Timestamp: Summer, Day 1, AV 511
With his arms draped carelessly across the doorway, Devmond breathed the Dragonsmoke in deeply second hand. This room in particular was now filled with smoke giving the room a veil that made everything seem dreamlike. The beautiful woman, draped like decorative animal furs over her patron, had any flaw washed over by the perfumed fog, and the soft chinking of wine glasses were like chimes, the different pitches depending on the drinker’s eagerness to empty it. If there could be any place that the goddess Nikali could stay at home, it was here in a place that seemed to fulfill the needs kept so long hidden.
When Devmond had first entered the gates of Syliras' outer walls, he had felt the heavy influence of the Syliras Knights the moment the guards had followed him with suspicious eyes. This continued every street he entered, the same guards except with different faces. He had expected their ethically strict code to seep down into every crevice of the city. This place had been discovered by accident, given by a passerby whom he inquired where he could find good-looking distractions. It had been partly sarcasm since the person in question, a gnarled faced Akalak, had given him a nasty look for the Symenestra’s purple-dyed hair. Oblivious to the insult, the old man had smirked and said he’d find some at “The Golden Dragon”.
From the moment he entered the front door, Devmond felt more at home than he had even in his family web. He had never imagined there was somewhere in this wide world he could freely relieve a bit of tension. And in public no less. In Kalinor, his torrid reputation had embarrassed his family. Coming in with tousled clothes and smelling like a whorehouse, his mother often begged him to stop coming home if he walked in so trashed. It took a lot of practice, years even, to figure out how to dress in the dark and manage the rope streets to his house unseen. Eventually, the reputation became housed among only the tavern rats and barmaids the frequented hangout.
Like an disavowed reformed alcoholic in a liquor store, he wandered the Golden Dragon with his restless eyes darting everywhere never knowing where to stop. Devmond realized he must have been on his feet for half-an-hour. Feeling the the tiredness from an overexcited heartbeat, he had to laugh quietly at himself. Patience was not someone he had even attempted to get familiar. There were many other women whom he'd known better, and more could now be experienced simply at a motion of his hand and a whisper of his voice.