Nemaisare — Roleplayer Guild

Another sunrise meant another morning waking up to aching muscles, aching hands and aching heads, his own included. Aye, he wasn’t immune from the exhaustion that came of clearing away mud and stone and trees from a liquefied mountainside just because he’d known it was coming. But he rolled out of bed, biting back his groans for the sake of the youngsters so loudly complaining about their sore bodies. Ha! Let them get a bit older and still think their poor spirits today quite so miserable. He found their complaints amusing. After all, they’d be heading out again today. And the day after that. And they’d all still be expected to fall in as usual for their patrols. He knew the drill. He’d grown up in and around the fort. Never left it. And he thanked the spirits now that only one family had suffered serious injuries from their collapsed roof, and that everyone had been safely won from their houses the day before.

Now, at the least, they had only the rest of the livestock to worry about. The dead horses would have to be dragged in and butchered to save as much meat for the dogs as possible. And one or two would likely be carted off farther afield to keep the scavengers away. There’d be chickens to find, if any of them were still alive… Jules doubted it. And the houses would have to be dug out. Or at least systematically shored up, but they didn’t want the mud rotting the timbers before their time.

There was other news to hear, worse than a mudslide, by the time he was properly awake and settling in to break his fast. Word was spreading about some dead deer and the old rituals. Something found on a patrol; he suspected things were getting exaggerated. Nothing a man liked hearing on an empty stomach. Missing hearts came too close to pointing fingers for comfort. Of course, no one knew who had done it, but they all had theories, the Zarnofsky’s were not popular with all of their neighbours. Stories were flying about old grievances and new, problems other forts and families had faced that they might think, that maybe was, the fault of those living on the hill. It was hard to keep track so far out from any city what was wish and what was weather.

By the time he was grabbing a shovel and marching with the rest back to the slide, the story had grown and shifted. Now it was a horse from the stables missing a heart. Then he learned the woman who’d found it had been called before the Second, that her mind was gone, that she’d been terrified out of her wits, that the left over magic had wrapped itself too thickly around her, swallowed her self. Then he learned it was that young Samarie who’d reported the find and he scoffed at the rest of the stories. She had a proper head on her shoulders, that one. A little inexperienced with magic as thick as they had here, but wise enough to remember caution. She’d have been neither terrified into gibbering nor trapped by any spirithunger. He hoped so, anyway. He’d yet to see her this morning. And soon enough had other things to think about when he was assigned beside a far too talkative young lad. Olan meant well, and he did his work, but Jules had always been of the opinion that if you had nothing to say, you didn’t need to keep talking. To make matters worse, they were uncovering a henhouse. A few hours labour for some dead birds. They couldn’t have lasted the night. It was almost a waste but for the knowledge that they’d lost what was in the fields too. For that, he’d keep his complaints lodged in his gullet and choke on them like a rook on a bone.

His muscles, however, didn’t have any such restraint, and he cursed as his back twinged with the first shovelful of mud. His shoulders pulled and his arms tried to turn into rope. From the way Olan huffed out his words, Jules figured he wasn’t the only one suffering. Somehow, the younger man was still talking after the first hour, which impressed Jules more than he wanted to admit. True, he was huffing and puffing and taking a few minutes to finish every sentence, but there was hardly anyone else even trying to talk let alone holding up a conversation all on their own. Had he been blessed with even a fraction less patience than the amount he’d woken up with that day, Jules would have been telling him he could shut up any time he wanted to. For the moment, as their shovel blades scraped against the henhouse walls, he was content to learn about the quality of the mud they were moving, and the old life Olan had happily left behind, and his younger brother, and his mother and father…

When a break was called, and Brenna came around with the water bucket, they both blessed her heartily and wished her well. Going down, that warm, wood tainted liquid had all the makings of a sweet nectar for all Jules cared how it tasted. He was damned thirsty. Olan, drinking just as greedily, was, however, more eager for more news about that upset of the night before. Apparently he’d been part of the team that went out to investigate after Samarie, so it had been that woman, gave the whistle. The only reason he wasn’t sleeping now, so Jules gathered from being an old hand at listening to what wasn’t said, was because he was too frightened of what they’d found to manage anything like rest. That only worried him all the more. So, once they set to again, now able to see the wrong side of the henhouse they were looking for, he joined the conversation, listening more avidly and steering it around the trouble, more eager, now, to learn what he could of the situation.

There was nothing but black all around him. Black and the heavy, blanketing stench of rotting things and blood. He could smell fear too, but it was fading, slowly. Soon there would be nothing but blood and old death and stale air while he died. He’d killed the squawkers when he snuck into their little wooden house, lifting the latch with a glee that would have confused anyone more accustomed to using a door. Then he’d slipped inside like an awkward shadow and caught them, one by one, as they woke up and panicked and enticed him into playing a game that could only end fatally. Sometimes he’d used his hands, claws biting into loose flesh until he could break their necks. Sometimes he used his teeth, snapping them down against whatever part of the bird was closest to his face.

Their feathers tasted dirty, and the house smelled foul, even after dousing it in blood from that frenzy. But it had been warmer than the air outside, and dry, so he stayed after eating his fill. Belly distended and full, thoughts sluggish, he’d curled up in a corner after cleaning the strange smooth skin of his hands and wiping at the drying blood and feathers stuck to his face. And there he’d been caught when the world rumbled and slid sideways, when water and mud squeezed in through the cracks and left him stuck in a darkness as complete as in the den where he’d been born.

He had not bothered to try measuring any sense of time beyond eating when he woke hungry and going back to sleep, after the initial, panicked efforts he’d made to escape. He knew it had passed, he knew it had been a while because he was growing thirsty, and the place felt close and warm, despite the wet. His skin was damp and the air made him tired. So he shifted and paced one more time around the edges, feeling the walls through the hair on his head, though it was not as sensitive as whiskers, so sometimes he felt the walls with his head. He’d found the door once, but it wouldn’t move, so he stretched out against the far wall and waited to fall back to sleep. He was not frightened by the dark. But he knew he should not stay too long if he could help it. Not if the air got any worse. Still, it seemed too much effort to do more than scratch at the walls and try to pry the wood free from his position lying down. Heavy… The air was heavy.

The thumps were coming at regular intervals against the wall before they woke him. And in the end it was the scrape of metal on wood that roused the youth enough to lift his head. But he could only summon the energy to blink towards the sound. There was still no light, but the air was a little looser, and it didn’t feel so difficult to push himself up onto his elbows to lift his head out of the musty straw and test it for new scents. His ears twitched too, though they barely moved from their fixed place. No use, he didn’t know that noise, couldn’t understand it or translate it. So he shifted again, pressing against the wall, away from the door, a low, crooning growl starting in the back of his throat.

“Ayuh, I tell you… I’m glad… it’s the shovelling… for me.” His words were widely punctuated by his heavy breaths as Olan tried to emphasise his point. “Yes… sir… I’d as soon… never again lay… my eyes… on any such a sight.” They were scraping the bottom now, almost had the door free to open without risking any collapse of mud to either side. Olan’s energy was waning fast, but Jules didn’t mention it. Once his back had loosened up and his muscles warmed to the work, he’d found a rhythm and wasn’t going to begrudge a man being tired from staying up most of the night on duty. “Somehow it were worse… as I see… it… that there wasn’t… a bit… of blood on… on that deer. And nothing eaten. He was… just… gutted and… You know… the heart’s a good meal… But I… prefer… the kidneys.” And he was back to ignoring the point. They all knew no one had killed that deer just for a meal. If that was so, the meat wouldn’t have been left on its bones. Of course, not having seen it for himself, and having no particular wish to, Jules couldn’t say for sure, but why would he want to? Certainty was sometimes as bad as ignorance. Better to let the superiors do his thinking for him, now he had as many details as he’d never wanted.

So he grunted now, leaning on his shovel. “Sure, Olan, I know. Leave off a moment, I’d say that’s clear enough. Funny though, I ain’t heard a thing out them birds yet.” While he was doubtful as to their having survived whatever panic they’d felt with their poor little hearts intact, Jules also couldn’t have said he’d be surprised if they weren’t even aware of the problem. Chickens, after all, were chickens. And the thing was, the house wasn’t looking in too rough a shape. Folks around here built well. They had to. It wasn’t the first time the hill felt like being smaller. And wood was too expensive to waste.

At his observation, the younger man fell silent, looking grateful for the breather, and even more appreciative that Jules had finally said more than three words together. But though they both listened a moment more, all they could hear was their own heavy breathing. So, he grabbed the latch and pulled the door open with a good bit of force as the swollen wood protested the movement. And was forced back a step by the smell that surged out with the stale air, and then pushed back another when a lean shape leapt out at him. He felt a weight and sharp pinpricks digging through the fabric of his tunic and cloak as he struggled to keep an arm between his body and the beast’s while it growled and bit. He cursed as teeth met through the muscle of his forearm, too breathless to scream.

Then came a hollow thud and the weight grew limp and slipped to the ground. And he stood alongside Olan, pressing a hand to the bite on his arm and staring down with the other as the rest of the crew came running. A naked young man was lying in the mud, face down and hopefully drowning was Jules’ first wicked thought, but no one seemed to know what to do until Olan remembered he was bleeding. And then there was nothing but a rush he couldn’t understand as both he and the unconscious thing were helped or hauled, respectively, onto the bed of a wagon and sent back up to the fort. His only consolation, as he stared at his attacker, was that he’d been hogtied and gagged, to avoid a repeat performance.

When the door opened, he rushed out, yowling, and pushed himself off his haunches to leap at the first obstacle to present itself. A man. He could see nothing else as he struggled to subdue him; the sun was too bright after so many hours without it. So he clung instead and bent his neck to find the only bit of flesh his teeth could reach. He was rewarded by the fresh flow of blood into his mouth and an angry sound he recognised. Then his head echoed and his muscles grew limp as pain blossomed at the back of his skull.

He slumped, unable to help himself, and lay, dazed, as voices and noise gathered above him. He fell away from the world for awhile.

When he opened his eyes again, it was to another heavy feeling. Hurt. His head hurt, his hands were gone and he couldn’t move without making it worse. He could barely breathe. So he thrashed, muffled screeches were the result as he panicked, hurt and confused, when his limbs refused to obey. His head was rattling with the wagon and he couldn’t get off!

He was a dirty thing, the creature Jules was looking at. Matted hair and dirt ground in most everywhere he could see. Though maybe there was an underlying darker skin tone adding to the effect, it was impossible to tell. There were scrapes and scratches and old and new scars all lying across each other everywhere he looked, none of them seemed too serious though, just the result of the obvious rough living the boy had been through. There were callouses on his knees and feet and hands thick enough to make Jules think the kid had been living wild for a long time. And almost, almost he was ready to give him another chance when his eyes opened and he saw the colour of the iris, and how much white they covered. Blood red and gold flecked, even dazed they had a frightening power he knew didn’t belong in that face. “Spirits preserve me…”

Was this boy the result of the deer? The cause of it? He was praying fervently for no connection even as he flinched back from the wild thrashing of the awakened captive, and had resorted to lying across the kid to keep him from injuring himself by the time the wagon rolled through the gate. The driver was already calling for a physician before they came to a full stop and for someone to fetch the Third as she climbed back to help him subdue the boy. If there was a connection, the Zarnofskys would need to know about it. If there wasn’t, they could at least be made aware of this strange human stealing their chickens.

To Wilhelm, who was as yet still more used to the frozen wastes beyond the door, and whose skin was still reacting far more than usual to what was probably nothing greater than average temperature, the remark about there being only a little heat seemed absurd. Then again, he was aware that he'd spent too long in the cold, and though he wasn't sure how long was long enough for the effects to leave him alone, he thought perhaps he could afford to let that one slip by. He couldn't, however, work up the energy to be bothered by it, so there was little point in continuing to dwell on heat or no heat, whatever the case might be. There was, however, a growing concern in the back of his mind that if he had never seen a creature like Hap before, nor heard of one, and Hap did not understand the points he was trying to make, he was either dreaming dismally, or not where he should have been. He was too tired to decide which was more likely, or even what either might mean for the now or the later.

He couldn't understand how the sun could be beneath their feet, but that was for another time. When his mind was not slipping through shadows as though they vanished whatever they encompassed. At the conclusion adopted by Hap, he could only sigh agreement. It was a strenuous breath, shaky to start, almost shallow, but it just kept on until his lungs were full and then rushed out without fanfare. He was not from the Reaches. Insofar as he knew, his home did not have a name. There'd been no need of one. They all lived there. Apparently, that was wrong.

The troll's ears twitched as the pup Hap handled continued complaining, but the only sign of his earlier discomfort and fear was the slow curl of his tail across the furs to wrap around an ankle. The least energetic fidget anyone might possibly manage. When asked to describe his home, Wilhelm opened his eyes, third eyelid already covering them, and stared through film to the ceiling again, watching details fade in and out of his focus. That was a tall order to ask of anyone, to tell someone about their home if they were starting with confusion. Where did you begin? What did you share without explanation? What did you offer with both hands and wait until it was accepted? What did you leave lying behind where it had always been? He would start, he thought, as a herb bunch above swayed from another heavy breath, with the trees.

"You ask too much of me, but I will talk, and I suppose you will question. There will be something shared that way. Heh." His lips twitched, but he was already drifting towards memories, new moments didn't belong there until they'd passed, so the smile faded before it was finished. "My home is everywhere I set foot, on stone, earth, grass and through water... Or snow." He snorted. "But she lived most in the same tree I chose. Greater than those dark things I walked through, each leaf would cover my hand, some my hands together. Or they are small and thin, good for gathering into a bed. I could climb a full day and find little worlds in the branches." It had been a while since he'd been strong enough to climb that long, old age decided that the heights at which one was comfortable became lower and lower.

"My tree was long dead, and his roots gathered stone in the rising water of the flat land every spring. We would sleep in the lowest branches then, when the water threatened to make us breathe her." When the rumble that underlay his words died away, Wlhelm remained quiet for a time, though he managed to stay awake. Remebering could leave one lost if they hadn't first set out a path to follow. "He is empty now."

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