Investigate the dark corner

Maila looked at the barmaid once again, and smiled.

“Fine,” she said, “I will see you in one hour. Now, there is something I must do.”

“Great!” The barmaid’s voice betrayed her excitement at the prospect of some alone-time with Maila, and it was with a large smile on her lips that she sauntered away through the bar.

As for Maila, she put the barmaid out of her mind for now and refocused on the dark corner, where no movement was now tangible.

Carefully approaching the corner, ignorant of whatever else was going on in the bar, Maila expected the pale man to come charging into view at any second, but nothing happened as she pushed on into the corner, until she got to the place where the walls met.

Confused but certain that she hadn’t been mistaken about what she saw, Maila turned round but saw nothing between her and the more illuminated area of the watering hole.

But as she stared at the patrons and the bartender, Maila felt a chill run down her back as she realized that something was very, very wrong. Seconds went by, and yet there was not any movement at all going in the bar, not anyone flinching or flashing their eyes.

Even a cup of ale which had been pushed over the counter remained frozen in mid-air, with a stream of brown liquid hanging out from it into the air beneath like a tongue.

“What is this?” Maila wondered, and tried to move. Her legs and arms refused to obey her, however, and Maila found that her head was the only part not rendered immobile by some invisible ****.

Then a part of the darkness took a step forwards from the wall and transformed itself in front of Maila’s very eyes into the pale, leering stranger which she had chased.

Grinning viciously at the immobilized Maila, the stranger then shifted appearances again, trading the unsavoury, scrawny look into the substantially more impressive one of a middle-aged, lean and tall man with short white hair and a neatly trimmed beard, whose grey eyes stared intensely at Maila. For clothing, the man wore a purple robe which was wide around the legs but tightened around his abdomen, with three buttons running downwards on the left part of his chest.

“Welcome, Maila…” The stranger said with a calm, somewhat amused tone of voice.