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Fiction Herald Of The Old Ones

What Are Thrones Made Of? - Part VII: Not All Schemers Are Smart​


"Do not ask which creature screams in the night. Do not question who waits for you in the shadow. It is my cry that wakes you in the night, and my body that crouches in the shadow. I am Tzeentch and you are the puppet that dances to my tune..."
— Tzeentch, the Architect of Fate.​


“The first thing you need to understand about worshipers of the Changer of Ways is that all of them are making horseshit up, busking it and generally fucking about. They all claim that they had it all figured out from the start, and they are all lying. The second thing you need to know? It’s that that only makes them even more dangerous.”
— Words of Witch Hunter Hauke von Hinnerk-Hansen.





Near Jaguar’s Mouth Cave, Outskirts of Skeggi, Jungles of Pahualaxa
2nd of Silðimánuður, 2545 VR // 40.0.9.16.17 5 Kabʼan 10 Sak​

Torfi can’t do anything but dodge and scamper back, just as his hounds had, as the enormous reptilian clad in greenish golden armor bears down on them. His mind doesn’t even harken back to the javelins holstered at his back, or the dagger hanging from his leather belt. Why would it?

Around them, the members of Adella’s hunting party -her allies, her Jarlvakt, and who knows who else- shout in alarm as they themselves raise spears and notch arrows. The twang-like sounds of bowstrings as arrows are let loose are instantly followed by those of arrowheads striking metal, bouncing off armored scales with depressive thuds. The couple that do find purchase look like not even their entire length could be enough to pierce through skin and into flesh, let alone cause a debilitating wound.

And even if they could, why would he ever help the people whose death’s he’s just orchestrated?

No, all that the young man does is continue retreating towards the desiccated reef’s steep climb up to what would be the waterline on most days. He’d assumed from the start that the stunt would cost him his life, but he’s not dumb enough to actively seek it. Instead, as he follows the distant barks of terrified hounds, he can’t help but look back.

Just in time for the body of a jarlvakt, one of Adella’s huscarls, to fly towards him. Torfi dodges by throwing himself down, meaning that the body clad in scraps of mail armor and fur instead snaps into the reef with a sound of cracking coral and the squelching of impaled flesh.

The man’s corpse looks back at Torfi with glazed eyes, giving him a much faster-than-usual show of how exactly the reef has grown for hundreds of years. And yet, he can’t help but follow the trajectory backwards, recentering his sight on the futile attempts to down the storkäft.

Adella seems to have had the same plan as himself, using the fools who had followed them to the cave’s mouth and the discordant volleys as a distraction to get as far away from the beast as possible. Another one of her bodyguards, a warrior wearing a simple helm of sheet metal decorated with ram horns, tries to put himself between the lizardman and his King, only for the beast -still wearing collars and ropes of feathers ruined by years in saltwater- to rear up and bring both of its four-clawed fists down upon the man like scale-encrusted boulders.

The mashed corpse’s legs are still twitching as the animal simply stomps through and continues its growling and slobbering charge towards the Jarl of Lyssa Bay. Torfi is endlessly glad that it has chosen her and not him for a target. But he isn’t necessarily surprised. After all, for as long as Norscans have raided Lustria, there has been a clear awareness that its native beastmen have an aversion for anything and everything touched by the Gods.

And not even witches or viktis like Njal and Soren are as touched by the Gods as beings like Adella. And so the Raven-touched woman continues to retreat. For a second, her eyes catch his. And for the first time since his father died, Torfi can’t deny himself a hound’s satiated smile.

Her own eyes, however, return an unknowable stare. “KILL IT, KILL IT! YOUR KING COMMANDS!” She focuses on the foe at hand, screaming orders with a discordant and echoing loudness that should be impossible in the coastal outdoors.

That seems to steel the resolve of her wavering warriors, who redouble their efforts. Those who only have spears, axes and the odd sword even climb down the reef -which, Torfi notes, is slowly filling up with water as the low tide ends- to try and surround the monster.

To little success.

Every tail-swipe crushes a chest, every snap of crocodilian jaws breaks bodies in half, every claw-swipe sends chunks of gore the size of sausages flying out of screaming bodies.

Spears bend as they are thrust against a supposedly weaker underbelly, axeheads bounce and shields splinter as the animal grabs their cords through the wooden structures painted with the King’s toothed raven. It is a massacre that leaves a dozen broken bodies in the way to Adella’s shape, which remains stuck to one of the bone-encrusted coral ledges.

The bodies mix with the seawater, moving and wedging here and there as the incoming waves rise and rise, some of those furthest behind, closest to the demolished cave entrance, even begin being picked at by opportunistic seabirds and reptiles.

If Torfi had the mind to look for it, he could dunk his head under the water and find hundreds of crabs and fish nipping at floating pieces of flesh and the rent-open corpses. But he doesn’t, for the sight that unfolds over the water as the troll-sized reptilian reaches Adella is twice as horrifying.

The woman climbs up to one of the coraline ledges, letting her cloak of filthy blackbird feathers fall off her with a tug as it catches on one of the stake-shaped growths of the living material. That leaves her body, from legs glistening with red-tinged seawater to her strange headdress to which Losteriksson’s Crown had been added, completely exposed with the exception of a loincloth and a now-broken bandage that exposes one of her breasts.

Where a nipple should be, a long-tongued mouth hisses. Torfi vomits right then and there.

The sight draws worshipful amazement from those still alive and trying to take the lizardman down like idiots, making it clear to Torfi that he’s still among a small group of those "privileged" enough to have seen the hundred or so wound-like mouths covering the woman’s body.

Mouths with breath as ragged as her original one. Mouths which sneer. Mouths which quiver and move as… If…

Speaking.

No, chanting.

Adella’s words become louder and louder, more and more shrill and chorus-like as the monster makes its final, open-jawed approach. It doesn’t even need to climb up the ledge, it is so tall that her position barely puts the blessed woman at eye-height with a snarling face covered by an enormous four-horned helm.

Torfi winces as her volume picks up, more and more until she is louder than a chanting longhouse or a marching army, until some of her own guard -those nearest- began to fall with bleeding ears and the stumbles of drunk men, cracking their necks against the shallow-bottomed water or being cut and rasped by the merciless coral.

The beast makes its final lunge, a ram of toothed jaws as fast as a whip.

But not enough.

Flames of an impossibly pink color he has only seen in the wings of the rarest jungle birds spew like lancets out of each and every one of her mouths.

The will of the Gods made manifest in an impossible gust of flames.

The pink fire engulfs the beast, making it utter a sound of thunderous pain that Torfi has never before heard.

And it only barely helps the woman survive as an arm -scales and flesh already melting off it- suddenly lashes out of the column of fire to strike at her, slamming her back with a crackling explosion Torfi can only hope to be her bones.

The flames go out within seconds of the dying beast’s blow, but the damage is done.

And Torfi, alongside less than a dozen beatific survivors, is left staring in gape-mouthed horror as the horrible burned beast, its armor melted into its body, takes one.

Two.

And three earthshaking stamps more before its charred body finally gives up, a mouth of dripping metal and bare blackened teeth failing to clasp around Adella’s prone form.

“HEY, YOU!” Torfi and a few others are broken from their stupor as someone shouts over the squawing sounds of the converging carrion-eating gulls. “YOU TRAITOR!”

‘Oh, yeah.” Torfi realizes. Everyone still alive -hopefully not the King’s broken body- knows that he’d been the one to guide them here.

And so the kennel-master turns, grabs onto a solid-looking piece of coral grown around a split skull, and fucking runs for it.




Council Rock, Port Reaver, Settlers’ Cove
18th of Brauzeit, 2538 I.C. // 40.0.9.16.18 6 Etzʼnabʼ 11 Sak​

Having been built up and remodeled by multiple kings of Port Reaver to function as a last bastion during the -many- attempts to overthrow them has left the squareish fort a complicated maze, and not even the kind one builds to confound attackers. From the uneven lines of fire given by the towers at each of its corners, to the cramped space of its inner courtyard, it certainly lacks the comforts of even the poorest of the pleasure yachts under Serena’s flag.

‘At least,’ She mulls. ‘None of the crews of those were idiotic enough to attempt to make it on their own.’

And yet, she is likely to lose one of those hulls soon anyways. The bulk of the damage of the Boar’s taxes had already been accounted for by her paymasters, and while she is far from having lost her fortune, some preventive belt-tightening is in order.

The problem, she finds herself mulling as she sheaths her saber after finishing the day’s training, is time. Time, not a lack of it. In fact, an overabundance of it. If only she could make that scarce with a few cuts.

“He fought well.” She speaks to her bodyguards as one goes to poke at the bleeding shape currently creating a red puddle in the middle of the sandy court. “Take him to Cadavas.” She mentions her private physician. “And have him patch the lad up at my expense.”

With little more words, she retires, leaving the men to their jeering and peacocking. As a seat-holder of Port Reaver’s council, she is entitled to quarters in the fortress in times of accord -which isn’t the current case, but Bastjan seems adamant in acting like it- and with the recent vacancy of the token numbers of men he had kept manning it now gone by his own orders…

The man seems to have given Council Rock -and what it symbolizes- up in all ways but the outspoken one.

And that suits her just fine, unlike men like Favieres and Dubosc, she has no interest in spending her nights among tavern-crawlers or maddened priestess-whores. And Al-Isar seems intent on copying them, as the news of their cadre seems adamantly centered on sampling every pleasure the city can bring him and his uplifted friends.

‘Pleasure…’ She thinks back to her yachts. Indeed, back in the Old World she would have no issue in selling it off for a good price -specially considering that she had gotten it for a price of spilled blood and naught else- in any of a dozen ports to anyone from a petulant nobleborn brat to a merchant with dreams of fucking his way into blue-bloodedness.

But here in Lustria? Where everyone is poor as shit, wants her to hang from the noose, or a direct competitor? Not a single buyer worth the headache on her side of the Great Ocean.

So what would her best option be then? Send it off to carry out the weeks -depending on the weather, even months- long trip back east, hoping that its captain will indeed carry the sale out, and won’t skim anything off the top? And all of that assuming that a pleasure yacht would survive the fraught voyage at all.

“Would take too long… Too many unknowns…” She mulls over as she enters her private rooms in one of the corner towers. The most spacious one, of course.

“Mistress?” Speaks a voice.

“Nothing for you to concern yourself with, Lance.” Serena speaks to the much younger man currently carrying a bundle of blankets, likely cleaning her bed up. He looks at her with those big blue eyes of his, half-hidden by the mass of blonde locks she enjoys tugging at so much. “Has Lady drawn me a cold bath?”

“It should be ready, mistress.” He smiles as she walks by. He also yelps when she grabs hold of his loose shirt and pulls him along to the room she has made into her bathroom by virtue of good ventilation.

There, she finds her bathtub being filled with clear water by a figure near identical to Lance, only more feminine. She’d gotten the twins as part of her price only a couple of years ago, they had been some kind of special deal offered by the vessel’s slavemaster to his Arabyan clients. A young boy fit for being made into a pit-fighter, and a matching pleasure slave.

Serena had ended up deciding to use them both for the latter role.

The girl greets her with a shy smile and a bow, and soon enough the twins are both upon her, helping remove every bit of clothing on her body with just a few extra -and welcome- graces and touches.

Soon enough she is laid in a tub overflowing with just enough water to deal with the Lustrian heat, incense burning on a small table near her as Lance starts working at her feet, and Lady rubs her shoulder with enough force to elicit grunts of satisfied pain.

“You seem… Stressed… Mistress…”

“Of course I am.” Serena squirms into the girl’s hands, lowering herself as much as she can into the water. “I am sworn to take part in a stillborn coup.”

She catches a glimpse of the twins looking at each other. Not in surprise -she keeps them abreast of most of her dealings- but in some reasonable amount of fear. A failed coup implies her getting the traitor’s treatment, and new masters for them.

Masters who would likely tend to be a lot less… Soft on them.

“Have any of the other lords broken your pact, mistress?” Lance asks.

“No, but I expect one of us soon will. It may even be me. This… We failed to see the bigger picture.”

“You rarely do, mistress.” The girl comforts, nibbling at her ear.

“I did this time… Bastjan… Giving so much of his fleet up when he became King may not have been as stupid of a decision as we had assumed. It means that most of his men are here, slowly becoming guards and -Manann forbid it, bureaucrats while ours are scattered across the Great Sea.”

“I’m not sure I follow, mistress, the four of you surely have more force at your command than he ever could?”

“Of course you don’t follow, Lance.” She smiles, squinting at him between the mounds of her breasts. “I keep you for your fingers, not your brains.”

Lady laughs a little at the insult, but the brother does little more than offer a rueful smile as he goes back to massaging the soles of her feet.

“None of us are stupid enough to keep our fleets together. Not without the backbone of a Port Reaver of our own -or a cove like the one Hamidou used to have- to deal with the burden. Only Dubosc has a third of his fleet in Settler’s Cove at any given time, and that’s because of all his slave barges. The rest of us keep the fleets spread like scattershot. Between that and all the mutineers… It may take months before we actually have enough cannons and sabers here to take the Cittadella, and he sure as hell won’t come out to meet us at sea. Months that that land-lubing pig will have to continue trying to strengthen himself. And months for that upstart Billings to keep trying to make himself a hidden Lord. They are both like a bunch of barnacles you can’t remove from a hull because bad waves would get your swabs killed.” Serena lets out a moan as Lady times her explanation’s end with the applying of pressure to a particularly stubborn knot.

Serena’s arms shoot backwards, grappling around the girl’s neck with a splash, Then her legs kick out, locking stunned Lance’s neck between her thighs.

“But… I am not going to be the one to break the news to the rest, not when I can use the time to also reposition myself. And I distinctly remember coming here to relax for the day. So, come on. Relax me.” She commands.

The twins share a look of blushing mischief. Only when they are entangled so does she get to see the sharpness behind their beautiful eyes.

“Yes, misstress…” They moan in unison.




Beaches of Skeggi, Lyssa Bay, Jungles of Pahualaxa
3rd of Silðimánuður, 2545 VR // 40.0.9.16.18 6 Etzʼnabʼ 11 Sak​

“Fuck y-ugh!” Torfi tries to bark as two warriors -of which he only recognizes one as a survivor of his assasination attempt- drag him along the sand of Skeggi’s Playa. They do so amidst a crowd that only parts for their drawn weapons.

Torfi doesn’t even try to raise his head, scared that his eyes may cross those of Njal or his mother, that their last sight of him before he is shoved and chained to a stone, will be that of him bent of body and broken of will. If he is going to be put through the Blood Eagle, he doesn’t want them to remember that version of him.

That is the only thing that could have drawn the attention of so many, the execution of the idiot mutt-boy who thought he could trick a daughter of the Raven into getting herself killed. Kingslaying, as it turns out, is only frowned upon by his people if it ends in failure.

His eyes are blurry and stinging, partially because of the sand he’s being dragged through, partially because -once he had been caught- he’s been on the receiving end of a beating that had left his right eye swollen-shut along half a hundred other bruises and cuts.

At least they hadn’t broken any bones or ran him through. That would have meant his likely death before his execution.

Which is why he is left entirely dumbfounded when one of his captors lets go of him, shoving him against a rock half-buried on the silty-beach’s edge.

“Stay there.” The woman growls, turning to look at her companion. “If he moves, pin him to the stone through his belly, King isn’t that interested.” She gestures to the spear held in the other’s hands. Who eyes him not with hate but with… Amazement.

“You the kid who tried to sick a damned lizardman on the King? And I thought the sand-eaters were stupid.” A voice speaks. For a second Torfi thinks it’s that of the guard who has been left with him at the head of the crowd gathering upon the beach while trying not to get their fur boots or bare feet stuck in one of its many quicksand patches. The crowd slowly becomes louder and louder with gasping and animated speaking.

But no, the voice comes from another shape, the one using the rock he’s been dumped by as a seat.

Torfi turns to look at it.

“Gods, you look like a pig who ran off halfway being fucked by a troll.” The man laughs.

Said man is wiry, a Norscan with deeply sun-tanned skin, unkept strands of long greying hair and a beard that hasn’t been cleaned up since the ex-kennelmaster was born. He also smells like brine and wears a mismatched collection of ratty rags and newish clothes, all decorated with bits and pieces of seashells.

The tools the man has resting on his shoulder as he looks down on Torfi with a smile give his nature away. A bucket shiny with salt crystals, a rake, a shovel and a ratty net tied around a stick.

‘A beach-trawler.’ Torfi blinks with his one good eye. ‘My lungs are about to be pulled out my back like fishguts, and my last conversation is going t to be with a fucking bloodworm slurper.’

In truth, it’s good company for an orphaned kennelmaster who never amounted to much in life.

“Name’s Styrmir, kid. And I gotta say, helping hunt that thing down? Now that takes some balls right there.”

…

“Uh…?”

“Oh, right, you are bleeding outta your ear. Here, lemme help you.” The man grabs Torfi’s sore shoulder, turning his entire pain-stiffed body just enough to leave him looking at.

“Fuuuuuuck…”

About thirty people, mostly thralls directed by a few shouting overseers, trying to pull the enormous and blackened corpse of the Lizardman, its partially melted armor still glinting under the sun. The enormous body is half-propped up a barge of hastily tied-together logs, clearly not big enough to handle its weight judging by the way in which it lists. About half the thralls are actually on the beach, pulling at the ropes tied to it to drag against the coming and going waves. Others push and pull while standing nipples-deep in the water, and a couple even try to row with oars while awkwardly standing on the charred flesh and wet wood.

And overwatching it all at a few hundred paces down the beach? Adella herself, once more draped in a cloak of feathers. A different one.

The woman stiffens once Torfi’s gaze falls on her.

Her head turns, sparing Torfi a single-mouthed smile and wink.

Not only has he failed to kill the King, now she has yet another accolade to her legend. No one has defeated such a formidable saurian near Skeggi since the wet season when Drenok Johansen arrived at Skeggi.

All thanks to Torfi.

And because of that, it does not surprise him that she eventually approaches him. Of course, she makes the beaten mutt lick his wounds for a half hour more, which is how long it takes for the slaves to finally drag the monster ashore.

Adella climbs upon its back aided by her worshipful guard, her nature will not likely remain a secret for long. And that’s if she hasn’t chosen to make use of it too.

The way in which the crowd, which moves like an army of ants around her and the corpse, reacts to words Torfi can barely hear certainly implies as such.

But approach she does, letting her allies and guards divvy and butcher the creature up with aid from Gothi Bloðugr, who barks and roars with maddened excitement at such a grand sacrifice. Torfi spies the thing’s entire head being carted off to the base of the King’s Hill.

“I better get going kid, can’t stand around liars you know? Makes an honest Norscan’s blood boil.” The crowd parts around Adella as she approaches, barely giving Styrmir the time to scurry off. But not without oddly critical parting words for the beaten dog.

“Let us be, I need to confer with my Kennelmaster.” The woman commands, creating an odd lake of privacy among a crowd of thousands. Even the non-norscans surround the dead beast and join the impromptu festivities, Torfi spies.

A single one of Adella’s talon-sharp nails touched Torfi’s chin, making him look up. She’s so close that he can count every single one of the ritualistic oval scars adorning her face. Close enough that only he can hear the rest of her mouth when Adella speaks.

“YOU MONGREL, I WILL FEED ON YOUR EYES, I WILL FLAY YOU WITH PLIERS!”

“Hello there, Torfi. I would apologize for your state, but we had to make sure you wouldn’t… Scurry off… Again…” Her smile is too excited, too happy.

“I could put you to so much good use… Yes I could.”

“So, you want to draw it out? I won’t beg. I ain’t that kinda mutt.” He tries to steady himself, straighten his back.

“I can still change my mind you know, I can still kill you, I can still-”

“No, no, I am afraid I have only come here to congratulate you. Torfi.”

“If you didn’t smell of dog, you’d be such a pretty bird…”

“Congratulate me on what? On not killing you? I wasn’t even lucky enough for that bastard Reidarson to be there.”

“Next time you try to kill me, you’d do better to have more than one plan, retarded boy-thing.”

“Is that so? If I remember correctly, I ordered that you organize a hunt, didn’t I?” She asks, had her lips always been this thin? “And you did! You gained me the best trophy I could have asked for, Kennelmaster.”

“The thrill… I haven’t been this excited since I made my parents kill each other….”

“What then?” Torfi asks, managing to rise himself to his knees.

"̸N̶o̵w̴ ̶I̵ ̶l̷e̶t̶ ̷y̴o̵u̵ ̸g̸o̴ ̷o̵f̷f̵,̴ ̷t̶o̷ ̶y̸o̶u̷r̷ ̶d̵o̷g̴s̵ ̸a̵n̵d̷ ̴y̵o̵u̸r̵ ̴w̸i̶t̷c̷h̶ ̷a̵n̵d̵ ̶y̵o̶u̵r̸ ̴m̷o̵t̸h̶e̵r̷ ̷a̸n̴d̴ ̵t̶h̴o̵s̴e̵ ̴c̵u̶t̸e̴ ̴l̷i̶t̸t̵l̶e̷ ̸t̵h̷i̵n̸g̸s̶.̸ ̵T̴h̸e̵ ̶R̶a̵v̸e̴n̵ ̶w̷o̷u̸l̶d̶ ̴n̴o̴t̴ ̷l̶o̵o̷k̸ ̶d̶o̶w̵n̵ ̸u̴p̴o̷n̴ ̷m̸e̵ ̷w̸i̷t̸h̷ ̴k̷i̵n̷d̸ ̸e̵y̸e̴s̵ ̵i̷f̴ ̴I̸ ̵w̶e̶r̴e̵ ̵t̷o̶ ̴p̵u̷n̷i̵s̸h̸ ̴y̷o̸u̶ ̷f̷r̶o̴m̶ ̴b̸e̵a̸t̴i̵n̸g̸ ̵m̵e̶ ̷a̷t̷ ̷m̸y̵ ̶o̴w̶n̸ ̸g̶a̸m̵e̶.̸ ̸B̵u̶t̵ ̷t̴h̴a̴t̵ ̸j̴u̷s̵t̴ ̸m̵e̶a̵n̴s̸ ̶y̴o̸u̴ ̸h̵a̴v̴e̸ ̸c̸o̴n̸s̵e̷n̸t̵e̶d̴ ̷t̷o̷ ̷p̷l̵a̶y̶i̴n̴g̸ ̴m̷i̶n̴e̵.̵"̸ The woman backs off, threats implicit and explicit in words spoken by a dozen mouths, in unison for once. "̷E̴n̸j̸o̵y̴ ̴y̷o̸u̶r̵ ̶f̵r̴e̷e̶d̴o̶m̷,̶ ̴S̸o̶n̷ ̴o̵f̶ ̵O̴r̶n̶o̸l̶f̶.̸ ̴N̷e̶x̸t̵ ̶t̸i̸m̶e̵ ̶y̶o̸u̵ ̸f̸a̷i̶l̸,̶ ̷i̶t̵ ̵w̵o̶n̷'̸t̷ ̶b̴e̵ ̴e̴n̶t̷e̷r̵t̴a̶i̵n̴i̴n̷g̸ ̴e̸n̸o̵u̷g̶h̷ ̶t̷o̴ ̷l̴e̷t̴ ̶y̴o̶u̷ ̸s̸u̴r̵v̷i̴v̶e̴.̸"̸
 
A bunch of people, including both editors for this fic, were very much hoping/expecting for Adella to get splattered this chapter.
Obviously, that didn't happen :3
I still have too much fun I can squeeze out of her fucked-up character!

I hope you enjoyed the story and I honestly appreciate all and any kudos or comments you may be gracious enough to gift me! And in case any of you are interested, here's the link to my Discord server, where I discuss my projects and all are welcome :D

It would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site.
 

What Are Thrones Made Of? - Part VIII: He Just… Showed Up​

"Upon the southern horizon of Hexoatl, on the eve of the equinox, stellar pyramids will rise above the jungle canopy. That is our deadline, that is our target. I will not waste a single minute waiting for the sick or injured, and have it known that no man who slows us down with his childish paranoias will receive the full pay I offered to true warriors of the empire."

— Sir Hugh Weidendorf, two hours before mysteriously falling to his death during his Northern Lustria Expedition.


Icnoyotl Favela, Temple-City of Pahuax, Jungles of Pahualaxa
40.0.9.16.19 7 Kawak 12 Sak​

Malte doesn’t say anything as he shoves the curtain of beads aside and enters the mudbrick “house” he had been instructed to sleep in days after their arrival to this… City of cold-blooded beastmen. For that is what they are, those chaos-worshippers and their army of stolen children might have argued differently, but the doubts seeded by a direct refusal on letting them go had only been proved by the way in which -like a dripping wooden ceiling while a storm rages outside- people had steadily begun to lessen in numbers.

First it had been those who had braved escape during the first couple nights. No wonder. By now, he envies them, they are the only ones he’d assume to have had any chances.

Then, those who had died or succumbed to illness in the week and days after their arrival to Pahuax. The Lizardmen -or their spokeschildren- had blamed it on slow-festering diseases of the jungle, a couple even on accidents. The fact that some may have been truthful had only made him sure of the inhumanity of it.

Then it had been that group four days ago. More than two dozen, maybe thirty. Almost thirty, prodded by that old witch who had caused trouble back in the slave holds of the elves.

He doesn’t miss those torture-happy daemon-born things, but at least they had not offered food and kindness with one hand and the butcher’s cleaver with the other. Slavery and livestock-ship, apparently, weigh quite differently on a man’s soul.

He still remembers, having uttered prayers to Sigmar the day his shackles had been removed by one of the frill-headed goblinoids. Back then he had just expected to die like all others, breaking his back to help the Sigmar-damned elves carry their stolen gold.

Now? Now he doesn’t even have the reprieve of that knowledge.

Still, entering the one-room building covered in cots and a cooking pit does serve as a small mercy, it has been days since the lizards had given up on making them share their housing with their cold-blooded kind, and there’s enough structures that he only needs to share the building with five other men, all of them sent off by that heretic girl to work with the fish-farming lizards.

He’d been of a fishing family back before the elfs had kidnapped him and his crew -of whom he is the last survivor- as his mother had been one of many net-weavers in Meurkenhavn, and he’d inherited his boat from his own father. But after twenty years of serfdom -nearly half his life- his scarred body barely remembers the cold waters of the Sea of Claws, his mind only being able to conjure the foggiest versions of a girl he had once hoped to make into a wife.

‘At least things are clean here.’ He grunts, having been given explicit orders to wash up every afternoon after a day spent netting the shoals of fish found in the ash-dusted canals and reservoirs of the stone city. None of the smell of dead fish and fungus-infested feet that would be expected inside of a cramped boat’s cabin hit him now.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t unpleasantly surprised, however.

Because his entrance to the hut isn’t met by his fellow fish-herders hushedly talking or preparing dinner. It is instead met by a crowded room. Crowded with men and women.

Malte can clearly hear someone talking in the middle of it all, there aren’t that many people to block noise. But there must be at least an entire third of the humans trapped in the city here, and they all seem to be raptly listening to the same voice.

Pushing himself forwards, Malte finds that voice to belong to a man he is sure he hadn’t seen among those who had survived the trek through the jungle. His hair is of a curled red, almost dark copper, color, his skin is covered in freckles, and his body is clothed in a mix between human clothes and the garments worn by the cultist children, as he wears a clearly oversized shirt of white cotton alongside a kilt of some native animal’s hide, his feet bare and decorated with bangles.

The one always surrounded by children.

“Now, I can’t promise you much else. If you get to the city, you will do it by stealing as much as you can the day before and by roughing the land. I can find you the way, not succor.” His words are spoken with a strong accent Malte can’t place at all, certainly not Imperial or Kislevite, his smile is full-thoothed and confident.

Malte understands the insanity of the context he had stumbled into pretty quickly.

“Steal? You want us to steal from them?” A woman of terrified eyes and with a body marked by the "entertainment" of dark elves whimpers.

“Oh, it’ll work out, believe me.” The man nods to her. “The lizards, their brains ain’t that big, you see? They mostly work on instinct. If you don’t look like you are stealing, if you act like you are grabbing this waterskin or that basket of dried fruit because you need it right now or someone else ordered you to, they won’t think anything of it.” The man moves his hand behind himself, for a second Malte thinks he’s about to do something as crass as scratching his ass. But the scrawny man’s hand comes out of a back pocket holding so many golden and silvery trinkets that he even lets a few clatter to the ground. “Otherwise, how would I have gotten a hold of these? That one.” He points at a circlet that looks like an ox ring. “Came out of the nose of one of the massive ones, they can be dumber than trolls, if you know the rules.”

“And you will teach us those rules, help us escape? It is madness.”

“Not madness. Believe me, they eat the ones who go mad first. And it won’t be help either. However many of you get to Sudburg alive -and believe me, you want me to take you to Sudburg- will pay me with whatever you manage to scrape off here.”

Somehow, the greed he speaks with assuages Malte’s fears.

“What about… The children?” Another voice speaks.

“Oh, the tykes? Been working at them for a year now. Hopeless, a lot of them. Their brains are baked by whatever keeps the lizardmen docile to each other. It’ll happen to you too, eventually.” Surprised gazes and gasps meet his words. “What? You all come from the Old World, right? How else the fuck would beastmen manage to build a city? In any case, I am pretty sure it’s in the food, and that it’s slow-acting enough that we still don’t have to worry about it.”

“We shouldn’t abandon them!”

“How about the guys in the pits and the cages, huh?!” The redhead snaps. “I know you have seen them, ‘cause I see them every day. Dwarves, men, halflings and even a couple ogres, every single party that enters this chunk of the jungle winds up there waiting to get their heads mounted on pikes. But I haven’t seen a single one of you ask about them. Why? Because you think they are hopeless, and you are right, no trick of mine could get ‘em out. Well, get it into your heads that the kids are the same thing, they just aren’t chained to walls… I guess, there’s a couple are new enough that I could grab, consider it a show of grace as long as you all stick to the plan.”

Malte can’t help but agree.

“Now, before we get down another doomed tangent…It’ll happen in a few nights. The dry seasons isn’t… literal, I heard some of the skinks chirping about some weird summer storm. We’ll use the lightning and cold-shock of the rain to get past them. You’ll see the sign the morning of, grab everything you can and meet me at the gate by the red pyramid to the north. There’s a swamp near it, it’ll hide our smell. After that…”

The man’s smile returns.

“You just make sure not to lose track of whatever direction I’m running in, I sure as hell won’t be turning back.”




Stellar Pyramids of the Southern Skies, Jungles of Pahualaxa, Isthmus of Lustria
40.0.9.17.0 8 Ajaw 13 Sak​

O'exizip can’t help but let out an annoyed hiss as he continues to scrub away at the brown-stained splotch marring one of the many levels that make up the enormity of the Pyramid of the Belt of Stars. Sunset will arrive soon, and the movement of the steps will make it near-impossible for him to continue trying to fulfil his duties.

Still, he gives himself a few moments to breath and take a gulp from his gourd of water, his body appreciating the rest, and his quick mind even more so as it distracts itself by drinking in the monumental sights around him.

Having been spawned into Hexoatl’s pools as a Skink of the Industrial Caste, he’d spent the first two decades of his life mastering everything and anything to do with the upkeep of the City of the Sun’s enormous temples and otherwise mountain-emasculating architecture. He’d learned how to fight the weathering of weaker stones, which vines are an aesthetic boon while others do nothing but cause trouble and invite vermin, he’d learned to take chisel and mallet to the decoration of newly-laid stone, and much more.

Eventually, through those years, he had found his own way of excelling: Cleaning. Few Skinks could sweep a floor more efficiently than O'exizip, or do as good of a job at removing the odors of a beast’s pen, what brews could best be used to clean any embellishment, no matter its make.

And his skill had not gone unnoticed, neither had that of his spawn-kin. When the Oracle in service to Mage-Lord Balygyi-Ploj had sent a messenger to Hexoalt requesting a replenishment of his workforces, his own cohort had been chosen as part of the prestigious and preen-worthy deployment.

He still remembers, but half a dozen seasons earlier, the uniqueness with which the Stellar Pyramids had stricken his sight. Much like Hexoatl’s, the three enormous structures in the middle of the jungle had been mostly of beautifully carved stone and stepped, but there the similarities had ended.

The Pyramids of Midnight, the Belt of Stars, and Midday, had lacked the right-sided foundations of most of his race’s architecture, forgoing squares, rectangles or hexagons in favour of a rounder shape. The Stellar Pyramids of the Southern Skies had long ago been formed from a series of stepped rings, each ring carved with glyphs large enough for a Kroxigor to stand atop them, and freely moving thanks to the work of long-gone Mage-Priests.

Their turning, with each ring dedicated to a different constellation or set of more lonely celestial bodies, working to constantly track the relative positions of everything upon the firmament. Even right now -even hidden from his sight by the sun’s own glare- the tiers of the Pyramid of Midday turn, some as slowly as the growth of leaves, some fast enough to blur his vision, each tier grinding against the one above and the one below like a set of Old One-given millstones.

The air is filled by a low rumble like distant thunder that he has grown to feel homely. To be tasked with care for a place of such astrological learning, a vital node in the Geomantic Web, is surely the best one could hope for his life to be dedicated to. For their careful alignment draws from the power of the Heavens, and those who seek knowledge of the future are afforded far greater insight in their presence, an insight only attainable if those like O'exizip refuse to falter at their own role in the Great Plan.

‘You are nothing less than the most important of the system’s tiers.’ He remembers a poetic traveling oracle telling him and his spawn brothers moons ago. ‘For without you, none could turn.’

He had been one of many Lizardmen from across Lustria regularly engaging in lengthy pilgrimages to the Stellar Pyramids, all of them happy to teach the local cohorts and learn from the resident stargazers. Famous enough is his new home, that twice already he has seen palanquins carrying slumbering lords arrive so that the Slann may meditate in the pyramids’ shadows, sitting upon the enormous viewing platform provided for this purpose.

As he works more than halfway up one such structure, O'exizip can’t help but wonder why their lords prefer this to sitting atop the pyramids’ peaks, as is their usual practice where he was born. It may be that from this position the pyramids appear to point toward particular celestial alignments. Or perhaps the Slann may divine something in the steady, grinding rotation of the stone rings, not too dissimilar from how they lull his sleep.

‘Or maybe they simply get dizzy sitting on the constantly moving rings.’ He jests and huffs to himself as he wets his stiff-bristled brush with more cleaning solution and gets back to work.

Much like millstones, the Stellar Pyramids of the Southern Skies had long needed to be wetted to function at their best capacity, a requirement easily served by regular caravans from Hexoalt and its subordinate coastal outposts.

The last one had included a batch of the corrupted Itz’xa’khanx, apparently the result of a victory against a raiding fleet brought to them by their sibling city to the south. And yet…

‘If only their blood weren’t so much of a Mahrlect to scrub.’

For it has been days since the last sacrifice. And while its geometry is perfect, the glyphs carved upon it weren’t exactly designed with blood drainage in mind, leaving him with the task of scrubbing an entire circle for days until it is all done.

Part of him hopes to have a talk with whoever it was that had the idea to send out such wonderful offerings. Another part hopes to-

“SKREEE!”

In a blink, O'exizip stands up, his colorful frill going tense and his pupils dilating. Without fault, the same reaction is triggered in the dozens of other workers laboring away at their own sections of the many rings.

It is the grating call of a vulture, one of the jungle’s many carrion beasts. Unusually loud and unusually persistent as it lowers itself more and more, flying wide circles near the edge of the collection of huts and workshops that surround the Stellar pyramids.

An omen of some kind, no carrion bird ever calls with such insistency.

His gaze, like those of all his spawn-brothers, tracks the avian shape’s flight as if it were a fly for a chameleon to snipe at. The workers below are alerted as well, but they lack his vantage point as the animal -its wings of night-blue and fiery colors- finishes its descent at the jungle’s edge.

Just in time for the stumbling, limping and blood-covered shape of what is unmistakable a human to stagger out of the treeline, and take a couple steps.

It looks up. Despite the distance, O'exizip can’t help but feel like its heavily-lidded eyes are looking straight at him.

Then, it collapses headfirst into the ground.




Butcher Street, Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove
21st of Brauzeit, 2538 I.C. // 40.0.9.17.1 1 Imix 14 Sak​

“So… We are going to the jungles to… Grow trees?” Stefan asks, a pack full of just-bought supplies strapped to his back. He still remembers the conversation from days ago, how the wizard had offered to grow trees for the shipwright in exchange for privileges for the king.

“Yes.” Answers the woody wizard with a smile. Despite being nothing more than a scrawny lad and a scrawny old man, people give them a wide berth. Stefan hopes that it's because of how recognizable Von Danling is, because he really does not want the other option.

“Uhh… Isn’t that what the forest is for?”

“It would be, if we lived in some manicured lordling’s country estate where every tree is or isn’t there for some idiotic reason.”

Stefan doesn’t really have it in him to say anything, just looking up at the seemingly offended hedge-making mage until he realizes Stefan was actually hoping for a real answer.

“The truth, boy, is that Lustria’s forests are unique in their deadliness, but quite similar to all others in their basic nature: They weren’t put across the world for Sigmar’s children to enjoy, but have built themselves, and men are merely making use of them through their ingenuity.”

As the wizard talks they both take a turn to the right, and the cramped street suddenly widens. This is because that turn is made so they can cross the constantly-under-repair bridge that goes over the canal-moat that separates the older part of the city, with its densely packed and narrow streets, to the more open portion with its half-abandonned walls.

It really is a stark change, going from three, four or even five-storied buildings with bowing walls to an area of homesteads dotted with patches of farming or livestock fences. And then there’s the even more open area of plantations north of said area and the work-dense Felldowns.

“Not all wood is the same, you see.” Von Danling continues to speak as Stefan takes in the sights. Even having lived in the tower, surrounded by plantations, he doesn’t think he’ll ever feel truly safe out of the cramped streets that had made it possible to survive as a thief. “Sure, most of it burns, but you wouldn’t catch a smart man filling his fireplace with spruce. And most wood can be worked, but I am yet to find a lord who had his mansion built with silver fir timber. Wood is alive, and always changing, too. Which means that even a good species may produce bad timber if it has grown infested or in soil that it does not belong in.” Of course, Stefan wouldn’t know, he only knows the names of those trees because the wizard likes talking about botany. The only trees he’s ever seen are the jungle’s, and the only ones the explorers talk about are the ones that bear good fruit, or the ones who like killing people.

Of course, the wizard keeps talking as they walk by the walls. And much to his astonishment, they have not gotten smaller since the last time Stefan had to walk by the point where they abruptly end, showing their innards of walkways and inner materials like a severed limb.

“This is even more of an issue in Lustria, for fungi here are voracious, and saurians love uprooting them in their marching, so many woods have developed trunks so hard that they would make hornbeam blush like a maiden…”

For years, it had been expected for anyone building anything in Port Reaver to grab loose bricks and stone from either the top or the unfinished ends of the walls. But not anymore. Today, Stefan even spots some men patrolling the top of it. Either that, or overwatching the workers breaking their backs near it.

The Poza, that pond of fetid water, is…

Still as disgusting as usual. The dry season has lowered its water level enough to reveal a good fourth of all the things generations of Port Reaver’s visitors had dumped into it.

But, today, there are men working away at it, or at least the ground near it, where the abandoned stockade once built to “complete” the wall all the way to the Freddo river’s left bank and thus to the city’s west. The stockade had also been mostly cannibalized for fencing and posting. But today Stefan watches as an ogre works away at it, pulling the trunks that make it up from the soil and piling them up on a couple of nearby carts.

“So I will be focusing on the species that experience has taught our ship-making friends are best: Lustrian cedar, new world locust and mountain tamarind, of these, I hope to establish…”

The bulk of the workers -a good two dozen- are working away at some kind of ditch not yet connected to the fecal waters. They are all naked, and many have enough whip-scars that Stefan can guess their being here means that the dungeons are empty. His best guess is that they are meant to drain the pond. Maybe it will cause trouble with the wall-finishing the King is always worrying about?

What he knows for certain is that the King will not be lacking in men. The city watch has only gotten more and more zealous about their work, dragging out of taverns and whorehouses any man suspected of not paying the constantly-updating taxes or breaking any of the King’s other laws.

What few streetrats he still manages to exchange a word with here or there seem to be all the happier for it. His “kind” go missing less often now, and when they still do, some even get found and sent to the barracks to be fixed up by the guard’s tooth-puller.

The negotiations with Lady Azzarello had born fruit too, apparently. Or at least, he finds a few less angry faces every time he’s recently had to run there and back to the Felldowns. With the king actually coordinating with her now, her ship-builders and ship-fixers are working a little less like headless chickens, and a bit more like work crews.

Captains are still angry about fishing boats and cargo-movers being prioritized over their vessels. But now there’s men wearing the King’s tusked skull around the yards almost every day, and that has its impact too.

And so, having managed to distract himself from the botanical rant for long enough, Stefan realizes his fatal mistake.

The reason they had exited the city and gone even beyond the vine-covered tower’s distance from it is that they are headed for Port Reaver’s logging yard. Which necessitates crossing the jungle.

At which’s edge he is now, because he got too distracted by ignoring the wizard to complain about following the wizard.

“Now, come on boy. Trees take time, even to me, and we ought not waste it.”

‘Fuck.’
 
This chapter was real fun to write, I love balancing things as disparate as heavy plot development, comedy, and observational world building.
I hope it was fun to read about for you readers!

I hope you enjoyed the story and I honestly appreciate all and any kudos or comments you may be gracious enough to gift me! And in case any of you are interested, here's the link to my Discord server, where I discuss my projects and all are welcome :D

It would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site.
 

What Are Thrones Made Of? - Part IX: Out Of The Corner Of The Eye​


“Take me with you, please! I cannot bear it here another moment! Please! Take me with you! I beg of you!”

— Deserted Driffa, Ex-Sailor aboard the Wargalley Manann’s Trident, now a Beggar of the Skeggi “docks”.


Outskirts of the Temple-City of Pahuax northeast of Ezcocotli Gate,
Jungles of Pahualaxa, Isthmus of Lustria
40.0.9.17.2 10 Ik’ 15 Sak​

“Sigmar… Be… Damned…!” Malte grunts as, with another show of force, he pulls his leg free off the mire. The -Albionise, as it had turned out- slave who had clued them all in had been correct. A sudden downpour had slammed into the reptilian city and its surrounding jungle for a few hours that had released enough water to compete with an entire autumn in his homeland. It had turned the canal waters of the stone city grey with runoff and left every single surface caked in a fine layer of ash-mud.

Almost as quickly, the following return of Solkan’s justicial heat had done away with most of it, searing puddles away and putting aquifers back to the levels they had been before. But out here, in the jungle proper, the canopy had sealed in most of the humidity which the plants themselves had not drunk in.

As it stands, he’s currently almost waist deep in what must be a shallow lake or swamp for most of the year, but which the weather has turned into an expanse of crackly dry mud hiding a much thicker layer of wet mud the consistency of mortar just beneath.

And he’s not the only one. While the redhead guiding them had tried to convince some -particularly women- that he’d carry them along in the canoe he had smuggled, the long and narrow vessel carved out of a single tree trunk had been obviously stuck without a layer of water of any kind to float on top off, and so absolutely everyone who has taken a chance has been forced to wade through the mud.

After covering their skins in a layer of it, of course. The monsters would be looking for them all, they are under no delusions, but Malte doubts that even a bloodhound or one of those slimy monsters the elves would ride could manage to track them after this.

And yet, every step remains a punitive pull that threatens to send him face-first into the mud. Thankfully, the thickness and recent solidity of it means that there’s nothing hiding within to worry about. Barra had warned about that too, there would be streams to cross and rivers to brave later on if they wanted to get to this Sudburg, and those would be home to anything from giant lizards with snapping jaws to skin-shredding fish. And that’d be without considering all the parasites and scum-born diseases.

Sometimes, Malte wonders what he and those around him might have done, to be cast so far from Sigmar’s protective gaze. But down that line of thinking lies the empty-eyed giving in that he’s seen hundreds of times during his life as a slave. The gaze of those who’d accepted their fate and simply waited for the killing blow.

Like the ones who had stayed behind, the hopeless and the deluded who had chosen to spend the rest of their lives -lives spent awaiting the day the Lizards would sacrifice them to their Dark Gods- toiling away at a city of beastmen and cultists.

No, instead Malte will trust his chances following…

“Come on, big man, we don’t have all night.”

Barra?

The scrawny man, caked in mud up to his navel while his oversized white shirt remains impossibly clean, is leaning down and holding onto a sturdy branch, offering an arm Malte gladly uses the help of in getting out with a noise of vacuum that is very much not pretty, but which lands him in a patch of ground that’s mostly just ferns speckled with the mud of those who have walked before him.

The redhead had warned them all against even thinking of bringing torches, let alone lightning them, and so as he joins the others who've crossed the mud there’s little to keep him from stumbling over every rock and branch lying hidden under the fern fronds, which themselves crackles with the sound of plants that have been killed by heat, but have not yet collapsed.

He’d not been at the head of the pack, but Malte can tell he’s at least part of the first third to complete the first section of their weeks-long trip to freedom. Barra had made no further promises, but had still spoken of logging camps, outposts and old structures scattered within a couple days of the port, and even of the ease with which one could find the camps of adventuring parties.

Finding any of those would, essentially, be all they needed, as the lizards would not approach a well-defended city so brazenly. In that sense, at least, they are like their goat-faced kin in the Old World.

“Okay, so,” Malte turns as Barra speaks. “Can’t have you lot milling about while I make sure no one drowns in the mud. There should be a dry river bed if you start heading southeast now. We need to stay downwind for as long as we can, so just get into it and keep walking until you get too scared to keep on without me. And remember, if you think there’s something looking at you from the treeline? There absolutely is, stick together.”

Malte nods, and assumes from the small noises made by others that he’s not the only one getting the message. And so, they leave the island-borne man behind as he makes some comment to the next person getting out of the mud pit. Something about not being paid enough to deal with all their headaches.

Personally, the man could demand his weight in gold from each of them, and Malte would feel it a fair price.

And so he turns and, grabbing hold of a fallen branch with which to check the ground before him for pitfalls and lurking vermin, and keeps going. Going deeper and deeper into the forestry.

He hears something snap, and turns towards it. From the sounds of shuffling and crackling ferns, he’s not the only one. He catches the glint of something perched upon a tree, shiny like a bead of glass reflecting moonlight.

An owl, perhaps, or any other kind of bird of prey. Maybe one of those lizards with leathery wings that constantly skewed their way in and out of the perches that were that cursed city’s heights.

With a deep and centering breath, Malte turns and continues following Barra’s instructions.

He disappears into the jungles, nothing but the cracks of twigs and bending of branches following him as he does so.






Thunderlizard Boneyard, Outskirts of Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove
23rd of Brauzeit, 2538 I.C. // 40.0.9.17.3 11 Akʼbʼal 16 Sak​

Stefan tries as hard as he can to focus on the task before him. But the sweat of his palm has helped the charcoal stick he holds on one hand stain his entire palm in a thin layer of blackness, and the irregularities in the pressed sheet of bark he is holding in his lap don’t help either.

‘Gods, someone should invent a better way to write.’ He grumbles to himself. At least he gets to spend the afternoon shaded by the wall of one of the farms’ sheds, instead of toiling away like most of the people who he entertains himself by looking at.

He’s made considerably less progress in his writing lessons than Von Danling had likely intended. But considering that all it takes to distract the wizard is to ask a question about some local weed, Stefan doesn’t exactly feel worried about getting his ear pulled.

The sheet of bark in his lap currently holds lists of names, just random names of people he knows, from kids from his old thieving bands to random ones he hears when he happens to eat a meal at the barracks or accompanies Von Danling to a meandering meeting. According to the wizard, sounding out the names would help him get better at intuiting spelling, instead of having to be taught every rule of whatever “orthography” is. And that it’d help his handwriting, since every word would be different and not just mechanical repetition.

Stefan had, obviously, asked if people wouldn’t take offense to him writing their names wrong.

“Most people you know or will ever meet in your life, boy, will not know how to spell their names to begin with.” Had been the even more obvious answer. And so, between distraction and distraction, Stefan keeps scratching the round-tipped stick of charcoal over the material, knowing that if he runs out of either, the wizard will just resupply him, again.

And so, he takes it all at his own pace, watching as men dig, pull and saw in the open pit stretching out before him.

The “Thunderlizard Boneyard” is not exactly a mysterious place, the open-air and shallow mine is perfectly visible from any second story building in Port Reaver not blocked off by another. But he can’t say he’s given it much of a think before. Quarrying isn’t the kind of thing a pirate port is famous for, and so since before he was born, the place has been intermittently worked by slaves whose owner had been granted the right to by this or that king.

Recently, it had been the toil of a couple companies, both indirectly owned by Fronisch, according to the wizard.

Not anymore.

The foreman in charge now is a man Stefan remembers having been part of the King’s guard, on the older side of things, even if his name escapes the boy. The king had given him something called a “patent” to the boneyard and enough prisoners from the newer codes of laws to get started.

Started with what?

Something called “The Port Reaver Ivorymen Company.”

‘Fronisch probably still owns most of it.’ Stefan observes, as said foreman talks with the wizard across the wide pit, shadowed by an armed guard wearing colors, but very much not those of the city.

The work, as he watches, is hard, but not complicated.

Apparently thunderlizards -which he’s only heard described in passing and hopes to never meet in person- once came to this area to die. While the idea of something in Lustria being powerful enough to choose when it dies feels ludicrous to Stefan, the rows of vertebrae longer than shipholds and the legbones the size of tree trunks help him understand. Hopefully, the things wouldn’t be coming around to visit their deceased anytime soon.

But enough of them had come here to die in centuries past to leave the area covered in layers of bone-encrusted mud. Enough to, well, mine it. Even as he watches, a few slaves -and a surprising number of freemen laborers- work away at releasing another skeleton from the ground, one with ribs so large that the men can squeeze between them to shovel away at the dirt inside the ribcage, and so long that the whip-like tail’s bones need to be hauled out in baskets and piled onto carts.

Bones, apparently, can be very useful. People would make all shorts of fancy things out of them in a couple workshops in the inner city -which he is also pretty sure are owned by Fronisch- and he’s even heard through Von Danling that it has its queer uses for the great smelters back in the Empire and Dwarven Holds, or even ground up as a material for pottery in the far, far east.

As far as Stefan figures, it’s something most places can’t get in the numbers Port Reaver can without spending years farming an animal beforehand. And the ability to make a profit without having to actually enter the jungle attracts all sorts of people too.

Oh, and there’s also the reason why it had started being dug out in the first place, and why the wizard is so interested.

Fertilizer.

Bone meal made out of thunderlizard bones and the refuse of the local livestock apparently did wonders for the plantations long before even Von Danling came along. And now that he’s personally overseeing those and the logging inland -for which Stefan is being forced to spend almost three days per week in the jungle- he is in need of a lot of it for his spells.

How much? As much as the foreman is willing to give him through their mutual servitude to the king, a number that continues to be hotly debated as Stefan realizes that he’s forgotten to dot his i, ä, ö, and ü all afternoon long.

“Hi, Stefan!” A voice speaks. When he looks up, he catches the waving hand of a kid not a year older than him walking past, moving towards one of the slaves as he hauls a cart full of fruit-sized knuckle-bones. And he’s not the only one.

Things seem to only be getting busier in Port Reaver, with a constant coming and going of deliveries, sometimes of enormous pieces that need to be carried like logs, sometimes of stone-milled bone dust. And of messengers carrying messages, payment, and their opposites.

Messengers… Like himself.

The more busy Port Reaver becomes, the less street rats need to actually steal and beg and do worse things to stay fed. And that makes him happy in a very uncomfortable way.





Merchant District, Skeggi, Jarldom of Lyssa Bay
9th of Silðimánuður, 2545 VR // 40.0.9.17.4 12 K’an 17 Sak​

“So, what are you paying?” Torfi grunts without preambles as he lays the enormous rolls of scale-covered leather upon the stall of one Fridebertus Skinscraper. The skins are actually heavy enough that the entire construction shakes and creaks. Torfi himself had only been able to carry it to the market because he’d taken use of a sled made out of sticks Njal had lying around among all his other odd offerings.

“God, you look like shit.” Smiles the thickly-bearded man as he greets Torfi in disgustingly accented norscan. Skinscraper was the rare example of a southron who had tried to “integrate” himself among the Skeggialings and…

The results are not pretty to look at.

A man dressed in the same light half-naked furs as a Norscan, but who had never given up on cutting his hair and beard like an Imperial. The man speaks fluid norscan with the accent of someone trying too hard, and half the time he doesn’t even remember he’d supposedly taken up worship of the northern pantheon.

No one ever bought into the charade, other than other imperials coming to the city. But he had the coin of someone who could do business with said imperials, and had never tried to cheat Torfi’s father.

“Well, yeah, not here to get a second opinion on that.” Torfi’s face is slowly healing, but the bruises are all still very much there, and most scraps and cuts are still visibly scabby.

“Yeah, I guess that man-witch of yours does that enough for you.” The man whistles, the way in which he says the words making Torfi’s mood twice as bad within a blink. He almost goes for the knife at his belt, but the man’s next words help, somewhat. “Fucking wolf’s ass boy, this stuff is…” The man starts, laying his hands on the armor-like skin.

“I got it from the King after-”

“Yeah, your trophy for helping the King kill that fucking monstrosity, the entire city knows about it. That bitch is creepy, but she sure knows how to make an impression.”

“Tell me about it.” Torfi scoffs, he can’t exactly explain to people that he’d been planning on murdering her. As many people may not like Adella, none of them would be able to keep their mouths shut, and then he’d just get killed -early- for trying to start a conspiracy.

‘Fuck, I wish I was smart enough to start a conspiracy, could have helped with the storkäft.’

“This stuff, if you try to sell it to anyone else, I’ll kill you boy.” The man inspects the material, only a third of the leather that isn’t part of trophies -like the skull or hands- had been given to him. But considering that the rest is being used to outfit the other survivors of the jarlvakt, he may be the only person in a position to sell his part. And he sure will, he has no use for trophies, or the bulky armor

“You’ll try.” Torfi tries to show some bravado. “Now, name me a price.”

What follows is a long back and forth, Fridebertus tries to make a trade out of it. But Torfi doesn’t need skins, he needs coin with which to feed his mother and siblings. And also, hopefully, to fix the kennels enough that they won’t need to keep abusing and cramping Njal’s hospitality.

He suspects Fridebertus -who very much drags it out- has more reasons than business to do such a thingt. The longer the banter goes for, the more people it attracts, the more of a crowd gawking at the sight of the lizardman’s skin -still decorated with faded paints showing snarling jaguars- it creates. People who will know Fridebertus owns it now, and that he’s important and wealthy enough do business with such things.

But eventually, one set of massive skins lighter and one pouch of coin heavier, Torfi does eventually leave, walking past the enormous houndstone in the middle of the market.

It’s nearly midday by the time he leaves, with the sun beating down with full strength, enough so that the metal of the enormous effigy of a snarling hound -a series of wrought metal rings hammered around its teeth- glint harshly enough to sting his eyes.

‘Even the rocks want me dead, great.’





Sacrificial Altars, Temple-City of Pahuax, Jungles of Pahualaxa
40.0.9.17.5 13 Chikchan 18 Sak​

“Yeah, I’ll see what I can do. Without Miss Welser-Nakor around it's harder to manage, but I think I can get the point across.” Speaks a young woman. Chloe is what she is called, if Ido remembers correctly.

There’s so many fewer people now that it has gotten easier to remember. The reptiles, at least, let them talk and socialize among themselves, instead of muzzling or cutting the tongue off anyone who dares to open their lips to do anything other than scream.

The one Chloe is talking with still eludes him. A few years older than either of them, she might have once been a blonde beauty. But the elves had taken an approach to human beauty like that of nobles with rare birds. If it won’t do well in a cage, then you just pluck its feathers off and make yourself a fancy hat.

Except, well, the elves do also tend to like shoving you back into the cage after they are done plucking.

“Thanks, it’s just… I get why they are putting us all in the same barracks now that they don’t need to scatter us across the city, but-”

“You don’t have to worry.” Chloe comforts the disfigured girl while Ido does his best to act like he isn’t listening in. He probably overdoes it, no one would be as focused as he is right now on a task as stupid as counting the sticks in the bundle he is tying together. “I feel the same way, and I doubt there will be a reason to say no to it..”

The girl had explained, to Ido’s unbelieving ears, that she’s been placed in one of the long stone barracks used by the hulking warriors with the heads crested with bone. She’d been put to work doing general cleaning for the “cohort” and… Ido can’t help but repeat her words in his mind.

‘It is the first time in six years I haven’t woken up screaming, not since those things took me. I’m fine with going back to people if I have to but… They make me feel safe. I didn’t think I’d ever feel safe again.’

The image of a human woman resting amidst a banner’s worth of those things… It boggles the mind. But it must be true. Because everyone left now is either insane… Or a coward.

Like him.

He’d been there, that night the man named Barra had walked into every hut and workshop, sharing his plans and giving directions and advice to everyone willing to listen. And his words had been true, not a single one of the captured humans had been punished for taking much more than could ever be justified.

And then the rain had come thundering, and then the night.

And Ido had remained stuck by fear while every single cot in the mudbrick house had been emptied. Trying to play asleep first, and then reacting like a fawn when a man had shaken his shoulder. One last chance.

And he’d stayed back.

Now, between the children who were already there, and the remaining “ex-slaves” there’s less than a hundred humans free to roam the city of pyramids. Barra had even been right about the prisoners, Ido had only galvanized his cowardice by sneaking nearby their cells and pens. Men and dwarves and other things with hollow eyes and thinning bodies, waiting for the slaughter.

He knows that will be his fate too. But he’d refused to run. Watching as the reptiles had sent a host to capture the escapees. Half of them had already returned. Empty handed, to his own incredulity. The plan had worked, and he’d stayed back.

Once he realizes that he’s just stopped working on his conspicuously ready bundles, and that both young women are looking at him, Ido stands up. He tries to explain himself, but the words die in his throat with a strangled mutter. They are looking at him like he is insane. They know he isn’t like them. And the only reason he doesn’t shout an accusation of their own betrayal to mankind’s gods is just how damn scared he is. Chloe’s face is painted with geometric flowers, the other girl has a piece of gold hanging from her belt in the shape of some idol that probably looked dainty in the hands of its original owner.

A large bundle of sticks held over each shoulder, Ido leaves, walking down the half-empty street of perfectly right roads, the symmetrical buildings on either side making him feel nauseous.

Then he turns a corner, and walks down the length of yet another perfectly angled route, then another, he’s halfway to the workshop that needed the kindling he’s carrying. He passes by dozens of the “skinks,” as they each go or return from their own work. He’s nothing more than them, just another slave to a greater cold-blooded power. He just lacks the ability not to pee himself about it.

Then, he hears the whispering.

“Are you sure he’s the one?” A female voice speaks, he’s heard it before, he freezes in place.

“Only one who heard the canoe-man out, said he wanted to leave, but then didn’t.” A much younger voice answers. Ido’s feet become lead, impossible to lift, his arms, however, become as cut roped, the bundles clatter to the ground.

“Thank you, Zidna. We will talk later. Go find Jakub, I’m sure he’s looking for you.”

Ido manages to turn his head.

The woman with the black hair and blue eyes, standing at the end of an alleyway. The one who had explained to them their fate beyond what the savage had preached.

A smaller shape scurried off into an open door, one of the children Barra had carried with himself to some of his speeches, the ones he wanted to also smuggle out. The dark-skinned girl with the hooded eyes.

“For what it counts, I think you would have eventually been a wonderful fit among us. But I can’t take my chances, not now that I’ve sieved through you all.” Before Ido can say anything else, or run, the young woman speaks again. Her words try to be warm and comforting, but they just grip at his heart like the cold-blooded claws of her masters.

“Axkan.” She says in that guttural and inhuman tongue.

A plea for help, a scream of fear, they both die in his throat as something stings his neck.

A dart.

He is already unconscious by the time his body falls limply to the ground, cushioned by the sticks.

He will not be waking up.
 
My editors seem to have really liked this chapter. One of them, in particular, commented that he'd love to see art of something described in its final scene.
Only two more chapters left in this story arc!! It may not be as action-packed as previous ones but, believe me, you are not going to wanna miss it...

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What Are Thrones Made Of? - Part X: Where One Belongs​

"Before Elves, before Dwarfs, before Men, the Old Ones arrived upon this world. Then came Chaos and the Great Plan of the Old Ones was unmade. We are the last of their servants, and only by our hand shall the Great Plan be restored, with the total defeat of the usurping younger races."

— Inscription upon the eastern boundary stone of the temple-city of Hexoatl.



Raudur Town, Skeggi, Lyssa Bay, Jungles of Pahualaxa
11th of Silðimánuður, 2545 VR // 40.0.9.17.6 1 Kimi 19 Sak​

“It’s been a while since one of you visited us, Ornolfsson.” The man, a worn-down old warrior by the name of Mursi, grunts as he lets down the barrel he’s been holstering upon his shoulder.

Torfi follows suit, leaving an identical one just besides inside a wooden shack that he guesses could theoretically be called a cellar. It is not even underground -nothing can be this close to the coast- and so the entire place is left mungy and hot by the humidity of the nearby jungle and the blistering rays of sunlight that enter through a thatched roof two years late to its bi-yearly replacement.

“One of us?” He asks, rubbing and rolling his shoulder. He’s used to hard work, not hard work. “You mean a Kennelmaster? My father used to be a member of you guys when he was my age.”

“I mean a Losteriksson.”

“Which… He also was?”

“Not in the way you are acting it, boy. A fucking kroxigor, my Gods…” The man snorts to himself, using the name for the reptilian trolls sometimes used by Imperial and Estalian travelers.

“What… Is that supposed to mean?” Torfi asks back.

“Never mind that boy, just a joke from someone who’s seen his fair share of Erik’s lot. Now, what brings you to our humble brewery? Other than drink you can’t afford, of course.”

Torfi looks around before formulating the request he very much has in mind. The Veslvakt are the strangest of Skeggi’s guards. For once, they are diminutive, with close to no jakker gangs to call upon to bolster themselves. And yet, their influence is disproportionately large among Skeggi’s permanent residents.

Why? Because they are the only ones whose interests lie beyond the Great Stockade, in the sections of cleared jungle around the city or within an hour's walk from it. They are the men of fighting age of the dozen or so families who farm and live outside of the walls, which means that they have to contend with a much deadlier task. Within the walls, the biggest daily threat is getting caught between family feuds, jakker brawls, or the occasional troublemaking outsiders. Without the walls, there is… Well, Lustria.

It is they who guard what meager food Skeggi doesn’t have to import from other colonies’ black markets, it is they who guard the loggers who gather the timber that makes up the entirety of Skeggi -well, them and Drenok, who tends to be much more unreliable in his madness- and who, most importantly…

Control Skeggi’s sole source of home-brewed alcohol.

Mead, barrels upon barrels of mead made from the honey of bees said to be the size of doves, whose honey could fill wheelbarrows and make the cleanest of meads. Bees whose colonies were, of course, a secret only members -not even their families- were entitled to.

And Torfi knows that well. Apparently, his mother Stina had initially -and drunkenly- gotten with his father to pry the secret out of him in their youth. She had failed at her actual mission, she would often fondly recall, but had gotten a reasonable consolation price out of their proper marriage.

“No,” Torfi answers, eyeing the barrels of mead with a sad smile. “Not here for mead, looking for the other thing you have a chokehold on.”

“Woodsman looking for wood, ain’t that fun. Why don’t you pick up an axe and go at it yourself, it’s part of your clan rights.”

“Because I don’t have the time, know-how or inclination towards becoming a logger and a carpenter, Mursi. I need someone else to get me the wood, and I know someone else to help my mother put the Kennels back in order.”

“Well then, talk with the loggers, I’m sure they’ll give an esteemed servant of the King like you a fair price.”

“The loggers who pay you and your mead-brewing warriors dues, you mean?”

“Yeah, those ones.”

“Come on, I am scraping by as is. I just want to skip the haggling and double-entendres and bribes and pay you directly.”

“That’s not a privilege the King gets, or their main customers -the ship captains- for that matter.” The man’s smile makes it clear that what he means by “their” is “our.”

“No, but it’s a privilege my old man used to get, right? Like every other man on the veslvakt.”

“You ain’t Ornolf, kid. You can inherit his membership, but it ain't like how southrons inherit, you have to earn it too.” His expression turns, the man clearly misses Torfi’s old man in some way. Just not enough to give him any leniency.

“I don’t have time to earn it either.”

“Then,” The man says as he walks by and pats his shoulder. “You better start haggling, Kennelmaster.”





Grails Esplanade, Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove
27th of Brauzeit, 2538 I.C. // 40.0.9.17.7 2 Manik’ 0 Keh​

It’s rare for a Pirate Lord to actually walk the streets of Port Reaver. The King will often walk around to deal with his port-bound allies, showing off his power by way of the guards surrounding him.

But Pirate Lords are a different thing. Their authority only really extends as the range of their cannons, or the walls of their crews’ lodgings. Beyond that, they are little more than seaborne gang-leaders. And as such, walking around in full view never gets them anything good.

But, today, with two of the gathered sea raiders leaving within the eve, and their entire abortive plan having unfurled itself like a torn sail, the group has chosen to go for speed rather than safety.

After all, some of them think to themselves, the Boar is not the kind to stage assassinations. Certainly not in the middle of such a busy section of the port he -in a manner deeply alien to them- continued to be so invested into.

“I never did ask, Geffray, the king did build this place for a bunch of your mercantile compatriots, lost any friends to the flames?” Pirate Lord Dubosc asks as they sit around a wooden table at the mouth of a tavern. Most of the other tables are taken up by their bodyguards, but that seems to strangle little of the activity around them.

“Friends, no?” Speaks the sour Bretonnian as he nurses his drink. “But I did intercede in securing some of the leases.”

“Securing which likely would have earned you some rent.” Guesses Lady Serena as she herself plays with some kind of trinket of clearly Lustrian make, judging by the geometric patterns of its decorations and the fact that it’s made of solid gold.

“And now everyone who could finish paying them is dead or scared to the wind.” Admits the affected Pirate Lord with an expression of anger that comes off as almost constipated in its entitlement.

“They never did catch whoever started the fire, did they?” Al-Isar asks. Of them, he’s the only one to not have already been among them at the time.

“Rumors of lizardmen crawling up walls and jumping roofs…” The piratess provides. “But no, the King’s investigation hung no cultrips. Which should tell a lot, considering that he is the one who almost ran his coffers empty building the storehouses.”

“Those were the days…” Dubosc mulls.

"It's not even been a year.” Geffray points out. Which is true. In a matter of months, Bastjan has gone from a headless and money-bleeding fool to…“I’m tired, and I don’t expect the voyage to Bregonne to be pleasant." He speaks up again. “So let’s get this over with.”

“Billings has convinced another hull’s captain that he ought to join his Lower Council. He’ll demand a seat on the table any day now, and he’s not even going to be blustering about it, he has the men and ships that’d get you called a Pirate Lord in Sartosa.” Al-Isar speaks. The only reason he is among them is the death of Hamidou, of whom he has not inherited a full fleet. As such, he is the closest to being equaled, if not outnumbered, by the captains of the Lower House.

“And meanwhile,” A forlorn Dubosc surmises. “Our fleets have become smaller.”

“And more loyal.” Serena, who remains as cold as ever, adds.

“I don’t need loyal men to take Re Island, I need many men. And cannons.”

“So, what, we just give up on taking him down? He can’t be that dug in.” Geffray asks.

“Look around you,” Serena, the very one whose idea had been to gather here, gestures. “And tell me what you see.

Years ago, what is now The Grails had been just another block of too-tall buildings cramped inside of Port Reaver’s completed Old Walls. Borġ had had them torn down soon after his continuation of the new wall had failed, using money from deals made with the rare kind of Bretonnian peasant-merchant willing to break laws imposed by the knightly class.

For a few months, The Grails had been a bustling commercial district, meant to siphon out the kinds of more expensive goods that pirates would usually have to carry across the sea themselves or smuggle into colonial ports. Much cleaner and easier for those locally based, even the four gathered here today.

And then they had burned down in a single night, picked apart everything valuable that hadn't been burned by orphans who had squeezed under charred ruins and come out blacker than tar, but slightly less miserable.

The ruins had eventually been cleaned up fully -to the tavern cooks and other locals, charcoal is charcoal no matter where it comes from- and Port Reaver had gained a random patch of cleared and flat land in the middle of its walled core.

The obvious had happened. Every beggar had moved to its corners, every tent camp set up by adventurers had switched places, and market stalls had started pooping up like mushrooms.

Even now, halved in size by construction -for the King’s nearly minted master of coin had sold half the lots to anyone with the coin to build a workshop with a dwelling above it- it has become the closest thing the pirate port has ever had to a central square, one which has even impacted their own fleets by alleviating the masses of people constantly crowding the docks.

“He may have given Council Rock up. But he’s sunk his claws into the city now. If we push back now, it’ll just not be worth it.”

“I’m not giving up.” Dubosc says, standing up. “As long as Stromfels rules the deeps, this will be a pirate's port.”

“Go at it alone,” Serena then shrugs. “You and that priestess you keep visiting. Who knows? If devotion is the way to go, then you have nothing to fear. But I have a fleet to command, and the faster I get them used to the new rules, the less nipping at my heels.”

“Heheh…” Al-Isar laughs. His eyes are full of mirth. “What else should I have expected. I join you all expecting real sea dogs, and I find a zealot and a coward letting a whore lead them around into doing no-”

BANG​

The crowd explodes in fearful screaming and running as the corpse of one young Pirate Lord Al-Isar flies back and crumples into a heap… The front and back of his shaven skull cratered by a well-placed bullet.

Serena holsters her gun with a scoff. None of the Arabyan’s bodyguards move. After all, with him already dead, there’s no one to pay them for risking their lives. Some even dare to start eyeing the men wearing the woman’s colors, considering new employment.

“Gods, this is why you chose your heirs Salhi, otherwise who the fuck knows what idiot is getting his hands on your rudder.” She then turns, fixing one of the blood-specked buttons on her coat. “In any case, have a nice trip, Geffray. And Dubosc, whatever scheme Sister Kelba is dragging you into, do share my interest. M’Lords.” She bids her goodbye, tipping her feathered captain’s hat.

As she does, there’s already two beggars biting and scratching at each other to see who gets to keep the golden earrings one of them has yanked out of the sun-warmed corpse’s head.

Port Reaver has changed.

But it hasn’t changed that much.





Pyramid of Xoloc-Chotec, Temple City of Hexoatl, Isthmus of Lustria
40.0.9.17.8 3 Lamat 1 Keh​

When Roland Nakor-Welser opens his bleary eyes, it is only to take the kind of gulp of air a man on the verge of drowning tends to reach for. In that instinctive movement -since he is laying belly-up in a stone slab, he is met by the feeling of sweat-covered skin as it is grazed by a gentle breeze. His back curls on the inhale, turning him into a boiled crayfish posture-wise. His hands -no longer encrusted with mud and of split and broken nails- grasp for his legs to find balance and stability, but a sudden and painful pressure out of his own curled torso jolts him back into the hard stone surface, which still hurts, just not as much.

“Mahrlect! Foolish warmblood, stop trying to kill yourself and let me do my work.” Speaks a tiny shrill voice by his side. “It’s bad enough that they make me take care of a puddle-brained human, now it’s seizing.”

“I’m not seizing,” Roland grits his teeth and speaks up, sending the medicinal caste skink into a startled jump away from him. “I’m in pain!” He clarifies.

His arms now move to the offending area, finding a palm-wide stretch of his entire torso encased in bandaging that is cool and slimy to the touch, likely by some kind of medicinal pungent he couldn’t be more grateful for, even if his tone denotes different priorities.

“What happened to me? Where am I?”

“Old Ones I don’t think I’ll be getting used to hearing High Saurian come out of fleshy lips, that’s an accent alright.”

“Are you listening to me?” Roland groans, trying to see if turning on his side makes things more comfortable. They don’t, but at least he gets a proper look at the Skink now.

It is not remarkable for its own caste. A skink whose body is entirely covered in pouches and belts that Roland hopes carry everything necessary to make him able to take a deep breath without wanting to cry. But most importantly, the scales of his back and sharp head -which looks at him with amused eyes as hands rummage through some kind of shelf carved into the stone bed’s base- are covered in markings of a milky yellow coloration.

Roland starts to piece things together as the Skink offers him a hollow and coirked gourd. He pops said cork off for Roland, who grabs it with shaking hands and begins to drink deeply. The contents are mostly watery, with the sting of medicinal herbs whose names are foggy to him right now.

“The garrison of the Stellar Pyramids found you staggering into their perimeter, half dead. Didn’t even know who you were until they brought you here. Only reason they didn’t kill you was because a Blessed Rylok wouldn’t let them.”

“Tlahui, yeah, owe my life to that bird.”

“And to me. When they told me a commander had arrived in the city under the invitation of the Mage-Lord and required my services, I assumed it was a scar-veteran in need of parasite removal. And then you show up on a stretcher, half your ribs cracked and another one poking into your lung.”

‘I should be dead.’ Roland thinks.

“You should be dead.” The Skink says. “Thankfully, you aren’t. How did you end up like that, anyways? I’ve only seen that kind of damage in corpses at the other end of a kroxigor’s mace.”

“A bernodon swiped me with its tail.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I could have imagined, mudbrain, why did you even approach one?”

“I was trying to use it to dispel a band of xibalbans.”

…

“Mahrlect, I must have missed your skull getting fractures, how am I going to present you before-”

“My head is fine. I can explain in more detail , I’m just… Tired.”

“You should be. We did our best to fix your body, but you humans are soft, it’ll take a few more days for the pungent to seep in deep enough to seal the cracks in your ribs.”

“What about my lung? I… It hurts, but I can breathe.”

“That was already dealt with by the healers of the cohort that found you. Not a perfect job, but in a few weeks you should be back to breathing as well as whatever human baselines are.”

“Thank the Old Ones.”

“And Eror.”

“And who’s Eror?”

“Me.” The skink answers. “Now, try and get up, you lanky ape. I need to inspect your breathing. After that, we’ll see about feeding and clothing you. Can’t have Lord Tleconexquiza’s “Herald” walk around like a slave, can I?”

“I was…”Roland speaks as he follows the command, turning his back to the healer and letting his legs hang over the other side of the plinth. “I will not dare make the Lord of the Solar-City wait.”

“Old Ones, they said you were loyal, but you sound like a Saurus.”

“I was raised by one… They?”

“Our troops returned before you did. They are like parrots, they love talking about you.” The skink snickers as he lays his cold head against Roland’s upper back. “You are not living up so far, if I say so myself.”

“Hey, Eror?”

“Yeah.”

“I thank you for healing me but… Go choke on a bone.”

…

“Now that’s what I was expecting of a human servant of the Old Ones. Proper untamed race behavior."

They both laugh, Roland makes a noise of undignified pain that only makes the blue-yellow skink laugh with even louder chirps.





Gemcutters’ Workshops, Temple City of Pahuax, Jungles of Pahualaxa
40.0.9.17.9 4 Muluk 2 Keh​

“Yes, I see where the issue lies.” Elma nods as the man -an Estalian with a thin sheen of sweat covering his bald head- laughs, leaning against the workshop’s wall as she inspects what had been supposed to be his station.

Heriberto de la Usca has now, by her own reckoning, become the oldest human of Pahuax’s Xho’za’khanx Host. At forty eight years of age, according to his own reckoning, the man had been taken as a slave while sailing to visit family from his workshop in Magritta to some other place called “Ner-Ja.” Now, at fifty six -again by his own accounting- he seems… Content.

Elma wonders what exactly has made him willing to stay and ply a trade he’d been barred from for a decade as a beast of burden. Old Ones, she’s even surprised that those wretched things had kept him alive as long as they had. But she’s not going to open those jars right now, when she for once has such a mundane issue to deal with.

The gem-cutting skinks of the artisan caste work arrayed over their wooden desks, grinding stones and small tools making an array of sounds that isn’t loud enough to harm the conversation.

Simply put, Heriberto is entirely too large to fit in one of said workstations, much to his own amusement and the annoyance of the spawn elder at hand.

“We’ll see, I’ll put in an order with the carpenters for a new one for you, shouldn’t take long.”

“What do I make him do meanwhile?” The Skink asks in Low Saurian.

“What is he saying?” The man asks in imperfect reikspiel.

“He’s bothered that you can’t start working already.”

“I see us workshop masters are cabrones regardless of species.” The man continues to take it all in good nature. “But do tell him that I am happy to stay busy until there’s a stool here that actually lets my knees fit under a table. I saw a canal nearby where some others were loading and unloading rafts. I’m happy to keep busy.”

“Oh, that would be great. I’ll have this all solved in a day, two at most, my apo-”

The Estalian, his skin covered in liver spots, raises his hands in a placating gesture and offers a smile missing too many teeth to not have been the work of his now-dead masters. “I doubt my work will be up to their standards anyways, not bothered by delaying the inevitable and vaguely understandable angry chirping.”

Elma can’t help but smile as she settles affairs, and soon is leaving in the opposite direction to the old man. Which is just her luck, because one avenue later she comes across the sight of two saurus warriors looking for her.

And they are obviously looking for her.

Obviously because one of them roars when they see her, and the two lumbering crested warriors start jogging towards her. And even more obviously because between them is held the shape of a shaken-around Barra the Entrepreneur.

“Spawn Elder, we were greeted by this one soon after taking our shift at Hexoatl Gate.” One of them speaks. “It is the one you told for us to look out for, correct?”

“Correct, you have my thanks, and are dismissed."

Instantly, Barra is let go of, jumping a short height to the ground and letting out a grunt of surprise as he lands, tuning around and shouting. “Hey, thanks you good-for-nothing gaudy crocodiles!”

“Barra, the northern gate?” Elma asks.

“You know, people have a weird tendency to walk leaning leftwards if you just leave them to their devices and they don’t have a landmark to correct themselves with.” He says, the fatality of his words contrasting with the rare seriousness his voice takes. “Eventually they just end up walking in circles.” His explanation that of a tradesman.

“I take it it’s done, then.”

“Yuup.”

“I hate this.” Elma sags. “I really, really hate this.”

“Tell me about it, I’ve been doing it so long I forgot how fucked up it is to do it to decent people.”

…

“Want a drink?”

…

“I knew you were better than your brother.”





The afternoon finds them seated under the shade of a lone tree among the grazing fields beyond the earthworks that make up the city’s informally expanded limits. Elma likes coming here because all the Skinks and animals know her brother, and through that, tend to be strangely willing to let her just… Exist.

“I still can’t believe they make this shit out of palm fronds.”

“We make it out of the cores, actually.”

“Yeah yeah…” Barra answers, and takes another swig of mexcalli.

“I just wish we could have done it differently. All those people, literally saved from slavery, death and torture, and then Roland had to go and be honest with them.”

“They would have asked about leaving, you know that.”

“They would have, but it would have given me days. Days to show them how good and accommodating life here can be, show them how much they could fit into the Great Plan. Instead, instead…”

“You would have gotten a dozen more at most. It’s twisted but… I get why the lizards saved you when you were children. Us adults are too much.”

“Just a few more…” She repeats. “I would have loved to just help a few more. But…”

“Come on you-”

“THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO DIE!” She throws her gourd aside, startling Barra and the animals on the field they happen to be in the middle of. They are some kind of local pig-like animal Barra has eaten before. Smaller and much furrier. “THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO, IF I HAD JUST…!” She slams back against the tree trunk with a frustrated groan.

“I’m guessing there’s some detail that-”

“The day after the first escape attempt, I was summoned by Lord Tleconexquiza and-”

“There we go.”

“Shut up.” She waves him off. “He… Whatever Roland has been summoned for. It’s important. Important for us all in Pahuax. So the Ashen Lord commanded that I should be swift in stabilizing the new Xho’za’khanx. No waiting, no convincing… Just… Take the ones we could already integrate, and get rid of the rest. Not just let them go to Sudburg, where they could all have found their ways back home, as hard as it would have been to keep things under wraps. But… He desired for me to remove them from the situation all together. His retainers made it all clear.”

“Fuuuuck.”

“I hoped…” Her eyes glisten. “I actually was glad that that escape attempt happened, that I sabotaged it. They would have made a violent mess of things otherwise. Even as I saw the knights catch them and devour them, a part of me was glad that the work was being done for me. But NO, because of course it didn’t end there, because of course not everyone who didn’t fit took their first chance. So I had to-Had to…”

“Send them out with me, so I could disappear into the jungle the way I do best.” Barra completes for her. It is so jarring to him, the bloody example of how -despite how much he may have not thought about it- the siblings were for all their freedom and renown, as much servants to this Great Plan as the lowliest cannon fodder.

“I’m a monster.”

“No you ain’t.” Barra tries to help. “You tried to help the most of them you could. Just like your brother did. I sure as hell wouldn’t have.”

They fall into a sad silence, the work of distant handlers occupying Barra’s vision. It is a wonder how creatures so small can lead around tree-cracking behemoths.

“How do you deal with it?” Elma asks, eventually.

“With what?”

“With the lying." She says. “Every day people ask me about what happened to everyone missing. And it’s just so hard. It is hard to keep the lie consistent, but it’s so much worse to have to sound like I am sad and surprised that people left, as if I didn’t order you to trick them into their deaths. And there’s-there’s the other ones. The stragglers who I know know what we did. Every time I think I’m done, the children speak a new name.”

“Well, the skill of it was easy. Been a long time since I learned people want to believe your lies, even when you tell them with a face like mine, as long as it’s lies they want to hear. Besides, if you are ballsy enough in my business, you only ever need people to believe you once. Your thing? Way harder.” He pats her shoulder.

“What about how it feels?”

“With that, I can’t help. I’ve always been quick to it. Sometimes, as a kid, I would lie to my parents and friends even when I didn’t have to. Earned me a few stupid beatings, but I never did learn to think it over before opening my mouth. Regret a lot of it, that’s for sure.”

He’s barely offering any comfort as he speaks, yet, Elma calms.

“Is that why you had to leave your home for Swamp Town?” She asks.

“Yeah, but not interested in recalling it all, if you mind.”

“Don’t worry, I just… I think I may have found a place for you. There’s a group of people who might actually benefit from your skills. Mahrlect, if we’d have the time, you might not even have gone there alone.”

“What’s this?” Barra tries to bring levity to the situation. “You putting me in charge of a anything, you know that’s-”

“Yes, that is what I am doing.” She tries to smile. “I have to. Whatever we do, we have to keep helping people.”

Otherwise, their failures may come to mean too little -or too much- to bear.
 
So! Next chapter is the final one of this arc!
Ain't that exciting? :3

I hope you enjoyed the story and I honestly appreciate all and any kudos or comments you may be gracious enough to gift me! And in case any of you are interested, here's the link to my Discord server, where I discuss my projects and all are welcome :D

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What Are Thrones Made Of? - Part XI: Rule of the Rightful​

"When the new Jarl -Sammi Fiorgeirsson, he was called- strangled Losteriksson to death and took over Skeggi, the sagas tell that he declared the very jungle our enemy and put every clan directly under him to work in clearing as much land around Skeggi as possible. He had great plans, plans to rival the greatest of the old peninsular tribes. “

“Much good it did him, he got bitten by a tick three days later while inspecting the work. He was already dead before his húskarls crossed the palisade with him on their shields. I don't think the Gods ever forgave us for letting -helping, depending on the clan- him kill the man who brought them to a whole new continent, certainly for doing it without their permission. That’s how Losteriksson’s line has always found its way back up the King’s Hill, you see. The Gods are petty things, not to be denied…”

— Shaman Svinulf Thorlaksson.



The Citadella Upon Re Island, Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove, Isthmus of Lustria
30th of Brauzeit, 2538 I.C. // 40.0.9.17.10 5 Ok 3 Keh​

“So, what do you think?” The King asks as he paces the ship’s deck. Usually, Sea-Swine sits around some prominent spot of Port Reaver’s actual docks. Or openly floating, if anchored, astride the port’s mouth between the Shark and the Trident. Now that he’s taken such a focus on actually getting Port Reaver to function -not even function well, that’ll be the work for whatever poor stupid sod replaces him- sailing doesn’t really fit into his schedule.

And what would sailing gain him? Sailing had never been what had called him to piracy, so he wouldn’t be doing luxury trips. It had been combat, boarding actions and ashore raiding that had made his blood pump. He’d happily go the rest of his life without having to lead a bunch of bastards through even the mildest of choppy waters again. And he can’t do that either, a rare universally followed rule among Pirate Kings: Once you become king, you give the pillaging up. At least the direct version of it. No one ever said anything about unfair taxes.

“The ship is in good condition. Nothing needs work that’d get you in trouble with Azzarello.” The man, Red-Head Kaon, says. Like Bastjan, he hails from the Border Princes, yet their accents, mother tongues and faces look as alike as an Arabyan and a Norscan seated next to each other. Typical borderlander business, really. And Bastjan is happy to hear the assessment, no amount of wizard-timber is going to truly mend their relationship until it’s actually delivered.

“Sure, I’d love to take it for a good longer trip to make sure there’s no hidden nastiness, but I’m not actually expecting any.” Kaon adds, looking up and down the rigging as he rubs a rag across his bald head, removing the sheen of sweat covering it and also passing over the angry red scar that had earned him the nickname.

“You could take her up to Skeggi. It’s been years since I last sent feelers out to them. Besides, I keep hearing they have a new woman-king.”

“Aye,” Kaon adds as he steps back to stand by the King, “A sloop under Billings’ Lower Council flag came across a fleet of them not too long ago. Fifteen of them low-laying fucking things.”

“Which means it was probably closer to almost a dozen.”

“Yah… In any case, no way I’m taking a ship crewed mostly by greenhorns to Skeggi.”

“Why not, cove isn’t bad sailing this time of the year.”

“Not because of the weather, you boar.” Kaon chortles. But because I’d lose a fourth of them to street brawls, and would have to deal with at least three getting their dicks cut off for trying to fuck Norscan girls. I am no Cathayan, I captain no eunuch crew.”

“Where, then? Can’t take them raiding if you fly my flag. And you will fly my flag. The entire point of this idea is to get me back to having at least one working vessel.”

Which is true. Port Reaver has two fronts to always be wary of. The jungle, and the sea. And now that he’s finally on track to dealing with the former, he’s realized how much he has forgotten the latter.

“I would have suggested Swamp Town, but…” Kaon smiles. The man had always been lackadaisical around his leader, even back when they’d been captain and helmsman under someone else’s banner. That had earned him his scar, after all.

Bastjan grunts in agreement. Most of the men who once sailed under his fleet’s grinning tusked skull have now transitioned fully into roles across the city. And while any of them could be ordered to go back to their previous occupation, Port Reaver is too full of young fools hoping to join the King’s men not to use them.

‘Fresh blood on deck is always good…’ He muses to himself.

“Take them south.” He eventually decides.

“To Jeruga? Not unless Mannan himself commands me to. Skeggi will lose me crewmembers, that place will put us all to death if we dare send a landing party. Besides, too damn far for such an inexperienced crew.”

“Just to the High Sentinel, then. I keep hearing more and more adventurers have started using it as a set-off point. Would be good to get a proper report on it. If they do well, we’ll outfit you for a proper visit to Skeggi after.”

Kaon gets a thinking look on his face. There’s only so many parties who set off from Port Reaver into the Isthmus. Most use this port and those around as a first stop before sailing much further south, as far as the Tarantula Coast.

“Okay then, I’ll start taking in port rats, see who's actually got more than stories between their ears.”

“Good, keep me posted.” The King answers, turning around and walking down the gangplank. The morning has been productive, but he doubts any conversation with Kaon will match what has been waiting for him in his office since delivery at the crack of dawn.

A letter, sealed with wax marked with the feather-capped jolly-rogger of one Lady Serena.





The Blessed Incubator, Temple-City of Hexoatl, Jungles of Pahualaxa, Isthmus of Lustria
40.0.9.17.11 6 Chuwen 4 Keh​

Like in Pahuax -and virtually every Temple City across the world- the largest ziggurat of Hexoatl serves as both the place of honor for the city’s Old One patron, and as the residence of the eldest -and thus, leading- Slann within its walls.

In gargantuan Hexoatl, where every plaza is half the total area of the City of Ash and cohorts are counted by the hundreds, that honor falls upon a ziggurat to Chotec so tall that the burning braziers at each of the corners of its uppermost floor don’t cause smoke columns as much as they directly produce ash clouds. Up and down the entire structure, enormous pyres filled with sacrifices flame on and on, their smoke catching the rays of the early morning sun and the smoke making the streets smell like burning flesh and blistering skin. So numerous are the burning braziers -some big enough to hold sacrificed beasts the size of wagons as if they were birds in platters- and so high are their charcoal piles, that it fools his eyes into assuming that the structure itself has caught on fire multiple times.

The City of the Sun, ruled by the Solar Lord, certainly stands up to its reputation.

Which is why Roland can’t help but be perplexed as the temple guards -massive saurus warriors clad in the best armor and wielding polearms that would make his lost one look like a walking stick- lead him into the downwards slopping ramp that is the entrance to one of the city’s lesser pyramids.

Lesser, only in comparison. Hexoatl’s Pyramid of Itzil is already taller than Pahuax’s high pyramid, reconsecrated to Tzcalli long before Roland’s birth.

The entire structure is decorated in the glyphs and carvings of that which has been his master since before he could speak any civilized tongues. Repeating again and again and again across every surface is the sigil of the three-horned and snarling Ruler of Beasts. Everywhere else, the walls depict hunting scenes, every kind of cold-blooded predator hunting every imaginable kind of worthwhile prey.

And as they enter, his senses are overtaken. The smells of a dozen different musks, of venomous slobber and of scaled hides, the low rumblings of beasts as they sleep in their pens and cages, or the roaring or snarling of those offended by the existence of skink handlers, as he walks, the ground is marked with the cracks of rock-breaking stops and the grooves of flexed claws.

He is among Itzil’s own. And where he braces for his mind to become clouded and mired with a thousand voices, as it does in the jungles…

He finds only clarity. A silence of the mind that contrasts against the bustling of the army of skinks it takes to keep so many beasts in check. The temple-guards prod him along, breaking his stunned stop.

They walk him by cages holding the dozing shapes of jaguars. Spotted, as black as onyx, or of the dunny coats he’d heard they sport in the mountains. Most don’t even notice him being led along. And the one that does is too busy grooming a smaller cagemate, saber teeth glinting in the torchlight.

The Temple Guards guide him deeper along the subterranean avenues.

Familiar beasts like razordons or even salamanders, the latter of which do rouse as he walks by, flames sparking at their gums. Pits holding trypadons and scalemanes, their rarer cousins, scrambling up the walls to better snap at the morsels being thrown by skinks.

Deeper, they go.

They walk him by stables holding cold ones, the animals eerily restful as saurus remove or equip saddles. He catches distant shadows of rarer mounts, feathered southron lesser saurians.

Deeper they take him, by the enormous and mostly empty holds that may some day house beasts he doesn’t even know the names of, or walking above flooded wells with metal-barred ceilings, their dark waters holding armored crocodilians and silky serpents.

It is intoxicating. Here, no beast chirps, squeaks or cries for his attention, no treetop conversations pierce his ears, no… No pain.

Predators do not talk to each other. They don’t have anything that needs saying. Roland, however, can’t help but gasp here and there, his heart quickening and his mind conjuring all sorts of things. Here, he could stay forever, he could be of use in ways-

His knees slam into the ground before his mind can register that they are bending. Each temple guard around him takes one knee with the thunderous crack of polearm butts striking the ground.

A chamber lies before them. Empty of beasts, full of something else.

A throne, a palanquin-throne of gold and stone, carved with a thousand symbols and decorated with fans of horns and tusks each taller than himself. Skink attendants climb up and down it, fanning, feeding, holding tablets and items… Serving…

Lord Mazdamundi.

Roland’s head crashes into the back of his hands as he prostrates himself fully, but the image remains branded into his head. The enormous and cross-legged form of a being made in the image of the Old Ones. A body smooth and roiling like a frog’s, but so large as to make a Kroxigor look modest, a body holding a mind that considers the world at a scale Roland cannot even fathom, a mind that stares into his with eyes of yellow lightning, brimming with arcane power.

His breath hitches, his head hurts.

“The Pyroclastic Cloud’s Experiment.”​

The words are spoken in a warbling and low dialect of Saurian Roland has never been taught a single word of, but as skinks quiet their chittering, the words ring like true rock-strikes into the back of his skull. It is as if a landslide is talking to him, gravely and entirely too large.

Somehow, only now does it dawn on him that a being old enough to have been taught the Great Plan from the lips of the Gods has summoned him.

“It Has Arrived Damaged.”​

The bandages across Roland’s chest feel constrictive now. Crushed under invisible stones. He has failed his liege lord by presenting himself in such a sorry state, had he a blade, he’d offer his heart right-

“Make It Stand.”​

A temple-guard grabs hold of him before he can actually follow the earthquake’s command, pushing him forwards, towards the Mage-Lord. Roland’s head hurts more and more the closer he gets, stumbling until he is hunched over and before the great red-skinned amphibian.

Something stands between them.

A plinth, one made of solid greenish gold, with a cupped top that holds…

An egg. Large, as large as his own head but otherwise nondescript, with an off-white shell and a rough -almost pebbly- texture.

“Touch, It. Test.”​

Roland tries to bow, but his legs tremble too much, his mouth dry, his vision blurry. He eventually manages to raise shaky hands, laying them upon the cool-to-the-touch shell. Instantly he feels…

Nothing.

He feels nothing. The pressure on his mind is still there, his nerves remain frayed. His body continues to shake in the presence of the mountain-moving demigod. But the egg itself elicits nothing from him.

Which feels like a stab to the heart. Whatever test he is being made to take in the name of all his kind, he has failed, and he can’t blame anything but his own unclean nat-

“Good… Dismissed.”​

Half the skinks attending Lord Mazdamundi snap into action like whips. Some take hold of the plinth, which Roland hadn’t even noticed to be connected at the base to long beams, and begin carrying it away, deeper still into the temple.

Some part of the bewildered human expects the egg to shake, to tremble, to shift. But nothing happens as he himself is pulled to another chamber. His body, no longer strained by the preternatural presence, begins to wind down. Suddenly, each and every one of his bones feel as if they had been cast in lead, he’d been less tired while being chased through the jungle by the undead.

Something snaps within him like a too-taint rope. Roland stumbles, his eyes shutter. The last thing he sees before darkness consumes him is the emotionless and wide face of Lord Mazdamundi. Inscrutable in emotion.





Somewhere South-East of the Temple-City of Pahuax,
Jungles of Pahualaxa, Isthmus of Lustria​

“This… This is insane.” Barra mumbles as, with a grip so strong her nails dig into his arm, the much younger Elma Welser-Nakor manhandles him into staying put, watching as the team of lizardmen who have spent the day escorting them into a seemingly random jungle clearing continue to lay down their wares.

It is a lot of simple stuff. Or at least it is things he has learned are simple in the nictitating eyes of the lizardmen. Tool handles made of solid gold, baskets carrying many pounds of fruits and vegetables each, which only the Lizardmen can farm at scale, similarly to the rolls of fur and wool cloth they lay down as a couple of pyramids, much to the delight of their… Hosts?

“People, there’s people in the Jungles.” He speaks, his mouth so agape a winged lizard could perch on his teeth.

Hooting and hollering and prostrating themselves lay almost a hundred people, dressed in the simplest of garments, draped clothing and skirts of woven leaves. They are like a sloppier version of the children of Pahuax -even more so when compared to Elma and her crazed brother- in the way their bodies are decorated with paints, their hairs with feathers and their limbs with crude recreations of lizardmen-made trinkets. They are varied in builds and ages, some are old in a way that shouldn’t be possible in Lustria, with wrinkled and tan skins that only a lifetime in the jungles could create. Some wear salvaged attires not unlike those of the now-dead escapees, mixing local materials with garments of imperial and norscan make.

Their eyes are wide and excited, in many, they glint in a way he’s only seen Roland’s eyes glint. The sparkle of a maddened mind.

“Not everyone who doesn’t leave the jungles dies in them, Barra.” The young woman explains, raising a hand to wave at an excited girl who looks her age and is currently clinging to the arm of a Saurus warrior as he gives her an exploratory whiff.

And that is not a unique sight, every human who isn’t losing their mind over the offered… Gifts? Is striking out with some lizardman, trying to make rudimentary conversation, show something off -often things as simple as tools made of knapped stone- or trying to be shown or taught something.

“They are the-”

“Skinken.” Barra interrupts. “Heard of them. But… People talk about all sorts of things crawling in the jungles. Never gave these a second thought.”

But now that they come to mind, every conversation comes flooding back. Parties returning to Swamp Town half as numerous, groaning about jungle-dwelling savages wearing crocodile skins. Old beggars, crying about men sacrificed on altars by wildlings covered in blood. Barra had always assumed them to be people mistaken for the diminutive Skinks, or the result of fever-addled minds.

“They have been around since before Roland and I. The first wave were desperate people from Skeggi and the failed colonies. They couldn’t survive the chaos and violence of the port, and tried their luck in a jungle that would have eaten them alive.” Elma lets go of him, and walks down among the group. None of the people approach her, although some do greet her with reikspiel honorifics and mangled low-saurian. Barra can tell they are looking at him even more intently. His white shirt feels stifling.

“Those who learned from the local skink communities… Survived.” She continues to explain as she kneels down to greet a woman holding a-

A babe, suckling at her breast. The child’s back painted with swirls of toxic blue that would make a raptor second-guess its target. The woman says something to Barra, but he is too stunned to stop and answer.

“Less than a dozen survived that first wave, but enough that when Roland and I arrived at Pahuax, a couple translators could be dredged from among their grandchildren. Now, we try to bolster their numbers. Children who don’t really manage to fit in the city, would-be sacrifices Roland sees potential in, new lost souls, and… And…”

“The elves’ slaves, a chunk of them at least., If you’d had the time.”

“Yes… But… The Skinken… They are…” Her gaze shifts to one of the men, Norscan in heritage, judging by his face and the hairiness of his large warrior’s build. He is comparing some sort of object with a Saurus warrior that makes him seem small. Some kind of white.. Ball…?

Skulls, they are comparing the human skulls hanging from their respective belts.

“They are jungle-crazed.”

“I wouldn’t say that but… Yes. They have become more stable over the last few years, the new wave of outsiders and the more constant contact with Pahuax’ outlying settlements has helped. But their leadership remained stuck. Seeing lizardmen as demigods and not allies, engaging in practices I cannot condone. Until now.”

“I don’t like where this is going…” Barra says as they come to a stop. By now they have fully entered the Skinken’s village of wooden huts with fronds for roofs. In the middle of it, a broken stone with faded carvings functions as an altar of sorts. Atop it rests a head.

A head fresh enough that its lack of skin reveals still-red flesh being swarmed by flies, and cloudy eyes that stare into Barra’s.

1785750107217.png
Skull and Crown of Gerard “Xolooitica” Schmitz.​

Atop the lipless head’s brown rests a diadem decorated with feathers, a large golden piece resembling a curling snake rests on the forehead.

“Old Xolooitica, he taught me how to hear Low Saurian enough to start communicating.”

“I’m… Sorry for the loss?” Barra can’t help but stiff as he realizes the crowd has followed them back into the village. Many carrying the city’s goods, but most just watching Elma with expectation.

No, not Elma, him.

“Don’t be.” She answers. “When we visited here for my fifteenth birthday, he offered me his forty year old son’s hand in marriage. When I politely declined, he had it cut off with a stone-axe.”

“It?”

“His son’s arm, he had it served as part of the birthday feast he organized.”

“Gods damn…”

“Roland had been trying to convince me to have him removed since he became Herald. I always hesitated.” Elma places her hands on the head, and with a squelch, pulls the crown off it. “I just knew there would be no one else who could keep this place as functional as he did. He did it with disgusting methods, but I just couldn’t find a solution…”

Elma turns around. Barra realizes too late what she is doing.

“Until now.”

The crown falls wetly upon his red curls, smelling horrible as feathers speckled with rotted blood fall on his shoulders. For the first time in his life, his white shirt is stained.

“They are mad, mad and lost.” Elma whispers into his ears. “They don’t need my warmth or my brother’s blade. They need someone who will tell them it will all be okay, who can bend them without breaking them until they are what the Great Plan needs them to be. They need a liar and a scoundrel. They need you.”

Around them, a hundred bodies fall in worshipful bows.

“Congratulations, Barra the Entrepreneur, the Exile, the Explorer. You are now Barra, Chief of Skinken.”





The Blessed Incubator, Temple-City of Hexoatl,
Jungles of Pahualaxa, Isthmus of Lustria​

When he comes to, he is resting against the wall of one of the upper levels. Something with a breath smelling like venom and fresh flesh breathing down the back of his neck, almost nudging his nape.

Before him rests the largest Skink Roland has ever seen, a warrior clad in armor that would perfectly fit a saurus if it weren’t for the red-scaled warrior’s wiry physique. Roland has to even give himself a second to confirm that he isn’t just an emaciated saurus, but the large and membranous crest running from forehead to the base of the neck is unmistakable.

“It looks like Xltzhpctli likes you, soft-flesh.”

“Who… What?” Ask the dazed young man.

The skink, lips peeled back into a smile that doesn’t fit his muzzle, smiles as he points somewhere up and behind Roland.

He looks up, wet slobber lands on his cheek as he finds himself staring into the teeth of a cold one with horns so large they’d fit upon the head of a stegadon.

“Oh, hello.”

“A human blessed by Itzil.” The skink speaks. “I wouldn't believe it, if you weren’t here.”

“Who… Who are you, what has happened?”

“You have passed a test, human, congratulations.”

“But, the egg… It didn’t…”

“I was surprised too. But we are not entitled to everything that the Great Plan pertains to, are we, little creature?” Some part of Roland wants to agree, another is surprised that the enormous skink had been there and yet gone unnoticed.

But the question that comes from his mouth is completely different.

“What… Now?”

“Now, we take a few more days to fix you up and to complete preparations.”

“Preparations for what?”

“A duty that should have been done long ago, and which you and I have been blessed with the honor of seeing to conclusion.”

The skink moves closer, a crest weathered by age flicking and tensing as he places a hand upon the horned-one’s head… And another upon Roland’s.”

“Three hundred years, Xltzhpctli. Can you believe it? But I knew we’d get through that palisade eventually.”

The word rings through Roland’s mind. He looks up again.

“You… You are…”

“Take heart, First of the Xho’za’khanx. You who cleansed the Salamander’s Cove, and who survived the jungle’s trials, have been tasked with the true cleansing of our little corner of the Great Plan.”

“You are… General Inxi-Huinzi.”

“Indeed I am.” The skink dismisses as if he weren’t the second best military mind ever produced by Hexoatl’s spawning pools. “Now, as I was saying. My armies will need a few more days to muster. Then we will march to Pahuax and recruit your own ashen home’s cohorts. Once all is ready… We are to erase the tumor known as Skeggi from the face of Lustria.” The human word sounds alien enough when coming from his snout that Roland has to take a moment to parse it and realize he’s talking of the chaos-worshipping port.

“That- I… Me?”

“You will be at the head of my advanced forces, you will give me the keys to victory only a human could. You will be my speartip, my second in command. You will…”

Roland’s breath hitches.

“You will herald the coming of the greatest of purges this land has seen since the sundering of the vermintide.”





Kennels, Skeggi, Lyssa Bay, Jungles of Pahualaxa, Isthmus of Lustria
22nd of Silðimánuður, 2545 VR // 40.0.9.17.17 8 B’en 6 Keh​


“There we go, there we go…” Stina gently guides as Torfi lifts the wooden cage back into position. Luckily, this one had only been broken by way of a splintered leg -for in a place like Skeggi, even dog cages need to be built upon stilts- and has been an easy fix. Most others have been trashed beyond salvage and been axed-up to join the firewood stock resting against the longhouse’s wall.

A longhouse which he knows will need the most work of all. The entire kennels lay in ruin with the exception of the outgrowth of Skeggi’s palisade that makes up its perimeter. And even in that, they had lost the wooden swing-gate that kept the kennel’s grounds from the actual “streets” of Skeggi.

“Okay, there we go.” His mother squats down to inspect. The cage’s leg is entirely new. But now at least they have a couple functioning ones. Between that and the longhouse’s eaves, it should be enough to keep their remaining hounds safe and dry from the blazing sun and next season’s torrential rains. The cage will still need a ramp. Now the dogs can just jump in, but when the next litter of pups comes…

‘If,’ He corrects in his own mind. ‘Not when, if. Don’t get your hopes up.’

When he stands up, he can’t help but let his eyes wander to his mother as she fixes her braids. To a ruined home that will still need weeks to be fixed, and to less than a dozen hounds, and to Haimiaz and Eistla, slowly becoming old enough to understand that their siblings won’t be coming back, and neither will their father. He thinks back to somber-faced Groa, Båtsman by her side. To Swarta and Tuni, not a speck of shame as they boarded a stranger’s longship in hopes of becoming something “better” than dog-trainers.

His mother’s eyes lock with his. She answers before he can utter the comment that has by now started fifteen arguments.

“No, Torfi. No.” She dusts her hands off. “There’s nothing for your siblings or me back where I was born. When I married your father, I became as tied to this place as his dogs.”

“We barely even have dogs anymore. I’m going to have to catch mutts just to get our numbers back. Unless the Gods kill the King, and fifteen purebreed sarlish elkhounds burst out of her dying mouths, we will d-”

“Say those words, and I’ll cut your tongue off, boy.” There is no bite to her words, she knows as well as he does, that the moment Adella’s amusement runs dry, it’ll be a trip to the Scarp for what remains of Ornolf's Pack.

“TORFI!” A shout startled mother and son. Stina’s hands go to the sword now always hanging from her belt, Torfi’s go for a spear that isn’t secured to his back as hounds swarm to and between his legs.

Njal.

Gasping for breath and half-collapsed against the gate.

Torfi approaches his best friend with a run of his own.

“Njal! What happened!”

“Lost… Lost son…”

“What?” Torfi grabs his friend, who continues to suck in heavy gulps of air, he must have run all the way from… From Gods know where.

“The… Lost… Ships… Back…”

“Njal, calm down, you aren’t making any sense.” Torfi holds his friend as his mother approaches. “Mother, your waterskin, he-”

“NO!” Njal twists around in his arms, grabbing hold of Torfi’s face, almost nose-to-nose.

“I was at the docks!” The witch finally belts out. “Heard screaming and shouting. People saw ships in the distance.”

“There’s always ships coming and go-”

“NINE SHIPS!” Njal screams his throat raw. “Every single one bearing Losteriksson’s runes!”

“That, that’s impossible.” Stina croaks. “That would have to be-”

“Floki, Floki has returned.”

“Something snaps inside of Torfi, suddenly he’s on his knees, being hugged by Njal.

Floki “Lostsson” of Clan Losteriksson. Inga’s sole male grandchild.

He had set out in a great expedition back when Torfi himself had barely been six years old, all confident and smiling with sharp teeth at the head of a fleet of thirty knarrs and drakkers.

That had been a decade ago, he’d been assumed dead more than seven years ago. Torfi even remembers the empty funeral pyre.

“He’s… He could.”

“Yes, yes!” Njal reacts, eyes brimming with happy tears.

Floki, returning triumphant from an impossible expedition, likely at the head of a force of death-loyal warriors. Only to find his grandmother dead, his clan disgraced, and his dog-keeping distant little cousin made into a caged bird.

In Skeggi, where might was right before the Gods, such a thing could only end in bloodshed. For the first time, true hope -and not the desperate mania of a fool who had tried to bait a lizardman into eating a Chosen- dares course through his blood.

Hounds howl. For the first time in a long time, they are not mournful.

They are elated.
 
So, we have reached the final chapter of "What Are Thrones Made Of?" and I am actually quite proud of the whole thing, and how useful it has been to setting up the upcoming final arc of Herald of the Old Ones. I only hope you lovely readers agree. ç
For now, I can say I will be going on a hiatus of a few weeks as I always do, both to decompress, and to give myself ample time to plot out "Shatter the Palisade"! See you soon!

I hope you enjoyed the story and I honestly appreciate all and any kudos or comments you may be gracious enough to gift me! And in case any of you are interested, here's the link to my Discord server, where I discuss my projects and all are welcome :D

It would be great if, if you enjoyed the story that is, you took a second of your time to go over to ao3 and left a kudo and a comment over there, since it is my main posting site.
 
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