“Better Bedding.” Khaliun immediately answered Fat Yuri’s question on where to slip his good word.
“I like your style.” the jolly man winked. Khaliun grinned a wicked smile.. “Don’t do that. Is creepy.” that said, he grinned back, much the same.
Khaliun finished her steak and comendered a local to push her wheelchair. A foreign feeling for this indomitable Strazi to be reliant on others, and one she was sure to repay generously. Her next destination was on the third floor, but first a trip to the marbles. An opportunity caught her eyes, and it came under the form of two temporal marbles bought at half price from “haggling”. That death gaze of her’s had its charms, apparently.
Now they were at the lottery. But Khaliun wasn’t here to gamble.
“The nationals, eh?” the man behind the counter, unimpressed by the schmuck that foolishly tried their luck on such a game. A tax on the poor, she always believed.
“Yes.” the royal guard replied, flat as ever. When given a pack of tickets, she filled them with random numbers, and then made sure to save a final one for last as she gave them all in one go. And with that came the first ball with the winning number: 185.
But Khaliun did not wait for the ball to just roll to the handler’s hand in its own, good time. The moment the ball dropped from the spinning mechanism, the marbles were stirred. Two seconds were reversed, then as she was about to give the tickets, she filled in the winning number, making sure it came first.
The man’s jaw dropped.. “I can’t believe this …” and yet the proof was there. An awkward silence followed, and again Khaliun grinned. It was clear they weren’t too sure what to do when the big wins were achieved. “We, of course, um ... don't keep that much cash onsite to pay out.. We can offer you ₽10,000 for now, the rest to be picked up from the lottery office in twoo weeks' time.”
“Acceptable.”
The money was claimed in big bags that rested upon Khaliun’s thighs, but the Vossoriyan wasn’t done. “Now, information.” she posed a small sack that contained the amount they expected. “What do you have to offer?” there was no beating around the bush with this one.
“Two questions.” a tall, rangy woman with a face mostly masked by a veil, proposed, to which Khaliun tilted her head in muse. “Which shop has the real sword? You know which one.”
“Cutting Edge.”
The girl squinted at the speed of the service. But she took it. “And what are the big rumours going around as of recent?”
“Plenty of stuff swirling. Heard some foreign kids have been getting into trouble lately. Only a matter of time before some of our 'Masked Security' comes down on them if they keep it up. Also heard a couple more Hegelans disappeared, one while exploring that cave across from the monastery. People are saying he visited a crafter down close to the Collapse, name of Vladimir, works a lot with Hegelans. They say he's been keeping a hegelan boy with him. Not sure why. Might wanna check out the collapse too if you can handle a chaos marble. There's bound to be one in there somewhere.”
The corner of Khaliun's lips twitched. "Appreciated." Just as she's about to leave, she turned back, 50 oubles added to the pot. "Is the hammer the real deal?"
The woman behind the counter considered for a moment, eyes narrowing behind the veil. Then, she nodded. "It is."
Khaliun scoffed, not at the info broker, but at the conclusions she made after hearing the answer. She seemed both amused and bewildered by this revelation. It was time to verify this herself.
To the Hammerschlag.
With precision and purpose, she made her way to the fourth floor. It almost seemed premeditated with how everything was unfolding, as she knew exactly where to go. But as she saw the hammer, her widened eyes displayed an awe that was very hard to fake, especially with nobody to really impress. If she had planned something, this wasn’t initially part of the equation.
And it was surprisingly easy to acquire at 40% off. Perhaps too easy. Such thoughts were secondary to the true issue, however: Logistics. How could she carry such a thing?! Especially without magic and chair-bound?
The disabled girl shifted her head around and spotted something.
“Hey. You. Mercenary?” she waved a bag of cash containing 400 oubles, 100 above his price. “I added extra for carrying services. Is this acceptable?”
Fritz Rudolf is happy to help. The grizzled landsknecht bows deeply, chivalrously. "Your wish is my command." He hefts his mighty poleaxe and precedes her.
Khaliun grinned. "Gallant. I like that." and so her group migrated toward Cutting Edge. Though she made sure to make the rounds, coming out with many tonics, including mana shots, to bolster her increasing hill of goods paid for by the State. The Landsknecht was on carrying duty, mostly. And finally, upon missing out on the Orphan, the true Lost Blade from Nikan. What she was to do with it was anyone’s guess. Two mighty weapons taken by this mysterious girl so far.
Few shops were spared from Khaliun’s eyes, although she did not acquire nearly as gluttonously as one would expect. But she did buy. Hunters’ garments, an intimidating pelt, Warhawks, and of course a second set of hands to help her with her goods with the hired Sugawara Yoshinori. With a strong security detail and shopping bags worthy of a spoilt gold digger, Khaliun seemed set to living the good life after this. Inevitably, one of the final items she’d obtain would be the map to supposed chaos marbles. A title that was very on the nose, but given what she had heard, maybe it was worth giving it a shot.
Then she took interest in The Groove.
It was not truly a place, at least not in the sense that most would consider ‘places’ in the world. It was another dimension, where strange beings gather as if it were a sort of ‘Café’ or Lounge. Hell, there was a literal Aberration Café, along with other peculiar machinations like The Exchange, or the Gates of Heaven & Hell. Or if one was feeling daring, a duplicate of a historical figure.
Khaliun hardly believed what she saw. Was this a dream? Her partners were equally taken aback.
But if this was some sort of fever dream, she may as well go with it.
“A lot of money is asked for here.” she said as she rolled up to the counter, meeting a … Snake person? She blinked rapidly as the creature turned, unnerved and ready to sick her bodyguards on it. But it spoke!
"I will consult the others. Please, enjoy some tea as you wait." said the being in an eerily familiar voice. The visitor had no choice but to comply, bearing witness to the many visitors.
A froglike humanoid popped out of one portal and hurried into another in the background.
A couple of ogauraq were having a debate within the Aberration Café. Of course, since they were ogauraq, she could see the entire thread of it play out in the air above them.
A large demon in lavalike armour tossed back some kind of potion. A small, bookish-looking angel, curled up in an easy chair in the lounge, eyed him uneasily from behind a newspaper.
"Hey. You." she looked over at the Landskenecht. "Pinch me. I must be dreaming." then a comedic pause. "Not on the legs."
The big man's eyes had been roving the room uneasily. "I've... heard that The Groove is a special place," he wondered aloud, but, my gods, this is... was that a man-sized walking frog?" He and the ronin exchanged looks and then both did so with Khaliun. The pinch near her shoulder did precisely nothing except to cause momentary discomfort.
"Ow." she rubbed her shoulder. "I presume I don't pay you gentlemen enough to indulge in that box?"
The landsknecht looked at her. He shook his head. "I apologize, milady, but I work. I don't gamble."
The ronin, however, narrowed his eyes shrewdly. "I will take the risk, but I will require two things: a second chance and one quarter of any profits."
Khaliun looked at the Ronin, and then at the box. "Deal." but before anyone could do anything, she raised her hand. "I'd like to know if I'm richer than I really am, first."
Khaliun was forced to wait a few more minutes, but then the sirrahi was back. The two of them confer. "Normally," said the recent returnee, "We would not divulge such sensitive information."
"We would not," confirmed his female partner. "It would risk disrupting the timestream."
"It would risk that." He shook his head. "And that's a big risk."
"A very big one." The woman bobbed up and down, nodding in that sirrahi way. In the background, dozens of frog people were now rushing in and out of various portals, armed with strange weapons. One had a crown on and seemed to be rallying the others as they plunged, once more, into the fray. "It might make certain parties -"
Her partner shot her a look. "certain parties very angry," he confirmed, and they said no more.
The woman shook her head sadly. "I am very sorry but, based on my husband's research, I must consider your offer an investment unlikely to mature."
He nodded sadly. "Very sorry," he confirmed. "It's nothing personal. Just business."
There was a third sirrahi, then, poking out from one of the portals. He looked young. "Just business," he added, "But it's not set in stone."
"No, it isn't," assured the man who had conducted the 'research'. "The future is always in flux."
"Always," added his wife. "We're happy to do business with you at a lower pricepoint and, if things do work out against probability -"
"As they sometimes do," said the teenage boy, busy moving some boxes now.
"We'd be happy to offer the full range of our services!" There was a girl the same age as the boy, returning from calming some of the frog people down.
"Now," said the 'researcher', crossing his arms and settling them on the countertop, "how may we serve you?"
"Yes, how?"
"How?"
"May we serve you?"
Khaliun blinked as her eyes met a screen for the first time. Her eyes burned at the sight - it was so unnatural! But indeed, there were the cold, hard numbers that, surprisingly, she understood. She was, after all, quite educated.
She gently rested her hands over her thighs as she gathered her thoughts. Calm. No rise in hypertension. “Then let's hedge this risk. That is why I am in this gathering of commerces.” she shrewdly looked to the snake-people. “Which of your products would improve ...” she waved her hand and wiggled her fingers onto the screen she had given back. “That thing. The success rate-thing. You'd be compensated for the risks.”
The couple glanced at each other and smiled big snakey smiles. "You're our kinda scum," said the husband. "Just our kind," his wife agreed, "fearless and inventive."
"One of your gambles won't pay out in the long term," said the son, rearranging some of the aberration control cubes and picking up a predator aberration leash that had fallen. In the background, a frog person stumbled out from a portal, bruised and bloodied, and sat on the floor, chest heaving. It croaked something that the two humans couldn't understand. Crossly, the couple's daughter pointed at a sign in a strange script and croaked back at it. It slapped its forehead and made gestures of apology while 'speaking', picking itself back up. "Yes, not in the short term either," that daughter confirmed, switching her attention over. "So long as you go through with the other one. That one could bear... lucrative results."
"Yes, lucrative," her father agreed, "But still inherently risky."
"Yes, inherently." It was the mother. "Your main benefactor is... not necessarily someone who has worked well with us before."
"You should, of course, invest in yourself first." It was the daughter. She had an aberration in a box. That was... not supposed to be possible, though there had been rumours within her covert of such things. "You should invest in your equipment." He glanced pointedly at the exchange. "And in your allies," said a second son, head popping out of a portal. Above it hung a sign labeled 'Temporal Duplicates'. "Yes, allies," agreed a second daughter. "Or yourself." She furrowed her brow thinking, and all five of her family members seemed to catch on within a second or two of each other. In the background, a mighty Pentangel emerged from one of the portals, other beings prostrating themselves before it. Khaliun's landsknecht made the Sign of the Pentad in reverence, but then the otherworldly apparition was gone through another. "Yes. So long as you can pinpoint a location where you would've been -"
"Yes, so long as you can pinpoint it, then we can yank out another copy of you, I reckon." It was the second son, still half-immersed in a portal.
"I reckon," agreed his mother. "It's unorthodox, but it works."
A giant pig-man had walked out of a portal, meanwhile, and was standing in front of the black box of nothing known as The Exchange, glancing around momentarily. The first son slithered over to assist him and they communicated in a grunting language. Finally, a sack of gold was proffered, the son accepted it and, with a grunted wish of good fortune, the pig-man stuck his hand inside. Even the ronin's eyes widened at what happened, as he was sucked into the small space, squealing, by some irresistible force and... disappeared. Then came a good many more, under the command of some sort of medieval pig-lady. She squealed and snorted orders at the peasants, her assistants threatening some sort of magical punishment should they fall out of line. Two of the sirrahi rolled their eyes. Another groaned. "Why do we do business with them again?" the first son muttered, echoed by one of his sisters. "We do not judge others by our moral standards, no matter how difficult it is," his father reminded him, and the youth sighed. Multiple sacks of gold and gemstones were paid and then the procession began.
The first whooped in joy and glee as she came up with a book of some sort, but was quickly berated. "Wrong kinda book," the second sister explained to Khaliun.
The second marched up somewhat hopefully, seeing what her peer had come away with, but little grunts of - was it prayer? Was it self-talk? Was it confidence? - quickly gave way to a rather loud shriek that was only muted by the presence of an automatic sonic bubble. She staggered away with a cauterized stump where her hand had been and some of the others recoiled and tried to scatter until herded back into order at swordpoint.
The next screamed as well, coming away with a cup of steaming tea in a shaking, scalded hand. This was handed to the wealthy lady, who handed it to one of her servants for safekeeping. The third, fourth, and fifth came away with demons and, it looked like some sort of promotion. The guards certainly seemed to show them more respect. The sixth's eyes glowed at the sight of a sack of gold. It was immediately cut open, a small portion given to him, and the rest poured into a chest held by the lady's servants. The next came away with - was it literally nothing? - and the penultimate one lost a hand and tried to run. One of the guards made to kill him before being frozen, mid-action, by one of the sirrahi and harshly reminded of some policy or other. The lady grunted a sour apology, and the newly one-handed pig-man was shackled and shoved roughly towards the portal under guard. The final one squealed and thrashed and dropped the hot tea and was kicked and shouted at for it before the whole uncivilized lot disappeared through a portal. "As pleasant as always," sighed the wife. Her first daughter rolled her eyes. "I don't see why we should keep letting them behave like that."
"As long as they behave in good faith towards us, we stay out of their politics," her father reminded her. "Yes, out of their politics," her mother confirmed. "Now," decided the first son, "Speaking of such, what say you to that?"
"Yes, about that." It was the father again. "We're prepared to make you an offer, though the risk is..."
"Substantial," said the second sister.
"A Second Fate reach into the Exchange and a self-copy."
"We'd ask for 200%" concluded the first sister.
"Yes, two hundred."
"The overall cost would be... ₽16,000"
“Myself?” Khaliun's eyes widened, her resting bitch-face finally faltering after so long. She looked to her hired hands, who both seemed to be taken by the grisly scene with the pig people. She too watched. What a sight. Unholy creatures resembling the monsters of tales, except they were as keen on fattening themselves up as regular people and using the lesser monsters to get their way. For a moment she had forgotten the whole cloning idea and looked to her Ronin associate. “Do you still wish to proceed?”
The ronin was resolute. "I do not know fear. If I meet two fates and both are grisly, then it was always to be."
Then came the proposition. “... What's the initial price for a double? And what does this entail for ME?” then returned the usual, extremely pleasant look of her's. “Must I assume some sordid fate should I default?” needless to say, she looked very hesitant. “What's the Endymion?” her gaze had drifted and she had noticed that obscene price among the more 'reasonable' ones.
It was the father, once again, who responded to her query, however. "The policy should you default is that you serve as a mercenary until you have worked off your debt or someones else has paid it on your behalf. You will appear in one of the other shops in... where was it again?"
"The Bunker, mom."
"Your profits will become our profits," the first brother concluded.
"Though you shall be provided with room and board," the mother assured her.
"You try to escape the debt or take violent action..." added the first sister fearfully, "The penalty is erasure, absolute and irreversible," the second brother confirmed.
"As for the Endymion?" She mother rested her crossed arms on the tabletop. "It is the very beating heart of the world,"
"The heart."
"The sacred heart."
"and one requires expressed permission to stand in its presence," she concluded.
“Very well.” Khaliun said once her question was answered. The price for defaulted was the only thing she knew how to do very well. How convenient. “I'll take the deal, then. Second fate and ...” she waved her hand in the general direction of the Temporal Duplicates sign. “That. 200% interest.” she sagged into her chair, wondering if she hadn't lost it. This was crazy.
“And that permission is a million oubles? The heart of the world is as expensive as a medium Vossoriyan chateau.” she arched a brow.
"That is the price with an invitation, to offset the costs of us maintaining a portal there."
"Yes, the costs. It is no mean feat."
Now, the Exchange. It was time to resolve the first portion of Khaliun’s contract.
The first that came from the box was ... Nothing! A collective sigh of relief occurred.
Then, the Second Fate. A true nail biter. Even the stoic Khaliun had a sweat drop there. What came out was four containers of manas ready for imbuement. Success!
“As promised.” once the four were brought to her, one was given to the renegade Samurai. “I'll provide extra if one of you can find me a way to get these to be useful FAST.” she waved the potential prize, one they could probably steal all things considered, if they did not care about their reputation.
But before any sort of crafting could be done, she looked to the serpentine family once more. “We've still got one more thing, don't we?”
A collective nod came from the serpentine family and they scurried about to prepare for the custom job. During the wait, the Landsknetch couldn’t help but inquire. "I am not one to often question a job. Especially with this sort of money." he began as he eyed the manas that were given to his Nikanese counterpart. "But what exactly do you intend to do with all of this? This is … Far beyond just protecting from thugs and taking down Skuggvars." he manifested his anxieties, to which Khaliun rested her arms over the armrests of her walking chair. She sighed.
“I’ve got a lot of rats to crush. Filthy rats just waiting for the chance to eat, now that their master has gone rabid.” she said, her tone now charged with a foreboding rasp. "They must be big rats." chuckled the mercenary as he peered at the massive hammer he was made to carry, albeit the answer did little to alleviate his worries. “The biggest.”
Location: ReTan, A now annihilated mountain, Ogauraq Camp Day of the week: Pandes Time: Night Characters: Abdel, Dayanara, Rikard @Force And Fury, Kaureerah, Ingrid @dragonpiece, Valerian @yoshua171, Trypano @A Lowly Wretch, Yalen @pantothenic, Wu Long, Golden Monkey, Lucky Dragon
Abdel had entered the cave with his colleagues, but he never truly wanted to. There was a sense of obligation that took over, and he even put up a brave face for his girlfriend when encouraging her to stay behind while he went to war. He regretted it all. The meeting with Brother Ash that turned into a battle with the Black Guard and a demonstration of power from Wu Long should’ve been enough to remind him of his place. He almost missed the popsicle state he had been forced into by Cold Soup when comparing the situation he was now in.
He took a light cut on his cheek from a White Guard he had attempted to control, while the other was successfully robbed of his free will and made to dance around Yalen as a human shield. The cut did not make Abdel panic, but the mild pain made him realize this was indeed all real.
... Daya?
And in just an instant, his mighty Skuggvar, a beast that almost seemed invincible, had been ragdolled effortlessly by a golden blurr neither he or any other teammate was able to keep up with. Paranoid, he pushed his back against the stony wall behind him, terrified of what such a strike would do to his much frailer body. Abdel was sweating profusely, and eventually tears ran through his face.
Mister Escarra! Marci! Jocasta! Help …! I can’t do this!
Abdel was but a boy, far too young and experienced with the world. And now he was made to feel helpless, a mere audience member to the carnage that was going to take place. Waiting for his turn to be made a volunteer to Golden Monkey’s next magical display of sheer brutality.
Just do it already! This is worse than death!
“COME ON!”
But his turn never came. Instead, in the midst of his wallowing in despair, he had actually paid attention to his colleagues. They were still all in the fight despite the odds, with Ingrid in particular concocting something that felt like it could match the obscene energy coming from the speedster. And, as his mind entered this bizarre transe of intense focus, he could finally lead the unfathomably fast target via his Tethered sensing. It was that Yasoi.
I can’t get a lock on but … Daya, I need you!
Focus on his puppet diminished, and instead he just barely managed to keep Golden Monkey in his peripheral vision while he tried to heal his beast. It was just enough to get her to stand again and glare at the assailant. Aided by her master, she sniped the monkey in his rare halt, failing to strike true but offering an opportunity for the others to position the ape just right.
It was all coming together like a perfect equation. The portal, Ingrid’s nuclear preparation, Trypano’s web, Rykard’s tenacity, Yalen’s crowd management. It was going to culminate into a finale the Godly ape couldn’t see. A glimmer of hope shined in Abdel’s eyes, and so he positioned his Skuggvar to ensure this outcome.
Wait … No.
Then he sensed Valerian. The odd addition to their team he had barely seen. A dapper fellow, one that easily impressed a youth like Abdel. But what he sensed was anything but impressive.
No! NO! Stop!
“NO!”
He shouted, but he had no real prowess in sonic magic. What he was good at was Magnetic magic, and he could practically SMELL the copper melt and the magnetic charge weaken to oblivion. The heat was too much and the outcome was nothing good with the trajectory it was going. What was a perfect equation turned into a perfect disaster. Little did he know just how accurate that view was.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump.
Everything went quiet. All he could see and hear was the tinnitus-inducing screech of Ingrid’s spell. Before any other could, Abdel ran. Where? He didn’t know, but he ran and got closer to whoever he could find. The only way he’d survive is if he was mobile.
“RUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNN!”
Abdel yelled. No need for sonic magic, he strained his vocal cords just for this. Dayanara sensed the signal near-instantly and got to dashing as well.
Portals opened just as the explosion was about to pop. His running paid off and he made it to one before most. And so did the bullrushing Dayanara that likely carried a couple of strays that latched onto her in the last two seconds they had.
Once home free, right at the edge of the portal, Abdel turned.
Move, move!
Abdel didn’t think, he just acted. He had no idea what he was doing, but he created an electro-magnetic barrier to delay the Cataclysm for under half a second. It was, hopefully, enough for any straggler to make it.
He did not hear the explosion. The young Tethered was propelled back just as the portal closed, landing on his back and coughing dust. He was alive, despite his stupid choice to not keep running.
“Damn …”
Abdel sat up, body sore from all the exercise and taking a ton of kinetic energy all of a sudden. His vision was settling. First quads, then triples, then doubles, and finally he could see one of these non-speaking giants. It kneeled before him and offered their hand. Abdel blinked and accepted it. He then looked around and saw more of these big people, in a camp with a few others that seemed to have come out of a portal too.
“Did … They all make it?”
He inquired sheepishly, his mind gravitating to the three girls that mattered most to him.
Location: Xochiyeiteteo - Sweetwater Farmstead Day of the week: Pandes Time: Night Present: Zarina, Classa @Force and Fury, Zox, Raiders, Tennaxi, Cozesteo, Cuimits, Torrix-Basté, Alqasas.
As groups went their separate ways, Zarina escorted the anxious Nuro toward the field of bodies. “It's okay baby. They won't hurt you.” she whispered to the beast whilst keeping a steady supply of soothing agents to keep him steady. It didn't smell as bad as when fires were flaring, as the driness of the desert had the benefit of drying bodies rather than putrifying them. Still, it was gross and unpleasant. Something Zazzy felt bad for letting Classa witness, but at this point it was too late.
“Hey,” she called for their attention, both Zox and Classa. “Is this normal? Fifty-plus raiders for your farm?” she inquired whilst drawing to detect any beating hearts or subtle signs of life that may be concealed. “I'm asking because it's pretty obvious you would not have survived without help, Zox.” she looked up at the perfected, shining golem. “Well, before anyway.”
"We get raiders all the time," said Classa glumly, trotting sideways around the others. "More of them lately. Mr. Jascuan says it's 'cause they're trying to scare us off the farm and scare Wazuo from taking it over once Mr. Jascuan's... you know..." She trailed off and her eyes flicked pointedly to some of the corpses before recoiling.
"Usually, I can deal with them," rumbled Zox. "I am built for war." There was no expression on his large, stony face now that he was back to his normal size and form. "This was the largest group ever. The masters and us demons would have all died," he added in confirmation.
Zarina, as they spoke, was busy checking for signs of life, and she found precisely eleven, in varying states of injury.
“Right.” Zarina proceeded to do a little bit of triage to determine the state of each survivor. The corpses were dragged to one side via telekinesis, making Zox's job of burying them easier. “They'll send fifty guys to die just for some land and sweetwater?” she remarked as she began to inspect the first of the dozen wounded, checking if this one could even be worth bringing in. “That's some mighty fine water ...” she muttered, eyes on the raider to her feet as she crouched. “Was it worth it?” she asked the fallen Cazenax as she still debated internally on their fate.
"The land is close to the city," Zox explained, ""but in a good area for sweetwater, and it's a lot of land. It might not look like it now, but 4S was once the third-largest sweetwater operation in the entire region, and the largest that was family-owned."
"Yeah, but Mr. Jascuan's dad made enemies," Classa added, in storyteller mode now. "Powerfuw peopwe in the city. They offered him a wot of money, but he said no, and that's why we're stiww here."
"There are other farms that get like this, of course," Zox explained, "Raiders are mostly open desert people who still live by the old ways. They like to hit right after sandstorms, when you're out repairing and vulnerable and when everyone in the town's too busy to come and help you defend yourself." He shook his head. "Some get paid, though. It's a way to get rid of rivals. Lots of the important people make deals with them."
The raider at Zarina's feet had been skewered through the midsection and had some burns to go with the wound. He looked up at her, speaking Cazenax, and Classa flinched at his words. Zox translated, clenching his fists for a moment before relaxing. "He didn't understand you if you were actually talking to him." The big golem shook his head. "He says it's not for money. They're trying to send the demons back to hell, where we belong. We're unnatural and going to be the death of Cazenax society: us and that demon-hugging, vozas-loving king Stazen."
"How can I go back to hell!?" Classa shouted. "I was born here! This is the only pwace I know!" She crossed her arms protectively and repeated her words in Cazenax for good measure.
Zarina rested her wrists over her thighs, letting her hands hand loosely as she listened to her demonic peers and the translation effort. “I don't quite understand the demon's place in this society. I didn't even know you Caz-uh-nacks existed.” she reached out to tap the raider's forehead, giving them a soothing dose of pain suppressants. “But if they dislike demons so much, what's up with them sicking double the amount in the farm on us?” the survivor appeared well enough since he could speak, and so he was lifted off the sand without ever being touched and provided a spot on the wagon. “What's the deal with that King Strazen, by the way?” she continued her patrol, finding the next raider not too far off her recent find. “And if any of you understand me, speak up. I'll get to you faster.”
"They believe demons are tools and not people," replied Zox with almost disturbing impartiality. "But they're wrong!" insisted Classa. "I am a person. Maxi says so! Jascuan says so. I say so!"
"You can use one tool to destroy another," Zox said impassively.
Classa shot him an angry look. "If I ever destroy anyone, it's 'cause they're trying to destroy me or they're being a bit shithead and I wanna!" She stamped a pair of hooves in anger.
"She's young and she was born and not created," said Zox quietly. "Mr. Jascuan treats her more like a daughter and Maxi more like a sister." He shook his head, but then Classa trotted up right beside them, leaning in. She pointed to her ears. "I can hear you, you know. I have super good hearing."
Then, Zarina had reached the second casualty. She lay on the ground, blood soaking into the sand beneath her. Both of the raider's legs had been ripped clean off by some incredibly violent force, but fortunately at least partially cauterized. She was young and she was crying. Her face was read and her eyes bulged in obvious agony. "Zag! Zag!" (Please! Please!) she wailed. "Cé ax zoan! Lasto Cé! Oluin lasto Cé! Zaaaag! Jazé dexo jepui Cé! Nurots istas Céx abazen: dexo poz fa exnast jupai. Zolo upé lix cits. Potés alaz cits. Cuxé jepui cits ni oxo il tacu nenzoné yats ni... Wui buin sebzai céx abazox. An alazui ja exupé! (Don't kill me! I'm sorry ! I'm very sorry! Pleeeease! I just needed money. My family are donkey-riders <poor>: just a bunch of snarling foxes <losers>! We're desert people. We have nothing. We needed food and they offered such good pay and... My brothers can't bag sand <are lazy and useless>. Someone had to do it!) She reached up, suddenly, and grabbed at Zarina's shin with a trembling viselike hand. "Lasto Cé. Lasto Cé. Sest céx inguia ozux judonui alaz Cé. Ozux manca poxa lui Cé. Exupé zind axé nupo Cé. Zag. Tennaxi Luna lix céx legasta. Dumé ax nupo Cé..." (I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've always dyed my clothes purple <tried to be special>. I've always been a dumb bitch. I didn't want to hurt anyone. Please. My name is Tennaxi Luna <Midnight Moon>. I don't wanna die...) She released Zarina's leg and covered her eyes. Then she rolled rolled halfway over and wept bitterly, her life spilling out into the ground from ragged stumps.
Of course, the Virangishwoman had not understood a word that she'd said, even if she'd been able to read the tone, and she was no healer. Then, Classa trotted up, wrapping unsteady arms around herself. "I don't like this..." the girl mewed, suddenly very much an eight-year-old again. Her eyes, haunted, flicked between the dying raider and her new friend. "I don't think she's bad, and she looks like Maxi now." She averted her gaze. "And Maxi's gone too!" She'd held back tears the entire time, but now they came.
The levity brought by Classa's innocence did shine a light in this valley of death they had created. The child made Zarina smile, even if it were just little chuckles. But the light was fleeting and not immune to the dark world that awaited this young critter. The desperate pleading and cries of agony of the young Cazenax woman reminded them all that these were people and they had done this. Something horrible, even if justified.
Zarina did not need to understand the words uttered by Tennaxi Luna to get it. Someone far too young, who did not have the eyes of a killer or the know-how to really do any harm. It was so obvious, despite how different they looked to the teen, that they were completely lost and in excruciating pain. “What does Lasto Cé mean?” she asked to her translators just as her leg was seized. Flinching, she was about ready to crush that hand with her telekinesis, but she didn't. Those same eyes she judged told yet another story. Someone who acted out of desperation and immediately regretted what they did. It wasn't the same as the resentment spat out by the first find. The Virangishwoman's heart just sank, and only the legless survivor could see her expression falter to the point of showing weakness. She couldn't let it out, though. Not in front of the errant or the innocent like Classa. She had to be the strong one. Hard as stone, like Zox. “... And Zag. Means please?”
Binding was out of the question, but something had to be done, lest this person was just left to bleed out. A slow and terrible death, and an inhuman thing to just let happen. She clung to that humanity she still had. Rising to her feet, she went to meet Classa, rested a hand on her cheek and levelled with her. “We'll find Maxi. But I need you to be a brave girl for me.” she looked over at the farm not too far off. “I'm going to need some water. For me, you and them. They made a mistake, but they don't deserve to suffer. They're people, like you.” she then gave the young centaur a little embrace before getting back to her duty.
Zarina snapped a piece of wood from a raider's spear and presented it right before Tennaxi's visage. “Bite down.” she made a biting motion to illustrate rather than wait for a translation. “This will hurt.” she warned, kneeling by the Cazenax with her shield morphed into a thinner contraption, the cannon was proportional. A thin steam of flame began to brush over her right gauntlet to head it up until reddened. Meanwhile, she did her best to dull Tennaxi's nerves, but it wasn't going to be enough to spare the poor girl of a very bad time. Once ready, she didn't linger. The hot metal seared the bleeding stumps, offloading the most awful of stenches and inevitably prompting ear-piecing screeches from the victim. Zarina steeled herself. This was the right thing to do. And she was grateful none of the others had to see this. Whether it was the ordeal she was subjecting herself to, or the tears she couldn't hold back as the smoke and steam hit her face.
Classa galloped off, though it was more of a canter. It seemed as if the girl had finally come down from her high and was fading. She would be back when she was back. Zox, meanwhile, watched quietly as Zarina worked. If the golem was thinking, he gave little outward sign but for his stillness.
Tennaxi, who had been their enemy an hour ago, shrieked and sobbed into the fast-arriving darkness. There was no recovering from the injuries she had been given, but there was survival and perhaps even redemption. In any case, through the haze of her own, she did not notice her vanquisher and saviour's tears. When the worst was over, she lay on her back in the sand, stumps elevated on a small stone, eyes closed, and chest heaving grateful, trembling breaths. "Mixa," she panted. "Tazo mixa."
Zox continued to work silently for a while, burying the raiders in a mass grave - albeit at least not thrown in haphazardly. Tennaxi, who had seemed both grateful and contrite, was left to his guardianship while Zarina moved onto the next wounded raider, and then the one after. One expired while she made her rounds. One tried to stab her. Three begged for their lives. One, particularly badly maimed, begged to be killed, while another cursed the Bantarsca Upé. Finally, two spouted the anti-demon and anti-void zealotry of their earlier peer. That didn't stop the last one from offering her money to let him go.
Classa came back midway through the ordeal, but Zarina deemed it unsafe for her to bring water directly to many of the now-prisoners. Instead, she settled by Tennaxi, kneeling on the fast-cooling ground as Zox finished with the bodies. Soon enough, Zarina would begin her interrogation, but the situation was also precarious. Were there more raiders? Who had sent them? There was only herself, Zox, and Classa left to defend the farmstead, and some of these people were not badly hurt. Mostlike they had played injured once they'd realized their cause was lost and something or other had prevented their escape.
Finally, Zox returned to where Zarina had gathered the recoverable wounded. "You tried to harm my people," he said to Tennaxi, settling beside her. The scrawny young woman's eyes had been on the sky and sometimes on her fellow raiders, but now she looked over. "Well, I failed," she replied after a second, "though I never really wanted to." She tried, abortively, to sit up, but then her eyes bugged out in pain, she let out a small sound, and she fell back, panting shallowly. "Think you harmed me worse anyhow," she shot back, closing her eyes again. "Listen, if you're here to finish the job, just do it and make it quick. I'm done for anyways: good for nothing."
Classa, who'd been uncharacteristically quiet, watching the exchange, chose this moment to pipe up. "Well, Maxi has no legs and she's good for pwenty. Maybe lotsa peopwe don't think so, but I've seen her and she does just fine." The child shook her head. "You sowta look like her, actuawwy."
Quietly, Zox reached over and laid his massive hands on the prisoner. Tennaxi tensed up in fear. Then, unexpectedly, he began healing. Flesh, torn and burnt, began to give way to fresh pink skin. There was no recovering the limbs, but there was an end to the crudely-cauterized wounds and excruciating pain. When she realized what was happening, all that the raider could do was issue a half-whispered thank you as she watched him work. Within a couple of minutes, she was sitting upright, looking around and hugging herself as the nighttime cold of the desert began to sweep in.
Meanwhile, Zarina had finished her rounds. There were seven prisoners in functional condition and, while none were outright hostile, not all seemed friendly. Something would have to be done with them.
The intense heat and the consistent wiping of her face buried Zarina's secret from the world, and eventually she would force herself to forget it too. She did not linger with the prisoner. “You're welcome.” she answered to what she deduced what some sort of show of gratefulness. Then she moved on, with the next sign of life fading just as she arrived. Concerned, she knelt and turned the body to notice they had bled out. It had been too long, even a strong binder would have trouble fixing the immense damage that came with prolonged blood loss. She sighed and carried on.
The next one was a feisty one. “Tsk, dickhead.” she growled as the knife lodged itself into one of the shield's scales. The assailant was subsequently disarmed by his own mistake, and without any hesitation, got Zarina's greaves to the chin, knocking him out cold. “Hey Zox, mind tying this one up? Like, some rock coffin or something with only his head sticking out.” he jested, although when thinking about it, maybe it was for the best if they could use magic.
Those that begged or were jaded were all given what Zarina could provide: Crude first aid, and if Zox cared enough, something a little more. That was until she met one that begged to be killed. She looked behind her, Classa was there. She took a moment to think. “Is that what you want?” she asked, voice hushed and her position strategically hiding what she was doing. The Cazenax didn't understand, but how she held herself and the tone of her voice was maybe enough for the mangled survivor to insist on their request. When they did, she posed two fingers onto their forehead. A rush of toxin chemical began to rush through their bloodstream, and for a moment they couldn't breathe anymore. It wasn't the most peaceful partings, but it lasted less than forty seconds before they passed out, and then succumbed. Zarina watched until the light left their eyes before closing them. A little bit of her's had been extinguished as well.
Now was time to get to work, however. “It's getting dark. Is there a shed we can use? Any sort of shelter?” she asked, vigilant of any potential attacker of aggressive scavenger. “I'm not inclined to become Froabas food. I'm actually surp- Right, not Torragon.” she shook her head. There were two options: A supply shed by the house, or one further in the cold wastes. She decided with the former. The survivors were brought by wagon, pulled by Nuro, and eventually were all put in the storage once any sort of weapon or valuable goods were removed.
Classa was tucked in with a sleepy Nibbler to keep her company after a few moments of storytelling and tickles.
Zarina returned to a grisly sight. More death and suffering. The prisoners were terrified for the most part, with the current ‘victims’ screeching for help as Zox immediately intervened to separate the rabid Tennaxi from the others. “What the FUCK just happened?!” the barely armoured Virangish growled, eyes to the golem. Zox focused on keeping the three concerned parties separate but answered her nonetheless. “It was fast. Before I could hear anything, she had killed two.” Zarina clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Shit. They were lip flappers too.” her glare was directed to Tennaxi who had since come to and looked both panicked and confused at what just happened.
Soon came the fear, and then the pleading. Zarina was rightfully suspicious. “You better not be fucking me.” her sharp and armoured finger pointed at the legless girl. The three were separated and their arms bound while the two bodies were dumped outside for the time being.With Tennaxi still overwhelmed by what happened, one of the assaulted was approached first. One known as Cuimits. “As you may have deduced, Cazenax often have names with meaning. Unlike us.” stated Zox flatly. “This one means Nine-fingers.” Zarina, as if on cue, paid attention to the recently bound hands. “Huh. From some fancy name like Midnight Moon to Missing-Finger-Joe. ” she chuckled, already calmed now that order had been restored. “Names are earned in Cazenax society. There can be a story behind his missing finger. Or simply how he is known. I could not say.”
Tennaxi was isolated while Cozesteo was made to wait with the others. Cuimits, one Zarina had identified as having a head over his shoulders, was her first target.
Zarina pulled a chair, sat in reverse and crossed her arms over the seat whilst Cuimits sat on the floor, back against a wall. Zox was the translator. “Let’s start simple, then. Who sent you?” and then it just became a staring competition. So she repeated herself. “I only took orders. My lieutenant is dead.” translated Zox in a similar, flat tone as Cuimits. There was evidently something about this one that kept Zarina’s attention. The way the others looked at him and his composure reeked of unspoken authority, like a high ranking member of a mob that dressed like any other local.
“Why’d you do it, then?”
“Money.”
“Why did she want to kill you?”
“To silence us, maybe. We got captured after all.”
“Was it one of those elites that sent you?” Zox made sure to use the appropriate terminology to qualify who she was talking about.
“He never met the one that paid. It went through the boss.”
“And so who’s the boss?”
Zox paused as he heard the answer. “I have killed him, it seems.” he sighed.
For a moment, Zarina had an idea to turn up the heat. Do something a little extreme to get this one’s lips to flap. But the corner of her eye caught something: Tennaxi. She gestured for Cuimits to be put aside, for now, and bring in the calmed Tennaxi. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“Lasto! Lasto …” Tennaxi lowered her head, only for her to see the grim reality of her mangled body. She shielded her eyes briefly before looking up at Zazzy. “I don’t know what happened, she says.” Zox shuffled a bit in his corner, his stoney gaze shifting between the prisoners. Tennaxi paused before being hit by a moment of clarity, index finger raised. But just before she could speak, Cozesteo shouted something she didn’t understand with Cuimits adding to it.
“Shut up.” Zarina said, but they continued. “I said, shut UP.” they both felt immense pressure applied above them, forcing their cheeks to hit the flooring. Cozesteo was quick to apologize the same way Tennaxi would, but Cuimits showed continuous defiance. The rest of the captives began to panic, to which Zarina was sensitive enough to cease her show of force, and in turn the tension of the air faded. Except of course for Cuimits’ continued ranting. As a result, Zox intervened with his intimidating form and just taped his mouth shut with some conjured leather. Again, the group was frightened, but the golem’s imposing size was enough to keep them in order. With peace returned, the interrogation could continue.
The timid Tennaxi, upon seeing Cuimits bound up tight, felt bold enough to speak. “She says she felt like she ‘lost her body’, and was all numb.” Zarina blinked and then squinted. “Like her body had a mind of its own?” to which Tennaxi nodded once the sentence was translated. Zarina drummed her fingers over the wooden seat. “It could be a spell. It could also be bullshit.” Zarina bit her uncovered thumb’s nail as she pondered, eyes locked to Tennaxi’s. She wanted to believe this girl was honest, but she had indeed killed two.
There wasn’t much to get from Tennaxi that wasn’t already said, and so the interrogator moved on. Her attention drifted toward Cuimits again, bound and gagged with consistent defiance in his eyes. But then there was the sidekick, Cozesteo. Clearly of lesser intelligence and standing. Quite bulky too. “What’s his name?” to which Zox replied with a slightly amused voice, as if he was in synch with Zarina’s observation. “Cozesteo. Big Rock.” the corner of Zaz’s lip twitched. It was the rock’s turn in the spotlight.
“Who sent you here?”
“‘Dunno’, as he would say. He says for money.” Zox internally frowned. “The exact same formulation the other used.” to which Zarina scoffed. “Is that so?” Her attention was entirely on the Big Rock. “Who’s your boss?” and for a split second, Cozesteo peered over at Cuimits, only to then shift his eyes about to lock them onto Zox, acting as if he was the bigger boulder among the two. Unfortunately for him, Zarina caught that and shot a knowing glance at Cuimits. “Potojax.” he said before cackling like a buffoon. A laughter that slowly degenerated into awkward titters as nobody laughed.
What followed were a series of awkward but ultimately meaningless questions, poking the man’s daily life and intentions. The more she went, the more it became clear this robust look of his was a façade. And the more his slipped looks toward his true boss, Cuimits. Realizing what was going on, a very brief sonic bubble was formed that enveloped Zox too.
“Is this man your boss?”
Cozesteo, taken aback by the sudden use of magic, just shot a confused look at Zarina.
“Tell me now. Is he your boss? Did he have something to do with the murders?”
A moment of hesitation took Cozesteo. But then he chuckled, again looking at his superior to feel emboldened.
“He says you must not be very smart. He’s his own boss and gets paid.” he didn’t bother to translate the ‘poxa’ in there.
Zarina’s arm unnaturally extended to seize the Cazenax’s throat. Her platinum hand was suddenly huge and could easily pluck the smaller being’s head. “I don’t honestly know or truly care about the bullshit behind all of this.” she snarled, the sound-bubble pointless in hiding her intentions. “You’ve hurt people that matter to me. You tried to kill some kid because you hate demons or whatever. And I’ve given you a second chance. I can easily take it away.” it’d be so easy, easier than pulling a trigger. That draconic shield-arm was so big and the claws so sharp. It’d be like passing a hot knife into a stick of butter.
“Zarina.” a concerned Zox felt the need to speak up, and the audience was growing agitated once more. “Please.” the golem reached for the girl’s shoulder. After a moment, she calmed down, but it had worked in getting Cozesteo to whisper something. “Zé …” he said. “They’re all afraid of him. You can see why.” Zox added, looking at the pool of dried blood at the corner.
Zarina sighed, lowered the barrier and shot a menacing look at Cuimits. The head of the troupe immediately her numb and his chin hit his chest. He was asleep after a strong dose of chemical magic was applied. But with one potential problem gone, a new one arose. The prisoners were terrified at this point and just about ready to explode in their foreign ramblings. The Virangish girl opted to not use force this time, raising her hands as a sign of peace while speaking pacifying words they did not understand. Zox, being the terrifying monster that killed many of their peers, did little to help too as intimidation wasn’t going to cut it after what had happened.
Just as catastrophe was about to strike, Tennaxi mustered the courage to speak now that Cuimits was unconscious. “Zag. Zag!” she pleaded to her fellow Cazenax. A display of good faith was made, Tennaxi showed her desire to help despite the suspicions around her. Given that it actually worked, Zarina was more inclined to believe her. A second female Cazenax, Torrix-Basté, added to Tennaxi’s efforts and provided testimony of the events that unfolded, making external magical influence the likely culprit here.
With peace restored in a fragile state, she continued her interrogation with Cozesteo.
“He says that for the record, he has nothing against demons and even owns a few.” Zox translated the words of Big Rock, still rattled by the recent threats but more willing to talk now that Cuimits was out. “The king’s changes aren't good for them. They’ll lose their sense of purpose. Being entirely dependent on the Vozas has more than just the obvious risks.”
“Risks, but you’ve been using this for … A long time I presume? Why are you worried about risks?”
Cozesteo looked to Zox, and then to Zarina before sarcastically cackling. “They want to have more lax admission standards for the Vo-Wola. The people who make use of the Vozas. He says it is insanity to be this careless with the most dangerous thing in the world.”
“Okay, but what does this have to do with them raiding this place?”
Torrix-Basté interjected upon hearing this. “She suggests that it might have something to do with land speculation following King Stazen’s policies.” to which Zarina shrugged. “For just a quick buck? Really? And going as far as killing your own? So who exactly sent them?”
Torrix-Basté was unable to say, as she only did it for the money and a general dislike for demons. Cozesteo, on the other hand, had more to say. He needed a little more squeezing, but a light bit of internal chemical did the trick. “There was a meeting with an intermediary that referred to their client as female. Apparently this was done to ‘help a friend’, and that the actual motives are a mystery to him.” Zarina sat back on her chair, arms crossed and attentive. “He thinks that the people in the Batarsca, the elites in a way, wanted to acquire this land expecting King Stazen’s policies to suddenly change, like what she said, but he believes an assassination attempt will be the cause and it may have already happened. The sweetwater guild in particular was keen on dealing with this land due to it remaining independent.”
“That would explain why they’d want to keep a lid on things.” she spoke to Zox, her platinum claw scratching her chin. “Sweetwater guild, jaded elites and a reformist King, it sounds like we’ve stumbled into a web of power plays and we’ve just caused a very unexpected mess.” so far Zarina didn’t seem too alarmed, and she was left to wonder what were truly the stakes here. There was a reason Upta and the Silent Ranger had dispatched them, and the only conclusion she could make was an extreme case with the Vozas.Was Stazen’s elimination a good or bad thing? It all hinged on this, she just knew it.
Tennaxi was brought back to the spotlight with Cozesteo left to breathe in his own corner. Zarina didn’t have to ask anything, she just began to talk. “She doesn’t know that much more, she says. But she’d be happy to serve as a guide at the city, but she’d need to be mounted.” Zarina, Zox and Tennaxi all looked at the poor Cazenax’s stumps. The girl still hadn’t fully registered how her life was going to drastically change. But with this grim reality made real and recalling Classa’s words, Tennaxi had something of an epiphany. “She’s realized that Samaxi, Mr. Jascuan’s daughter, is Potés-Palix. And- …” Zox just stopped talking and ‘glared’ at the legless girl. “What is it?” Zarina dryly inquired, smelling something was off and deeply concerned considering her friends had gone to search for that individual. “It’s mere speculation. But … She suggests that the timing of the raid looked to have been done in accordance to Maxi’s absence. They did not expect more than just me to protect the stead.”
Zarina clenched her jaw. A woman had hired these goons via an intermediary. Samaxi’s absence was conspicuously timed with the raid’s. There’s a lot of money and political capital involved. All surrounding the Vozas, or better known as the wicked Void that had nearly taken three close to her. The Virangish rider had gone from mildly concerned for an inquest she did not grasp the importance of beyond finding a culprit, to realising the potential gravity of it all.
Cozesteo was brought back in. Forceful but non-physical, she asked plainly. “How do I get this asshole to talk? I’m out of patience.” to which the Cazenax continuously shook his head and insisted he didn’t know. Zarina didn’t have time for this. A bag of a few magi was tossed to his lap - currency that wasn’t common but had its use in the supply wagon from Nashibansek. With such a handsome reward, the Big Rock could put his conscience away for a brief moment.
“Zarina. Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Zox, concerned by what he had heard, wished this could end already.
“Just say it. We can’t find the head of this serpent without this guy’s cooperation.” she growled whilst glaring at the still slumbering Cuimits. The other Cazenax looked concerned as well, shooting expectant looks at Zarina. Was she going to actually do this?
“He has a family that lives west of town, at a place called The Dive. It’s … a red domed residence occupying a gap in the hoodoos.” then everything got quiet.
Zarina just nodded before stepping out.
She opened her right, metal palm. The flow of time became tangible to her as she began to draw from it. And then, once imbuing her claws with the abstract energy she was far from mastering, she dug them into the air before her and dragged her hand downward. A forcefully opened a tear into time and space and created a portal in a cruder manner than most did.
Zox stepped out, and so did Tennaxi. Both would see the magnificence that was Alqasas stepping out of the rift and into a land not too different from where her mother had laid her. The reticulated and pearlescent Alpha Froabas sniffed about, recognizing Zarina and unknown parties. Naturally, she inhaled to prepare a loud and domineering howl. Quickly, the beastmaster created an improvised sonic bubble, only for it to partially succeed. The earth-shaking scream was heard by all the Cazenax, perishing all notions of trying a breakout at this time.
“Be quiet.” the strict mother ordered before flicking the mighty beast’s snout. It recoiled, growled and then sniffed some more. “It’s late here, as you can see.” she clearly spoke to the beast, and reached out to caress that previously assaulted snout. “I missed you too.” the animal shot her a challenging stare, but was otherwise docile.
“I’m not gonna threaten some asshole’s family. I'll get another lead.” she reassured, head turned as she still faced her dragon. “You.” she turned and pointed toward Tannaxi. “You wanted to be a guide, right?”
“I’m going to visit that guild. Can I expect good demons like you to translate? Or must I make preparations? I’d bring you, but …” she looked to her dragon, still not fully mature, and then to the stead where Classa slumbered. “You’ve got more important things to care for. Watch over Riesco for me, yeah?”
Present: Ashon’amar’loiyang @Ti, Cal’tuuro’jaros @Suicharte, Casii’fyret’alan @Pirouette, Dorothea Hohnstein @Jasbraq, “Ismet’ych’lahiin’dichora” @Force and Fury, Kaspar Elstrøm von Wentoft @Wolfieh, Edyta Łaska, Manfred Hohenfelter, Qasem Laghmani, Ymiico’luun’yoru [@Salsa Verde], Lycans, Father Jacques Dubosque, Brother Baudile Dubosque, Viktor Strauss, Cristophe Wiliken, Margot, the Highwaymen
“I did not want to interrupt.”
Viktor was sitting on one of the few remaining pews that hadn’t been destroyed during the battle. He had been fully concealed through expert use of his magusjaeger skills and had no trouble duping an otherwise quite observant Baudile. “And I was of the mind that all were welcome in the house of the Pentad, Herr Dubosque.” he said with a smug tone as he pushed himself up to his feet.
“Not willing carriers of bad omens, Viktor.” dryly replied the priest as he found support on the still intact tabernacle. “Words hurt, Jacques.” continued Viktor as he began to pace before the altar, arms crossed. “And you know I’m here to help. So far, things have been under control, haven’t th-”
“Stop it. Just, stop it.” Dubosque desperately searched for a place to sit, but he could only stand with growing discomfort. “All these deaths, Viktor. I’m not going to continue with this farce. I’ve kept my end of the deal, but where is your promise? A few kids are too much for you, Strauss?” the injured man, still wearing his loose nightly outfit, glared daggers at the blonde soldier. “I should do what I should’ve done months ago with you.”
“Kill me?” asked Viktor, halting his pace and staring up at the man that had threatened him. “You know how that ends, Jacques. Your people won’t care - they never did. And those kids? Neither you nor I can wrangle them away from this.” he took a couple of steps to the altar, and were mere feet away from the older man of similar stature. “If you and the people of this town are to survive this storm, something must be done.” he shot a knowing look at the priest, and the implication was thoroughly understood. Jacques scowled.
“How long will this continue, Viktor? How many have to die for … This?” Dubosque exhaled from his nose and continued before an answer could be provided. “No. No more. I will not take more innocent lives. By Oraff, I will no longer stand for this impossible choice that leads only to death. I’m done!” the man shoved the tabernacle with enough might to tip it over. It didn’t break.
Viktor arched an eyebrow. “You’re not done.” he dismissed Dubosque as if his resolve was a mere temper tantrum. “You’ve got nobody, Jacques. Your Church doesn’t care. Your country doesn’t care. Your own GODS do not care.” he stated as he reached down for the fallen golden edifice and set it back on its pedestal and wiped some accumulated dust. “Because you, as is this whole town, are meaningless to grander schemes. You’re nothing. Just as I am. What are you next to a whole civilization that they’ve gradually burned down?” Dubosque went silent, again pained and seeking the comfort of sitting down, but the closest pew was so far …
“I promise you this, however.” Viktor pushed his forearm over one of the wooden beams and leaned close to the tired Dubosque with his back against the wall. “Get through these final nights. Take care of these kids. And Mandelein will fade to obscurity as it has for fifty years.” he reached out to the priest’s shoulder and squeezed. “That is your reward for what your people had to endure. It’s almost over, Jacques.”
Jacques Dubosque looked at the hand that touched him. He wanted to react - to lash out. But he lacked the strength to even raise his voice. And for the sake of those he protected, he did not utter a single truthful word in his mind. He merely shot a scornful glare at Viktor, to which the latter scoffed and backed up. “Tomorrow night, do it.” he ordered as half his body began to fade. “I will be reclaiming some goods. Wrangle the rest to make this clean. I’ll be sure to clean up on my end too.” and then he was gone.
It took a few hours to gather supplies, heal the wounded and gather their bearings for the group to finally opt to just leave the smuggler camp. Qasem, much to his dismay, could not find an opening without being surrounded by confused but defensive allies of the crown-wearing witch. He would have to find another way, but time was running short for him as he felt his arm pulsate even more and hiding it was becoming impossible, even for a seasoned chemical mage like him.
With Hunds awake, they could begin their trek through the forest again. Tranquil and without disturbance, there was little chance of a wild animal attack. Although …
”Sqwaaaak! It is time! Time of the night!” rang a red bird perched on a branch with a demonic copy of itself by its side. ”Time to die! No more precious!” the demonic one mocked the group. There was no overt hostility, not even an ounce of energy drawn nor its massive flock nearby. ”But if you don’t die.” said one. ”Then mayhaps one precious can be found before the big one eats you!” uttered the other. ”The prison key! Super precious! Very old! Key, key!” they both bobbed their heads in excitement. ”Precious keys, for a precious reward!” then they began to groom one-another, and eventually faded through the stream of time and space.
By the late hours of Dami, they would reach Mandelein.
Taleja saw it before anyone else: Four Moons were full, shining bright through the crevices of the dark clouds. It was all coming together, from her role in all of this to the small piece of information Cal had blurted out. And the worst case scenario was confirmed when her drawing range flared with massive heat signatures all of a sudden. For the first time, the Kressian scholar felt backed into a corner. Then came the moans of pain. They were everywhere!
The group returning from the raid had entered the town from the East, and until then nothing had been too suspicious beyond things being a little too quiet. That was until Hunds started to cough incessantly, and so did two of the highwaymen. Some squirmed on the ground, while one held his throat as if he was choking on something. Then came the bone cracking, followed by the sound of skin and ligaments tearing. “Erin!” yelled Cristophe right before the woman smacked him away with immense might, further into the forest.
All three had turned relatively quickly into the same beasts they had fought the day prior. All with the same, feral eyes that only saw humans as enemies and meals.
Qasem, too, felt an intense pain within. But he did not turn. He began breathing rapidly, his skin stretching and his bones swelling in an attempt to take a new form. A clenched fist would break the miniscule flask of plushtail oil that had been recently emptied. Such a small amount was only going to briefly delay the inevitable, but that was all he needed. In the midst of the thrashing from the other three beasts, Qasem seized the opportunity: A still weakened Dory had her thigh slashed with a dagger, exposing her to a toxin that acted very quickly and made her go numb. With his increased strength, the Darhannic envoy caught her before she could fall and made good use of his superhuman strength to jump out of the way. “I’m sorry.” he said as he performed his treason, with Manfred not too far and capable of hearing his shame.
The kidnapper pushed to go deeper into the forest, where a Hunting Lodge was said to be. As others sought to pursue, the grim reality of what was truly happening became apparent. Converging toward them, from every direction including the forest itself, were burning hot masses that were unmistakably wildbloods. It wasn’t just two dozens scattered around, however, but hundreds. They almost looked coordinated in their attack, quickly blocking off an easy passage to tail Qasem with only a couple capable of closing the gap before becoming easily flanked meals.
From the Forest (East), West and South they were getting boxed in. Almost like they were coordinated. This left only Northbound, through the streets that led to the Square. They had to be quick, these creatures were everywhere, but mostly concentrated toward the middle of town, slightly South of the actual Square (that wasn’t the genuine centre). If one were to sense, they could detect massive energy flares, but walls of transformed townsfolk were going to be a problem. They had to keep moving, lest they get swarmed from all sides.
Ymiico only caught the vaguest glimpse of her attacker. A man that hadn’t even touched her and yet put her out like she was nothing. She was, after all, at her most vulnerable. But that face, she recognized it. She had seen it many times, way back at her first year in Ersand’Enise. The betrayer, Viktor.
She awoke not in a cell, but in the abandoned tavern that the Pentad and Hexaic collaboration took place, right under the bar and both pairs of limbs bound by rope. It was already late at night and she still felt numb from the dose of magic she had been shot with. Wiggling out of the bindings was no issue for a shinobi, even less one that felt her power swell considerably with every passing moment. There were constant shuffling noises behind the walls.
Once on her feet, the Nikanese Yasoi could begin to focus on her surroundings and sense more accurately. She met quite the sensory overload. Massive balls of heat surrounded her. The noises persisted. No, they got louder and they came from all over just like the heat signatures. Feeling boxed in, she opened the door leading out of the tavern, only to witness what can only be described as Hell on Sipenta. Wildbloods much like the ones she had fought the other day, were running rampant. Structures were severely damaged, beasts hopped onto roofs and some began to develop the ability to unleash flames, although they were considerate of their environment in that regard, strangely enough.
Before long, they caught her scent, with the tavern’s roof giving in to the weight of three hirsute creatures eager for Yasoi flesh. But they were ignorant to the power she shared with them - a power given by the moons. Ymiico wasn’t trapped with them, they were trapped with Ymiico.
Thus began Ymiico’s stand, surrounded by over three hundred beasts.
“Heh, easy. E - Z, easy.”
Margot stared at her winnings for a good ten minutes in one of her cave-like hideouts. She really was just looking at the pile and just triumphantly stood before it. “Turin, you dumbest bitch.” she spat by the pile. “Should having not fucked with them like Margot said.” she scoffed.
Schleim was equally obsessed over the pristine Magi that had been acquired. Then, it looked at Margot.
“What? No regrets.” she answered with a narrowed gaze. “Don’t care no more.” but Schliem continued to stare, while Tock arrived at the hideout to demand food. “No yums, only cashish.” she then shot the same look toward the Echobird. “Stop. Not Margot’s problem herein again.”
Both Schleim and Tock just stared with their heads tilting in synch. “Margot tried! And we nearly unalived! Ownselves can be helped alone.” she crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “Margot’s fault? What debt?! Tch!” the pile of money was wrapped back into the leather bag and stashed deep into her hideout. “Magot did not gift the poison to water hole …” she grumbled. “But Margot did helpmuch Turin the bitch, and the fucking Ghost.” she recalled that last one in particular, the only reason she was caught and locked up. “You’re right, Schleim. It is a littlelike Margot’s fault it’s herein happen.” she scratched her neck and looked toward the town from outside her cliffside hideout. “And that asshole need to get what’s comin’ to him.”
“Move.” ordered Taleja to Cal as she seized one of her concoctions from her bag. The two had been spared the worst of the beasts as they retreated back into the Trade Guild, however the young researcher found her opportunity when her group of peers was nearing their position. They were intercepted by a row of beasts that had emerged from the various businesses and homes nearby, with quite a few bursting out of the inn, and were going to block off the group with sheer numbers. The concoction, upon impact, unleashed a discombobulating explosion and a foul gas that struck the enhanced olfactory sense of the beasts. “We need to get to higher ground! They’re everywhere and too many. We need somewhere defensible.”
Indeed, the whole town had seemingly turned and were aggressively seeking out humans while having formed an unusually sophisticated perimeter in the forest. Escape wasn’t going to be easy. Bursting from the Tapisserie business were two beasts, one particularly keen on mauling Kaspar with minimal regard for its safety, while the other acting more like the fold and sought to trail and surround the group.
And as they continued North, the elevated Church that wasn’t too far from the Square. They were losing distance between themselves and the beasts, with many stalking the group from the roofs, and strays standing in their paths. There weren’t that many at the Church, however, with the gate open and swinging as if it had been used very recently.
“Hey!” the doors of the Holy edifice opened to show a single, Stresian monk waving at them. “Over here!”
Qadira arrived in Chuanwei with the rest of the group. She could sense the imminent threat approaching, her snout flaring at the smell of smoke and gunpowder. The Nikanese vessel took notice of them as well and fired barrages of projectiles over the coast and the settlement. Qadira stood ready, blubber giggling and tail beating the ground.
In the face of imminent peril, I beseech you, dear frail mortals, to release the tendrils of fear that seek to constrict your hearts. Be comforted, for I shall rise as your guardian, steadfast and resolute, warding off the impending onslaught launched by this vessel. Fear not, for I shall muster my formidable might and tenacity to repulse the audacious assault, ensuring your safety amidst this turbulent encounter. Trust in my unwavering resolve, and witness as I unleash my unwavering power to thwart this boat's belligerent advance, shielding you from harm's insidious grasp.
The beast gurgled and stomped its thick feet onto the dry dirt. Where many humans had failed to deflect the incoming projectiles, Qadira had repulsed all those in her vicinity with aggressive drawing and swift smacks of her tail. Her black, beady eyes glared at the incoming ship, her claws dragging against the ground like an angry bull’s hooves.
Then, the beast felt a warmth within - a great strength surged through her! The doings of a human named Yalen.
In the presence of your esteemed wisdom and benevolence, oh revered monk, I humbly offer my profound appreciation for the precious boon you have bestowed upon me. With deep gratitude, I pledge to wield this bestowed gift as a formidable weapon against the forces that stand in opposition to our noble cause. Rest assured, dear clergyman, that I shall strive unwaveringly to emerge victorious in our shared struggle against our adversaries.
When the largest cannon fired, Qadira syphoned the entirety of the projectile and fired back with an even larger blast mixed with flammable mucus to accelerate a chain reaction. The boat was struck, but did not fall. Not until Zhao’s cataclysmic charged attack after a second rain of projectiles. Many were knocked out by the blast, but neither Maura nor Qadira were out of it.
As the olfactory senses awaken within me, permeating my very being, I am graced with the unmistakable fragrance that belongs solely to my beloved sister. Forsooth! In this pivotal moment, I implore you, immobile human, to muster your courage and embark upon a swift and resolute advance, for the time has come to surge forth with unwavering determination in pursuit of our shared objective with alacrity.
Qadira unleashed a loud sound that nearly came off as a ‘moo’ and dashed into the ruins of the settlement with Maura on her back. An entity attempted to get in their way, but Maura picked up on the interference and guided Qadira appropriately. They would eventually arrive at an impasse: A human with a delicious fish-person. Qadira growled at the woman.
In the depths of my innermost sentiments, I find myself harbouring a profound aversion towards the individual in question, for their presence evokes within me a palpable sense of disfavour and discontent.
The talks between Maura and the Nikanese envoy didn’t work out, and conflict erupted with the unconscious Kaureerah freed. There were also Dayanara and Jiang. But in order to save them, this interloper had to be dealt with. Qadira was not easy to control and would find herself particularly aggressive toward the woman, frequently charging at her, and yet there was another presence that consistently interfered and threatened Kaureerah in particular. Qadira unleashed a massive roar, prompting Dayanara’s slow awakening.
Hark! In order to staunch the insidious advance of this enigmatic and imperceptible force that has left us consistently flummoxed, it is imperative that we remain steadfastly resolute in our collective endeavour, persistently launching a relentless series of attacks with unwavering determination and unyielding resolve!
With the help of a hidden Xiualan and Dayanara, the group of four were able to not only wound the assailant but also repulse her until the appearance of a strange individual. One that deleted the woman entirely. Qadira flinched, and curiously sniffed about. But the man was swiftly gone, leaving them with … A happy ending? Her attention was immediately on the drops of blood left by the supposedly dead Nikanese.
Following the act of savouring the flavours bestowed upon me by indulging in the gustatory delights of this culinary experience, I shall proceed to convey my deep-seated appreciation through a lighthearted gesture of affection, namely by engaging in the act of playfully caressing my limber muscle specialised in gustatory functions against the personification of piscine characteristics, thereby giving rise to a whimsical and comical interlude wherein the very entity that initially posed as a potential menace now assumes the role of an unexpected companion, epitomising the ironic twist that has manifested within this unique and memorable juncture.
Qadira licked Kaureerah and let out happy little grunts. Although the atmosphere in the air wasn’t perfect. A confrontation between Zhao and Maura occurred, tackling the subject of Xiulan. Qadira was still Maura’s ride, and kept on uttering grunts that could easily be seen as threatening to others.
My fellow chaps of good breeding and social stature, pray tell, how fare thee in the realm of existence?
The moment was cut short when a witch appeared among them, along with a slow and peculiar figure that remained silent. Qadira perked up, her body language suggesting she wasn’t all too comfortable with this person. She felt Abdel hand by her ear. Her eyes briefly peered at his direction.
In light of the bond that intertwines us within the realm of instruction and guidance, I feel compelled to impart upon you a word of caution, dear fatherly figure, urging you to exercise utmost vigilance and prudence in your dealings with this mysterious and enigmatic figure, who assumes the guise of a witch. Given the circumstances that currently envelop us, with an awareness of the intricacies and potential challenges that lie ahead, it is imperative that we engage in a meticulous and thorough process of thoughtful readiness, leaving no stone unturned, as we lay the groundwork for our forthcoming endeavours with utmost precision and careful consideration.
Location: Xochiyeiteteo Day of the week: Taldes Time: Day Present: Zarina, Ayla @Ti, Classa @Force and Fury, Tku @dragonpiece, Riesco, Zox, Raiders, Demons, Yolk Demon, The Olive Tree and Dragon.
The heat of battle was something Zarina had almost forgotten and a taste she never wished to genuinely acquire. Despite being prepared - some would even say over prepared - it did not make the ordeal any more appealing or easy. But she accepted this mission knowing full-well the inevitabilities it engendered. And so she charged in with her trusted steed, circling the horde of enemies with Classa not too far behind and her allies riding the Zox.
Fucking demons. Fucking Void-lovers.
Facial features twitched under her platinum helm. Malefic beings from another realm had been called upon to bolster the raider forces, and one had taken particular interest to her.
I am so sick of these foggy shitters.
But try as she might, her armour and raw might did little to repulse the corrosive blob of intangible darkness. It burned so much, invoking furies that only emerged after incredibly acute pains - like stubbing one’s toe. Taken by frustration over her situation and the pain, Zarina acted out in pure impulse. Her dragonhead greatshield, an item she had used to protect, opened its wicked maw to reveal a small cannon.
Now you burn.
There was a moment of hesitation. The remorseful Zarina that knew she was going to hate this tried to stop her. Had it just been the burns, she’d have held back. But there was more to it - there was fear too. And fear made people do many things. The flames were vomited out on a group of raiders, scorching at least two and injuring two more. The screams and the smell were atrocious, but she did not linger. There were demons and over fifty attackers.
The battle raged on with Zox clearing many of the pack. Tku eventually became the author of the mist’s second demise, Classa covered her new friend Riesco, and Ayla neutered the speed demon. They were going to win this if they held strong. The platinum warrior had to ensure the titan did not fall, and she did just that as the team’s immovable temporal shield.
Then came the finale. A duet with Ayla and the birth of a shining God-like giant. The enemies knew nothing but terror at their end, and the final titanesque demon met its match with the golem of pristine metal. They had won, and their first prize was a massive Ayla.
“We’ll need to revisit living arrangements, Ayla.”
Although she spoke, there was little chance the giantess could hear Zarina without some sort of sonic enhancement. There was one thing missing. Zarina, realising there was still a loose end, approached the familiar egg-entity she had seen once before.
It was not easy to find, for the conflict seemed to have buried it. Then, from within the shifting sands, came a faint glow, and Zarina dug. The glow expanded and then, bursting from the ground, came a glowing millennium egg. It shot into the sky and hovered there, a halo about its form, face beatific and arms outstretched.
A PRIMORDIAL EGG had ascended.
"An angelic Egg? It is a good Egg" Tku decided to move focus onto it.
“A Promordial egg, destined to be eaten.” Zazzy added.
The egg turned its magnificent head and blinked. "You have my neverending gratitude for aiding me in my ascension. I was summoned by wicked people, my chance at redemption tarnished from the start, but you fought with honour and decency and I am born anew in the light of the Pentad."
Zarina blushed in awe. So majestic.
Tku was in awe. He was so proud to have helped.
Its great white wings flapped softly under the burning desert sun, casting a vast and peaceful shadow. Brilliant pure white feathers drifted and fluttered down from above.
The PRIMORDIAL EGG smiled.
"Mister Egg, are you able to help my friend Zox?" Tku asked, unsure of the nature of the egg.
"It is already done." It... winked. "Enjoy six more hours as titans. Then, you shall both be returned." It clasped its hands before itself.
"And now I must go," said the egg, "but I first bestow upon you these gifts as a token of my gratitude." Three glowing black and green orbs - egg-shaped - appeared before the angelic being, and they wafted slowly down towards the sand, where they lay, warm and waiting.
One, however, landed elsewhere, coming to rest atop the great olive tree.
The tree pulsed. The egg disappeared.
arina nodded sagely at the egg. No more words needed to be said. This was a good ending.
The armoured girl approached the landing site of one of the eggs.
In his head, Tku heard a voice.
"Step forward, child," said the mystical tree of the desert.
In the distance came the echo of hooves and, with them, a dust trail.
"Eat of my fruit and you shall be nourished."
Classa could feel its words as well. "You too, young one."
Classa looked up at Zarina and leaned in. "But I don't really like olives..." she whined, scrunching up her face. "Do I gotta?"
Zarina cackled at that answer. Oh kids. “It's a special olive.” she said before tapping the centaur's back. “Only the best of us can even get a lick.”
From within the great tree's branches came a mist, in the midst of the desert, and they were filled with gentle clouds and a soft light. A small serpentine dragon rested within it contentedly, eyes half-closed. Then, in Tku's mind: "What do you wish for?" Classa trotted up and took an olive as well.
Riesco also approached. His simple horse mind was attracted to the tree for some reason. Zarina just watched him do so. He leaned toward Classa, lips flapping. Ready to suck in her winnings.
Classa held it out in her hand, looking at it and working up the courage.
Frightened by the horse coming up to take her prize, the girl swallowed it. She, too, heard what Tku had moments earlier. Riesco began to nod heavily, frustrated but excited!
"I wish..." The girl trailed off, suddenly and perhaps for the first time, lost for words. She regarded Zox, then Tku, and then the giant Ayla. Last, she looked to Zarina. "I wish to... be free." She paused. "And the others like me: them too."
Classa took a few steps back toward the others. "So is this like a trick question or something?" she asked, "'cause I'm totally just gonna ask the tree to grant it."
Zarina did not know what to feel. Relief? Her job felt just a tad easier now. But, without Zox or Classa, this farm would have been good as gone, and Jascuan very dead. She exhaled from her nose, and then chuckled. “No trick. If that's what you really want, then so be it. No wrong answer, Classa.”
Classa stepped forward. "Are you a tree or a dragon?" she asked with childlike curiosity. The dragon's eyes slid open and it seemed to smile, floating languidly through the air as it descended, looping and twirling about her shoulders. "Why can I not be both?" It chuckled and the tree's leaves seemed to tremble.
lassa's face scrunched up inquisitively. "How can you be a tree and a dragon?" She pawed at the ground. "Sounds like something Mr. Jascuan would say when he's trying to sound all wise and stuff."
The dragon stilled and tilted its head. Then, there was a small surge of energy of a type that none of them had felt before and the child's eyes widened. "Ooooohhh," she exclaimed, nodding knowingly after a moment. "I get it!" She paused to consider, sticking a lock of hair in the corner of her mouth and nibbling on it. "I think I actually undewstand a lot of things now. Give us what we need and we will free ourselves." She looked up and smiled uncertainly.
Classa stamped her feet happily. Nobody was quite sure what she'd received, but she seemed to know. The little girl twisted and cracked a shit-eating grin. "Wait 'til you see what I got!" she boasted. Then, momentarily, she turned back to face the tree and bowed her head. "Thank you Mr. Dragon-Tree."
With that, the dragon settled back upon the branches and the rolling mists took it away from that place. The tree stood still and silent in the desert.
Then, it crackled and bent. Its branches groaned. Its fruits withered.
The ground seemed to open and it disappeared as if it had never been there in the first place.
A single millennium egg sat there in the sand. The other was in Zarina's hand.
Classa perked up. "Oh, I want it!" she exclaimed, hurrying forward. Then, she looked up at the massive figure of Zox. "So I can save it for him, of course." She blinked, smiled, and looked up, holding her hands out towards Tku.
Ming and Abdel were the pair sent to follow-up with one of the trails captured by Qadira the Skuggvar, and brought her along too. By having such an imposing beast in their disposition, the group thought it best that the trio would go to the more back alley location they had sniffed out. It was a warehouse of sorts, near the Foreign Quarter, with a few other larger buildings neighbouring it.
A garage for older carriages was selected to stake out the place. Two heads popped out of the wooden railing of the roof, with Qadira curiously pushing on her hind legs to get a look as well, nearly breaking the structure! Luckily Abdel had a hold of her. Ming could count four guards from sight, and the young Tethered could confirm it with his sensory capabilities.
“We must go quiet. We gain nothing from raising alarms everywhere and cause more collateral damage.” said Ming, ever the steadfast worker.
“We can try to sneak, but that’ll be hard with Qadira.” Abdel looked at his Skuggvar. “I don’t want to leave her unattended either. Maybe we knock one out?”
Qadira grunted.
“The beast is big.” Ming shook his head. “It is too dangerous. I will go in, and you will cover me. Understood?”
Abdel wanted to say something. He really wanted to prove his worth and actually do things. But alas, this was objectively the best way to go about it. Ming was to go alone, attempt to sneak, while Abdel watched from a block away. From there, he had Qadira ready to attack if things went awry.
And they did, sort of. As Ming employed the gift to try and slip in unnoticed, three of the guards dressed in plain clothes were none the wiser. Except for one. He was walking toward Ming with clear intent and off his initial patrol path. Abdel had half a mind to try and attack to knock out, but his intuition told him this was far too risky. They had to act like they had been made.
Just as Ming was going to be intercepted, Abdel and his guard dragon walked up to the man. A man slightly taller than him, which wasn’t common in ReTan. “NinHao!” greeted Abdel with a very forced smile. “我是政府。我需要检查地方 (I’m government. I need to inspect place)” he uttered with minimal charisma which mattered little when Qadira had sublime timing with her burping of her recent meal. It was enough to get the guard’s attention, if he hadn’t noticed the hulking beast already that served as very obvious intimidation.
The guard just smiled as he saw the beast, and even seemed like he wanted to approach it. “政府？但一切都井井有条，长官。(Government? But everything is in order, sir.)” his expression dulled once he addressed Abdel’s approach with a very distinct accent. To which the teen replied. “我们很仓促。也许我们快点？ (We are hasty. Maybe we make quick?)” he took out a pack of rolled cigarettes that were in a red box, clearly made to be of high quality. It was a box he had gotten during his classes, and said to be a typical means of ‘acceptable’ bribery among everyday men. Added to this, he had a few incantors to go with it and Qadira’s loud breathing as incentive. Ming exhaled in exasperation from his hidden corner.
The man just chuckled, only looking at the offering once before addressing Abdel again. “先生，我们遵守所有规定。(We are complying with all regulations, sir.)” again, such an odd accent. And this time Abdel picked up on it. “... هل انت من هنا؟ (... Are you from here?)” he inquired in Virangish, much to the enjoyment of the guard. “أرى أن لديك أذن جيدة! أنا أكون. لكنني لست كذلك. (I see you’ve got a good ear! I am. But I’m not as well.)” he beamed at Abdel and shot an even happier smile at the Skuggvar. “من المحتمل أن يكون المستمع الجيد مثلك قد استنتج أن هذه قاعدة ثورية من نوع ما. (A good listener like you has probably deduced this is a revolutionary base of sorts.)”
Abdel gulped. He felt like he had just landed in the lion’s den. His hand reached out for Qadira’s snout. “لا تقلق ، لن أؤذيك. لكن يجب أن أسأل ، لماذا تساعد حكومة مثل هذه الحكومة؟ هل أنت خائف حقًا من عالم يتساوى فيه جميع الرجال والنساء؟ (Do not worry, I will not hurt you. But I must ask, why would you help a government like this one? Are you truly afraid of a world where all men and women are equal?)” Abdel began to draw while the guard enthusiastically began his speech. “هناك حاجة إلى رجال طيبين مثلك إذا كنا سنفوز بهذا! ماذا لو ذكرت لصديقك أن هذا مجرد شيء مضطرب للغاية. عموما لا يهتمون.(Good men like you are needed if we’re ever going to win this! How about you just mention to your friend that this is just a very turbulent enclave thing. They generally don’t care.)” shrugged the man, to which Abdel replied sternly. “لن أفعل. (I will not.)”
Just as the Tethered was ready to use his Magnetic magic in tandem with Qadira’s might, the guard had one final thing to say. “Then, you need to know a few things before you take any step further, Abdel Varga.” Abdel’s ice turned cold as the world around him distorted.
What had been a warehouse and a rather average-looking middle-aged man of Retanese extraction were now… the confines of the San Agustin refuge and a face that Abdel knew very well: that of his first crush, Marceline. “I have to say, I’d be pretty scared if I didn’t know the animals better,” she teased. “There’s a little soft spot, right behind the eyes, where if you scratch just right, they become big sucks.” She smiled.
Abdel nearly fell on his ass after space and time were warped around him. This was a first, usually these required a portal. Qadira was there too, seemingly unfazed by the change in scenery and just kept sniffling at the man-turned-Marci. Wait, Marci? “Marci? What are-” the obvious hit the flabbergasted Abdel quickly enough, this was some sort of illusion! “Who are you?” he inquired with a raised tone while backing up closer to his guard Skuggvar. “Why are we here? Show your true face!” as much as he feigned outrage and anger, the fear and anxiety was as clear as day to the entity.
“Well, I’m not Marci. You figured that one out, investigator.” Not-Marci cracked a teasing grin. “I’m also definitely not here to hurt you.” She sniffed and glanced down at her shoes, rocking back and forth from toes to heels like she had when they were very young and like she’d stopped doing once the tethering had taken hold in earnest. “‘Nuff people getting hurt already, and for the stupidest things.” She shook her head. Looking up after a moment and meeting his eyes, she sighed. “I’d show you my true face if I had one.”
Abdel didn’t disagree. Actually, he fully agreed, but the circumstances were such that he could only keep himself guarded for now. This could all be a trick. “I don’t understand.” he simply said, his hand resting on the scaled back of his Skugg. “But-” he pursed his lips. Qadira was not showing any sort of hostility to the being. What could this mean? “Are you the one causing this mess in this country?” he furrowed his eyebrows. “An agent? Or … The man himself?”
“Man, hmm?” said Marci, shaking her head. “Sure.” She spoke and was suddenly Manuel Escarra. “I guess I’m many things to many people,” he admitted. “An enemy to some, a misguided idealist, a saviour, or hope.” He let out a long sigh, leaning against one of the walls of the refuge under the cool moonlight and the warm torchlight. “I only ever wanted to be the latter. The world’s unfair, Abdel, and you know it.”
“I do.” Abdel began to let his guard down as he took in the warm air of Torragon. It might’ve been an illusion, but it definitely felt like home, and it sounded like Manuel Escarra. “I just … Don’t think too much about it. I never really had to, and I guess I feel happier when I don’t.” his tanned hand reached to his Skuggvar's head and he began to scratch where the false-Marci had recommended. Qadira melted in a matter of seconds, letting out little grunts of joy before letting itself fall on its tummy and just let go. “You must know I’ve been finding people associated with you. Are you going to get back at me?” he asked meekly. He was trying to hide the fear he had of this very notion he thought of the moment he realized who this was, but he couldn’t feign confidence whatsoever, even with a big beast by his side. “I don’t regret it. They were breaking the law.”
“And your parents,” Escarra bit off bitterly, “They were breaking no laws when they surrendered you.” He shook his head. “But your friends were when they freed you. The laws had to be rewritten to allow for it.” The head ranger’s eyes narrowed. “Some laws enforce justice. Many contravene it.” He regarded the youth appraisingly. “Ask yourself this: you are raising that magnificent animal, and her sister. Who are you raising them to obey?”
Abdel clenched his jaw at the mention of his ‘family’. A sensitive topic he had tried his best to forget. “Please don’t talk about them - my parents.” he said with the same bitterness the false-Escarra employed. He obviously agreed with the notion, but emotions flared far too much when it came to the subject that rational thought rarely came into play and bottling up the frustration ended up being easier. The Traveler nodded in commiseration. “Then I apologize wholeheartedly. The selfish acts of others leaves marks on us and I well know it.” Abdel looked down and merely nodded. The tenseness had dropped after that.
The conversation moved on, and the youth had more to say. “I’m raising these girls to obey me. Well …” he sighed as he relented on the scritches. “I know they’re way too smart to really ‘obey’ me. But, I want them to work with me and live comfortably with me. I’ve grown close to them, I think.”
“And so it is with the wealthy and powerful as compared to everybody else.” Escarra was now Marci again. “The rules of our society have been raised by them like children. They love those rules and they guard those rules, but the rules serve them. Maybe they think they want comfort for the people below them but, just as this magnificent beast you raise might have eaten you had you not trained her, so they train us not to rise up and eat them as well.”
“What are you trying to say?” inquired Abdel, eyes narrowed. “That Qadira should bite my head off because I asked her to do things for me?” just as he said that, the Skuggvar turned its head to give the boy a big lick to the face.
“Haha!” laughed the fake Marci. She scratched at the back of her head. “Sounded like that, didn’t it?” She shook her head. “But no, she shouldn’t because, with you, she has and will likely continue to enjoy a better life that she would’ve in the wild. The same cannot be said for the millions who are pushed aside, trampled, and kicked to the curb by the few who have all of the magic and who use this power almost entirely to maintain it.”
Before Abdel could respond, Qadira then moved her ‘affection’ toward the apparition. It approached its big, mucus-covered lips to attempt at a lick on the Traveller. “I don’t think about these things much but … Why do they do this? I know, back home, they stand on-top because they have better magic. But why nullify everyone else? It feels extreme. Even dangerous.” he crossed his arms, eyes darting between the kiss-happy Qadira and the shapeshifting being. “But most importantly … How do you even change something like this?”
The Traveler let out a long sigh, and now she was Amanda, just as she had looked when Abdel had first arrived at the refuge. She stroked the big slobbering dragon, playing with its long, whiskerlike tassels. She listened, too. “The ones on top do it because they are sanguinaires and an entire population of people with manas but no ability to use them is a buffet, but it also means that they’re safe. Nobody outside of their chosen few lieutenants will ever rise to challenge them.” She scratched the big beast right between the eyes and regarded Abdel more evenly. “But their motivations are simple and selfish. What interests me more is why so many people go along with it.” she shrugged, gently shooing Qadira back in the direction of her master. “I think it’s because of safety. At the end of the day, people will accept injustices so long as they judge them not to be more intolerable than the sacrifices needed to overturn them. The regime here does an excellent job with that. Even so…” she glanced up at the night sky as a shooting star streaked across their view. Abdel stared in awe at the display, almost forgetting it was likely to be an illusion. “They are losing the battle. As Retan opens up more to the rest of the world, people are beginning to see. There is a groundswell of anger at the opaque and arbitrary testing regime and the hardships that it causes.” She faced him unflinchingly, then, and addressed his final question. “If change is to come, it needs to be supported and driven by the people of this place, but they will need a spearpoint to get started: one strong enough to challenge the twins.” Her eyes narrowed, becoming uncharacteristically cold. “It ends with their devil heads on pikes.”
The extreme nature of the Traveller’s conclusion was enough to get Abdel’s head back in the game. Heads on spikes, how many revolutions are illustrated. At the very least the Traveller didn’t paint themselves as a full-on idealist, which would have tipped off the not-so-naive Abdel of potential hogwash. He gulped at that very violent image. “Monsters. Revolution …” he scooted close to his retreating beast once more, seeking comfort from the mighty animal. “I’ve known some of that when the Refuge was freed. It was terrifying. I wasn’t so scared, but back then I had almost nothing to lose.” his heart skipped a beat as he thought of Maura, and then of all his friends. “Now, I don’t know. I want people like those Twins to face the music. But I see why so many are scared to even try. I am too. Especially when I nearly hurt the people I love when violence was the only option.” he looked over at Qadira and was reminded of the house incident. All of this reminded him of how easily he could lose everything, all for a revolution he didn’t fully understand yet. “... Was it you that sent these men to Mr. Bao’s? The ones that nearly killed my girls?” as accusatory as his words seemed, his voice was tempered and his expression softened as if he was simply expecting the truth for closure rather than a full-on confession.
Amanda was still for a moment and then, in no uncertain terms, she shook her head. “The twins hope to use the boogeyman that I represent to galvanize action against an internal revolution.” She paused. “Wait, no. That isn’t strictly correct. The Nikanese are involved too. Why, I cannot say, aside from their age-old enmity. Whatever exists of those who agree with me has been co-opted by the government and the revolutionaries. Bao was the last of the real ones. The other one - the one they call Hui - I… misjudged him.” Her shoulders slumped and she shook her head. “I may have some power, I admit, but I too am not immune to making mistakes. He is not an evil man, but he is… not a good one either, and no longer a friend, if he ever was.”
Then, she was Manuel Escarra once more. “If you don’t believe me, look in the small chest in the warehouse office, in the false bottom. There is a reason that I approached you here.”
Abdel couldn’t tell if there were lies or not. There was no way to verify except for whatever was in the warehouse. But, at the very least, it was convincing and fit what he had observed so far. “Hui.” he repeated that name a few times. “Ash, or something. Comes off as a sort of alias. I guess that’s to be expected in these spheres?” he mused. “He was the one to fight that exemplar - Wu Long.” Abdel furrowed his eyebrows and turned his head to the not-Warden. “What do you make of that guy in particular? He … Is hard to read. And was keen on using our expertise when the government wasn’t.”
Escarra nodded. “Comes off as an alias because it is.” He crossed his arms. “And Wu Long?” He bit his lower lip and let out a noise of frustration. “He and I do not agree on a foundational level. In some ways, he would be every modicum as oppressive as the Twins. He would show mercy where it is not deserved and persecute those who he has deemed 'evil' by nature. And yet… I cannot deny that he... cares about this place and, in a sense, uncorruptibly so.”
Abdel scratched his cheek. “All of what’s going on, even if it isn’t you leading it, connects to you. You seem close to both these players, or were, and had some sort of falling out - at least with that first one.” he was trying to piece it together, and was less so talking to the traveller as he was airing out his thoughts. “... Why won’t you intervene yourself? With everything that you know, it feels like the Twins wouldn’t be much of a symbol of oppression and safety to the people if they were just out of the picture.” again, airing his thoughts, as he didn’t even let the traveller answer before he continued. “Is it that you just can’t?”
For a moment, the figure of Escarra wavered and something else could be seen beneath. Abdel failed to pick up anything much, but something had happened. “Those who ‘teach’ you would have you believe that there are no monsters out there greater than I, but I tell you now that there are.” Solidly the Head Ranger once more, he shook his head. “I cannot say more and I cannot stay more, else my presence here be detected and it pose a danger to you. To answer your question, though, it is not that I cannot, but that I mustn’t. If I just sweep in and topple a head of state and leave the people of this country to clean up my mess in the power vacuum, I have only created a new crisis. Should I rule in the tyrant’s stead, I have simply replaced one authority with another.” He shook his head. “I have not come here today to convince you that you must join my cause. I wish to apprise you of the situation in full and beg of you to act with both resolution and compassion. Be here. Know these people and, when the time comes, help them achieve the victory that they so justly deserve.” Then, the world around them began to blur and slowly crumble. “We will be returning to the present and I will fall unconscious. You will have used internal magic to do so. Understood?” Abdel simply nodded.
The Rettanese man fell to his knees and nearly hit his head on the stone pavement, only to be caught by Abdel at the last second. Everything was back to normal and not a second was lost in the present. To Ming, the guard had simply fallen over after telling something he couldn’t hear to Abdel. Sceptical of what happened, he emerged from his hiding spot and joined his foreign partner. He wanted to say something about Abdel’s methods, but he ended up just nodding. It got the job done and they had more to do.
“Bring the body inside, we won’t have much time until they suspect something.” whispered Ming as he opened the door to the innards of the warehouse, letting Qadira in first while Abdel started to drag the unconscious ‘Traveller’. The boy could still not believe this was, in some form anyway, the ‘great menace’. He could end this whole shebang right now, potentially. Or not. Chances were the traveller was too strong, that it’d have no effect. But in truth, he had massive reservations over doing it even if there were guarantees of it being permanent.
Once inside and the doors closed behind them, they would be greeted with a few stacks of crates. Near the centre was one crate in particular. It was smaller than the others and placed on a table as if it had recently been filled. Ming nudged his chin toward the box, and Abdel nodded. There were no signs of traps, not in this crate or the others. They began to gut them, starting with this one, though Ming was keen on opening a few nearby ones while Abdel examined the contents.
“Anything beyond clothes and a gun?” he asked, and Abdel had indeed removed both a rifle and a whole set of clothes. A Black Rezaindian set to be exact. “Yeah. You don’t have many Quentics around here, right?” to which Ming denied, it was definitely a rarity and always foreigners.
“Hui - Ash …” mumbled Abdel to himself. “Church clothes and a gun.” he blinked, recalling something from about a year ago. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, and yet it felt vivid. Like he had known someone that had all these pieces fit nicely together. But these weren’t the only things inside. There were also stacks of correspondences, mostly in Perrench.
Good thing Abdel had taken Perrench, and liked it more than Rettanese.
It was a back and forth between two authors: Ash and the one dubbed ‘Sifu’ by the former. Sifu - Teacher. Abdel could deduce that much. And in turn, recalling his trippy exchange earlier, he could already piece together a relationship with the traveller. They were the Sifu. And as he skimmed through the letters, he’d come to discover a breakage in the relationship near the end, shortly after being told of his moniker of ‘Ash’ translating to ‘Hui’ in Rettanese.
“Je regrette cette séparation, Sifu, mais je n’ai pas le coeur de me dévouer aux masses comme vous le faites.” read Abdel out loud. The falling out ultimately came down to Hui’s lack of drive to prop up all the masses and considered himself far more than the master did. Ming perked up, not nearly as proficient in Perrench as Abdel was. “Which means this isn’t about the traveller … The people are being used by Hui!” concluded Abdel, discreet but not enough to not get Ming’s attention. “What isn’t about the traveller?” to which Abdel simply passed the letters to Ming. “I don’t think the head of your problems is the Traveller.”
There was a final piece to consider. An old scroll, worn by age and the ink faded. It was in old Perrench, stuff that Abdel definitely couldn’t read. But he recognized some words. By the date written it was about eight hundred years old, at the time of the Great Heathen War - a piece of History the teen wasn’t too familiar with. Not that he knew much of History in general.
“Service, Great, Sacrifice, Heathens.”
He could deduce these big terms among the faded words, the obsolete formulations and old spellings. That, and the seal of Arcel the Victorious.
Dorothea Hohenstein’s secret had been partially made by brother Baudile Dubosque after their first encounter. The details mattered little as to the crown’s true nature - it was demonic and it had to go. He had made arrangements to meet with the young woman again in the hopes of gathering intelligence on the sinister headwear, but alas it hadn’t come to pass. The next best thing was to stick to what he knew best: The Church.
Sister Laska was part of the group and a fellow clergywoman. Her extremism made the outcome of such an exchange predictable, and in all likelihood extreme measures would be necessary in these unfortunate cases, but he needed more: Another perspective.
Enter Qasem, a Darhannic envoy and by all accounts an accomplished investigator. An objective and considerate view was what Baudile hoped of the man. Differences had to be put aside when the wicked was in play. They were all men and demons did not discriminate by faith.
Finally, Manfred was tugged into the coming exchange with little information. Qasem, having worked with him previously, was the best to lead him into the ‘trap’. It would be at the same defunct tavern Baudile had met Taleja the night after the beast hunt that he’d gather the three for an impromptu summit to decide their action against the unseen evil that went far beyond just Mandelein.
“My apologies for bringing you all in after this crazy day.” said Baudile in all his suaveness as he stood behind the old bar, arms rested like a bartender making small talk. “But I felt there was no time to waste and everyone being distracted would give us some peace.”
Qasem did not sit. He had a hard time convincing himself to trust the monk and his intention, but he had also seen this crown for an extended period of time. Something was wrong, and at the very least he’d gain some insight. “Has this even been verified? It could be a lot less than what you’re speculating.” questioned Qasem as he leaned against a wooden beam, thorough as ever. “The last thing we want is to turn on each other without good reason in a town that has shown only hostility toward us.”
“It is, at the very least, related to a demonic entity. My better, Père Forestier, had been tasked to investigate an incident in your school involving a team that sought out an item of similar nature.” he explained as he reached under the counter and remained crouched for a moment. “Without a doubt, the signs are there. And you would not be here if you didn’t suspect it too.”
“I, too, have worked with Dorothea,” added Sister Laska. “By Eshiran’s will were we able to slay the beast in the forest.” She made the sign of the Pentad, seeing if a couple of others might follow. “By and large, she used a rifle, but she was not incapable with her magics and…” She took and released a breath, scanning the other faces in the room. “I saw with mine own eyes that she employed Dark Magic.” Those same eyes then turned to Manfred. “You know her best and you must know that you would not be here if we wished harm upon her person. Is it not so?” she asked. “Does she not use Dark Magic?”
Manfred had been told that this would be a meeting of great import. In truth, he’d thought it would represent the near-culmination of their work here, with only some smugglers left to deal with before an imminent departure. Instead, three members of various clergies were conspiring against his beloved and had thought it wise to invite him. The magusjaeger kept a poker face. In truth, his feelings were mixed. The crown was a source of immense evil and it had sunk its figurative claws disturbingly deep into Dorothea. Yet, he also saw, in Edyta Laska, the absolute worst species of dogmatic extremist. Perhaps the rezaindian would try to excise the crown nonviolently. Perhaps she would make some attempt not to harm his beloved, but Manfred was under no illusions that, if harming Dory was ‘Plan B’, it was only by a fine margin and she would be very willing to sacrifice the host to stop the cancer. “It is true that she has used magics I am unfamiliar with,” he answered unhelpfully, crossing his arms and leaning against a table. He glanced at the other two.
“There it is!” brother Baudile emerged from the dusty bowels of the counter with a whiskey bottle. He poured a glass for each participant, with Qasem promptly gesturing in refusal with a brow raised. “So it is confirmed that she is a dark mage. And the crown is undoubtedly wicked.” The monk nodded to himself before chugging the drink in one swig. “Then there’s no mistake. That thing, my friends, is a seal - an anchor - for a demon. And that girl has it digging deep in her soul.” He began to pour again. “The question is how advanced this has gotten.” his gaze went to Manfred, and the rest watched him expectantly. All fell upon him to answer, if they hadn’t gotten it from his classmates already.
It was difficult to hide a scowl. That was it then: confirmed, in his mind. They were eager to destroy her, as he had once - briefly - been. Manfred would do this his own way, but he could not let them know. “If that is your expert assessment, then I thank you for it. I am but a simple magusjaeger, at the end of the day, and not so very knowledgeable on these matters.” He still needed to seem as if he were on board, though. He needed to engender some degree of trust. “But I have noticed a change in her of late. She wears that headpiece quite often, especially when she believes she may be in danger. I do not believe that she does so consciously. She certainly seems to have become more confident and gifted in her use of magic…”
“As his lover, do you know how long she’s been wearing it?” Qasem turned his leaning body to face the real reason they were here: Manfred, and what he could provide so they could take action. “A timeline is good, si. It doesn’t always mean progression, but if her magic’s improved …” Baudile raised his eyebrows as he eyed his glass before taking in his second shot. “She has made some sort of deal with it already. Removal might be both difficult, but also fruitless, if it’s progressed too far.” the man ended with a sigh, the drink still hadn’t drowned out the growing gloom in the room.
This, Manfred knew, was a test of sorts: a statement delivered in his presence to elicit a reaction. If he appeared too reconciled to the possibility of his beloved’s killing, it would be suspicious. Yet, he did not want to spit fire and brimstone either and set them on edge. Instead, his eyes widened appropriately as these devils in clerical robes spoke. He appeared shocked and lost for words. “You…” his tongue tripped. “You mean… you would kill my Dorothea!?” He shook his head vigorously, vehemently. “I tell you this now, sirs, I will not have it!”
Sister Laska, who had pounded back one drink and a second as if they were nothing and whose cheeks now glowed rosy and red, leaned forward, a lock of tawny brown hair spilling from her habit. “And if your Dorothea is responsible for bringing about a nation-destroying calamity?” she hissed. “I have said, already, that I will avoid doing her harm for all that I am worth. My primary oath was to Eshiran, but rest assured that I swore a vow of honesty to Dami as well.” She took a decidedly broad step to the side. “If we are to assess,” she warned, “If there is to be hope of a solution that can save her, you need to be honest with us.”
Baudile shook his head. “Our only goal right now is to get that crown away from her.” he said in an attempt to pacify Manfred. “Even if it’s latched onto her, keeping the item far away will often be enough to prevent the worst.”
Qasem, on the other hand, opted for brutal honesty with such dire matters. “Do you understand the gravity and risk of this situation?” He crossed his arms as he stared down the Kerreman, “Thousands, if not millions, could perish by the actions of one young woman when a demonic item is at play,” he warned. “Manfred Hohenfelter, be ready to accept drastic measures to be taken, and soon. Whether it’s us, the Churches, or the Gods themselves, be ready. A lot of this may depend on you.”
Manfred narrowed his eyes. “It has been eight months.” Never quite taking them off of the Darhannic, he lifted the glass to his lips and downed the liquid inside of it in a single gulp. “Do not worry, Truthseeker, I will do whatever is necessary.”
“Have you tried stealing it?” asked Baudile, halfway through a third drink. He began to appear as rosy as his colleague. “Only way we’ll know anything for sure is if we mess with the thing. But-” he finished the drink and then slammed the glass onto the counter. “It will warn the demon. Dorothea will know. And it will put you at risk, Herr Hohenfelter.”
Manfred scowled. “I will do it,” he offered. “And none of you will dare act until I do, or you will find me most disagreeable.” He did not have any more to drink, much as he loved drinking. He needed his faculties too much at the moment. “If my cause is just, Aun-Oratz shall protect me.” He regarded the gathered clergy. “Dare I say he will bless us all.”
Soon, they were three in the abandoned bar. Baudile had abandoned halfway through his fourth drink and needed to sit. His teen years had accrued a great tolerance to the stuff, but gone were the days of the permanent fiesta and the harsh realities of the job stared right at him. “No matter what, the poor girl’s in for something dark,” he lamented, eyes on the counter and arms limp over the wooden surface. “If we request an exorcism, what are the chances our betters side with safety?” he asked Laska, eyes throwing her a mere glance before he stared at nothing again.
“I gave my word that our first option will be to do this bloodlessly,” she replied, nursing her third drink, “and I intend to keep it. I shall give him his chance, though he lies, without doubt.” She shook her head, sipping some more. “Should he fail, I have… resources among those who would perform such a task.” She glanced down at her glass pensively before downing the last bit. “If the demon is of the third tier or less, I believe they will be able to exorcise it without much fuss. A fourth tier is tricky.” She set the glass down on the table nearby with a clack that was not loud but seemed so. “If it is above that…” She let her words fade for a moment. “Well,” she snorted, “regardless of vocation or creed, let us pray that it is not.”
Qasem had closed his eyes since Manfred had left and stayed quiet. Regardless of how one looked at it, the only real hope they had was if the demon wasn’t even worth sealing away to begin with. He sided with realism and preemptively braced himself. “I wish you both a good night. May the Gods favour us in these uncertain times.” and with these words, he departed.
“And I thought today would be a good day after you caught that beast.” chuckled Baudile as he slid the near-empty bottle toward Laska. “Here’s to us, the thankless vanguard against the wicked.” he raised his half-empty glass in pure sarcasm before taking it in. “Sometimes I wonder if my brother was right. I am way out of my depth.” Another, self-pitying chuckle escaped him as he rested head head over his forearm. He was just about ready to fall asleep.
Edyta regarded him for a moment and… she kept on regarding him. Brother Baudile was quite drunk, she realized, and so was she if she were to be honest. “Every day is a blessing so long as we still draw breath and have purpose, br -” She sniffed, and it might’ve been a hiccup. “Baudile.” In truth, the young rezaindian felt herself a mess. She was speaking with far too loose a tongue, and her hair was spilling out almost freely at this juncture. “It… sometimes bothers me too that few understand us and few… love us,” she admitted, tucking some hair behind her habit again.
She might’ve stopped there but, instead, she turned to him earnestly. “There are times when I wish that Dami had chosen some other path - any path for me because the things we must do…” She trailed off, absently picking up the glass and just staring into its empty depths, squinting softly until the glimmers of lamplight that reflected in its translucent surface blended together. “I do not want to hurt people,” she squeaked, feeling some great mass build behind the dam of her eyes. “Even if it is for a greater right. How can we mere mortals ever truly be sure of the Gods’ inscrutable will anyhow?” A single tear slipped from the corner of one eye and left a little wet track down one cheek. “And…” she sniffed and avoided his eyes, staring down at her shoes. “I do not want to be lonely. It is a fool thing to say, I know -” she caught herself, “- but I have said it and it has been with me for some time and I must speak it or else go mad. It is unfair!” Her voice rose in a near wail. “It is unfair, I say, and I do not want it! Why cannot the Gods spread their burdens equally among people? You are Stresian, right?” she pleaded. “Surely you must know! Or… at least have some idea.” It was all a mess now. Sister Laska - Edyta - had come undone and allowed this man to see the weakness and doubt that lay beneath her cool surface. It was unbecoming. It was entitled and unfair to him and she resolved to do penance for it tomorrow and through the coming week. And yet… her teary-eyed gaze slid his way and she failed to disavow her words. At least he was half asleep, or appeared to be.
Halfway through Edyta’s sinking into near-despair, Baudile had straightened himself and felt a twinge of fear of what was to come. A rezaindian confessing in a drunken state, one could not predict where this could go. He was far too drunk to hide his look of bewilderment. He sucked in his lips and looked away when a silence finally lingered and Laska expected some sort of answer. But what could he say? Deep down, he felt the same in most ways. He wasn’t cursed with killing threats like she was, but instead cursed with knowledge. He knew things that could blacken a saint’s soul and that could topple regimes, including his own Church’s, partially from his position but also from his own insatiable curiosity. “I-” he shook his head and eventually looked back at the nun. “I cannot say, sister. I cannot. Because I’ve been asking myself the same.” no, this wasn’t right. If he truly wanted to know, he knew how to get answers, even if it was difficult. That lie he forced out in spite of his state gnawed at him, so he corrected himself. “That’s not true. In truth I could get my answers. I could be told why my role is as such, why we serve such a noble creed, but … I’m afraid of facing that truth. To realize that, maybe, I’m doing it all for myself, or even worse, for no reason at all. Because how do we know what we’re doing is ever truly right?” he sighed and nodded to himself. “You could always ask them, Edyta.” he smiled, “Ask those whom you serve above all other mortals, why indeed. Why must you suffer through it while so many others can live in ignorance? Why you? Ask them. All ten of them if you must.” he reclaimed his empty bottle and tried to shake a few drops out into his glass. “Will you cut me down for uttering such blasphemy?”
“I would have to cut myself down as well, then,” she snorted, “and I would go to hell for it, for that is a sin.” She let out a sad, bitter little laugh. Baudile laughed as well, but with far less bitterness. He seemed to enjoy himself in this shared despair, and he received something like a smile and a rueful shake of the head from his younger colleague. “Gods, you know, I would hate to be those smugglers tomorrow,” Edyta remarked. “I swear it truly: I am going to take so much pent up rage out on them…” She let out a bark of laughter. “Certainly not repressing anything here, Mister Criminal-Whose-Face-I’m-About-To-Smash.” Edyta dabbed at her tears and blinked a couple of times. “I suppose you’re a man of the cloth,” she sighed, pulling back her habit momentarily to gather her hair properly in anticipation of covering it once more. “And hair is not a sin.” A wavy reddish-brown mane spilled over her shoulders and she combed the tangles from it with her fingers.
Looking at Laska let loose made the monk feel conscious of his own, increasingly greasy hair that was far too long for a man. His hand sloppily brushed over his hair to pull it back. “I’d be quite damned if it was.” he snorted, “Try not to go too crazy on them. These middlemen did not come up with their devious schemes on their own. Pirates never think long term in the Eye.” a moment of actual good ideas had stuck him despite how tipsy he had gotten, “Whatever they are doing, Edyta-” he had gotten quite comfortable with her, as he hopped over the bar - nearly killing himself in the process - to discreetly impart some knowledge onto her. Knowledge he likely shouldn’t share with anybody. “it spreads far beyond here. Or Kerremand. Or Constantia. And it goes as far as last year in Ersand’Enise, when we lost many of our brothers and sisters.” the jovial air had since been rinsed from his being and concern for her, and by extension the other students, were taking precedence over the moment. “I need one of their leaders alive. No matter what.”
Sister Laska watched him hop over the bar and, for a moment, she was ready to reach out with the Gift and catch him if he needed it. In the event, he didn’t, and she merely smiled, excited. There was a pleasantness about him: an eagerness, earnestness, and keenness, and how she needed that! But then he began speaking smartly and the warm glow of alcohol’s effects and perhaps other things she had not considered began to fade. Edyta’s brows came together and her gaze flicked between her antsy fingers and his eyes as she listened. She was not in much of a state to think strategically, but she had been trained to listen to people more intelligent than herself and she would remember this too, at least. The rezaindian was not that inebriated. Finally, when he was done, she simply nodded. “It shall be done,” she assured him, but she was not done, however. But…hhould you know more, friend, I beg of you please tell me.” She placed a hand over her heart. “I will speak to nobody whom I should not of this matter. I will exercise the proper restraint. This, you have my word on and, as I have probably said too many times for you to care to hear it again, that is not something I contravene lightly.”
“You have yet to break your word, so it remains golden.” Baudile leaned back after saying his initial piece, looking for a solid surface to lean against before vertigo got to him. “All I know for sure is that certain interests converged onto our late Brother, Lamb, a year ago. And one of the trails diverged,” his hand briefly balled into a fist and then expanded to illustrate said convergence, “Tarlon. ReTan, Inipor … But one led here. Specifically. Why? I’m here to find out.” his words were slightly slurred as his muscles numbed, but his mind was there and he sounded the most coherent he had ever been. “For anyone else it’d just be … Kerremand. But, this place. I knew this place. My brother’s here. So I had to go and see it for myself, off the books. You know better than I do, we don’t have the resources to spare ever since Bloody Victendes.” he rubbed his sweaty palm over his pale face and sniffled a few times. “Hmm, I might be catching a cold.”
“Well, then you should get your rest, dear brother,” she chirped, finally tucking her hair back into its hiding place, “and take care of yourself. Though, if it progresses, I am not an inept healer even if I am no Dordian.” She rose, taking both glasses and bottle and swaying her way to the bar where she left them. “Now, are you alright to walk under your own power or do you require the shoulder of a friend?”
“My pride wants to say this isn’t my first time, but-” Baudile raised his arm, ready to be ‘helped’ back to the Church with a cheeky grin on his face. “I won’t say no to a friendly shoulder.”
Edyta let loose a giggle, and it was a soft, girlish sound. “Well then, a friendly shoulder you shall have, good brother, and tomorrow, we shall start the unraveling of this grand conspiracy, Shune and Dami alike bless us.” She did not feel all that holy and it did not much matter, but she made the sign of the Pentad, settled her shoulder under his arm, and led him on his way, cheeks still red and rosy.
Fr. Jacques Dubosque simply nodded at Laska’s answer and said nothing more. The polite greetings and warm hand shakes to his folk continued while the Quentic nun remained at his side.
She waited patiently until there was a break in the procession - so like some great merchant meeting his friends in the market square - and an unease began to take her. “I shall offer you the same degree of candor that you have shown me,” she began. “I know, and have known since I saw the grotesque skeletons of human-dragon hybrids in the castle dungeon, that there are wildbloods within this town. They walk among you and all have been untruthful about it.”
He did not say anything to her until they neared the brewery, where a boy no older than twelve was helping his father load in goods into storage.
“Ah! Guten Morgen Herr Dubosque! (Ah! Good morning father Dubosque!)” the kid dropped everything and went on to greet the leader figure, both hands reaching out to Dubosque’s much bigger one.
“Ralph! Ihr Griff wird von Tag zu Tag stärker. Bald wird dein Vater endlich eine Pause machen, oder?” (Ralph! Your grip is getting stronger by the day. Soon, your father will finally catch a break, eh?)” the jolly priest with the moustache beamed at the boy.
Ralph then turned to Laska. He definitely looked shy, but unlike many of the adults, he did not have their look of distrust on his heterochromic eyes, one hazel and the other more bluish. He nodded to a near bow before her and then returned to his duty. The rezaindian’s return bow was… delayed.
Dubosque, before continuing his stroll, reverted to Avincian and gestured toward the pre-teen, “He is one of them. Cut him down.” he ordered, his voice cold and stern with an almost censorious gaze shot at his fellow clergywoman. But his smile persisted. No one nearby would understand what he had just said. Edyta watched the boy for a moment longer. She watched Fr. Dubosque, eyes narrowing and energy beginning to gather. The boy laughed at something his father had said and walked off carrying an empty barrel. Her glare snapped back to the priest. “Do you think I want to do this?” she demanded, “That I do it because it is anything but necessary?”
“Is it truly, sister?” he inquired, his smile all but faded once the boy had retreated inside. “This boy, Ralph, hasn’t hurt a soul in his life. His father is incredibly proud of him. Why is it a ‘necessity’ to end his life, should he be afflicted?” he demanded in return. They both began to walk again, and they would find a tranquil, low-activity part of town to lower their emotional veils. “As a Dordian, and Priest of this town, I have a sacred duty to ensure these people’s wellbeing and preserve life, no matter how imperfect it might be.” he solemnly stated. “And you have a duty to take lives that pose a greater threat. But tell me, sister, which path takes priority here?”
“Oh, it seems an easy answer for now, so long as he has never killed, but how about when he does?” she demanded. “Not if, father, but when, because he will.” She shook her head. “I do not like it. I wish it were not so, and I grieve for one so afflicted, but the only way that your approach ends is in tears: whether two days or twenty years from now, it will. More will die because of your desire to save.” She shook her head adamantly. She would not strike down a child in the middle of a town - she was neither that stupid nor cruel - but she would not be dissuaded from the necessity of her path either. She could not be, for it was part of her oath as a red rezaindian: to do the jobs that others could not stomach, to clean up the messes that their misbegotten sense of mercy created.
The priest sighed out of his nose. They were clearly of two different worlds, but he wasn’t blind to his own biases either. He wanted to agree with her pragmatism, but it seemed both of them knew, deep down, there was something wrong about it, no matter how good the cause was. “Just as many tears will flow by Eshiran’s methods as they would with Oraff’s. We both fight for a brighter tomorrow, sister, and I’ve yet to give up on the future these people can still build.” He spoke with resolve, but his disposition didn’t suggest an actual challenge toward Laska. “But we can both align when it comes to Dami’s will - The wicked that have cursed these people must be destroyed.” he stated as they neared a bench he’d sit down on, exerted from his bad leg. “We will handle these uncomfortable matters afterward. Is this agreeable?”
Edyta paused a few steps from him, not interested in seating herself. “It is… not disagreeable,” she allowed. With that, she offered a shallow bow in his direction and a soft smile with no happiness in it. “Eshiran spare you, father.” Then, she left.
There was a monster with eyes that did not match, and Edyta knew what - or who - it was. “Please,” she murmured beneath her breath. “Please do not come nearer.” It did not stop. Those familiar eyes were filled with primal rage and the same hunger for flesh she had witnessed countless times. She reached out with the Gift and tried to slow him, she tried to lower his metabolism, to make him sluggish. Stop! she screamed at him inwardly. Stop, you little bastard! She gritted her teeth and pulled in right up to her capacity, rocketing away from one of his swipes with a kinetically-enhanced leap. “Please.” She didn’t realize that she’d spoken the word until it had already left her mouth, but it was too late. Her magic failed. The monster who had been a boy kept coming and the downed figure of Father Dubosque was nearby. You fool, she cried inside of herself. “You fool,” she whispered. “I told you it would end in tears.” With a small, sad sound, Edyta Laska did her duty.
What the hell was that!? The thought hammered at the walls of her headspace again and again. Things like what she had seen - that laugh: it still echoed through her - were not supposed to exist. Her hands shook and her breath trembled and she was okay. She was okay, but so was the enemy. She had struck it with decrepitude but it had rewound the spell and even… she had felt the fingers of time upon herself. She shook her head. She was Volto fucking Certosa. She had forced it to leave but… she had left as well. Had it been out of fear? Had she run? Had she abandoned them?
And totally, ruthlessly, anguishingly insane. It was connected. There had been the other two: the wolves. She would warn the others. Just - she breathed in and breathed out - not yet.
Devastation had taken Mandelein. Two dozen had been killed at the very start of the attack, and a good dozen more during the whole chaos. The casualties were massively limited by the intervention of outsiders that were antagonised by the very citizens they saved earlier during the day, and Fr. Dubosque’s swift interventions in different hot zones of town. This didn’t include the beasts themselves, with twenty two being the final tally, and about half were rendered unconscious rather than killed.
The coldness in the eyes of the people had completely melted as the foreign youths did their everything to help, during and post-attack. There were so many injured and many homes utterly destroyed. But with the binding capabilities of people like Casii and Kaspar, reparations were well under way while the more martial like Manfred and Viktor patrolled every street to ensure the security. Everybody had a job to do and there was always more. The day was easily swallowed by the ordeal. More than once would the students find themselves offered baskets of food and other helpful supplies by villagers that couldn’t properly communicate with them. Most of them were kids, but a few adults swallowed their pride and extended their hands out to the outsiders.
With a current lack of leadership, everything went by Constable Leonhardt who had only sustained minor injuries during the stand at the Barracks. Peace was brought to the streets, but the cries of grief were loud throughout the day. The unconscious beasts were ordered to be sealed in the castle's basement, including the kids, by the barely conscious Dubosque. It had contained great beasts before, it could do so again temporarily.
The priest of the town remained mostly unconscious until the evening, clearly strained from his intervention that resembled nothing any had seen. Only Laska and Dory could feel a vague similarity to the eerie call of the first beast they encountered. Brother Baudile, when he wasn’t helping treat the wounded, was tending to his brother, never leaving his side with only concern in his usually chipper face that often came with a suave he thought was more charming than it was.
It was when the hours of Dami were looming that Jacques Dubosque awoke fully from his slumber. On the opposite side of his room was his half-brother, Baudile, sat on a small wooden chair, nearly asleep himself, with a leg over the other and a book resting over his lap. The awakening of his brother caught him by surprise. “Ah, Jacques, you’re up. I feared I’d have to sit here another-” Baudile was quickly cut off. “What happened? Have the beasts been quelled and the town secured?” Dubosque’s demanding voice came with an intense glare directed at his brother. Taken aback, Baudile stammered his response at first. “Y-yeah, we put the rest in the condemned basement like you said. We got them all.” he smiled as he dragged himself and his chair closer to the bed. Jacques nodded.
The older of the siblings seemed out of it still, but when Baudile got too close, he raised his hand to stop him. “I’m fine, Baudile.” and after a few grunts, the clergyman rose from his bed and limped over to his cane. Again, Baudile tried to help but was promptly rejected. “Hey, let me at least get you some food, yeah?” though he was met with silence by the priest, he did it anyway. He returned five minutes later with warmed soup while the priest sat before his desk, too weak to move beyond his ascetic bedroom. “Voilà! Just like they make it in Segonia. Though, with less shrimp.” Jacques looked at the meal and pursed his lips. “Thanks.” he answered nonchalantly.
A few spoonfuls later and the elder Dubosque let an awkward silence reign supreme. A silence Baudile couldn’t bear. “Jacques.” he beckoned, and he got a prompt reply. “Baudile.” he then took another spoonful, his eyes on the scripture before him. “What’s going on here?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation. “Nothing adds up. The people yesterday, they were not invaders, you know this. The people will know soon.” his tone completely changed, showing serious concern for the matter discussed. “I need to know if I can help. You know I-”
“I know what, Baudile? I don’t know why you’re actually here. Is this an investigation, my brother?”
“What? No. I mean- Yes, but not, you know, of you.” taken aback, Baudile leaned back against a wall, arms crossed as his brother looked at him.
“And just you, alone while you’re still tailing your seniors like a pup in the hopes for a big break. Ersand’Enise wasn’t enough, was it?” Dubosque’s tone became accusatory as he glared at his brother. Before Baudile could answer, the older man continued. “We haven’t talked in years. In my most recent memory, you were far too busy enjoying your youth. And now that you’ve found some intrigue in my home, you’ve suddenly decided to reconnect. Is that it?”
“What- Jacques? What the fuck?” Baudile’s heart beat fast and his facial features tensed. He felt attacked. “I’m here to help because I know you, and want you to be well.”
“That isn’t you. You’ve always been the one with an angle. The fact that you took on the cloth still baffles me to this day.” the frustrated Jacques Dubosque nodded and scowled. “Still squandering that potential of yours, chasing thrills and becoming a Philosopher to have as much freedom as possible. YOU had the potential to be a Somnian, and a very good one. One of the elites that speaks the holiest of words. But, here you are.” the man snarled.
Baudile was surprised at first, but it didn’t last. This hadn’t been the first time they’ve butted heads, and the more Jacques spoke, the more he matched his older brother’s grimace. It was getting to the point where he pushed himself off his happy place and got closer to his sitting brother. Jacques painfully ascended on his feet and looked into his brother’s eyes in a confrontational manner.
“I don’t need you here, Baudile. Everything was under control until you and these people came.”
Baudile wanted to say so many things, but he couldn’t. His mouth was stuck and his scowl got more exaggerated by the second, like he was desperately holding things back.
“The problem will be solved tomorrow anyway. You’ve done your part. I appreciate the help and putting yourself out there for my people. But this is where it ends.”
“Jacques.” said Baudile with a voice meeker than what he wanted. “I just want to help my brother. Help people. Nobody else is coming.” a relief to hear.
“I honestly don’t care, Baudile.” Jacques shook his head. “The truth is, I never really did. You’ve never mattered all that much to me.” Baudile’s pupils dilated a little more, his body less tense as he took the bomb. “You're my brother. I love you. But I think we’re beyond being close. It’s been over years ago. I’m sorry but-” he reached out to pat his brother’s shoulder before turning back to his desk. “I’m going to ask you to leave by tomorrow, when they’re done. I do not want you upsetting more of my flock.”
Shocked, and honestly heartbroken, Baudile was without words. Past errors in his ignorant youth and his clashing personality to his stern brother’s felt like they were being punished at this very moment. And, deep down, he felt like he deserved it. He recalled his exchange with Laska, his fears to confront the real him and his motives. The truth, the one he perceived and hid from, stared him down under the form of his brother. He was never truly accepted by both his family and the Church, and only pursued these creeds for his own, personal motives. ‘Angles’ as his brother would say. Sleazy, melodramatic and downright indecent for the prestigious ranks of the Church. He did not need Gods to tell him his purpose was non-existent and he was but a farce of a man.
Dejected, he just nodded and turned to the door. “There’s more soup in the cauldron.” he said as parting words, only to get an indifferent ‘Mhm’ from his brother.
Brother Baudile was gone, completely torn inside, but Father Dubosque wasn’t the only presence - and he could feel it. There was sister Eberl he recognized in her quarters, soundly asleep already. But there was something else. Something nearby that did not want to be seen.
“I will not be stalked in my own Church. Have the decency to show yourself.”
Cristophe was one of the unlikely heroes of the hour. Considered a goon for his affiliations, he was expected to run like the rest of his troupe. And yet he fought in the farms, partially from already being there but even as the opportunity to escape presented itself, he remained. When the fighting had ceased, he continued to do his part and primarily helped repair homes the best he could and carried the wounded for triage. He did not speak much Avinvian, and his Yasoi was also relatively basic, but he got around with a few phrases and by simply acting rather than talking.
But once calm had returned to Mandelein and the sun had set, the one thing that rang in his mind since the day prior was acted upon once more. In a barn not too far from where he and the Yasoi battled laid the corpse of the supposed ‘Beast of Mandelein’. He had been looking at it for an accumulated two hours between the morning and evening.
That uncannily human face - there was no doubt about it in his head. He sat by the corpse, blue eyes just staring as if he was expecting something. But nothing came of the vain endeavour.
Dory, thinking it might have been for the better to keep an eye on the slain beast of the forest. Whilst returning to the corpse for her patrol she found herself a familiar face, although not one she was too pleased to see. Clenching her rifle, keeping it at the ready she approached the man. ”What are you doing here?” The tone of her voice was calm.”Where’s the rest of the group? Shouldn’t you be with them after such an event?”
“I wanted to see the beast.” Cristophe answered in Kerreman without deigning to look at her. All that seemed to matter was the cadaver before him. “They are not friends. Just colleagues. I spend my free time how I see fit, away from work.”
Dory lowered what little guard she had and swung her rifle on her back ”Anything of note on the beast past it’s face?” She closed in towards the beast to inspect it as well.
“Nein.” he answered before reaching for a booze flask from his coat and took a swig.
”Mind if I have some too? I’ll owe you one in return” She said with a reassuring tone.
Cristophe extended his arm toward Dory, only conferring her a very brief glance.
She took a swig from the flask before giving it back. Then remember the happenings in the forest. ”Was the beast’s den known to the town?”
Cristophe shrugged. “They knew it was out there.” he mentioned before retrieving his flask for another sip. “It was Viktor’s job, and someone else’s.” he got quiet from there.
”Did they not come back?” She tried to not say too much. ”What was their name? Viktor has not mentioned them.”
Cristophe shot a cold glare toward Dorothea. “A man called Cristophe, before all this became a mess.” he answered as he exhaled from his nose. The question seemed to have exasperated the man more than Dory’s presence.
Cristophe?... The girl grabbed whatever she had found from the den. The skuggvar tail would tell much but the watch given to her by Laska might tell a story. Inspecting it for a while before the initials clicked with her. ”C.W?... A Cristophe, perchance?” She thought aloud.
The ticking of the watch Dory revealed caught Cristophe’s attention even before it was in sight. His head turned and he looked toward the Feskan for longer than he had the whole exchange. Then, when he finally acknowledged it, he hesitantly reached out with a shaking hand. “Wiliken. Cristophe Wiliken.” he said as he seized the watch and just looked at it the same way he did the corpse - with a sense of loss mixed with immense focus. “Cristophe Wiliken Jr.” he muttered silently as he brushed his thumb over the watch’s old, stained glass.
Dory began to potentially put one and two together and did not like the answers she was getting at. ”Your father?” Her voice got rough as her own thoughts about her own parents got mixed into her feelings.
“My son.” Cristophe said, his voice uncharacteristically turbulent. “My stupid, beautiful son.” he looked at the beast’s semi-human face. There was no doubt in his mind now. No more denial. “I told you it was a stupid idea. You fool …” he bumped his fist to the body’s thick forearm. The man didn’t cry, he was beyond showing tears after all that he had lived through, but his voice and eyes sang nothing but tragedy and anguish. “You could’ve been so much. But you chose small and easy.” Cristophe’s jaw clenched and so did his fist that was holding the watch. “Just like your father.” a sniffle managed to pass the man’s barrier. “But at least I found you, Cris. Finally, I found you.”
Dorothea stayed quiet, nothing she could say could make such a loss any less painful. The thoughts of what if it was her instead of her parents ran through her mind. Would they have cared as much as him? All she could do was ponder as his anguish resonated through her thoughts.
A good moment passed. Cristophe mumbled a few things that Dory couldn’t even hear before eventually placing the watch over the beast’s chest. “Thank you for finding him.” he said after a sigh. “And freeing him.” then Cristophe stood up and reached for his gun. “You’re going to hit these smugglers hard soon, aren’t you? They’re responsible for this shit, that’s what you’ve all been saying?” he interrogated Dory, his figure far more imposing then her’s. He was direct and quite dry about it, but his disposition showed no hostility.
”We will” She was not going to beat around the bush. This man did not deserve to be talked around. ”The smugglers won’t ruin this place any further than they already have.”
“Then I will come.” he stated without even seeking Dory’s input on the matter. “I have a duty too. As a hired gun, and as a father. I will gather my men tomorrow.”
Life continued in Mandelein. The calamity of the day prior did not stop mouths from needing to be fed, brews to be concocted and materials to be worked. Despite the tragedy, not everything was glum. More people smiled when they saw our student group, Ines was particularly receptive to them and a couple of constables volunteered themselves to assist in the inevitable clash with the outside force that had been plaguing them for so long.
Now they had a chance. They had young foreigners who had fought off the monsters, and they were going to help now that they saw a reasonable out. Not that many trusted them - far too many were older and grew comfortable with their isolationist views.
“Sie brauchten Hilfe? Sie brauchen Zahlen, um eine Garnison niederzuschlagen, wissen Sie. (You needed help? You’ll need numbers to take down a garrison, you know.)” said Laura with a cheeky smile, accompanied by a middle aged man wearing a coat and carrying a rifle.. “Viktor machte sich auf die Suche nach diesem Blutsauger, aber er ließ uns mit einem guten Koppelman zurück. (Viktor went off to track that bloodsucker, but he left us with a good Koppelman.)” she held said Koppelman 49 with her two small hands. The thing was nearly as tall as her.
“Auch Sie werden unsere Unterstützung haben. (You will have our support too.)” it was none other than Cristophe and four of the highwaymen that remained loyal to him. “Ob Sie es wollen oder nicht, wir haben mit diesen Leuten noch eine Rechnung offen. (Whether you want it or not, we have a score to settle with these people.)”
Welcome to Chapter 6. We’ve made it so far. Good job on keeping up!
This cycle, despite having a big objective, is actually quite ‘free’. You can choose whatever way you want to engage the big threat, if you even want to engage it. You will have the following available: -Laura and Constable Hunds, they are trained and more or less reliable. However they’ve rarely had to deal with actual combat. -Cristophe and four highwaymen, there is clear resentment for the group among the rabble but they’re actually experienced in combat.
You are free to reject help.
You are ALSO free to not join the raid and instead continue investigating loose ends. There might be things in your investigation that are missing pieces. So far a big connection has been made between the beasts and the hostile smugglers, and whoever they work for. But there’s clearly more going on here, and of course wildbloods erupting midday is not nothing.
For the Smuggler raid, I’m going to organise this likely as an interactive event, but one that’ll be kept simple. What will matter is the STRATEGY and then eventual TACTICS you use, and how you use the resources available. You are fighting a group that is fourty-strong, with some Yasoi that clearly aren’t red shirts with magic. Expect heavy resistance and consider prisoners in the boat, as well as other smuggled goods.
Brother Baudile requested one alive, but you are free to do as you wish.
The evening prior, a small hunting team composed of Sister Edyta Laska, Dorothea Hohenstein, Casii’fyret’alan, Manfred Hohenfelter, Ismet’ych’lahiin’dichora, Ymiico’luun’yoru and led by Viktor Strauss had hunted down and retrieved the corpse of what was later identified as a Wildblood “taken by the beast”. The corpse was kept in an unused barn South of town, with many villagers attempting to take a peek, if they weren’t gathering around the Inn for the latest gossip. The night remained quiet, and it made way to a morning that was bound to be agitated, to say the least.
Most of the town had gathered at the old Trade Guild under the directive of Fr. Dubosque.
“Ist das Biest wirklich tot? (Is the beast truly dead?)” asked an anxious baker named Sofia who had pushed through the crowd to be at the front of the town meeting.
“Unmöglich. Nach all diesen Generationen?! Von einigen Kindern?! (Impossible. After all these generations?! By some children?!)” yelled out an outraged Günter, the retired seamster.
“Warum sind sie noch hier? (Why are they still here?)” asked Bertha, the old seamster’s daughter, her vehemence palpable, “Das Biest wurde nur durch die Anwesenheit von Außenstehenden wütend. Unser PROTECTOR ist jetzt aufgrund eines von ihnen verursachten Problems verschwunden! (The beast only got enraged by the presence of outsiders. Our PROTECTOR is now gone because of a problem they created!)” many cheered in agreement, many also seemed to be reluctant to say anything.
“Sie haben Anna gerettet! Haben Sie etwas Anstand. (They saved Anna! Have some decency.)” retorted, ironically, another Anna, this one the wife of another farmer, “Unser Beschützer war schon lange nicht mehr da und sie halfen uns mit dem Monster, das ihn ersetzte. (Our protector was long gone and they helped us with the monster that replaced it.)” she nodded toward Dubosque, and the students she could see that participated in the meeting, “Thank you for helping mein friend.”
“Bußgeld. Sie halfen! (Fine. They helped!)” growled Bertha as she tossed her arms in the air, “Was jetzt? Sie sind fertig. Wir können das Problem jetzt lösen, da der Wald sicherer ist! (What now? They’re done. We can deal with the problem now that the forest is safer!)” again, the mob seemed to be quite split, though there was a clear majority for xenophobia.
“Bertha,” began the good Father, sitting on a chair in the centre of a long table that would accommodate a council. There were a few older villagers among him, and a few students were allowed to join as well, “Ich verstehe deine Ängste. Als wir uns das letzte Mal nach außen öffneten, waren wir verletzt. Andere wurden verletzt. (I understand your fears. The last time we opened ourselves to the outside, we were hurt. Others were hurt.)” his hands interlocked with one another, the man was not going to succumb to emotion and fan the flames of fear, “Vergessen wir nicht, dass sie sich selbst in große Gefahr begeben- (Let’s not forget that they put themselves in great peril for-)” then he was cut off, for the third or fourth time this morning, by emotionally driven villagers.
It continued on and on. For all the good the students could have brought, the aversion many of the villagers had for any outside interference was more than obvious at this point. Maybe they were right, there hadn’t been attacks until they appeared, and the beast held an important role in their culture. But it was without a doubt that a threat was slain, and many also saw that.
“Und was ist mit den Schmugglern? Und die anderen Monster? (And what of the smugglers? And the other monsters?)” a familiar voice with a broken Kerreman piped up from the back. The entire gathering of people turned to notice Father Dubosque’s own brother, Baudile, indulging in a smoke and with smug confidence on his face, “Es gibt noch viel zu tun, oder? Soweit ich weiß, sind diese besser als alle Halbheiten bisher! (There’s still a lot to do, no? From what I can see, these ones are better than any half-measures so far!)”
Father Dubosque shot a glare that could only convey disappointment and even resentment for his own brother. And, like clockwork, the people erupted into a rabble. The mention of more beasts and the outside threat of smugglers had them bicker on borderline nonsense. Even the more reasonable townsfolk appeared hostile at these notions, dismissing them as ‘beside the point’ and ‘divisive lies to pull Mandelein further down’.
"It appears to me," interjected Manfred, his voice frosty, "That you are doing a fine job of that yourselves." He removed the pipe from the corner of his mouth and exhaled, filling his immediate vicinity with a whitish haze. "Your fear is almost comical were it not so damaging. No wonder the town is withering. No wonder there is none of the trade that used to flow through here. He punctuated his gestures with his pipe. “You come to rely on some ‘beast’ to see to your interests instead of your fellow man.” He shook his head, letting his feet down from where they were crossed over another chair. They landed with an audible ‘clap’ on the wooden floor. “There is no more water in your fountain. There are scant few shoppes in your square. The hospitality of Mandelein used to be renowned and its name spoken with respect, at least in the lands that I come from, not so far from here.” He scowled deeply. “Yet you stay this ruinous course you have chosen, despite its clearly evident damage.” There was an extended pause. “You are fools,” he declared. “The lot of you. Outsiders come to help and you focus on them being outsiders, instead of being there to help." He gestured with the pipe, taking in the angry and disorganized mob. "So you tell lie upon lie, and to what end? How can one expect the desired result if those who are enacting it don’t know what it is?" He let out a snort. "Though that is a familiar story here, I see."
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, boy!” shouted Morritz, the carpenter.
“We never desired anything.” scoffed Melanie, constable Leonhardt’s wife. "Yasoi, outsiders, destroyed our trade. Smugglers, outsiders, plagued us for generations. We were FINE."
Dubosque shot a concerned look toward Manfred and then toward Sister Laska, but kept his piece for now.
The sister, as well, said nothing, her warm blue gaze sliding from one man to the other. Not so for Manfred. "Oh, hogwash!" he retorted, waving a hand dismissively in the villagers’ direction. "You really are in love with your little narrative." He shook his head tightly and rose, gesturing with his pipe. "If you were plagued by outsiders, you also benefited from them." He snorted. "How much trade flowed through here? Were your tariffs not the lowest in our entire nation at one point? What need would there be of smugglers when merchants paid mere frosch for the privilege of doing business here?” He began pacing. “And, before they closed themselves off, did you not once call these yasoi friends and neighbours? He scowled. "Before you, too, closed yourselves off?" He was doing his best to maintain an even tone, to defeat their emotional and backward arguments with reason, but their sheer…pigheadedness was beginning to get to him.
Manfred was not wrong. His reasoning was rational and grounded. And yet he was met with pushback. A lot of it. Most came from indignant villagers that couldn’t accept being told off by an outsider youth, one dressed so proper and smoking a pipe right before them. They had been living through hard times and this pampered kid was telling them they were fools for surviving the way they had to for fifty years? The uproar was overwhelming, counterarguments drowned into a sea of emotional outbursts. It wasn’t just Manfred that was antagonised but the villagers bickered among themselves too.
“Enough!” the priest’s voice boomed with the help of the gift, and the crowd ceased their yapping to pay mind to their leader figure, “We’ve enough burdens without imposing more onto our fellow men and women. These young envoys have come to help, and help they did.” he took a deep breath as his hand descended onto his aching leg. Moments like these were when it flared the most, that and when it rained. “They have our thanks. And when their near-finished mission is over, we will find our peace again.” the people were clearly not entirely pacified by these brief reassurances, and none of them were going to extend the same thank you, but whatever drove them to incessantly voice their frustrations had been quelled, if only slightly. The priest turned his attention to Manfred, “We are to understand that the final loose ends have been found and a plan is in motion, yes?” he asked with a faint smile forming under his thick moustache, “If anything, you have the Church’s support.”
Manfred had tried, but these people were obstinate, and they were hiding something: something that had nearly killed Dory and possibly himself. And what had they received for it but hostility, and since the very start, as well? It was a wall of lies, in truth, and the priest was in on it only, he was far better at placating than the townsfolk were. Ungrateful Schweinhunde he thought to himself, not quite succeeding in suppressing a scowl. He nodded, taking a moment to light his pipe again with some quick arcane magic. He took a gentle pull - people who did not know how to smoke often pulled hard and broke out in fits of coughing - and savoured the rich aromas and flavours of the imported tobacco. "That is comforting to hear, Father." He addressed the others with a pressed-lip smile. Fuck you. Fuck you all. I’ll save you from yourselves. “I cannot speak for my homeland in Meckelin-Thadau, but I know that the academy, as well, offers its assistance. It is clear that many here cannot bring themselves to trust the word of mere biros such as ourselves, so I promise that you shall have more.”
More? That single word resonated through the old trade guild. What was once a room full of fiery emotions was now growing agitated by the implication they quickly caught onto. The school already knew of this place, that much was for certain, but special interest that warranted more than biros? Many looked to Dubosque for reassurance, and all he could provide was a question, “Herr Hohenfelter,” he began, eyebrows furrowed and voice rasped from the previous strain he put into it in his previous words, “what are you saying?” he wasn’t the only one showing growing concern, Baudile was as well from way back.
Sister Laska’s eyes shot Manfred’s way too. "Merely that help is on his way," he concluded. It was not so very long a distance for her eyes to travel to Fr. Dubosque’s. They met.
Jacques Dubosque’s early walks were part of the town morning ritual, and a reassuring sight for the townsfolk. If the good father made his rounds, it meant things were going to go as usual. Only the worst of the Mandelein storms could keep the ageing chief in his abode, and even then he made it a point to visit his people.
“I prayed at every opportunity yesterday,” he confessed as he continued his walk with the aid of his hazel cane, “as my thoughts were with your friends, and you as well. It pleases me greatly to see both Oraff and Eshiran answer and bring both you and that young woman safely back among us.” he waved at the botanist who had been opening up her humble shop. In fact, he saluted every single villager that shot him a glance, “You have my thanks, sincerely. They are grateful too, in truth,” he said as they passed by more villagers that eyed the two, some more jovial than others, but few held a smile when they peered at the priest’s one up, “even if they wouldn’t ever say it. I’m sure, as a Rezaindian, thankless jobs aren’t foreign to you, Sister Laska.”
“Not at all, ksiądz.” Edyta Laska shook her head and managed a rueful smile, “But few so thankless as this,” she admitted. Her hands were knit before her as she walked. She pursed her lips as if something were bothering her. Then: “Tell me, father, with Dami’s candor, is it truly at an end? For I do not feel that it is.”
The good father didn’t answer right away, as they passed by a couple of masons eager to shake the priest’s hand. Pleasantries were shared, and Laska’s question was left to linger. Eventually, they were back on pace. “If it were just that one beast, sister, we would have long since recovered.” His attention was always at whatever was forward, with only a passing glance to his walking partner when she spoke. “There is an outside menace, as you’ve probably discovered, that has recently returned after decades. They made good work of profiting off our isolation and predicament.” a sonic bubble formed around them before he continued, “And they’ve made sure to keep us trapped in this isolation, knowing how vulnerable Mandelein had become since the fall of our Yasoi neighbours.”
The rezaindian was straight to the point.“These vile creatures are their doing, then?” Her fingers came apart and her fists clenched and unclenched a handful of times. “Tell me where they are and how many, and I shall once again employ my talents in the name of Eshiran.” Her eyes burned with righteous fire. “I swear it.”
“I cannot tell you the exact location. Their operation thrives on mobility.” he said plainly, “But I’m aware that my brother has spoken to one of yours. He has been seeking them out too.” They were approaching one of the exits of town, and so they continued through the outskirts as small droplets befell the two, “An astute investigator such as yourself would have seen the castle by now, and what its bowels may be hiding. The beasts are the fruit of an outsider, but not these ones.” He clenched his jaw; something hot was bubbling inside the older man, “They merely took advantage, and turned a tale of protection and community into a scourge. I will pray for you as you deliver Eshiran’s will onto these foul renegades.”
“But not these ones?” the nun prodded.
“Indeed.” he looked over at Laska and gave her a curt nod, “The story of the beast of Mandelein began many centuries ago, a time not too distant from the great heathen war. A lot of it has been, how would you say …” he gestured circles with his hands as he mused, “lost to time, I suppose? The story has been thinned down to be enjoyed by children before bed. Many elders don’t remember it either.” He liked to talk and, in truth, it was enjoyable for the man to have a fresh mind to exchange with, and so he made it last. “The first beast of Mandelein, and the first known Graf of the region, are one and the same. Cursed by an outsider wielding unspeakable power. However, rather than indulge in one’s impulses as would a beast, the Graf’s love for his land and people took precedence. And so began the story of the Beast of Mandelein. And a culture of fear of the outside … Until trade and profit superseded irrational fear, anyway.” he chuckled.
One could tell, simply by looking at her, that the wheels of Sister Laska’s mind were racing. “I…see,” she replied, after an extended pause. “I thank you for your candor.” Her brow was furrowed, face pensive. “It would seem that the Graf was… a man who held Ipté close in his heart. There are no others I have seen who can forestall the beast.” She glanced about her surroundings uneasily. “So then, do I have your word that there is nothing that remains of this vile affliction among the townspeople?”
“If I were to say no, Soeur, would you kill them right here, on the spot?” he kept on walking, his voice unperturbed just like his imperfect gait.
“I am an instrument of Eshiran’s will, and that of the most blessed Optimates.” If there was any uncertainty in her voice, she did well to hide it. “I would do my duty, ksiądz,” she replied immediately, “regardless of my personal feelings.”
“What help, Hohenfelter?” Dubosque raised his voice, demanding an answer.
Manfred’s eyes narrowed and there was something almost… smug about him. "Aaah, there we are, your true colours," he remarked. "No more false smiles and dodged queries, and insincere placating words. How wonderful they look on you. Of course…" he pulled out his pocketwatch and twirled it between his fingers. "A bit of truth would look even better."
Dubosque was singleminded, however: more agitated than they had ever witnessed him. “What. Help.” he grated, all-but glaring at Manfred.
"The help that I have deemed you need," the Graf answered. "Since people are dying under your watch, but it is a ‘help’ very much more than capable of erasing this little problem of yours." He narrowed his eyes and flipped the watch open, glancing down at it. "Of course, this doesn’t have to be unpleasant," he continued, snapping the cover shut. All at once, then, he rose. "All that you need to do is to stop protecting criminals” he roared, ”And start telling the Gods-damned truth!!" He stopped, let out a breath, and straightened his collar, smiling with only his lips. "You have… five minutes."
Dubosque was pale, something about this sinister ultimatum had scared him more than the disappearance of Stigenroth or the arrival of outsiders. It wasn’t the look on Manfred’s satisfied face that got to him, but visible panic growing among his flock. Then the first insults came out, and before long, constables had to keep a few overeager men from trying to smack the grin off of the Hohenfelter’s face. Again, the priest shot a look at Laska, the one he believed to have at least had an understanding with. He felt betrayed. She shook her head tightly, expression, helpless, and glanced at Manfred with something less than anger but more than annoyance.
“Your words evoke help, but your voice and body say threats!” a loud, feminine voice from outside the crowded building challenged Manfred directly and did a good job in catching the attention of the mob. It was Laura, mostly recovered, although she still used a pair of crutches. “Why would we trust you? You come here, we have MORE problems! You come here, my BEST FRIEND gets attacked!” her blue eyes glared right into Manfred’s. She was no longer the little victim from before, or the subtle little watcher in the barracks. “What best way to solve a problem than to create one first? Hmmm? Very strange that they can kill the beast in a day. What is this new HELP, Graf Hohenfelter?” that title, it startled more than a few, but it kept them quiet too as they watched Manfred expectantly, Dubosque included.
If Manfred was cowed, he did an admirable job of repressing the outward signs. "I hear accusations," he replied, "when I asked for truths." He was sweeping the room with his senses, actively searching for threats. "The truth as I see it is that there is more than one beast, a fact which nobody volunteered." He ticked it off on his fingers. "There is no Graf here, which also was not shared." Finger two. "You hire brigands to waylay travelers en route here and complain that the town is dying!" Finger three. "Your livestock was disappearing before we arrived, despite whatever lies you’ll tell to the contrary and, what’s more: my associates have witnessed those killing them come from -"
A woman was there in the room. She had not been there a second earlier. She was small and young and pretty, with long blonde hair. She sat in a wheelchair, hands folded upon her lap, and her arrival cut Manfred’s rant off where it stood. She glanced around the room, immediately trying to take the temperature of it.
Everything was silent, all eyes on the newcomer who had formed out of nothing. None of the villagers had ever seen such magic before. It was a terrifying sight, even to Laura. Dubosque wasn’t intimidated, but he understood the implication of bringing temporal magic onto the table. For now, he could only watch and listen with little done to appease the fear in his people’s hearts.
She looked about uneasily. “I’ll confess to having no idea of what I’ve just walked into, but I see plenty of worried faces.” She offered an uncertain smile. “I’m here because Manfred called for me, though, because he is certain that there is a danger this town beyond what he - or you - can handle. ” She had already begun sweeping the town and its nearby environs for signs of danger. “I’m tethered, as you may have guessed - a Zeno of the academy. I’m looking for dangers in the town now. If you know anything, that might make things a lot easier.”
As expected, nobody in the crowd spoke up but the attitude had also been culled. That wasn’t to say they were content. No, quite a few, mostly those outside that had been listening, were gone. “We appreciate the help Zeno-” it didn’t feel right, she was far too young to be a Zeno, and yet how else could she display such power? Jocasta could feel it without even using an ounce of the gift: They were afraid of her, including the priest that awkwardly awaited a brief introduction out of politeness. What were once howls from the masses were now venomous whispers and secretive glares shot at the students, but with a particular focus on Manfred and the blonde arrival. That was until … “A Zeno? At that age? This a ploy, I tell ya’. A ploy.” a not-so-discreet handyman ‘whispered’ to his associates in Kerreman, but anybody with experience in Kinetic magic could eavesdrop. “I agree with Laura, there’s no way some dumb blonde kid with a little magic is from the School. It’s one of those Tethered mercs.” more and more people were evoking this conspiratorial narrative, and in turn conspired while some others began to overreact and unleash their fears and frustrations on loved ones. Jocasta could feel it all - the agitation her presence had brought and the potential unrest that was to come.
In truth, Jocasta knew a little bit of Kerreman - though it was only a little bit. It appeared to be enough to piece together the hostility that was clearly being directed her way, however. She shot Manfred a look, for just a flicker of time. Then, keeping up an increasingly strained smile for the people of the town, she conducted another sweep. More than one demanded her name as proof that she was truly a Zeno of Ersand’Enise, and that was the final straw. “Ich gebe meinen Namen nicht an Leute weiter, die mich beleidigen.” (I do not give my name to people who insult me.) she replied in awkward and heavily-accented but correct Kerreman. She cast out her senses once again.
The masses had mostly dispersed. Jocasta wouldn’t be in need of any long range sweep to detect the first inkling of a threat. Sudden, large energy signatures with much higher heat levels than normal humans suddenly appeared in town, and briefly following their emergence came screams. They came from the Western farms.
Then the barracks.
And again in the cluster of homes Northeast of the guild.
In just a matter of seconds, there were calls for help in almost every direction and the sound of homes being destroyed reverberating through town.
She acted almost immediately. She seized one of the beasts by the mind and those closest to it would see it collapse before their very eyes, enough tranquilizing agent in its bloodstream to knock out a skuggvar. Then, a second.
Realistically, Jocasta would have been about to continue in this vein indefinitely, dealing with every crisis at a speed that no mage could match. But then came the disturbance: one a couple of kilometres out of town, taunting anything that could smell the temporal stench it was leaving behind. Like it knew it would be found, and banked on it. By the amount of energy it had produced, it could not be ignored.
“What the hell have you idiots gotten into!?” the tethered muttered beneath her breath. Then, louder: “There is something upriver. Something… monstrous.” She shook her head and glanced between Manfred and the rezaindian whose name she could not quite recall. “I… if I don’t go deal with it, this town…” She trailed off, already gathering energy. “What in the five hells!?” she cursed. “Fight them!” she ordered in frustration. Then, Jocasta was gone.
Jacques Dubosque wasted no time. When the screams begged for help, he seized his cane and “dashed” out with the help of the gift, shoving anyone in his way. “If you wish to help, now is the time!” he shouted in Avincian before heading to the Barracks, where he sensed a large concentration of these overheating entities.
All hands on deck! Arm yourselves! Ring the church bells! The enemy is in your homes! We are under attack!
This will be very brief. -There was a Town Meeting you likely attended. -Jocasta made an appearance. -The town is under attack and different areas have been struck. You can choose to help. This battle will happen on discord, and you will likely be split up. Different NPC’s can be met in the encounters.
Location: The Desert, Somewhere Day of the week: Victendes Time: Unknown Present: Zarina, Ayla @Ti, Jocasta @Force and Fury, Yalen @Pantothenic, Benedetto, Desmond, Tku, Evander, Fiske, Silent Ranger, Riesco, Nibbler, Classa, Sand Bat.
Don’t go.
Zarina internally begged for Jocasta and Yalen to stay among them as she was being healed. Arms crossed, posture too cool for school and her expression hardened, one would never know what she was truly thinking.
We need you.
She looked at both of them, first to Jocasta, the almighty being she had grown so close to. And then to Yalen, the moral compass and ray of light of the group. Both of them were so integral to the first group she was in, and now they were leaving.
I can’t keep them alive all alone.
Zarina clenched her armoured bicep and nearly gritted her teeth. But just as she was about to say something, the pair was just about to leave. All she could muster up was a wave and a look that very briefly communicated the distress she tried hard to keep bottled up.
The Virangish sighed as the Silent Ranger spoke once more, announcing the departure of the group to lands yet unknown. Zarina took this time to look at her group. None, other than the brutish Benedetto, could use temporal magic that she knew of. The weight of responsibility, true responsibility, had never been more overwhelming as it was now. This wasn’t just financial decisions and risky expansion efforts, people she cared about now had their lives depend on her. She knew it would, at some point, come down to such magics for survival, as it had been against the Sand Wyrm. The helm was put back on - a means to feel safe and hidden amidst the agoraphobia she was starting to feel - and she readied herself for what was to come.
Marci turned on the spot, three hundred sixty degrees, taking in the vast nothingness that surrounded the group. The sun reflected off of the burning red-white sand and she blinked. The air around them was distorted by the heat. There was plenty of wind to alleviate it, but this was hot and blustery, prone to whipping up sand and dust at unpredictable intervals, and it only made the heat worse, if possible.
“Well, that was fuckin’ productive,” grumbled Benny, casting about. He seemed about to spit in the sand, but then thought better of it. He glanced Marci’s way. “You got range, Gimpy, right?” he crossed his arms and looked at her expectantly. Then, he seemed to soften. “I mean… how ‘bout you sweep the area, Marce?”
She glared at him for a moment, moving a bit closer to Ayla and Zarina, who bristled at the insult to their friend. “How about you go fuck yourself, bud?” the latter snapped back. Marceline held up a hand to stop them, shooting Zarina a thankful, apologetic look. Then, she focused and energies swelled around her. Her face turned grim as the sun and wind continued their twin assaults and she brushed some hair from her face with her dominant hand, her left. “Nothing,” she announced, straining in the opposite direction of the sail-like structures. “Nothing as far as I can sense. A few critters buried deep in the sand. Maybe some ruins about seven klicks away. Fuckin’ desolate” She shook her head as another hot gust of wind whipped her hair about and made her gasp. Marceline, like her grandfather, was of the desert. She knew it. She could feel its moods and survive its periodic furies. This was different, though, in a way that she couldn’t place. She could feel herself drying out, like a sponge left outside on a Dorrad day and a deep unease began to take root in her gut. It started to remind her of…
The tethered shook her head and refocused and, dimly, she sensed a second set of ruins, much closer than the first, but mere moments passed before it hit her - it overwhelmed her. Marci’s eyes bugged out. “Now!” she shouted, pointing about ninety degrees from where she’d started. The sun occupied a completely different position in the sky and she’d struggled to get her bearings. “That way!” If one squinted into the distance, the horizon looked strange and hazy. “SANDSTORM!!!”
Benny could feel it too. “Eshi-fucking-dammit!" he shouted into the wind, “Are you kidding me!?" He could see the storm on the horizon now, more or less. “Fuck this. I'm gonna disrupt the storm. I ain't moving an inch!" He began to draw in energy - massive amounts of it - and there was certainly plenty to draw...
More desert. Good grief, Zarina was truly condemned to the sand dunes. And it did not feel like Torragon, somehow. It just didn't feel like her spiritual home. Her helm came back on as the sun mercilessly hit the group, and she then directed her attention to Marci, “Shelter, have you noticed any?” was her first instinct, but then something else perturbed the Virangish. The spatial anchor she had set on Riesco had been disturbed and she could immediately tell he had been moved as well despite being far too remote to warp back. Had he been attacked? Doubtful, one of the rangers would have at least brought him away. Which was the ideal situation. But ...
“Keep looking for other lifeforms. One that has metal, in particular.” she practically ordered Marci, given she had a magnetic specialty, “Riesco might be out there.” she began to draw from space and time, which a select few in the group could even feel. The moment Marci pinged something, Zarina was keen on mimicking Jocasta's technique she had used almost exactly a year ago.
Tku's eyes had adjusted to what was in the ruins and now they were in the desert once more. Honestly this was much better than whatever wicked test that snake salesman had. Upon hearing sandstorm Tku looked over. It was a big one but overall you could survive it with some know how.
However, this may not be the case as Benny had decided to disrupt it? A storm of that size and intensity change the very landscape. "If people are so determined to keep put, how about I make some shelter? Especially with us needing to save the horse." Tku approached the side of a dune and started to change the sand, hardening it and compacting it into walls and domes. It would take some time but a sand storm of this magnitude could swallow people alive, "I'll leave room for Riesco."
"Nothing within three klicks!" Marci shouted back, getting a mouthful of hot wind and sand. She paused. "Except for... there's ruins, right in the storm itself, and more way south of here. We'll never make those. It's either north for those weird whatever-they-are or east and we hope to outrun it 'til it dies!"
Then, it was like herding cats. Zarina was demanding that she look for Riesco. Benny was crowing about how he'd punch a fucking storm in the face. Tku was making people-sized sandcastles with careful, loving precision and he would never finish on time. Then, Desmond more or less just accosted Fiske and took off running in the direction of the bizarre structures. Shit. Shiiiiiit. Fuck. Godsdamn. Marci began to panic and shut down.
Zarina placed her hand onto Marceline's shoulder. A subtle injection of chemical magic to relax her was performed before Zazzy spoke up, “Grab onto me, you can't run anyway.” she said, her voice muffled slightly by the growing winds and the helm she wore, “I trust you can do it, Marci. Only you can.” Zarina peered toward the storm and was just about ready to zip further away. But before then, she shot a look at Tku, “If you can run, do it. If not ...” she exhaled from her nose, “Fuck, not a lot of you can run fast, huh?”
Ayla's immediate concern was her own appearance, as she was covered in burnt clothing and her once-beautiful hair was almost completely charred. But her hopes for a respite were dashed yet again as they were thrown into yet another disaster.
As she gazed up at the approaching storm, Ayla listened intently to everyone's ideas. A storm like this could last for days, and without any supplies, building a shelter would be a death sentence. Running was an option, but the ruins or strange buildings they had seen could provide some relief and possibly even contain supplies.
Lost in thought, Ayla turned to Benny as he proposed an idea, "What if we do try to disrupt the storm? We have chemical mages who can turn the sand into salt, which would clump the sand together and make it heavier. Arcane mages can turn the sand into glass, and Binding can create barriers that act like brakes by turning the sand into stone. It might take a lot of strength, but it could be worth a shot."
Marci whirled on the spot. "Ayla? Are you crazy!?" She didn't bother address Benny, for she knew he already was. "That thing is way too big to have more than a local effect on!"
"Maybe for a weakling like you, Gimpy!" taunted Benny. "I like to live with nor regrets."
Marci ignored him. He might live with no regrets, but he would die with plenty. Meanwhile, Zarina was exhorting her to 'grab on' to her. To what end, the tethered wasn't quite sure, but she suspected Zarina wanted to run. Marci... did not. It was... inadvisable to run. She began moving to the top of a nearby dune, scanning for Riesco as she went. "Tku!" she shouted over the blustery wind. The temperature had suddenly plummeted, too. "Tku, we should build on high ground!" She was splitting her focus. Dammit, Zarina. She knew that horse meant a lot to her. He was a sweet horse, but dammit!
She scanned in the direction opposite the storm and... there were indeed some larger animals running from it. She switched to the unknown buildings, keeping her sweep quick and cursory for it was all that she could manage. There was nothing there, save the buildings and... some curious buildups of elastic and other mechanical energies. A good ways beyond were the energy signatures of living things: sapients, probably humans or... hegelans? She didn't know. There were... Yes! Horses! she thought. It was a hurried scan. They were weird in some way, probably because they were panicked, but there was metallic content on... "Zarina, I have horses, up to the north there! Past those strange whatever-they-ares." She pointed, already focusing on magic. Tku was building his shelter. She was searching for weaknesses and shoring them up. "A few more animals that way, stuff like horses, too. They're trying to outrun the storm or find shelter." Her hand changed direction.
The sandstorm was well and truly racing towards them now. Ayla had convinced Benny to use heat to turn the sand to glass once she found out that he had no Binding knowledge and only minimal Chemical. Sure, they could take some of the strain off of their structure by creating a localized weakness in the storm around it, but there was no way to punch a clean hole right through a sandstorm. Marci was sure of that. "You need a mask," she called, finished sealing up one part of Tku's structure. It was certainly ambitious, and they were the only two Binders. "Or at least a cloth: cover the lower part of your face! Glasses for your eyes, or close them tight!"
“Got it.” Zarina immediately took flight, “I owe you, love.” and then she blasted off, continuously moving North while warping as far as she could whenever she could. She continued until she could zero-in on the energy signature of other beings, or when her highground provided a view of the creatures. Riesco and his dark armor were standouts, luckily. As she continued North, however, she'd come to notice the peculiar edifices along the way, and she couldn't help but be curious of them, even taking some time to actually acknowledge what they were.
Zarina bolted with Ayla on her back to search for the lost horse. The storm was coming in quickly, but between her flight, temporal magic and Ayla's help, very little could stand in their way. Not even stray sandbats.
As they got close to the peculiar structure up North, the storm had caught up to them. But they were so close! And with a last ditch effort, Ayla's beautiful use of magic made it appear as though wings sprouted out of Zarina's back, allowing them to gain the speed they needed and perform a final teleport to have them reach shelter.
“I'll keep going!” shouted Zarina as she combated the endlessly loud winds, “Stay here! I have the armor for it!” she ordered Ayla as she turned to face the storm.
She walked alone, with Ayla doing her best to help her friend brave the merciless sands. And as she got deeper, Ayla could sense Zarina anymore. But was she truly alone? When it felt like she was getting lost, the big rodent that had been hiding in her chestplate began to squeak and cuddle up closer to her chest. The bit of chemical magic he blessed her with gave the Virangish the vigour she needed to soldier on. And bravely so, as she smashed through the winds, and eventually started to meet the energy signatures she had just barely detected.
Except, it didn't feel like Riesco, and the silhouette was far too small …
In the distance, through the lashing wind and whipping sand, Zarina perceives something: something... horse shaped.
She strains, calling out for Riesco.
Zarina keeps calling for her horse, believing that horse shaped things to be, well, a horse. Her shield is kept limited to a smaller size as a superior width made her susceptible to being blown away. She resists the best she can, approaching the figure while fighting the elements.
The shape gets closer, its silhouette emerging in the far distance from the haze. It's... small - smaller than it should be: not her beloved Riesco.
“Riesco?” she squints behind her helm, “... Gina?” she stops her approach for a moment, but then continues her jog.
The small horse draws closer still, a couple hundred meters distant now in the fast-fading haze, at full sloppy gallop. She can hear the thunder of its hooves as they kick up pebbles and dust. It isn't coming straight towards her, but it appears to have noticed her. It gives off an air of panic.
Zarina picks up the pace, drawing from the excessive energy around her to close the gap. She is still hoping to find her precious steed.
It begins to resolve itself, and... it appears to be a young colt or filly, ridden by a similarly young girl. She calls out. "Uinza?" and again: UUUIIIIINNNNNZAAAAA! Oast lix statu?"
Zarina stops and blinks, “Uu-Een-Zah?” she repeats, utterly confused. How is a kid and a small horse handling the storm so well? Then, the girl began to shout! “Woah woah woah!” she waves her idle hand in a pacifying manner, “Uinza, hello?” the storm really doesn't help, as it gets in her helm and armour and the winds made her voice carry much smaller weight than normal, “Uhm, help ...?”
The storm has thinned noticeably and then Zarina can hear small coughs. The girl appears to be hacking up dust. "Yooo speek the high -" She coughs some more, starting to slow as the dust clears and the winds still bluster. "The high tongue." the little voice was full of wonder.
“Uhhh,” with the storm thinning, Zarina's sense of urgency drops, though only just a little as her horse is still missing, “yeah, I guess.” her attention then shifts to the surroundings, “Have you seen a horse? White-grey, has black armor, very handsome.”
The last of the dust clears and the girl on the horse is trotting toward Zarina now. "I did!" she chirps, eyes and voice full or wonder. "And he was a really beautiful guy." She pauses for a moment and comes to a stop. "Wow, you're really one of the high ones!" She is quite young and the horse is quite small and...
Zarina blinks. What she is seeing makes no sense: The girl. and the horse. They aren't... separate.
"I'm Classa!" she chirps, looking up at Zarina admiringly and rocking side to side excitedly on her four feet. "I can help you find your pretty horse."
A wave of relief, “Ah! Thank the Dreamer-” she is about to make the gesture to wipe non-existent sweat off her helm, until she notices.
Zarina freezes there. The monstrous Horrifer Wildblood that fought rapid Sand Wyrms and was ready to die fighting waves of Froabases without fear. She is utterly terrified at what she sees. The uncanny valley had been crossed during her trek in this desert. Surely, she had died in the storm and ended up in some dreadful limbo.
Luckily, Zazzy still has her helm on, so it mostly looks like the Virangish is just standing there, silent and probably surprised by something. “Wh-” she gulps, “S-sure. I'd like that.” deep breaths. She's nice. She can help find Riesco. “I'm Zarina.” did she just tell her name to a hellspawn?
The child-horse smiles up at her. "I'm almost as tall as you, you know." She bites her lower lip and smirks like a little shit. "And I have super great agility! Look!" She begins trotting, leaping, and rearing up, putting on some kind of show. "I outrunned the storm," she says proudly.
Zaz is still reluctant. But then again, snake people weren't all that much better. However, she also looks /so/ human.
“Nuh-huh.” Zazzy placed her hand over her helm, cheating a little, and hovered her hand toward the centaur-girl, purposely stopping before it got too close. The cuteness didn't distract from the surprising and somewhat disconcerting experience, “Totally shorter.”
Classa comes to a stop. She blinks. "Yeah, well I'm only eight and you're like..." She pauses, considering. "Wait... are you a golem?" For a moment, she seems a little nervous.
“Huh?” Zarina flinches, “A golem? What's that?” although to reassure the nervous horse-creature, Zarina seizes both sides of her helmet and slowly tugs it off, revealing some damp hair with quite a lot of sand mixed in, lips dry with the stuff too. “Blah! I don't like sand.”
"Yaaaah," the child agrees, finger in her mouth as she picks some sand out from between her teeth. She turns and spits, grinning, a couple of half-grown incisors leaving gaps in her smile. "Sand is yuck as..." She doesn't say the word. She suppresses a mischievous smile instead. "And I guess you're not a golem. My owner's is bigger and all rocky. You're like... thirty?" the kid asks, bouncing antsily from foot to foot to foot. She half turns, looking back in the direction that she came from.
Owners and rock things, interesting. It definitely does not help Zarina pinpoint where they are. But then the age comment came, “Eh?!” she crossed her arms and pouted, “Excuse you little lady!” her hand tapping on her shield reveals just how much sand had lodged into her armor, “Rah shit.” she taps some of the scale-like plates to dust them off, “I'll forgive that, kiddo, if you help me find my Riesco. Deal?”
Classa nodded. "Deal!" she exclaimed, offering a thumbs-up. She reared up and turned rapidly. "Follow me, and uh..." She grinned again, challengingly. "Try to keep up, two-feet!" With that, she took off at a fast canter.
Zarina chuckles, already charmed by what she had initially seen as disturbing. It is, after all, just a kid fused with her favorite animal.
With a light hop, Zarina ascends and takes flight, helm off so she could take in some air after being confined for a while, “Can you do this, four-legs?!”
"I'm only eight!" Classa protested, tucking her arms in as she accelerated to a full gallop, and she was fast. DAMN, she was fast. She actually managed to pass Zarina. A low, squat sandstone building hove into view and, finally, she began to slow, panting despite being possessed of a child's boundless energy. "I didn't get my first magic yet. Anyway, Riesco's just in here," Classa breathed, greedily sucking in mouthfuls of air. "I found him wandering in the desert." She shook her head. "It's not good to wander in the desert. Trust me. Things die there."
Finally, they came to an outright stop and the girl spun on her rear hooves and gestured a welcome. "Anyway, what was he doing there, and how about you? I think his armour's a little dirty, but it's really nice..."
When Zarina could sense and see her horse - the familiar shape and the the armor he wore were so hard to miss for her - she zeros in and makes a quick check if anything is wrong. Supposedly nothing beyond loads of sand. She then peers down at the galloping half-horse girl, and in her deep softness, she actually let Classa arrive at the horse first, only for Zazzy to teleport just a few seconds later by the horses. The actual horse is a bit jumpy, definitely recovering from the storm's assault, but he is quickly calmed when her rider gets close.
“There you are ...” Zarina says in a hushed tone, reaching her arms out to take her horse's head into a light embrace, “You got bored all alone, didn't you?” she whispers to his perked up ears before turning to her centaur guide, “I -” she looked over at the SOuth where her friends where, “We got brought here, right when the storm came.” she beamed at the little one, “Thanks for watching out for him.” she then whips out a carrot from a pouch and feeds it right to the still a bit agitated Riesco.
Classa eyes the carrot.
The carrot is consumed entirely. No trace of its existence remains.
Zarina whips out another carrot a few seconds later after the inevitable pout, and offers it to Classa.
!!!However!!!
Riesco makes a move! He wants seconds.
Classa's face falls as Riesco shamelessly and ruthlessly gobbles up the carrot. She could swear that he gives her a horse-side eye, and she pouts and paws at the ground with one of her front hooves.
Then, Zarina pulls out a second carrot and the child's face lights up. She starts to reach for it excitedly - "I heawd they're good for your eyes!" - but the horse swoops in again and defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory. She sticks her tongue out at Riesco, and maybe he's just licking his lips, but she could swear that he sticks his tongue out right back. Classa turns. "Are you gonna ride him now?" She seems to be brimming with nervous anticipation and she glances a little further northeast. "Oh yeah. Did you come all alone?" she inquires, not even giving Zarina the chance to answer her first question.
With both horses at war now over stolen produce, Zarina answers the first question by just doing it. Up on the saddle, she dusts the seat and whips the reins to make them somewhat presentable, “Yeah, we're quite a few.” she points her gauntlet to the South, “My friend Ayla, you'll like her, is by those strange things. The others are further down, some made a shelter, others ...” she clicks her tongue, “Some ran. May need to wrangle them, if they're even alive.”
Zarina's greaves tapped the sides of her horse, prompting him into a trot, “Wanna meet them?” she asked with a playful grin, “So, actually, where are you from, Classa?” small talk, but essential, “... Why were you in the desert during a storm, actually?”
"Hey Zawina..." She trailed off. "Are you hot in that awmour?"
“It's not too bad.” Zarina answers with a shrug, “I wish I made it better for hot days.”
"Yeah, doofus. I think that woulda been smarter." The girl snorted and shook her head, but she seemed to catch herself, realizing that she hadn't answered the questions put to her. "Oh, and I can't wait to meet your friends!" She sprung out ahead, hopping to the side a bit and continuing at a quick trot. She pressed a finger to her lips, seeming to consider. "I'm sure they're alive. This was a bad one." She looked up at the lingering reddish-yellow in the sky before turning back. "But it was over quick. Don't worry. We'll find them."
They continued on for a bit more, the eight-year-old full of antsy little movements, constantly nagging at and annoying Riesco in little ways. "I like horses," she decided. "They're kinda like centaurs, but cute n' dumb."
“Careful girl,” warned Zarina with a stern voice but she kept a subtle hint of a smile as she looked at the young centaur, “I enjoy you but be careful.” her grin got a little toothy, “I might just be a big bad dragon, just like the armor.”
Riesco grunted from time to time, and even twitched his hoof a little in a halfhearted kick to the side, “Centaurs? Is that what you're called?” eyes were back forward as they got closer to the odd edifices, “I've never met someone like you where I come from, Classa.” a carefully eye looked out for Ayla at this point, “But I think we were brought here to meet you and the people you're with. Maybe to help, or get help.” meanwhile, as Classa got to annoy the horse a bit more, the moment she got a bit too close to his rear, she'd be greeted with a few high-pitched horsey-farts.
Classa made a show of staggering back, her lanky little legs splaying out. "Eeeeewww!" she squealed, scrunching up her nose, pressing her hands to her heart, and staggering almost to the point of keeling over. "I am slain!" Quickly, she sprung back, grinning, and trotted alongside Zarina as the Virangishwoman spoke. For a moment, the girl looked over at her new acquaintance evaluatively and a silence built. Then, her voice became smaller.
"I was born here, but a lot of us weren't. We were saved from the void, where we were... demons." She seemed hesitant. "Don't worry. I'm not bad and I'd never hurt anyone..." The sound of eight hooves in the dirt was all that could be heard above the whistle of the wind. "And my owners aren't bad. I pwomise. They bought me from a auction and they're really nice to me. They don't have a lot of money. Just this old sweetwater farm."
She seemed to perk up and be eager to change subjects. "Oh yeah! That's what I was doing when I found Riesco here! We could tell a storm was coming, and since I'm the fastest obviously, they sent me to go make sure all the rainsails closed alright."
“Hmmm.” Demons and the VOID, things Zarina wasn't too keen on encountering again. And yet this one wasn't nearly as obscene as what Ayla, Yuliya or Nibbler had become. “I've seen demons before.” said Zarina, voice still stern and her face hard to evaluate as she stared forward again, “You're definitely not like them. Cheeky little filly, to be sure, but not the real deal.”
The subject of ownership, however, hit Zarina harder than it normally would. She had avoided slavery back in Gandakar due to her essentially staying in the capital, and the majority of slaves being in the coffee fields nowadays. But now she couldn't just dodge the promise anymore, “I'd love to meet them. Your owners.” she plainly said, shooting a smile to the girl that wasn't quite as genuine as the others.
“Rainsails-” they were so close to the strange structures, “that's what they are? Do they, like, gather water or something?”
"Oh yeah!" exclaimed Classa. "But like... different: better!" She started skipping. All the cazenax love it. They put it in their dwinks and the ones the city people have in their big evening gwiddle feasts, especially Mr. Jascuan, though he doesn't have a griddle, exactly." She waved dismissively, talking a mile a minute. "He's not a city pewson anyway. He's nice. Kind of like a dad, I guess, since I don't know mine, but he's old, so many more like a Gwandpa..." She trailed off, thinking.
Before the girl could elucidate further, however, Zarina sensed them: three human energies, about three hundred meters away, hunkering in the lee of a folded up sweetwater sail. Ayla, Fiske, and Desmond - it had to be them.
“Cazenax?” was the only thing Zarina really questioned among all of it. But she took note of everything else. From the feasts to this Mr. Jascuan. “He sounds like a good man, that Mr. Jascuan.” Zarina reached for her pouch, and revealed a third carrot before chucking it over to the centaur, “I have a grandpa that was kind of like a dad too. Taught me how to ride horses. I'm sure he'd love to meet you, actually.”
When they got close to the small group, Zarina didn't miss out on sniffing out their energy signatures, “There they are.” she gave a new kick to Riesco's side and got him to enter a canter, “Don't wanna miss the new friends, now!”
Classa nearly bobbled the catch, but her 'super great agility' came through in the end. She snagged it and took a bite, talking as she chewed. "Awwwww did I eawn a widdle pwesent fwom being a good howsie!" she teased, sticking out her tongue and skipping along after quickly swallowing.
Then, however, they were there, and she could see people in the distance. They started waving and moving toward them.
Lunamaria Hawke
teenangstlife
Pirouette
Not a Sayan
Neziul
Altered Tundra
Echotech71
