Lina Inverse was in a foul mood when she and Gourry entered the tavern. This wasn’t particularly unusual, but the problem was most definitely compounded by the musician sitting in a corner. Lina remembered this musician. Oh, she remembered him. He’d somehow managed to survive three dragonslaves, seven fireballs, and countless flarearrows.
She had nothing against music. Not really. She did have something against songs written about her. Songs that got most of it wrong.
She elbowed Gourry. “It’s him.”
“Who?”
Lina gave up and ordered three plates of the special and ten of the dessert. She would need a lot of chocolate to survive the evening.
The musician in the corner began a new song. It was one of the worst.
The warrior and the sorcerress rode into Viden-town,
For they had heard of evil there and meant to bring it down.
An overlord with iron hand who ruled his folk with fear.
Lina gestured to the man handing around drinks. “Bar-tender, shut that minstrel up. . .and bring another beer.”
He handed her the beer quickly. “Can’t do that, miss. A musicker really brings in the custom.”
The warrior and the sorcerress went searching high and low.
“That isn’t true,” Lina muttered into her plate. “I think that *I* should know.”
“Know what?” Gourry asked.
“Nothing.”
They meant to find the tyrant who betrayed his people’s trust,
And bring the monster’s power and pride to crumble in the dust.
They searched through all the town to find and bring him to defeat.
“Like hell,” Lina said between mouthfuls. She was feeling much better with food in her, but the song was really annoying her. “What we were looking for was wine and bread and meat.”
They found him in the tavern and they challenged him to fight.
Lina snickered. “We found him holding up the bar, drunk as a pig that night.”
“What are you talking about, Lina?”
“Nothing, yogurt-brain.”
The tyrant laughed and mocked at them with vile words and with base.
“He had a lot of nerve to call me a little girl, in any case.” Lina smirked.
Brave Lina was to wise for him, his blade clove only air.
“A Bom-dei wind pushed him backwards over a chair.” That was actually a rather pleasant memory, even if the stupid musician had it all wrong.
With but a single blow she then brought him to his doom.
“Gourry hit him over the head with the soft end of a broom.” She hadn’t had anything to do with that part, but it was sort of funny. The huge man in armor falling backwards for the second time only with a hit from a bundle of straw.
And in a breath the deed was done the tyrant-lord lay dead.
Gourry looked at Lina apologetically. “I didn’t mean for him to hit the fire-iron with his head,” he said with remarkable clarity.
“I know you didn’t,” Lina agreed.
The wife that he’d kept shut up, they freed and set on high,
And Viden-town beneath her hand contentedly did lie.
“We went of find his next of kin,” Lina reminisced, “and to the girl confess, ‘Your husband wasn’t much before.’” She stifled a giggle. “‘But now he’s rather less.’ ‘He was a drunken sot, and I’ll be better off,’ she said, ‘and while I can’t admit it, I’m not sorry that he’s dead. So here’s a little something, but you’d best be on your way. I’ll claim it was an accident, if you’ll just leave today.’”
“It was an accident!” Gourry protested.
“Sure,” Lina agreed. “I don’t care whether it was. I still got plenty of gold out of it.”
Gourry looked thoughtful. “Um, Lina. If I’m the one who killed him, how come you got the money?”
“You said it was an accident, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but. . . .”
“Well, then the money’s mine.”
“That’s really not fair.”
“Gourry, this is just the way we do things: I carry the gold and you hit people over the head.”
“It was an accident!”
“I know.”
In triumph out of Viden-town the partners rode again,
To find another tyrant and the cleanse him from his den,
The scourge of evil and the answer to a desperate prayer.
“Don’t you believe a word of it. I know, cause I was there.”
The End.
This is based on "The Leslac Version," by Mercedes Lackey, whom you really ought to read.
