Chp.41: Drinking and singing

That evening, as had been announced, there was a party. While it wasn't exactly a good idea to waste resources on such frivolities, it was important to keep everyone's morale high given the difficult desert crossing that awaited them, so Zamor had decided to indulge his subordinates with that little whim. However, to avoid excessive waste, he had decided to cook only the equivalent of three meals per person; since most dishes would be based on a large amount of meat, almost everyone would be full after eating three; if then someone had still wanted to have more, Zamor would have allowed to cook again. That way he would be sure that nothing would go to waste. On the contrary, as far as drinks were concerned, he had allowed them total freedom: after all, he had no reason to ration alcohol, since they had no nutritional value, and the same was true for water since they were literally next to a river and they could have replenished in a matter of hours.

To cook, the beastmen had lit dozens of bonfires which they had then transformed into braziers, and had cooked the most succulent meat they had among their supplies, mainly wild boar and trout. The trecouches that Haku, Darbi and Rhaegal had brought were very welcome, as they were considered delicacies; there weren't enough for everyone, of course, so Zamor held a competition based on various games, each with a large chunk of those animals up for grabs. The initiative was very welcome and soon the river bank was full of beastmen who competed in games of skill, speed and dexterity, having a great time and earning some of that delicious meat. So engrossing was the situation that, even though they had no way of verifying it, both Darbi and Gord were pretty sure Brenno had started a betting round, as the minotaur had become strangely shy in the presence of Zamor, Haku, or anyone there who held a minimum of authority and often the two had seen him walking around with a bag full of objects that he had almost certainly won at the game. Darbi and Gord hadn't said anything anyway: after all, if the beastmen enjoyed betting, why stop them? That was a party, it was made for transgression. The important thing was to have fun.

The dragons had felt a little uneasy when they arrived at the party; after all, they knew they weren't exactly welcome by everyone. To avoid problems, they decided to settle in the area that was mostly occupied by the Zamor's army and therefore by individuals they already knew, and who didn't look at them suspiciously as soon as they saw him. After all, it would have been quite difficult for them to enjoy themselves if all the beastmen around them felt endangered by their presence. In the midst of Zamor's army, however, no one treated them coldly, but rather they were invited to sit with the beastmen and even eat and drink with them. The dragons had been a little hesitant, but after a while they got used to the situation and started enjoying themselves.

"Come on! Let's put more liquid in the body!" Darbi exclaimed raising a glass of beer, to the happiness of all the beastmen present, who immediately took a liking to him. Even if beer in such small quantities didn't affect him, he liked to be addictive.

Suddenly there was a kind of rolling, and Gord and Brenno appeared together with a dozen of their underlings as they rolled several huge barrels full of alcohol. "Too easy like that!" the lizardman declared grabbing the cup that Darbi was holding and throwing it on the ground. "Guys, today our mission is to test the resistance of a dragon! Come on, incite this big boy to drink a whole barrel! Let's see if he still acts bold after that!"

Immediately the chorus of 'drink, drink, drink!' rang out in half the camp. Brenno let out a loud bellow and spoke to the crowd as if he were commenting on a show. "Come on, people, the bets are on! Will Darbi be able to stand after drinking a whole barrel? Or will he collapse like a boiled fish? Come on, place your bet!"

Darbi looked at the barrels. They were huge, and almost certainly Brenno and Gord had made them especially for him. The amount of alcohol in them was probably enough to have an effect even on an animal of his size. But he certainly couldn't back down. "Sounds like an honest challenge. Let's do it!" he exclaimed, and lifted the barrel as if it were a goblet.

The other dragons laughed too. "Darbi, you just returned from a mission, you had a long day, I don't think you should do it" Keita teased him trying to formulate an understandable sentence in the midst of laughter.

"Yeah! We all know you won't be able to stand on your feet anymore!" Kialandì yelled at him.

"Tsk! This is all to see!" Darbi exclaimed, then punched a hole in the keg and gulped the beer inside as if it were water. The beastmen (and maybe even some of his sisters, who knows) kept cheering him on with the chorus of 'drink, drink, drink!' all the time. It took him almost three minutes to be able to empty the entire barrel, and then he threw it to the ground, smashing it with his paw. His body suddenly felt different, as if it had gotten softer; he tried to stand on his legs, but first he staggered, then he tripped over his own feet, and in the end he was forced to kneel on all four legs to have more stability and avoid falling. For some reason, the sounds had suddenly gotten louder and the lights from the fires seemed to dance and take on strange shapes and colors.

"Ladies and gentlemen, here is the most feared creature in all the world: the dragon!" Brenno announced pointing to Darbi. "Look on the bright side: at least he's not passed out!"

A chorus of laughter went up in the camp. Even Darbi, between some sobs, laughed. Kialandì teased him: "I told you that you wouldn't stand up anymore!"

"Tsk! As if you could do any better!" Darbi grumbled, a little stung in his pride.

Kialandì stopped laughing and gave him a challenging look, after which she did what no one expected: she walked briskly towards the barrels and grabbed not one, but two, opened them both and began to pour the tasty liquid into her mouth. The beastmen and other dragons were horrified. "I can't believe it!" Brenno exclaimed. "She can't do it!"

Instead, Kialandì swallowed completely the contents of the two barrels, which she then threw on the ground and opened as if to demonstrate that she hadn't left even a drop. Then she staggered a little, as Darbi had, but unlike Darbi, she dug her claws into the ground and exerted all her strength to stand, and finally managed to keep her feet. "Were you saying?" she asked her brother amused.

A loud 'uuuuuuuuh!!' was heard throughout the camp, and Darbi blushed at what had just happened. "She just humiliated you so much!" Gord teased him. "I can't believe it, friend! You let your sister beat you!"

"Ah, no! Don't talk about it!" Brenno yelled bringing attention back to himself. "There's no way a woman can beat a man in a drinking contest, our masculine dignity is at stake! Someone bring another male dragon here now! Rhaegal! Where's Rhaegal?"

"Huh?" the dragon in question murmured, who was busy enjoying a skewer of wild boar meat and didn't expect to be called into question.

"Take him! He must drink at least three of those barrels!" Brennus screamed, and at least twenty beastmen rose and dragged the dragon towards the barrels, ignoring his protests. Rhaegal tried to run away, but Tikka and Keita jumped on him and forced him to drink too.

Haku watched the scene from the side, not lifting a finger as he watched his brother forced by his sisters to drink an abnormal amount of beer. He couldn't suppress a smile as he saw this scene. It was all so… normal. It seemed that everyone had forgotten who was a dragon and who wasn't.

"Aren't you joining the festivities?" Zamor asked him approaching and handing him a piece of wild boar leg.

Haku accepted it willingly and devoured it in two mouthfuls. "I've never been much of a party person. And I don't want to risk being dragged into a drinking contest" he answered, then he burst out laughing as he watched Rhaegal fall to the ground without any dignity.

Zamor chuckled. "Yes, I have the same problem as you. As the boss it would be my duty to remain vigilant in this difficult moment, but my subordinates seem to want nothing more than to see me blind drunk. I can't blame them, but I have to flee all the time like this" he said, and then he asked: "Isn't it beautiful?"

"What?" Haku asked.

"This" Zamor replied pointing to his siblings frolicking with the beastmen. "All this unity, all this harmony. If someone had told me in the past about dragons and beastmen having fun together, I would never have believed it". He smiled slightly. "I take this as a good omen. Maybe what we're both trying to achieve isn't as impossible as we thought"

Haku nodded. In fact it was true. Both he and Zamor had their doubts about the idea of ​​building a community together... but seeing that scene instead thinking that dragons and newcomers could create something together seemed almost natural. "Yeah. It gives me hope for..."

"Hey brother!" Darbi caught up with him, staggering as he ran. "You must come now!"

"I won't drink like a sponge, Darbi" Haku said immediately.

"No, no, don't worry!" Darbi said stopping in front of him and almost crashing into him by mistake. "We've decided that we'll spare you the drunk as a prize because you won the fishing contest before... but now you absolutely have to come, Rhaegal is about to face his penance! You absolutely must see this one!"

Haku noticed that indeed, for some strange reason, Rhaegal was trying to get up and balance on two legs. Determined to see that strange penalty too, he decided that for that time he could join the celebrations, so he ran to see the scene up close, followed by Zamor who in turn wanted to have a laugh.

The night went on like that, between laughter and huge quantities of beer. Pretty soon some beastmen weren't even able to stay awake anymore and collapsed asleep from too much alcohol. Dragons, fortunately, had faster metabolisms and so soon even those who had drunk several barrels of beer like Kialandì and Rhaegal were again in full possession of their mental capacities. Or at least, they didn't need to vomit like many beastmen did, of which obviously the main exponent was Brenno, who was so tipsy that he even started courting Teramon, mistaking her for a minotaur just because she had horns, earning a tail swipe so strong that it sent him five meters away.

Incredibly, however, Brenno had shown that he really had thick skin, because after less than an hour after getting a tail swung in the face by a dragon he was already on his feet again and dancing in front of the bonfire together with all the others. beastmen, singing songs about extraordinary heroes or legendary feats. Even those who couldn't dance shuffled along to the music, including dragons who still had to be very careful to avoid crushing anyone.

While the others danced, Finiar had kept a little to the side. Unlike many of her siblings she didn't feel very comfortable dancing in front of the bonfire. Rather, she loved listening to music and songs. They were extremely cacophonous due to the many voices not at all in harmony with each other, but at the same time they were strangely catchy and charming. It was as if the notes and sounds didn't need a score, but that by moving freely as they preferred they managed to form an even more beautiful song than the premeditated one. And almost without realizing it, perhaps because of all the alcohol that she and her siblings had drunk, at one point she began to sing.

Her voice was certainly not melodious: the throat and vocal cords of a dragon couldn't possibly produce sweet sounds. And her song wasn't composed of words, but of verses of varying intensity. More than a song it was a kind of music, as if she were an instrument. It was a wild music, hard as rock and strong as a hurricane, but strangely harmonic, and it seemed composed almost of the same flames that danced in the bonfires, and flowed as if it were the water of a river; listening to her, the beastmen seemed to hear nature itself singing. A music that made the body tremble with its intensity, but at the same time gave a strong sense of security and peace. It was a truly absurd combination, and probably no instrument ever invented by any newcomer would ever be able to reproduce those sounds so strange and at the same time so extraordinary.

Finiar only seemed to realize what she had done when she finished her song, for she blushed as she saw all the eyes on her. She was about to apologize when all the beastmen around that bonfire started clapping at the same time, and even some of those in the nearby bonfires did. Some even asked for seconds. "Uh... did you really like it?" Finiar asked timidly.

"Why shouldn't we love it? You were great!" Darbi exclaimed with a smile. "I didn't know you had such a talent, sister!"

Finiar blushed even more at those words. She'd never had a chance to sing and really never even thought about it, since most of their lives they'd spent being as quiet as possible, but she had to admit that she liked it. So, having received everyone's approval, she began to sing again, following the melody forming in her heart.

The party went on until dawn the next day. It was a truly beautiful moment and the dragons savored every moment of that event. New challenges awaited them in the future, but only for this short night could they afford to have fun.