#I lost the original sheet music and spent so long digging for this post

[misosuper]

Shoutout to me during lockdown for having nothing better to do than transcribe the TMA fluff intro 🙏 Go forth and fluff

[popsicletheduck]

He of a Thousand Voices

My first Critical Role fic! I actually wrote this a while ago, when I was still trying to catch up, but I didn’t post it because one, I didn’t think anyone would read it, and two, I’m very bad at finishing things.

Rating: PG

AU (ish? it’s sort of an odd story)

Words: ~2k

Spoilers through Episode 78

The world is rain soaked, great grey sheets pouring from the sky. It’s early afternoon but it hardly looks it, dark and dim in every direction. Your sodden hood flops in your eyes no matter how many times you push it back. Each squelching step sends a splatter of mud against your already well worn boots. The pack on your back seems to weigh double what it did when you slung it on this morning and you can’t seem to stop shivering.

So the sliver of red orange peeking out from beneath the tavern door is a very welcome sight.

You hadn’t planned on stopping, after all you have business elsewhere, important business. But then this storm rolled in this morning, seemingly out of nowhere, and made further travel near impossible. So now you’re here, in the first town you walked through large enough to even have a tavern. You have to admit, it will be nice to sleep inside for once, although you’re not quite sure you have the coin to cover it.

You push the door open, greeted with the warmth of a crackling fire, the smell of bread and ale, and the soft sound of a lute being played gently in the corner.

It’s tiny and rough, not much more than a few hand carved tables and chairs arranged around a small stone fireplace set in the far wall. But it’s clean and it’s warm and it’s out of the rain and honestly you’ve spent the night in places a lot worse. The owner is a jovial halfling man who tells you a room is four silver, a meal is two, and a drink is three copper.

You carefully count your coin, and you buy a room and a drink, and you hope it’s not too much.

Given the time and the place you have the tavern almost to yourself. There’s only one other person, a human man sitting in the corner next to the hearth, the source of the music you heard when you first walked in. He’s not quite playing, just gently strumming here and there, notes and chords falling softly among the crackling and snapping of the fire. There’s a mug in front of him, but his eyes are half closed, and he seems lost deep in thought.

You take a seat near him, not out of curiosity or the need for company, but simply out of a desire to be close to the fireplace. You throw your cloak over the back of an empty chair and stretch your feet out as close to the fire as is wise, basking in the warmth.

The owner brings you your drink. You sip slowly, trying to make it last, and dig around in your pack for some of your dwindling rations. Your mind begins to drift as you stare into the flickering flames, worries about this journey, about what the destination holds for you, wondering what the future has in store.

A slight creaking of wood snaps you back to the present, and with a start you realize the lute player is now sitting right next to you. Your hand goes instinctively to the dagger sheathed at your side.

He holds his hands up, half a smile quirking his lips. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” and his voice is pleasant and his eyes are kind but how in the hells did he manage to move so quietly. “Just looking for a bit of company. It gets a little lonely here now and again.”

He’s somewhere in his late twenties, dark brown hair that falls just shy of his shoulders, short trimmed sideburns, pointed features. His clothing is simple but well made, a half cloak of deep blue draped carefully across his shoulders.

“So. Just passing through?” he asks.

“Yeah. Only stopped because of the weather.” You try to relax. Surely there’s no harm in a little conversation.

“Came in quite unexpectedly, didn’t it? Pretty odd, actually, for this time of year.” There’s a flash of something in his eyes, gone so fast you’re not sure you didn’t just imagine it. “Where are you headed, then?”

“Down the river.”

“Ah, so you’ve heard the siren call of great city on the delta. then. And what are you hoping to find there? Answers? A purpose? Or just adventure?” His fingers strum gently on his lute, nothing more than a few unconnected notes, like half of the opening of a song.

And you may have originally thought human, but the more you look at him, the more you’re convinced that’s not right. Half elf, maybe?

You shift a bit in your chair. “There’s a lot of places between here and there.”

“True. But you’re not headed to any of them, are you?”

“What about you? Surely you’re not from around here.”

He smiles. Your avoidance is unsubtle enough for a child to pick up on, but he smiles. Like it amuses him.

“No, you’re very right.” He takes a sip from his mug, leaning back in the chair. “I go wherever the wind takes me. Wherever there’s someone who want to hear my story.”

“Surely there are better places for storytelling than an empty tavern in the middle of nowhere.”

“Ah, but it’s not empty, is it. You’re here.”

Well it’s not like you have anything better to do, trapped here until the storm blows through. “So what’s this story?”

He smiles, and for no good reason it sends a shiver down your spine. You’re not sure whether it’s excitement or fear, or maybe both.

Not human. Not half elf. Not anything you’ve ever seen before.

“This is a story about scoundrels and misfits, about adventure, about heroes.”

“Heroes? Everybody and their cousins knows the stories about the heroes.” The great heroes from when the world was new, folk tales, legends, told a thousand times and with a thousand variations.

“Trust me. You’ve never heard this one before.”

His lute is back in his hand, and he begins playing softly, underneath his words, as he spins a tale you’ve never heard, about another world, a world called Exandria, and a group of adventurers called Vox Machina. A pair of half elven twins, an ex-noble tinkerer with inventions that kill, a holy gnome cleric, a half-giant goliath who is her best friend, an elemental druid destined to rule her people, an irreverent gnome bard, a chromatic dragonborn sorcerer seeking to prove himself. About their humble beginnings, doing jobs for mysterious strangers. About the death of a dragon, and unsettling threats made by unseen enemies. About the rescue of the emperor, and deals made with devils and one pulled back to life from the great beyond. About adventures deep below a dwarven city, unnatural beings from worlds beyond, a fight in a perverted temple leagues below the sun. About a journey through the sky and across the sea, to a holy city far to the snow covered north, a brush with the law and fights in a pit. About a lord and lady that came bringing darkness and death in their wake, the bloody fight to free a city, darkness defeated in the tunnels beneath. About traitors discovered and unexpected family found and-

And the wrath and ruin of a conclave of dragons, cities brought to their knees, civilizations destroyed, fire and ice and acid and poison spewn across the land. About the desperate push for ancient, powerful objects, scattered across the lands. One in a sunken tomb, and a deal with a goddess to save a fallen companion. One given as a gift, after solving a deadly riddle. One pulled from the bisected corpse of a tyrant, a duel unfairly, barely, won. One hidden at the heart of a cancerous tree, a cancerous being, in another plane of existence. One in a city far to the south, one in a shipwreck deep beneath the waves, found by another first, gained at the price of a death, a spirit implored to come back. And the last in a city made of brass, a game of chance lost and a battle not just for power but for freedom.

About the death of two dragons, an uneasy, unsettling alliance with a third. About plans made, allies gathered, a date set to march. The last night before the attack, heavy with the knowledge that not all of them would be coming back.

Through it all his voice bobs and weaves, twisting with the music. One moment he is himself, then a duregar general negotiating for his life with a knife at his throat. Then a crazed black powder merchant, the disembodied voice of a fiend, a daughter looking for answers. An ancient red dragon spitting threats like fire, a goddess, a sphinx, a dead man, an archfey, a broken child, a giant. Friends and foes and everything in between.

Finally he falls silent.

“Well?” you ask breathlessly.“What happened? Did they defeat Thordak? Did they survive? And what about Raishan?”

He just smiles.

You leap to your feet, the mugs on the table rattling as you slam your hands downs. “You can’t just leave it there! Good or bad, success or failure, I need to know!”

He still sits, composed, completely unfazed by your outburst. “This story may be mine to tell, but it is not mine alone.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Find me again when your journey is complete and I’ll continue the tale.”

“How? How will I find you?”

“Just like you did this time.” With that he stands, takes one long drink of ale, winks at you, and walks away.

You want to follow, to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and demand answers, demand the ending, but you find you can’t move, your body locked stiff and noncompliant.

You hear the door creak open. “Until next time,” he calls.

The door closes. You have control of your body again.

You rush to the door and fling it open. There’s no sign of the man, creature, whatever he was. No retreating silhouette in the dusky light, no footprints in the muddy road. Nothing, as though he walked to the door and then simply ceased to exist.

“Can I help you with something?” the owner calls from behind you.

You shut the door reluctantly. Is it your imagination, or is the rain beginning to fall softer now? Turning to the halfling you ask, “That man. Do you know anything about him?”

“What man?”

“Wha- The man who was in here before me, he was playing the lute, he said he was a traveler.”

There’s a long pause as the owner studies you. Whatever he finds seems only to put him at more unease. Finally, he speaks, hesitantly. “The only one who’s been here today has been you.”

You return the gesture, but there’s only honest confusion and concern in his eyes. He’s telling the truth or, at least, he believes he is.

“I’m sorry, it’s been a long day on the road, I must have dozed off.” You try to smile, but in your own mounting uncertainty you’re afraid it’s weak.

“You must’ve been real tired then. You’ve only been here a half hour at most.”

Half an hour. But looking back you’re certain the tale took hours in the telling. Or was it days? The more you try to remember, the more unclear your memories become. Was it just one man, or were there more? Was it told to you, or did you watch it unfold before your eyes? The story itself remains clear as crystal, frustrating incomplete, but the details around its telling are lost in a swirling miasma.

“...hey!” You realize the halfling has been trying to talk to you, and by his tone, for several minutes too. “Are you okay?”

“I think...I think I’m going to go to bed.” There’s a pounding in your head, an unsteadiness in your feet, an ache in your stomach like you haven’t eaten for a week. Maybe you haven’t.

“I think that might be wise.”

As you slowly climb the slightly rickety stairs to your room, you wonder just what you crossed paths with, and you think maybe you’re lucky to be in one piece with your mind intact.

You also start planning how you’re going to find him again.

You simply have to know.