amare fiorì a larghetto

a short story by salmonandsoup

--//--//--

Your name is Izek Strazni, and you are soulless––at least, that’s what just about everyone who’s ever met you has eventually concluded.

Even your parents couldn’t put it any more gently than that when you asked them about it, confused as to what those people meant and why they sounded so sad. A good deal of those who live in Vallaki are born without souls, as souls cannot move on and come back in the cycle that they do thanks to the Devil Strahd’s shroud over the land of Barovia. Soulless people are gloomy, fearful, stumbling around like zombies with no ambition, no drive, no spark. You don’t think you act like that, but you are young enough to be uncertain. So you accept this. It is what it must be.

You live with your parents, your uncle, and your little sister, Ireena––well, lived with Ireena. Ireena ran far into the woods when she was three and you could not find her; you could not protect her from the direwolf that attacked you both, and that failure has haunted you all your life. You are the only one in your family born with curved horns on your head, however small, and a spaded tail, however vestigial. It sets you apart from the rest of your family immediately, a signifier of some hellish taint on the Strazni bloodline–– he’s a tiefling! your relatives whispered with shame in their voices when you were born, what if they think we align with the Devil? they asked, clutching their prayer beads. They still worry and weep. When you hear them bemoan their fate, thinking they’re alone as you head off to bed, you accept your appearance as something shameful, but as you are soulless, you don’t feel much shame unless you think about it too hard. It is what it must be, even if you wish it were something else.

The other children in your home town of Vallaki, led by one boisterous and catty girl named Valentina, tell you that you are a nasty, devilish brute because you are a tiefling, and that is what all tieflings are. They rip your paltry clothes, they dump cold water on you in winter, they cry that it was a blessing that that direwolf ate your arm when you were five. As your damp, empty right sleeve waves in the wind, you accept this, but as time drags on and you grow older, the taste of it ferments into something slimy, something acrid. You hurt, and hurt for years. You swallow abuse at school, at work, at home; you bear pained faces and not-so-hidden grimaces from your mother and father––you know that they secretly blame you for that fateful day; they blame your little sister running off, never to be seen again, on you instead of on your drunken uncle who was supposed to be watching the two of you play when the direwolf attacked; it is easier. They’re hesitant to comfort you. You know they believe what those children tell you when you confide in them at night. You know they do not sympathize when you tell them of how those children harass you, how they hit you, how they hound you.

Eventually, you don’t want to accept any of this suffering anymore, and when you’re thirteen, you become the dog that finally bites back.

Valentina makes one jab too many, and you grab her by the hair and slam her head against the wall of the schoolhouse in your all-consuming fury. She falls like a sack of logs that you’ve chopped into firewood, left side of her face bloody and crumpled. It doesn’t take a doctor to determine that she died upon impact. You can’t bring yourself to panic over the three witnesses running away, screaming to their mothers and fathers, because you’re fascinated by the sight before you––by the red spatter on the stone wall and the wide, unblinking, glassy eyes. A sick sense of satisfaction rises in you. It’s the first time you’ve felt anywhere near good in––well, ever. You really must be soulless if this is what makes you feel any joy.

But it doesn’t matter. You go home and do the same thing to your uncle when he starts to yell at you, the same impulse welling up, too strong to resist. It feels good, so good to finally get revenge for your lost sister, the little girl who constantly haunts your dreams with tearful eyes and screams of fear. Your mother shrieks in horror and runs when you meet her eyes, fleeing the house and bolting down the road. Your father tries to detain you, and you easily fend him off, knocking him unconscious with barely any effort. You’ve come this far, and you vow to yourself that you’re not going to back down now. Not now, not ever. But you need to run, and so you sprint towards the western gate, where Krezk may lay to take a soulless monster like you in.

Even with only one arm, it takes four trained guards to finally drag you kicking and screaming to the stocks with how you fight back. You’re struggling the whole way until they chain you down and slam the pillory shut. You sit and wait, and when the Burgomaster arrives, he looks down at you from the bridge of his nose, greasy hair fluttering in the breeze. The head of the guard reads the charges against you; the situation looks grim, and death encroaches.

“I should have expected as such coming from you,” the Burgomaster says after a moment. You glare up at him as best as you can, completely unrepentant. If you die here, you will die satisfied, and you don’t care. He scrutinizes you in the quiet of the evening, the only sounds being the rain falling miserably and your bestial snarling, writhing in your chains like a wild animal, horns clacking against the wood of the pillory.

After a long while, the Burgomaster smiles, lips curling slowly and wickedly. You grow still, bewildered at such a horrible, sickening expression, one you’ve never seen the likes of.

“I believe we have much to discuss, Izek Strazni,” he tells you, and motions for you to be let out of your chains. You can’t understand, and with your head busy trying to wrap around the situation at hand, you shuffle dumbly towards the Burgomaster’s mansion when the guards tell you to walk.

--//--//--

Your name is Izek Strazni, and you’ve accepted an offer you can’t refuse. The Burgomaster proposed that he will pardon your crimes in exchange for you becoming his bodyguard for the rest of your life. You will keep the people of Vallaki in line, and make sure they smile and stay merry, because constant cheer deters the Devil Strahd. If all is well in the town of Vallaki, you get to live and you get to enjoy the benefits of a noble life. If not, you die as you were meant to. For all of your previous bravado, you have to admit, you’re not ready to leave this mortal coil, not when you have plenty of revenge to exact on the miserable townsfolk.

You accept the offer without question, and you move into the Burgomaster’s mansion a few days later. There’s a warm, large fireplace, more food than you’ve had in a week in one single meal, and then a small room all to yourself. As you unpack your meager belongings, you look at the battleaxe that the Burgomaster gifted to you leaning upon your bed and think that you might like it here.

As it turns out, you definitely do like this new position of power. People were afraid of you before, but now they acquiesce to your demands. They have to; it’s law. With a look, you can cow even the bravest of dissenters. It’s a rush every single time. You know you’re here and staying because without you, the people would be angry enough to revolt against the Burgomaster and win. If you’re honest with yourself, you know you’d join them––but that would mean your certain doom if it fails. You remember Valentina calling you a cockroach. Now you take that insult and mentally wear it with pride; you will allow nobody in this town, in this land to kill you off, much less a paranoid weasel of a man like the Burgomaster. And now with your standing, the people of Vallaki have no chance at ever making you feel small again.

Within a couple of years, the Burgomaster appoints you as the captain of the guard, and your rule is harsh, but effective. You train the troops with brutal efficiency, and soon they are a force to be reckoned with, chasing out evil within the bounds of the city and slaying it at the borders of the walls. You take a great and fiendish delight in killing wolves. Your empty heart fills just a little.

One night in the winter of your seventeenth year, you stumble back towards the Burgomaster’s mansion after drinking yourself into a daze at the Blue Water Inn. The Martikovs are the only ones who aren’t afraid of you in this town, and you like to banter and debate with them as they cook the meals and pour the drinks. They’re fiery; they’re a challenge; you like challenges. You leave the tavern in good spirits, but about halfway back, a sharp pain wracks your body and you nearly fall over. Gasping for breath, your wide eyes see flames devouring the alleyway and licking up your body, eventually swallowing your torso.

From the flames sprouts an arm, far larger than your own (and you had trouble believing that was possible). It stretches your usually loose sleeve taut with its bulging muscles and barbed spines. You flex and wriggle your long, clawed fingers, shocked. On an impulse, you snap and flames dance in your grasp. You shake them away, and just like that, the fire surrounding you is gone.

You pass out from the shock and wake up a few hours later in the same alleyway with no pain and little recollection of what the hell had happened prior. When the Burgomaster sees you and your new appendage, his surprise moves to fear, and then to shrewd glee. When you ask to learn what went on, his grin shrinks just a bit. He says that he finds it perfect for a brute like you and that you shouldn’t question the arm because the reason doesn’t matter, only that you have such a boon that you both can reap the benefits from. He often calls you a brute, and by now you’re sure it’s not a friendly nickname. He watches over you more and more intensely until he thinks you’re completely under his thumb, demonic arm holding up his pedestal firmly. But he’s wrong. While you are loyal to him, he isn’t family. The only true family you had ran away or succumbed to their own misery over the years.

--//--//--

Your name is Izek Strazni, and you are now twenty-four years old. You’ve seen plenty of adventuring parties come and go through Vallaki on their quest to return home; some make progress, some never get off the ground where they wriggle like weeping little worms, but the outcome is the same: each and every attempt to destroy Count Strahd von Zarovich fails miserably and life returns to its normal, oppressive day to day. By the ninth party you meet, you stop giving a shit. The faces blend together and their voices all are just loud. There’s nothing to note unless they make trouble for you or for the Burgomaster, and once they see you, they choose not to make trouble more often than not.

The tenth party throws you for a loop due to its sheer size. There’s eight people of all kinds of races with all kinds of demeanors, and four of the party members are bards (if the musical instruments don’t give it away, the mischievous lights in their eyes and the sing-songy lilts in their voices do). These bards are loud, they’re lewd, they’re brash, but they’re quite kind as well, and way too willing to help the townspeople however they can (to the point of almost forgetting what personal space and tact is). One’s ridiculously tall, one’s ridiculously short, the other seems to be a tiefling like you with skin like red ochre… and yet, they’re not the ones you focus on.

The fourth, seemingly plainest bard is the one who catches your eye. He’s a young half-elf dressed in ornate green clothes that look like a mix of traditional bardic fare and a suit that a court minstrel would wear. He’s on the curvy and chubby side, standing a good foot shorter than you without his hat, and his curly brown hair is parted strangely and shaved on one side. His chinstrap beard is short and curly on his round face, and glinting, golden glasses sit on his slightly hooked nose. But his eyes are wide and big and warm, a chocolate brown pair that sparkle with delight just as easily as they shimmer with tears; you learn at a glance that they’re as expressive as the rest of him. You first see him in the Blue Water Inn, where he takes one look at you and then can’t stop, even if he doesn’t make eye contact. You glower at him, standoffish––suspicious. Who does he think he is, to look at you like that? There’s fear in his eyes, but it’s second to some other emotion that you have difficulty deciphering. When you don’t know something, you get angry, so you slam down your glass, pay, and leave before you do something stupid because you’re not in the mood to deal with repercussions. He watches you go.

You see him the next day as the party goes to officially meet the Burgomaster and be welcomed into Vallaki, and you watch him talk quickly and brightly until he sees you looming in the corner of the room and cognates your presence. Then he stammers and shakes with reddening cheeks. He’s very polite to you; his voice is softer and almost demure, he calls you “Mr. Strazni”, he clasps his hands like he’s about to bow to you when he talks, but he still can’t meet your eyes. You want to grab his chin and demand his attention, but you don’t, you just study him with a cold look until he’s finished and he scurries out the door after his friends. You’ve never met anyone happy to be in Vallaki, but that’s what he tells you. While his smile as he leaves isn’t as wide as you’d seen it before, it’s just as happy––a light rose rather than glimmering gold.

The same thing happens a few times over the next week and you grow tired of it. Why does he skirt around you and yet seem to watch you all the time? What does he gain from that? What does he want? It’s driving you crazy. You accost him as he’s walking through the town square, and while it takes him a while to answer with how his sentences stop and start and maze all over the place, he eventually––and rather bluntly––responds.

“I think you’re cute. I wanna ask you out,” he blurts out, cheeks nearly on fire.

You are completely thrown for a loop. Cute? You aren’t cute. Rabbits are cute. Cats are cute. Rats can even be cute, when they’re not running in filth. Cute things are small and fluffy and defenseless. You are none of those things; furthermore, you are the exact opposite of those things. How can you be cute? You ask that, and he laughs at your question, which immediately turns your confusion into indignation.

“Why are you laughing? Stop,” you demand.

“I’m sorry, it’s just––not that type of cute,” he clarifies. “I… think you’re attractive, you’re cute. I wanna ask you out on a date.”

“A date?” Once again, you’ve been thoroughly sucker-punched. The rituals of dating and the dance of romance are so confusing to you that you’ve never considered it to be a valuable undertaking. But he’s asked you, a soulless man, to attempt it.

“I don’t even know your name,” you say as some kind of defense. “We have just met.”

“Well, yeah, but blind dating exists and I’m here for a good time, not a long time,” he immediately rebutts. “And, oh, shit––really? I’m sorry! I thought I did, I swear I did. My name is Markos. Markos Emilo Passerini.” His tone is so earnestly apologetic that your annoyance slowly melts. Markos Emilo Passerini, what an elaborate name. You suppose it fits a bard. You nod once, satisfied.

“I will accept this date,” you tell him, and he lights up like the clear night sky. He leaves, dancing in the streets, cheering and whooping and causing quite the ruckus. You decide not to keep the peace, just this once.

One date turns to two, to three, to many more in the weeks that follow. He can’t get enough of you, and you’re starting to appreciate his presence. Markos is a bright young man of twenty-one, hailing from a city he calls Bru’clin. He tells you he and his party were trying to head to Waterdeep when a deep and dreadful fog swarmed over them during the night and they woke up in Barovia. You tell him he isn’t the first mouse in the trap that the Devil has set, and he pouts and folds his arms like a petulant child.

“Well, I don’t like it,” he says plainly. “I wanna go home. I don’t appreciate being kept here, even if I did meet you. Strahd can eat my ass and I’ll set the table with fine china for him; bon appetit, bitch-boy.”

The delivery hits you in a way no other joke has, and you laugh for the first time in your entire life. You don’t realize you’re laughing until he grins and joins you. He repeats the joke, which sends him into even brighter peals of laughter. You both double over together at the bar of the Blue Water Inn, and when he can finally catch his breath, he wipes tears from his eyes.

“No, but, seriously, we’re gonna kick the shit out of him.”

You don’t believe him fully, but you appreciate his enthusiasm; it is a welcome breath of fresh air. “If you’re an enemy of the Devil, you’re an ally of mine,” you say. His smirk becomes that soft, bashful, genuine smile.

--//--//--

Your name is Izek Strazni, and you’re obsessed with the lightness in your heart. Never in your life have you ever wanted to see anyone so often and for so long. Markos responds in kind, and the two of you spend your days together so frequently you sometimes shirk your duties. This makes the Burgomaster absolutely furious, but you couldn’t care less even when he screams at you for hours on end. Whatever you and Markos talked about that day drowns out his derision.

You get to know the rest of Markos’ party more intimately as time goes on. The other three bards met Markos at Cathedral University, their shared bardic college. The anxious little forest gnome is Shane, the other tiefling is Basil, and the giant of a boy, the goliath, is named Craigory––the last of these is obviously an alias, but you’re not a “level 4 friend” yet, and therefore aren’t allowed to hear that “backstory”. There’s a moody and petite high elf warlock in the group named Belris, a meat wall of a human fighter named Barnaby, an annoyingly cheerful and nosy firbolg druid named Daelar, and then, finally, an aasimar cleric named Asterin who has an unbudgeable stick up her ass. They’re all unique, and you’re content that they’re with Markos when you can’t be, even with all of their foibles. They’re a strong unit together, made clear when they drove off a giant wolf pack with you and the rest of the guard. There’s some animosity between some of the more reserved members of the party and you at first, but after a while, they accept your frequent presence, probably because you make Markos so happy.

And just like you make Markos happy, he makes you happy in turn with his idiosyncrasies. The man can’t dance very well unless he makes the effort to choreograph himself, but he has impeccable timing and constantly moves in a groove. Music flows in, through, and out him; music is him; he’s almost always singing and playing either his spectral keyboards or his lute, and he’s the most at peace when he does so. He’s usually quite happy, but there’s less of a spring tightly coiled when he’s playing music––he relaxes. He teaches you a few dance steps and you learn quickly, but you prefer just banging out rhythms on the wall with your hands and sometimes your feet, which he riffs on delightedly. He’s made songs about things you’ve said, often stopping conversations to scribble lines down to eventually cobble together. During the day, he flies around outside on a broomstick he owns, and he’s graceful like a figure skater, doing flips and tricks. It enraptures you, and always gathers a crowd, especially when Markos’ bardic friends join him in the air, the unit singing and playing music even while upside-down and corkscrewing precariously through the spaces between buildings. Markos always chimes in with a witty retort or a bawdy quip in the conversations he’s in, and even though his sense of humor is confusing, your confusion makes him laugh––that’s the most coveted sound you can get out of him. When he explains his jokes to you, you understand and you laugh, too. Laughter is fun. Nothing has ever been fun to you before, not even terrorizing the town.

That makes you wonder: can soulless people laugh? Can they have fun? Can they feel this lightness in their hearts? You bring this up to Markos, and he ponders this.

“Y’know, I never took you for soulless, ” he says after a while. “Maybe stiff and angry, but not soulless.”

“But I am,” you reply. “I was born without a soul.”

“Do you know?” Markos asks. “How can you tell?” In that moment, you realize that you can’t. You could never tell for certain. Some days it seemed indubitable, some days not so much. The day you killed Valentina and your uncle definitely was a day of rage. Could soulless people hold such rage?

“I cannot tell. But… I have killed two people. And it felt good.” The words leave your lips softly without your cognition. Markos’ face falls, and you regret speaking.

He’s silent for a long time. “Why did you do it?” he asks.

“The children in town hurt me, over and over, for years––and while I did not mean to do it, I killed one of them, the one who led them all to it. I killed my uncle, who was supposed to guard my sister and I, but a dire wolf ate my arm and my sister ran away.”

Markos closes his eyes. “Do you regret it?”

“Yes and no. I am where I am because of it. But it was not my intent, and I am feared and hated for it. I like the fear, but I put up with the hatred.”

“You like the fear because it means you won’t get hurt again. It’s a defense mechanism,” Markos says, and you hate it because he’s right. “I’ve killed people, too. I don’t like it, and I try to solve things peacefully and please people before ever drawing my rapier… but I have, and not always in self-defense. So I can’t judge you. And I definitely don’t think you’re soulless.”

You’re shocked to hear this. This little songbird has killed people? Well, you suppose he is an adventurer. But you wrap an arm around his shoulders. “I believe you did the right thing,” you say and hope that it comforts him.

It works better than you expected; he kisses you.

--//--//--

Your name is Izek Strazni, and you have come to the conclusion that you are not soulless, just “somewhat emotionally inept”. You are twenty-five years old and now engaged to your songbird who decided to stay and protect Vallaki with you and convinced his friends to do the same. The lot of you slowly but surely bring some sense of security to the town with your competence and your confidence, which bleeds into even the most timid of Vallakians. The civilians even start taking up lessons amongst themselves, learning to master their farming equipment as weapons of war, and some even taking to feeble, earthy magic. The Blue Water Inn is never quiet, now a hub for talk of hope and growing fever. Maybe they can fight this darkness. Maybe they can even win.

But all is not well, contrary to what the Burgomaster proclaims, for one fateful day at the end of the summer, half of Markos’ party vanishes in the middle of the night. They’d returned to the Blue Water Inn the evening before, but didn’t come down from their rooms the next morning. Markos is in a panic. None of his remaining friends can console him, not even Craigory––who you have learned is actually named Samuel. You nearly punt Basil through a wall; he’s only making the situation worse with his holing himself away and clamming up, even at some points morosely blaming himself for this even though you all know he has no control over any of the situation. Instead of that, you decide to take action and immediately organize a search party. You spend the day searching Vallaki with a fine-tooth comb, Markos by your side.

You find Asterin’s, Daelar’s, and Belris’ corpses in the underbrush of the Wachterhaus, infernal sigils carved into their backs. Markos staggers over and kneels beside them, wailing with grief. He cradles Belris’ body to him, trembling in rage and sorrow with his sobs. You clutch your battleaxe tightly; you will find whoever did this, and they will lose their head.

Later, you comfort Markos, and when you discuss it that night, you both suspect the Wachters with finality. They present themselves as a picture-perfect family, though you remember a daughter who hasn’t been seen in a while (though a woman’s voice is often heard meowing and yowling in grief as the nights go on). They seem suspiciously inconspicuous, especially the lady of the house, Fiona Wachter, and the whole family and each member of their staff vehemently opposes the Burgomaster. On top of that, those who walk in that house don’t come out right again, twitching and shaking and talking about trying to find their “heightened selves” again. They make plans to go back; they come out worse and worse. Low, guttural chanting in Infernal joins the yowling of the woman who pretends to be a cat on the nights of the half and full moon.

But the Burgomaster dismisses you both when you relay this information to him. When Markos demands to investigate, tears in his eyes, the Burgomaster snarls that he must hold his tongue with a rage you’ve only heard from him when he’s at his drunkest. Markos immediately recoils, trembling and shaking his head and fidgeting his tense and grasping hands in the way he does when he’s at his breaking point. You shield Markos as you two leave, fully expecting the Burgomaster to throw something at Markos, and when you settle down in the Blue Water Inn, you plan reconnaissance and revenge with Basil and Samuel.

But it gets worse. The walls must have ears; three days later, Basil and his belongings vanish without a trace. You can’t even find his corpse. Markos grows quieter, sings less, and you want to rip someone in half. Then Samuel goes missing, and Markos snaps, spitting arcane curses and fire long into the night before he breaks down and just screams . You have to do something, but you can’t disobey the Burgomaster, lest he find out and execute you. But you’re scheming all the while, trying to find some beacon of hope.

A month passes, and while Markos has regained most of his cheer, there’s a glint of cold steel in his eyes, and then sometimes an emptiness that fills even you with fear. It’s the eleventh hour, darkness encircling and closing in on you both… but with it comes Strahd’s newest playthings, another adventuring party: seven capable and angry people carrying two ghostly children with them. You and Markos befriend them easily and welcome them to Vallaki, and Markos whispers that he’s hopeful for the first time in a long time when you lay bed that night. They just might be the key to your victory. Soon enough, right before the Festival of the Blazing Sun, the new victims receive an invitation to Lady Wachter’s “book club”––her cult.

Your name is Izek Strazni, and you are a man with a soul and a fiancé. You keep the peace in Vallaki. That peace has been threatened, and your songbird has nearly stopped singing. You will not let this evil go unpunished if it is the last thing you do.