Can you keep a secret?
After his meeting with Professor Agathias, Malmr seeks a friend to lean on, but instead sees Lucie's powerful appearance of magic. Chaos ensues, and he invariably ends up taking the new little mage to Namarast, which appears as a kidnapping to those not around.
51 Gold for Lucie, Malmr completes a Fortune Quest and earns +1 Corruption and +2 Discipline.
Málmr
He let out a soft hum when the answer came that Danae was gone, and couldn’t help but smile to her gentle-hearted apology and her hopeful remedy. “You already are, auðœfi.” Her little hand was so delicate in his scarred, calloused one, and the shade was cool on his scarf and heavy cloak, and he could already feel his walls coming down, his fear of judgment. Lucie wouldn’t judge him, he was sure. She wouldn’t think him a monster.
He sat next to her and let his heavy pack fall off his shoulders in a clatter of pots and pans and tent poles, among other things, and let his broad hands rest in his lap as he considered her question.
“Hmm... I do, but they’re the sort of tales your mother wouldn’t want you hearing,” He said lightly, hiding the truth behind familiar levity. “I’ve been working to catch some very bad men, for one,” His tone hid the screams, the betrayal in their eyes, the guilt, the murder in the streets, blood in the sand. “And for another, I met the strega-viðr, the forest witch, again. Do you remember me telling that story?” His fingers laced together.
He passed the time telling her of his rather innocent first meeting with the witch who haunted the autumn woods, when he first came to Ivras and had his money stolen and had to camp in the woods outside of the city. It was a bountiful wood, so he didn’t go hungry or cold, but he’d never heard of the practice of making an offering for safe passage.
“She’s peaceful as long as you honor her,” He told Lucie gently, telling her of how to make an offering should Lucie ever find herself lost in the trees, as was common back home for him. “But I wasn’t alone the second time.”
He wove around the truth for the second encounter in the woods. He talked about his traveling companion and how they cooked together, he talked about the young maiden in danger. He left out how the maiden hated him, how he’d already attempted to arrest her before, and her violent mistrust brought the wights down upon the three of them. He mentioned the witch’s cabin, but left out how Sylen had found out about Málmr’s tusks and locked him and the maiden together to almost burn to death in the witch’s fury.
And he certainly didn’t mention that he’d made that journey with Sylen to hand himself over and die in the Order’s hands. It hadn’t ended that way, but some part of him still felt like it should have.
He ended the story with a muffled smile that made his eyes crinkle above his scarf. “And what of you, little Lucie? What’s been on your mind since last we met?”