deep forest full of lush, evergreen trees, is now a never-ending pit of darkness. 

David isn’t where he is meant to be anymore. 

He does not recognize this place.

The ex-mercenary rubs his eyes—once, twice!—to make sure this is not a trick of the light. 

It isn’t. As much as he had been laughing before, and ready to exchange banter with his comrades, up until the early morning sun showed its face in the sky: David cannot find the will in himself to make another sound. 

There is nothing more terrifying than lingering in a supposedly haunted forest with your friends, and having them disappear on you without the hint of a warning. If this is Markus and Sasha’s idea of a joke, it isn’t funny in the least bit. “Guys?” David clears his throat. His grip tightens around the hilt of his sword. 

He gulps. “H-hello? Is anyone—”

Something covers his lips. It’s warm. Probably a hand; though, David cannot truly tell in this light. 

“Another sound from you…” a voice tells him, “and I will turn those testicles of yours into rubble—understood, darling?”

David does not have time to utter another word before he, too, is pulled back by a strange, otherworldly force; away from the now-extinguished campfire, he and his comrades had built with a batch of leftover twigs.

The ex-mercenary truly hopes that whoever has just taken him captive is joking. He tries to figure out what he could have possibly done to enrage this stranger—yet, for once, David feels that he had been behaving himself quite well.

Fuck, he thinks, as cold sweats travel up his spine. Is this where I die?