Fiction Herald Of The Old Ones

New chapter, with some shiny illustrations to boot and a furthering of the ongoing "Swamp Town-Sudenburg" plot.

 

Chapter 10: Arrangements

If you want to survive, much less make a profit, out of an expedition into Lustria? What you need are not the greatest mercenaries you can hire, those will only last you as long as it takes for something local to remember how much it likes the taste of them. You don’t need to outfit them with the best blades or armor, the former will shatter and the latter will rust, well before you even reach that mythical bounty which you seek. You don’t need a fabled map which took you years to locate or a scar-skinned tracker who’s managed to carve himself a life in the New World, your map will weaken, break and tear or crumble into dust; your tracker will die, disappearing with a rustling of brushes to never be seen again. Take a wizard with you to Lustria and he’ll go mad reading the carvings of some abandoned ruin. Take a warhorse and a single mosquito’s bite will make it foam and the mouth and cry blood.

Even if your mercenaries make it, their weapons work and your guide or your map make it, even if your unique and never thought of before tool or trick works, you will still die if you do not have the one thing that you truly need.

What you need, you detestable pack of fools, is Logistics.

You need organization. You need planning and plans which you can afford to alter or abandon for others. You need readily arranged-for resources and to already have figured out how to spend them and administer them. And sure, part of all of those will be the wages or contracts of mercenaries, payments for arms producers of how ever much that maddened mage or magical compass and map cost you. But it will also be itineraries, rations and water, tools and camp-making resources.

And back ups, believe me boys, you will make dozens of plans and fifty of them will fail. Lustria kills you alright, but it suffocates you, strangles you slowly. If you want to survive her you need more plans than she can bother to ruin. It’s about the endurance of an imperial bureaucrat or the creative accounting of a Marienburg merchant, not about the swordsman’s skills or the sharpness of an axehead.

-Words of advice from famed ex-explorer Diegus of Nicuesia, given at his tavern The Blunted Lance, allegedly the best Tavern in Santa Magritta.

Sacred Arena, Saurus Quarter, Pahuax, Jungles of Pahualaxa​

23rd of Vorgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.12.0 12 Ajaw 13 Xul​

Falling back onto the stadium’s ashen ground, Roland would be wheezing and catching his breath at the blunt impact of his drop. Except, he was already short for breath and panting before he was shoved back by the scale-hide shield, so the tumble in truth actually restarts his body by shocking it, giving him a chance to take in sorely needed bellyfulls of fresh hair, his mouth tastes of the salivation of an exhausted animal with a light drizzling of bile and blood. Far from enough to warrant worrying for his health, but more than usual even accounting for the nature of his common sparring partners.

Usually he spars with the younger spawnings of Temple Guards, mainly because their polearms are what his smaller weapon is based on and their elders hold the most insight for his technique. Today, as his sore muscles can attest to, protesting as they are of the mere idea of another bout, is not one of those days.

The one who has beaten him is not of a temple guard spawning or even a saurus chosen for his record or potential to receive further training to possibly become one. Indeed Chorai of the Creeping Jungle is one of the many nomadic saurus who've made their way to Pahuax since the Temple-City’s refounding.

The two of them are just one pair of the hundreds dueling within the arena’s space, and many more train alone or in formations making use of the empty stadium. Roland isn’t even the only one of his kin training. Usually he’d note his status as the only Xho’za’khanx capable of standing his own against the saurus warriors, but as Chorai offers him the butt of his spear to help him get up, it's clear that will not happen. It’s their fifth duel of the day and all Roland has managed has been starting to get used to avoiding the precise and frog’s blink-fast jabs of the veteran.

That really is the key to training with one such as Chorai, the relatively weathered saurus may not be old or wise enough to have begun rising through the ranks, or patient and disciplined enough to be a guard prospect. What Chorai is, is being good with his spear. Good enough that the Herald is yet to see or hear of him losing any bout in which the green-and-black banded saurus was allowed to fight wielding his weapon of choice.

Chorai of the Creeping Jungle.​

It all boiled down to, as Elder Nakor had taught him early into his training, the fact that the best lessons came from fighting those one is most incapable of besting. Roland could only agree, he might not be any closer to besting Choria that he had been when they first met, but he’s pretty sure he’ll be able to handle most anything a warmblood pikeman can attempt to outrange him with.

He does end up taking hold of the spear’s golden shoe once he feels there’s enough air leaving and entering his body at a regular rate and he’s spit out the glob of frothy saliva. He almost doesn’t need to make any effort to pull himself up as the saurus leverages him, catching his feet soon enough and thanking Chorai for his lesson by tapping their shoulders. The impact still forces him to brace but he’s so used to the motion that his posture or footing don’t budge.

“So, you interested?” He idly comments as he moves back to grab his discarded polearm.

“Mmh,” The saurus growls as he inspects his purple-scaled shield, specifically the many grooves dug into the material by Roland’s weapon. “It has been a while since I last went out hunting I suppose.” He gives in.

“Trading, and some diplomacy for me, but mostly just caravaning and patrolling.” Roland corrects him.

“Mmmh ‘trading’ is basically just about getting materials right? It’s just hunting or foraging with extra steps and bartering.” Chorai dismisses.

“Well, I suppose you aren’t terribly far from it, even if it sounds like you have a distaste for it.”

“Not a distaste.” The ex-nomad explains. “Just don’t care for it, back in the Creeping if your band was lucky enough to cross paths with another you would just pool everything and redistribute wares by who’s plans they would help best. Trading, having to agree to specific exchanges, would just bog it down for days.”

“You are right with the days thing, we’ll be spending a good while at each stop before Elma is satisfied, but it’s the only way they know to share their wares and we need to keep them content for me to do my job.” Roland acquiesces.

“Fair enough, and I will be doing some hunting, just to be clear. I feel like I’ve been cooped up for too long, training tadpoles like you.” The saurus jokingly snaps his jaw as they walk out side by side, saluting Old-Blood Kowaal on their way out as the general continues to overlook training from the Arena’s lower rows of seating above them.

“Oh you are free to hunt, you know this is mostly about setting an example anyways.” Roland accepts, mentally checking another item in the list of preparations he and Elma ought to get done with before they can leave.

Cryston von Danling’s Study, Von Danling’s Tower, Outskists of Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove
24th of Vorgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.12.1 13 Imix’ 14 Xul
​

“So far you are only making this sound like the worst deal I’ve negotiated in my life, and I’m a pirate, negotiating unfairly is our bread and butter.” Dryly remarks the pirate King from his seat as he idly nurses his watered-down rum.

The study, if it can be called that, is in dire need to repair, the smell of rotting wood and dead plants still clinging to the walls despite fixing of the first being underway and removal of the second already being done. Still it somehow manages to be the best room in the demarcated tower for such a meeting, by virtue of being high up enough to receive the salty wind through its open windows.

“How is it a bad deal?” Speaks his host as he looks out and down from one such window. The man looks old and feels ancient. His skin shrink-wrapped around his bones in a way that reminds Bastjan of castaway corpses, and yet bony hands with calluses like the knots of trees hold onto the ledge with no trembling or white-knuckled frailty.

A long beard and even longer locks of birch bark-white hair obscure many of his facial features beyond an aquiline nose, a many-wrinkled forehead and dark green eyes. His clothing, on the other hand, gives much away. The tabard might have been the finely made attire of an imperial scholar long ago (something Bastjan is familiar with by virtue of those he’s stolen and sold) but the pants and boots and the smattering of tools and materials which hang from many a belt and pocket give away the kind of utilitarian requirements of a working hedge-wizard.

His long necklace of vine rope hold multiple medallions, such as a larger copper triskelion or what he recognizes as an Imperial mage’s icon, the bronzen filigrees in the shape of leaves, spirals and ferns surround a jewel of three rings of silver and two of emerald broken up by a further silver wedge.

Icon of Ghyran and the Jade Order of wizards who wield it.​

Of course, the most relevant detail to Bastjan is the fact that all of the clothes and items the wizard wears are uniformly ratty and ancient, worn down by the sheer amount of years spent being worn.

“It is a bad deal because you offer me the service of a wizard as if I were a nobleborn ruler, ask from me in exchange the resources to rebuild this tower of yours and much more. And yet when I ask of you what services would warrant such an allotment of my resources you merely give me further vague comments on your services.” Bastjan accuses.

“Do you doubt my skills, my king? Or do you doubt of the fact that I’m a Jade Wizard? I will admit many of your predecessors have doubted me so too, and I did prove them wrong.”

“I don’t doubt you are what you claim to be, there’s too much that gives your claims weight.” Which is true, long has he heard of the folktales of Port Reaver’s Green Man, the abandoned, and yet uneaten by the jungle, tower, the forces of previous kings making it through the jungles or being lost on a whim during schism or usurpations. “What I doubt is your actual usefulness to me.”

“Oh, do you? I’d expect a man like you to know of the risks of his office. How many have ruled here during my stupor, again? Seven? Eight? All I’ll tell you, you Pirate Kings tend to last longer with my kind backing you…”

“And yet, from what you’ve described of your dealing with that lake-stalking monstrosity it was both an exhausting and long endeavor.”

“That it was, I will not lie.”

“So, should I expect more now than before? If a traitor lunges for my throat will a branch strike him like a viper? If a would-be king lays siege to my fortress will an army of bayhops take hold of their ship hulls and pull them away plank by plank?” To this the druid-like scholar doesn’t answer, merely turning to look at him with curious eyes. “I am not sorry to say that I have higher priorities than wasting these many resources in paying a single man to maybe help me if I’m threatened in a particular way he could help me out of, which I’m sure can happen, when there’s so much more pressing that needs to be dealt with.” He takes a sip of his sweet rum. “It’s already bad enough how much you’ve upset business by getting the farmers to help you with the tower as they’ve already begun, because now they are sapping construction materials and manpower from the Felldowns for you.”

“And what priorities, do tell, does a Pirate King of Port Reaver have which are higher than his own security.”

Bastjan’s answer starts with a laugh. “HAHAhaha… Oh where should I start?” He self-deprecatingly jokes. “Half my city’s walls are crumbling down or not even built to begin with, an entire chunk of my city burned down a long month ago, reavers and migrants are coming in larger numbers every year and this season is not looking to be any different. In Manann’s name I’m competing against norscans as a raiding hub and against an imperial fucking colony as a trade hub. And oh if you try to get me to talk about what it’s costing me to finance the guard fleet the Felldowns are building for me alongside the mens actual equipment, or what Fronich or the Cloister are leeching off of my people I might as well just pay you to get me a plant that’ll help me kill myself!” He rants, frustrated and yet laughing, it feels rare to be able to rant to a man of, in practice, his same standing, he relishes the chance to speak with an equal who he knows is hiding how they are both equally weak in their power.

And yet, it takes the old, old man long enough to answer that Bastjan is forced to look up from his empty cup. He expects a barb. He gets an intrigued stare.

“Those… Those are your priorities…?” Is what Von Danling finally asks.

“Uh? What else could the priorities of a king be?”

The jade wizard again does not answer. “Crops.” He offers instead.

“Crops?” The Pirate King asks, befuddled.

“You are right, a vine won’t help you when the crossbow bolts come unless they are fired by a very large and slow ogre. But I can see from here,” The druid points at the open casement window as the wind makes the boards its made from slowly sway, he can see a good chunk of outset Port Reaver through them “I can see that the farms, meager and hugging the walls the last time I was active, have grown and expanded. Tell me, do you export much?”

“Not much, but it’s the only thing that leaves the city as exports not in the hands of explorers or huntsmen. Sugar cane -mostly for rum-, cotton, smoking herbs, the like. We keep what meat we can keep alive for ourselves.”

“Then I offer you a different deal, your side stays the same, but I throw in helping your crops as an incentive.”

“Helping the crops?”

“Yes, the soil here is fertile, and Ghyran is of such strength here you see. All it needs is some guidance which I can provide, and I can swear to you, my king, what wealth you gain from selling these crops will be twofold by the time the rains return in earnest.” Something has changed in the wizard’s demeanor, but what exactly the ruler cannot tell. Could it be hope? Hope for what?

“Mmmh… That… That I can consider…”

“Excellent,” The wizard elates as he starts moving, going from derelict shelf to shelf and grabbing moth-eaten tomes and opaque vials. “Now, there’s something else in this deal I’d like for us to arrange, an addendum if you will…”

Bastjan, now with his interest truly peaked by the first mage he’s ever met, not at the tip of his hog rod, that is, orders for more rum and food to be brought up. In his head swim ideas of ships fat with sugar and pulled cotton ready to pay for his projects.

Outskirts of Swamp Town, Settler’s Cove
24th of Vorgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.12.1 13 Imix’ 14 Xul​

Filippo Calderara’s company of Tileans, Verezzans almost to a man, has only recently made the long voyage across the Great Ocean, he can’t say he’s enjoyed the four months-long trip but he would have at least expected to enjoy it being over.

He has, vehemently, not enjoyed his few days at port so far, and he doesn’t have any reasons to believe his last night in Swamp Town will be much better. He has no one to blame but himself, really, having ruled out the colonial ports over fees and Port Reaver and Skeggi under the advice of the captain of the vessel he had cheaply chartered.

Now, in hindsight, he can piece together that the reason as to why the transport had been so cheap might be tied to the captain’s reticence at the idea of mooring anywhere but at the lawless mudscape Filippo is currently traversing.

The name, at the least, is fitting, as Swamp Town is not built on a shored-up piece of swampland or somewhere within the vicinity of one, but on top of the brackish stretch of “terrain” itself. The buildings, if they can be called that, are a mesh of stilts lopsided and uneven, stilts supporting wooden buildings which look even more waterlogged than the plant life around them. The thatch roofs are either just laid upon clearly new buildings or rotting down into the rooms of the huts. From what Filippo has learned, most men don’t consider repairs after what they call the “rainy season” worthwhile in the sorry settlement.

Filippo cannot fathom the idea of leaving one’s home in such a sorry state of disrepair, having left his family’s modest state in his widowed mother’s care.

The streets, if they are even worth that name, are barely more than stretches of swampland made walkable by the laying down of stretches of wood. Wood which much like the huts tends to be either just laid or half-submerged into the sludge and slimy with it.

It’s a labor to move through the town, but at least he can consider it good training for his expedition into the fabled long lost city of the watchers. The map to which he’s made sure to keep driest of all his belongings.

His men aren’t with him, mostly focused as they are in the gathering of supplies, a week's worth if they don’t waste it on rum, and enjoyment of what few creature comforts are hidden in the less warped huts of the village-turned mire.

Maybe a lesser man would have worried enough to take a bodyguard or two with him. But what's Calderara have to worry about with his rapier on his belt and his well-fitted breastplate on him?

No, instead he walks alone using the directions given to him by a helpful and smiling tavernkeep. There’s little in the way of hospitality from the men who have found themselves turned into locals of such a place, but he’s interestingly found them all to be helpful as long as he makes his plans and contacts clear.

Now, there’s not much to differentiate hut from hut as they have been built haphazardly and scattered between the mangroves. Luckily, Filippo is not looking for a hut. What he is looking for is a dinghy of dark wood, strung between two trees on the larger side of the scale and with a sailcloth secured to both trunks acting as both roof for the dinghy-turned camp and as a hammock.

The man who waits for him by said tarp is his objective, the contact given to him who shall know how to interpret the map and take his party to the massive skull of gold that is the Watcher.

Barra the Explorer is… Close enough to how his contact described him. He appears to be in his late twenties, close in age to himself, nape of the neck-length curly red hair is his most prominent feature, it isn't dirty but hasn't been cut by someone skilled in years, something that doesn’t surprise Filippo considering that there’s likely not much demand for barbers in Swamp Town.

A face full of freckles and a couple scars from little nicks cover the Albionese mans’ rosy cheeks as he cheerfully salutes, meeting the Tilean’s handshake with drowsy eyes but a confident smirk.

Barra the Entrepreneur, Albionese exile and information broker of Swamp Town.​

“Don Barra?”

“Barra alright, not so sure about the don part my friend… Felipe?” Asks the islander heathen.

“Filippo, actually!”

“Ah yes, my apologies my lord.” The redhead bows. This pleases Filippo, who while happy to take on necessary partners, had hoped his co-conspirators would keep in mind his status as heir apparent to one of the great families of Verezzo.

“No offense taken, I’ve seen now with my own eyes how information only reaches these shores as a trickle, and often a muddy trickle at that!” He jests.

“Quite alright sir, wouldn’t have said it better myself!” Agrees the guide. “Now, I understand you have the map with you my lord?”

“Indeed I do, and by Myrmidia did it cost me, so I hope it’ll be a worthwhile investment.” He laughs as he pulls the rolled-up piece of parchment from its container, passing it to the woodsman. As Barra inspects it with avid eyes, humming to himself about some “Toskitl crossing,” Filippo in turn inspects the man.

He supposes his accouterments for the expedition, alongside his supplies, are kept inside the boat, as the loose cotton shirt and equally loose pants seem quite ill suited for traversing the jungles of Lustria.

“Yes, yes… I see, well I will take some time to trace our route.” Decides Barra. “But I assure you it’ll be within schedule for us to leave tomorrow. So if everything is of my lords’ liking…?”

“Oh it very much is. You will meet us tomorrow at the piers, I must say I find the tales of the murderous nature of this land quite overblown however. If half the tales told had been true, half my men would already be lost to the land!”

“Ahaha… That’s quite alright my lord, really sometimes I also feel that such tales are exaggerated as such to keep as many men as possible from gathering what the continent has to offer, why I’m proof of that! You should see what my clan looks like after a decade sending them all I’ve won here!” Boasts Barra, now the twenty-first member of Filippo Calderara’s expedition.

Felldowns’ Chandlers, The Felldowns, Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove
25th of Vorgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.12.2 1 Ik’ 15 Xul​

(8)The Felldowns, Port Reaver’s shipyard and manufacturing center is made up of a large collection of open-sky workshops, canals, drydocks and warehouses. Framed by the Freddo river’s estuary and guarded by (12)the Swampman’s Blockhouse on the west and by Port Reaver’s moat on the east overlocked by (4)the Blushing Maiden. The largest supply hub in the pirate city, (9)the Felldowns Chandlers, are located at the center of this ship repair hub.​

Stefan waits just outside of his masters’ office, nervously leaning on the wall as he tries not to listen in on the heated debate going on just a door away. He recognizes only two of the voices, Master De Curiel’s and Master Azzarello’s, from what must be half a dozen.

Fat Curiel’s doesn’t entice him, but the shipyard master’s does as he hasn’t heard or talked of the woman in a while despite how many messages he’s delivered to her apprentices and workshop. He’s not talked with her since she… “helped” him get his current position. He can’t put into words why that makes him sad or what he would even say if they did talk (as if he could ever repay her) but that doesn’t remove the feeling in his belly telling him that he should try. A feeling that has only gotten worse since his meeting with Ripface.

He, for once, isn’t carrying a message, as he’s been directly ordered to wait until the merchant has time to talk with him. What about, Stefan does not know. Hopefully not bad, but at least he’s been shaving up.

The loudness fluctuates over the next few minutes until the door opens and people begin leaving. First is Master Shipwright Azzarello, who he chooses not to approach based on how her stare looks as stone-turning as a basilisk’s, it slightly softens when she notices him, but not enough to risk wasting her time. The rest are equally important, other “leaders” within the Felldowns he’s learned to recognize even if he’s never actually talked with them.

Lastly leaves a man who Stefan has never seen before, and yet much like the king days ago instantly recognizes.

Pieter the Butcher is a massive thug, and the scariest man outside the pirate lords based in Port Reaver. Some say he’s a half ogre. Judging by his massive gut, chin-neck, hairless head and constant angered huffing, Stefan thinks the rumors are right.

He averts his gaze as the bulky man walks forwards and out, last in line out of De Curiel’s office. Pieter’s gang controls the areas immediately around the Feldowns while the Stragglers run the inner city. Stefan dares not consider getting on the man’s bad side.

He doesn’t move until the sounds of conversation from those leaving become muted.

“What’s it now?!” is the tired and angry reaction his knocking on the office door a minute later earns.

“M-me, señor De Curiel.” He answers.

“Oh, the boy Stefan, come in, come in.” The tone of voice remains tired and frustrated, but at least not directly at Stefan, just as an aura.

It’s as lavish an office as a merchant can have in Port Reaver. Which means realistically modest but far outstripping what Stefan could hope for himself. He is not ordered to sit down so he awkwardly stands in the middle of the room as his boss speaks, never raising his head from the parchment he's intently reading.

“You are my fastest boy and you’ve shown yourself competent so far, so from now on,” He starts as he takes his quill, and dabs it into an inkpot. “You will be working as my direct throughline to my and Azzarellos’ newest client.”

“Sir-”

“I’m not done explaining boy,” He cuts. “You’ll be moving out of the sleeping quarters here to that client’s locale, he’s been gracious enough to offer you a room as a cut to your wage. From now on your job will be to get anything and everything, messages or otherwise, from him to me or Azzarello as fast as possible.”

“Oh… Who…?”

“Congratulations boy,” The merchant uncaringly offers him the parchment, which Stefan now realizes is a signed contract of some kind. “You have been promoted to direct messenger between the Felldowns and Von Danling’s dealings.”

“Von… Danling?” Stefan asks as he mechanically grabs the document.

“The wizard, boy, the king’s wizard. You are going to be living and working as his errand boy from now on. And before you beg, my hands are tied, the king recommended you to him and this is getting me in his good graces.” He gruffly finishes. “Now go, gather your things and get out of my sight.”

“Ye-yes sir.” Stefan is dumbfounded but starts to turn and walk away, his head battered by the terrifying prospects of a mage’s masterdom.

“And boy, try not to get turned into a toad will you? I can’t rehire you if he boils you alive.” Laughs Stefans now ex-boss as the door closes behind him.

Ezcocotli Gate, Pahuax, SJungles of Pahualaxa
25th of Vorgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.12.2 1 Ik’ 15 Xul​

“Cargo secured?” Asks Elma.

“Yes!” Offers one of the skinks as he secures a rope around a basket tied to the flank of a meek hydrodon.

“Beasts?”

“Ready.” Answers her brother with a shout from the frill of the lead stegadon all the way at the head of the caravan, a beast she believes he’s especially fond of by the name of Wajgrani.

“Itinerary?” She asks her assistant, one of her apprentices, a cute and blond thing by the name of Astrid.

“Northeast alongside the causeway to the Temple of Constellations for 10 days, a day to rest and trade. Then seven to eight days east until the first warmblood settlement. Another day to rest. Eleven days along the coast to Sudburg, there for as long as it takes. And the same trip backwards once we are done.” Helpfully recites the blonde-braided girl as she climbs up the nets thrown from the side of another one of the beasts of burden, pushed upwards by a helpful saurus as she parrots Elma’s own plans.

“Excellent, is our detail ready then?”

“It is.” Answers a gruff saurus knight, Actepa'ek, in charge of the frugal but adequate detachment her brother has collected from between his friends.

“Then what do we wait for, all these metals aren’t going to trade themselves are they?” She clicks with her tongue, the universal saurian term for “let’s get going.”

Under her feet, the howdah starts moving. The caravan, more than two hundred strong between warm and cold blooded members, picks up the pace as they leave Pahuax behind through the Ezcocotli Gates. It ought to be a good trip in more ways than one, she’s great at planning them out after all.

 

I wonder how much do you all like the art I embed, should I use official and canon illustrations or stick to what I comm and am given from artists I collaborate with?
As always thanks to my friend Legion for his model of Chorai, to the artist Haunted Muppet for the sketches of Barra and once more to Planjanusza for his Port Reaver map. As an aside, 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 (where by the way chapters of this story will be posted a day early usually).
P.S. Work on the bestiary continues at an steady pace

 

Chapter 11: Transportation of Goods

Geheimnistag, also known as Geheimnisnacht Eve, the Day of Mystery, and the Floating Holiday in the Empire, "Winter's Eve" in Bretonnia; "Twilight's Tide" to the Elves or Ar'Uzkul to the Dwarfs, is a day that marks the time when the dark moon Morrslieb and the white moon Mannslieb are both full in the night sky. This occurs only once per year for the Known World and is considered a time when the veil between the mortal world and other planes of existence becomes thin, sometimes dangerously so.

-Excerpt of The Holiest Days, by Border Prince Scholar Bari of Nicolas.

I’ve heard many a tall tale from those who claim to have explored Lustria, and I know well how to shive the truth amongst the boasts. If they ever describe an event under Morrslieb’s pale green hue, for example, I know them to be lying rats. Morrslieb does not dare glow in Lustria, lest they get fed up with it and pluck the cursed moon from the sky like a rotten apple from the tree.

-Words of Johann Beckhein, renowned explorer.

Temple of Constellations, Jungles of Pahualaxa
Geheimnisnacht, 2538 IC /40.0.9.12.10 9 Ok 3 Yaxk'in'​

The Temple of Constellations is quite a sight to behold, even for one such as Roland, who remembers well a hatchling-hood amongst the massive ziggurats of ever-ashy Pahuax. But its grandness does not come from any particularly massive structure of beautifully carved rock like the Ashen Ziggurat or the dark luster of the sky-spearing Obsidian Column. No, what the Temple of Constellations is, as Roland attempts to see it from his vantage point atop one of its many shrines, is that it is expansive.

Expansive enough, he’s realized by now, that one doesn’t truly enter it, after all, how can a caravan “enter” a landmark so large that it is impossible to wall or remarkate. The Temple of Constellations stretches over jungle, cleared field, lake, river and hill alike, hundreds and hundreds of shrines placed at seemingly random distances and intervals, some hidden amongst the trees in their lonesome, some clustered in clearings or surrounded by the wooden palisades and fencing of Lizardmen communes. Clusters like the one his sister has quickly turned into a modest but bustling trading spot.

Well, Roland knows himself to be wrong, he’s heard from many a terradon rider, and even seen glimpses through Tlahui’s painfully contrasting and distantly clear vision that the hundreds of shrines are very much not random, but a map.

Not a map of Lustria, or the Isthmus or even the wider World Sphere. It maps the immensity of the Old One Sea above them. This shrine he walks the cupola of is nothing more than the anchor point to the star that is the base of the Lone Horned Packbeast constellation. He’ll attempt to look at it later, once the night comes.

For now, as a local Skink climbs up the wall of the shrine to gather him, he has more pressing matters to attend to.

Both he and the local climb down together, and he is soon guided to a small section of the “market” where a Saurus warrior of green-banded scales inspects a large macuahuitl, the variety and size that even a Saurus ought to wield using both hands. The warrior in question, his crest decorated with shards of finely carved bone, inspects the engraving on the blade’s golden mountings before taking a thick and larger leather piece offered by the Skink who manages the stall filled with weapons, both finished and unfinished.

The saurus notices Roland, introducing himself as Alpha Talon Uccuchtan before grabbing hold of the rope, tightened as it is to the log that makes up a corner of the space with a few loops. The saurus doesn’t swing the weapon, Roland has seen him already test the balance so, instead carefully taking a few of the obsinite edges and metallic hooks of the sword-mace to test with glides and tugs at the thick cured skin.

The movements do not have the smooth glide one would hope for under the best circumstances, but it does well enough to satisfy Uccuchtan, who soon enough is untying his own macuahuitl from one of the belts strapped to his leg-guard and exchanging the visibly well used weapon for the new one.

Obsinite does not blunt, chipping it as one does stone only makes it sharper, but there’s only so much usage and chipping one can put the blades through before they lose too much of the glassy material to be practical or become brittle enough to shatter. Uccuchtan’s own seem to be almost ready to suffer the later, and its wooden and metallic components are clearly worn down enough too.

The old blade will find its way to Pahuax, or another plaza or temple-precinct perhaps, outfitted with a weapon-crafters' commune. To be fixed if it can be or more likely broken down to make a new one.

“What does Old-Blood Kowaal seek of us?” asks Uccuchtan once the exchange is complete, biding Roland to walk by him as the two watch the caravan’s and temple communities’ resources exchange hands and be accounted for in clay tablets and knotted into khipus.

“We are to decrease this dry season.” Answers Roland as his sister waves at him, stopping for a second from her knotting of one such long record-keeping cord.

“Less patrols?”

“No, patrol as always, you will be receiving newbloods soon, if you plan on bolstering even. Simply allow for deeper penetration.”

“Newbloods are no good for patrolling, too excited to sink their teeth into whatever they can find during their first outings in the jungle, If I put them to patrol all we will get is a failure to follow the directive, they will be too excited by the prospect of their first pitched battles and ambushes to let the warmbloods lure themselves.” Snorts the jungle-stalking warrior.

“Shall we send for a messenger then?”

“No need, I’ll call in a few cohorts to edify them, less patrols that way, are we to abandon any of the outlying temples?”

“The goal is to make them relax and attempt to root themselves. Give them breathing space, do as you see fit but know there is no determinate calendar.”

“Breathing space… And then we shall constrict?”

“Whatever the Great Plan may demand.” Is Roland’s pompous attempt to explain that he does not know.

“Fair enough, this is the right moment to do so, as well.”

“Uptick?” Roland inquiries.

“They are tidelike, predictable and constant, I swear on Xhokha’s mace they always start arriving by the larger batches days after Huanchi’s night, they don’t even seem to care whether the rains leave early or late.”

“They cross the entire World Pond to get here, they likely don’t have the ability to know, rather than not caring.”

“Speaking for yourself there, xho’za’khanx?” The saurus nips at his bodily hereditament.

Roland forces himself not to visibly bristle, he has a task to commit to. “Anything of note this season, though? I shall report upon our ret-”

CRicccck KA-DUUUM!!

Roland jumps at the sudden explosion of noise, raising his sight to the skies above to follow it, finding nothing but the mostly cloudless infinity he had been gazing at mere minutes ago.

“Was that…?”

“The Incessant? Yes it is, you ought to have expected it, the dawn approaches, and with it comes the Incessant Storm. You must surely have visited the complex before?” The saurus asks, half mocking and half truly curious.

“I have, not here at Lone-Horned Packbeast but I have, just never in the dry season.”

“Ah, that I can better understand xho’za’khanx, I too was once surprised by The Incessant’s ability to clamor every night, even without moisture to draw clouds from. It’ll get better at night, at least in the dark, without the glaring sun the lightning is visible, and catches you less off guard. And Lone-Horned Packbeast is near the center, we receive some of the longest bouts of lightning-bolting.”

“It is… Disconcerting.”

“It is, some of us permanent residents don’t ever grow accustomed. But…” The saurus grabs hold of a roasted cuyu from a nearby roasting skewer, finishing his comment as the rodent’s bones crunch in his mouth. “I hope you’ll be here for a fight under it, it is a truly godly thing to experience.”

“Not for the foe, I’ll risk the guess.”

“Oh on the contrary,” Uccuchtan swallows the lump of roasted meat and bone shards. “I would go as far as to say that they tend to reminisce of their gods even more fervently than we do, after all, they are the ones about to be drowned out by The Incessant.”

Toskitl River, Jungles of Pahualaxa
3rd of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.12.13 12 B’en 6 Yaxk'in'​

Filippo Calderara’s corpse lies face down on the shallow water that makes up one of the many reedbeds that dot the Upper Toskitl’s course. A lesser rylok, a carrion eating parrot of colorful feathers and bald, wrinkly face nips and tears at the most easily accessible area of meat in his half-submerged body, his anus. The animal is far from as filthy as one would expect considering its point of entry to the source of red -and still lukewarm- meat, but the dead nobleman’s guts are long emptied. An emptiness which is partially the reason for his departure from the world of the living.

Around it, other corpses lie hidden amongst the reeds, surrounded by clouds of botflies and death flies, which are themselves falling prey to diminutive feathered hunters like the colorful motmots which swoop for them. Just outside of the reeds, upstream, the noise of a few carrion storks tearing into a much more savaged body, loudly snapping, tearing and stepping on the water with their long legs or clacking with their beaks as they swallow pieces of manflesh whole.

The bird must be quick with its eating, for it is clever, but not strong or threatening enough to face many of the other flying carrion seekers of the jungle, even now as it perches on the bloodied breaches of the man, it can see the water carry strings of blood downstream, and the things lured by the taste of blood in water will be even more dangerous to it. It’ll likely be no more than a few minutes before birds like itself or crocodilians steal its meal.

A few paces away lies another smart, but feeble, creature which is making use of such a situation in the closest way it can. This creature does not tear at the bodies’ natural openings, but instead it rummages their loose coverings, pulling and unhooking small shiny items, a game the vulturine parrot would love to take part in if it wasn’t in such a rush.

This creature is, again, also in a rush, it may be able to throw rocks at birds like the rylok or keep the stork away with a long gnarly branch, but once something with teeth bites into the corpses, it will lose whatever they still have on them.

The parrot is observant, having followed the human troupe for a few hours as they stumbled in and out of their river-side camp, holding their bellies and producing both pungent odors and strained groans. It had swooped in on the first one to fall down, but was originally shooed away by one of the healthier warmbloods, eventually landing on this fattier one as more and more fell.

Not all of them had fallen, one, larger and taciturn had seemingly been in good shape, even if agitated by the demises of its kind one soon after the other.

But that one is dead too, in the thickest of the reeds lies its body, hidden by view and brought there by a trap. The lesser rylok has sampled it already, having greatly enjoyed the spillage of its cracked skull, opened for the bird’s enjoyment by a sudden blow to the head from behind with a rock large enough to require both arms to be held.

Held, of course, no longer. Discarded in the reeds by the last standing human.

Barra the Entrepreneur’s breathing is shallow and ragged, tired of the breakneck speed at which he is ransacking body after body. Pack after pack and satchel after satchel, he’s already half-filled the wet bag that rests by his feet on the shallows. If one were to simply take notice of Barra’s breathing being so exerted or the fact that his clothing is clearly soaking with the Toskitl’s water and his own sweat, it would be easy to connect that something has just happened.

What that something is, Barra has no one around whom demands for explanations is to be given, so he hurriedly finishes stealing the belt off of the last corpse, looks around himself to make sure no beast larger than the busy storks have arrived, and makes to leave. He almost drops his -now much heavier- bag and even stumbles, but arrives at the now deserted camp nonetheless.

He carelessly leaves the bag behind as he darts for the few tents, visibly more meant for the climate of the owners than of the region they are in. Light wool canvases made heavy with the absorbed humidity of days of travel through swampland and jungle make for poor living, but have not yet had the time to truly break down.

Barra runs for the entry to the closest one, one of the four meant to give the expedition sleeping space. Barra had been offered a spot within another one, but having spent the nights under the canopy instead only sees the insides of any other than Calderara’s now that it is to be taken by the jungle’s creeping vines as tribute.

He doesn’t find much, but the few coins, knives and other nicknacks he takes, he knows he’ll be able to sell in a good while for what passes for a fair price in the Lustrian ports. Armor and weapons are there too, but they are much too heavy to be worth taking. And even if he had the means, he knows well they aren’t worth it, if there’s something the ports aren’t lacking in, it's the equipment of the long gone.

It takes him all morning to fill the bag, more because of having to empty it to winnow out what he’s taking than for lacking things to take. A fight within him occurs over exactly what alcohol to take, what to drink there, and what to abandon.

But eventually, once the worst of the midday sun is gone and he has helped himself to what remains of the dwindling but fresh rations -certainly much less than a party of such size ought to have had- does he start walking downstream.

Well, he does quietly go back to near the reedbed, spying from behind a large fern as two amphibian beasts, each as long as two men are tall, fight over one of the bodies. Each bright orange animal pulls, one having bitten the demarcated and shredded corpse from the left underarm, the other sinks its teeth into the opposing right side of the groin. As they shake the body with their long necks without letting go, their fight becomes one akin to what one would expect of two dogs fighting over a bone behind a butcher’s shop.

Barra makes no sound as the popping of tearing joints starts, but does gag when the body truly starts to tear at the “seams.” He averts his gaze, but soon finds a similarly gruesome sight in the shape of a duo of two-legged reptiles chasing each other on nimble feet between the rocks of the opposite embankment, one tries to nip at the other’s mouth, hoping to steal the long trail of guts that hang from tits pinprick-teeth filled mouth.

Barra makes to leave quietly, even if he knows the assorted beasts are too busy to consider a hunt worthwhile by this point. With a fair distance left to the river, he follows it more by sound than by sight.

It won’t be until almost midnight when Barra gets closer a considerable distance downstream, finding his rowboat where he left it.

He throws the sack in and quickly unties the boat from the tree it’s secured to. Once he boards he does not get prepared to row. Swamp Town is a few days downstream. Said days will be dangerous, but not an unknown risk.

After all, there’s no man alive who has traveled the Toskitl more than Barra the Entrepreneur. Often accompanied on the way upstream.

Even more often alone on the way downstream.

Von Danling’s Tower, Outskists of Port Reaver, Settler’s Cove
3rd of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.12.13 12 B’en 6 Yaxk'in'​

Stefan likes running.

Stefan hates running downstairs.

Stefan loathes running upstairs.

And more specifically:

Stefan is considering throwing himself at the Pozo’s filthy waters headfirst and with his mouth open over having to climb the spiraling staircase of the wizard’s tower one more time.

And yet, he climbs them at a run, because Mannan be damned he loves the room at the bottom of them enough to grind his legs away for it.

The door he finds at the top, like most of the tower’s furnishings, is clearly a recent product of the Felldowns’ own work. It’s not that he can recognize some specific wood-worker’s labor, he knows because three days ago he must have run by the men bringing it to the tower and installing it at least six times.

Wizards, Stefan is quickly learning, are as worrisome as they are busy. The green wizard, Cryston von Danling, spends most of his time walking around the fields while muttering to himself or disappearing for entire days into the forest.

But today the man is in his study, else Stefan would not be making the trip.

He knows not to wait outside or knock on the door, he won’t receive an answer. Instead he lets himself in through the unlocked doorway and into the study.

It’s brimming with plants, and he’d swear every single time he visits there’s more and more. Many hang from the ceiling rafters and drape over the walls, others grow lined up in large pots flanking the open windows or in smaller ones on desks and shelves. Most are flowering or even fruiting, and Stefan is sure he’s seen some visibly grow just over the last week.

Stefan doesn’t say anything as he approaches the ancient mage, who likewise doesn’t acknowledge him and continues to pour over a tome so old most of the pages are clearly loose from the spine and simply stacked within the covers. Stefan doesn’t wait to be noticed either, he leaves the missive from the king on the table and starts heading back out.

“Tell me Stefan,” The voice rustles like ready-to-fall leaves. “Have you ever been to the Reaver’s Henge? Perhaps during some youthful bout of exploration?” The tone is not that of a real question, more probing than curious.

Stefan turns around, the mage’s eyes are not looking at him, but at the letter now held in bony fingers.

“Reaver’s Henge…? No, no I don’t think so sir, but no need to bother, I’ll get there as soon as…”

“It’s not a place in the city.” He is cut of. “Beyond the Freddo, you will be going there in two day’s time with a few dozen workmen.”

“Beyond…? SirI!” Stefan is gripped by sudden worry. “No one goes beyond the Freddo sir, only the explorers and merchants.”

“That’s not no one then.” Smirks the wizard as he gets up.

“Oh, uh, I mean no one, no one who…”

“Oh I know what you mean, well have you been to the Swampman’s Blockhouse then?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the danger of walking a few paces west of it?” He laughs. Stefan can’t articulate how insane it sounds to him being asked to walk into the jungle as if it were another errand. “And don’t fear, between me and the king’s men, your biggest worry will be making sure the mosquitoes don’t discover you have fresh blood.” The joke isn’t funny to Stefan, stories of men being exsanguinated to death by monstrous mosquitoes come to mind instead.

It only takes a few steps for the wizard, short and yet looming, to be in front of Stefan. He forces himself to look up because past conversations have taught him formality is less than productive around men who treat plants more like people than actual people.

“Tell me, young man, have you truly never heard of the Reaver’s Last Henge?”

“No sir, don’t even know what a henge is.” He admits.

 

I'm curious as too how many of you saw something along the lines of Barra's scene coming...
As an aside, 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.
P.S. Work on the bestiary continues at an steady pace, I'm currently working on Lustrian Amphibians. Something else that is good news is that in 1-2 weeks my entry to the ongoing short story contest will be upgraded and edited to be posted in ao3.

 

Chapter 12: Building a Bridge
A decade we spent in Lustria. And in those ten years, my legion and I built not a single permanent bridge. We became experts at crossing rivers, at building barges large enough to carry the entire regiment across the Güiri-Noko over a few trips in a single day or at safely wading our way across with minimal losses of equipment or men. I cannot even remember how many canoes and rafts we constructed. Had we saved up the wood, we may have been able to sail back home aboard an armada of our own making.

But never bridges, at least never permanent ones. Pontoon bridges or such things are planks, rope bridges or not-yet rotten through tree trunks were often used by my engineers to save us time when encountering a ravine or a river we knew we’d have to cross multiple times due to its meanders. But never permanent bridges.

Why not? Because it was impossible. We tried, as the most careful reader will notice that I claimed that we never built a permanent bridge. Permanent is here our key word and the source of much of our hardships. Little is permanent in Lustria outside of how deadly it is and the constructions of the Lagartos. We built many bridges in our first few years. They all succumbed to the elements: Rotted away, destroyed by floods, pushed aside and smashed over by massive beasts of the waters or trampled by those of the land, overtaken by plantlife until they became untraversable or collapsed under the added weight… And in one unique case, literally devoured by a variety of the region’s wood-munching armored catfish.

If a captain orders his engineers to select a location for the establishment of a bridge, or his men to gather the materials to commence construction, I fully endorse his officers and advisors to exhort a moderate amount of mutineering, for either that man’s mind has been overtaken by the jungle fevers, or he never was fit to lead to begin with.

-Death and Riches: Memories of Estalian mercenary Captain Fernando Pirazzo.

Toskitl River, Jungles of Pahualaxa​

7th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.1 7 Ixmix’ 14 Yaxk'in'​

Oxyi-Cho'a has long stalked the ever changing mosaic of environments that make up the marches of Pahualaxa. The jungle may seem static if one scouts it by climbing atop a tree and scouting from above the canopy, just as the monkeys and soaring birds do. But that is only because such animals lack his kind’s keen eye for minutiae.

The jungle is ever changing and only as homogeneous as it wants to be. One might find themselves bounding across the trunks and long, horizontal branches of mighty oldwood trees only to be cut of by a section of jungle overcome with vines so thick as to make it impossible for others to flower under their compressing shadow, or a region of younger trees, perhaps the result of a wilfire’s rampage many seasons ago or the feasting of a particularly large herd of brontodons, growing so close together and so straight as to compete for the sun’s rays, forming a natural stockade.

And that’s if Oxyi-Cho'a’s ever-shifting eyes only account for what kind of tree’s bark he ought to emulate in his disguise. Pahualaxa’s mosaic is furthermore divided by all manners of traits. In some places the rains of the season, as they are pelting him this very moment, drain well into the soil and the streams that demarcate the land, in others, it accumulates, creating all manners of watering holes, inundated forests and temporary swamps and ponds for amphibians to lay their eggs in or for many to drink without worrying of what may lurk below.

The opposite happens in much of the jungle over the dry season. Often the water levels may lower or visibly drop, but enormous sections of his home region will never experience true dryness. Others will, and the drying and dying plants may soon become kindling for forest fires under the influence of the Incessant. This has only recently begun , with those areas most susceptible to the lessening of rains already becoming cleared away into small patches of more open forestry.

Massive rivers, however, are strong enough that the half a year of lessened rains barely affects them. One such river is the Toskitl, which he observes as it flows slowly and sings well below the branch that the chameleon skink has chosen as his vantage.

Oxyi-Cho'a of Pahuax, Chameleon Skink Stalker.​

For now, Oxyi-Cho'a is foregoing his usual camouflage and is letting his natural green scaling pop, as neither of his eyes spy possible threats below. The waters are certainly deep enough to host beasts which may be able to drag him down, but he is too high for a leaping allagart or snake to make the attempt, and both sides of the river are clear in account of how the steep banks in this particular section make them unsuitable as point for animals to come down and drink or to attempt a crossing.

On the other hand, those same banks are full of small holes, the dugout homes of riverine birds in nesting season. Oxyi-Cho'a takes notes of them, he shall return later in the day once he is done searching, a dozen or so will make a nice meal alone with what he might hunt come sundown.

It had been an interesting find, as abandoned warmblood camps always are. Disease, most likely, those of the stomach which warmbloods who carelessly hunt are most susceptible to. He has always been quite amused by such a shortcoming, that warmbloods are of such weak constitution that eating the fresh meat of common wildlife will still kill them if they just so happen to carry some disease his own people don’t even have a name for by way of how mild its effects usually are

Still, an abandoned camp and its bodies are a common sight during such long range patrols. What isn’t, is a total loss of life. Usually he would find one or two bodies, for warmbloods tend to allow for about half or two thirds of their forces to succumb over long weeks before they surrender and begin their retreat or die facing one last challenge. Only in those situations does he tend to find larger massacres. Unless whatever they fought had an appetite, in those cases scraps are all he has to guess group sizes by.

But a complete party of thieves and plunderers all succumbing to one single sickness in a single night? Unheard of, highly unlikely.

Oxyi-Cho'a’s first theory had been the worst possible one (as it has always served him well to do so), that of intervention of the plague-ridden Xha-kota or of another repugnant anathemic pestilence. But investigation has proven him happily wrong. The half carved body of a rotted mazatls a good few paces off the camp -far enough for human snouts not to notice the smell amongst all the others of the jungle- had been clue enough of methodology. Ransacked bodies of motiff.

Betrayal, disgusting. A behavior unthinkable for his kith and kin, and yet so very common amongst the younger races. So very intriguing…

What can Oxyi-Cho'a do but seek out this uniquely unpleasant specimen?

Having rested for the worst of the midday heat, his search continues. He stretches out his limbs, loosening his prehensile tail’s grip on the large branche he’s used for his stop. Finally, his eyes twist around, giving him a full view of the world that surrounds him as he checks his satchel for his darts. He’s far from running low, probably enough for the rest of his patrol unless his prey becomes even more interesting.

Salamander Cove, Isthmus of Lustria​

8th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.2 8 Ik’ 15 Yaxk'in'​

The sound of a marching caravan is far from a soothing one, but it has a certain calming effect for most. The droning noise of just-in-sync-enough steps, the natural rise and fall of conversations, the seemingly random noises of animals(both of the caravan and the surrounding greenery) and the near constant sound of uprooted and cracked wood as Wajgrani pushes aside the greenwood and young sapling trees which have made the path narrower since their last trading trip.

Roland enjoys it a lot, personally, it’s not calm or quiet but it is a comfortable kind of busyness. It is as if a small and close-knit section of the barrios back in Pahuax has sprouted legs and started crawling its way somewhere interesting, taking with it a good section of the community on its back. Even their surroundings are amicable, birds by the dozen follow them -obviating Tlahui, who as always flies high above- in order to peck and snack at the fresh food made available by their trampling of the soil. From grubs and earthworms to tender roots and the ruined nests of different animals. And the birds aren’t alone. As always, Roland is subject to the states of leaping monkeys and lizards resting on branches. Their eyes, without intelligence but full of instinctual understanding, follow him. So would those of peccaries and small predators, were they not skittish or clever enough to avoid the caravan altogether.

Some part of him can’t help but loathe how his… Condition worsens over time. How maybe there’ll soon be a day when the jungle’s life will be so blatant in its attraction to him that he’ll lose all ability to subtly or silently walk the jungle. But he squashes it down like the slug of a thought it is. His is a gift from an Old One, one he was bound to receive by the Great Plan’s itinerary. Does the warrior complain when Tlanxla allows his mace to strike true? Then why should a herald complain when Itzil makes it so he may even communicate with the humblest creatures of the world?

The sudden weight of a carrion bird on his shoulder shocks him out of his mud-brain thoughts. It is a testament to how pointlessly useless such musings are that he hadn’t even noticed the large avian’s approach. And for once he does agree with Tlahui on how deserving he is of the pecs and berating squaks he receives. The message is clear, and he gives a silent thank as Tlahui takes off once more, loudly beating his long wings as he skirts the treeline in his ascent, scaring off the great majority of the gathered menagerie.

“Guess it’s time…” Roland mutters as he gets to walking,

“Chorai!” He calls out to the dark-banded saurus as he trots up to the alpha talon. “We are close enough.” He comments.

“Are you sure you only want to take one cohort? We can spare some more, still a long way from our destination.”

“Thank you, but we will manage, we work together often and they have already visited that sinking locale. And in any case, we don’t expect to have anything that will require transportation back. The Fourth Race breeds easily, but not under those conditions.”

“Fair enough, and may you travel safely, heard from the local communes that the salamanders have started their breeding season, never good to be around them just before the dry season hits its peak.”

“Tell me about it!” Roland jokes as he starts walking off to tell his sister about their short-term separation. “The handlers back in Pahuax have started looking like huanchi’s cats from all the soot and singeing!”

It earns him a barking laugh from the saurus.

As he walks off, he comes upon Ra'kaka, one of said cohort It barely takes a gesture for the skink to take notice and start calling for the rest of his cohort with chirps Roland simply can’t emulate, faster that way.

Soon enough, after a moderate amount of ear-pulling and “Don’t you dare get into trouble!” From Elma, he and the small cohort of forty skinks have disappeared into the jungle south of the southwest-northeast route the caravan is taking, bound for Swamp Town.

As he told Uccuchtan, he doesn’t expect that he will have to deal with much beyond the actual caravan’s objective in the western reaches of Pahualaxa and the warmblood ports of the Salamander’s Cove. He is used to playing his sibling’s guard huagerdon. But he is much more comfortable doing this, following Old-Blood Kowaal and High Priest Xukto'er’s orders, themselves passing onto Roland his tasks within their lord’s strategy.

Settlers’ Cove, Isthmus of Lustria​

8th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.2 8 Ik’ 15 Yaxk'in'​

He is being watched.

There’s no uneventful boat trip in Lustria, which is already an understatement. But by all accounts only almost dying twice makes this one one of the less horrible ones by a wide margin.

He is being watched.

First one had been the usual. A waterbeast, black-scaled caiman, attempting to snatch him from the too-large-for-a-single-man boat as he had been resting on the lip of it last morning. Barra has managed to jump out of the way without getting his arm or shirt snagged between the animal’s teeth, and as terrifying as the sudden attack had been, there is little an animal smaller than the boat you are on can do to get to you. Still, a heart stopping experience, next time he should remember not to get comfortable sunning himself on the edge. The boat’s keelson is always safer. Unless there’s hungry piranhas or border snakes in the water, but what are the odds of that?

He is being watched.

Second one? Second one somehow manages to keep him on his toes even a day after. An animal attack he can deal with just fine, everything he’s ever seen in Lustria outside or inside of Swamp Town has tried killing or eating him at least once. With the modest exception of what animals he has eaten himself. But the staring? The staring is much, much worse.

He is being watched.

He had never experienced it himself before, only ever heard of it in the taverns until now. He doesn’t even have any true proof beyond the heaviness in his belly and the nerves he cannot shake off no matter how much stolen grog he drinks. But it is there. It very much is and it’s worse than any constricting snake’s hold in its oppressiveness. More encompassing than diving into quicksand or a swallowing mire’s hold on the struggling body.

He is being watched.

One of them, one of the coldbloods, is looking for him, at him. It has been doing so for as long as he’s been awake today, likely since much earlier. No matter how fast the current and his oar take him downstream, he feels watched. No matter how many bends in the rivers he sails through, which should have forced a persecutor by foot to take longer and harder paths by food or claw, he still feels observed like a naturalist’s specimen. He has forced his boat between the narrowest trunks and thickest tree covers of the swamps, so narrow as to force him to lie on the boat’s bottom and still have to lean backwards to avoid the branches snagging him, and yet the eyes which stare at him but which he can’t see remain.

He is being watched.

It is not like the danger of being near a wild animal searching for food, he has learned to handle that. It is not the risk of the diseases and fevers that the hair, water and food he eats every day carry, that he risks every day, for that risk is a calculated one, a gamble he accepts he must make every day. And it is not the threat of violence from one of his fellows, that he has turned playing with such a danger into a profession, a testament for how long he has been scamming the men who come to the coves.

He is being watched.

No, it is a deeper danger, a more meaningful one. One he hasn’t felt since his exile, since he was caught red-handed by that filthy bastard Aignéis. The kind of intrusion that gets a man cast out from his clan and sold as a slave to a Sartosan slave ship. A lack of privacy not even his years as a slave had forced upon him. And now, suddenly and despite being a free man, all it takes is two slitted eyes he can’t even pinpoint for the judging and disgusted stares to return.

He is being watched.

At first he tried to act unaware, to trick the thing much like how he’d tricked many men. Lure it into a confident attack or into losing interest. He soundly lost that contest of patience.

He is being watched.

He’s grabbed drifting branches from the water and brandished them as weapons, throwing them wherever he might have felt the staring coming from. It has obviously not worked.

He is being watched.

All he can hope for is that the closer he gets to Swamp Town and its business and noise, the more likely it will be for the stalker to relent. Or at least, that the putrid settlement’s noises and mayhem will make it easier to ignore.

Barra the Exile is being watched. And he can only hope that his watcher does not see him as anything more than a bizarre curiosity.

Swampman’s Blockhouse, Port Reaver’s Western Outskirts, Settlers’ Cove​

8th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.2 8 Ik’ 15 Yaxk'in'​

Some part of Stefan had always expected that the men and women who he serves as courier for -people as important as the itinerant pirate lords, a literal wizard of the king himself- would act in the imposing ways he has always heard they would. Mystical and half-crazed mages, a ruthless boar-tusked pirate king, scheming and mysterious faith women and master craftsmen.

And yet, as he watches the third heated argument between such figures since the bridge began construction, he begins to understand how truly small the divide between an argument between two street rats over scraps, two thugs over territories and a king and a priestess over politics can be. And all over what? An unfinished timber bridge half-hanging over the slow-flowing brackish waters of the Freddo’s mouth? It’s not even the only one they will have to build. The path carved out by the river leaves a large island (although not large enough that Stefan can’t see the other side of it from the blockhouse) which means two separate bridges will need to be done before the Freddo can be crossed by foot once.

The Western Outskirts of Port Reaver, as informally demarcated by the Freddo River’s delta. Here stands the Felldowns (8) and its profitable Chandlers (9). From this area the ancient Council Rock fortress (3), symbolic seat of power for the city’s pirate council, is easily visible. Nearby the secluded Eye Bay can be found, and so can the long abandoned and mysterious structures of the derelict Reaver’s Last Henge (11).​

First argument had been between Lady Azzarello and the Jade wizard. Over wood allotment of all things. Because if the Reaver’s Last Henge, whatever it is, is on the other side of the river, it needs to be worked on… Well a bridge is the best solution to get laborers and materials to and from the Felldowns and the site. But according to the master shipwright it isn’t. In her eyes, it is a “foolish waste of good wood in the name of a grass munching vagrant’s ramblings.” Stefan fondly remembers the two -one usually mysterious, the other ever dignified- breaking into cursing and name calling each other to the point that the King had intervened.

Second argument was somehow even more entertaining and an almost repeat, only this time between the King and the shipwright, with an amused wizard hiding his involvement by giving Stefan clearly unneeded directions and superfluous orders from the side as two of the most powerful people in the city argued about patrol boats.

This third one, well this one feels very different. Some details remain the same: As in the previous two times he’s watching it all unfold from the block house's roof as he suns himself, and as the last time an amused Von Danling watches on from nearby as well, overseeing the construction of his bridge across the Freddo. The previous ones had been public outburst, this one a private one hidden by the outcrop the blockhouse is built into, carried out in the middle of the day, when all workers are away and hiding from the heat.

Stefan will not get involved, as in the previous times. But that doesn’t stop him from listening in.

“What I’m saying is that this, this is even worse of an affront to the Sea Gods than your petty attempt of a trading outpost! And you remember how Stromfels punished that insult, do you not?” The voice is beautifully smooth and calm, yet is filled with a venomous disdain.

“Forgive my blasphemy, abbess. But I’m pretty sure that if the Wrecker is the one who took offense on my investments, as you are suggesting, he would not have made it burn.” Responds with contained rage the Pirate King.

“Investments, do you hear yourself speak? You talk more like that fool Hermann than like a reaver.”

“I hear myself speak, and what I speak is the truth. This city, who you crowned me king of, belongs to me under the codes of saltwater and blood. And I’ll do as I damn please with it.”

“As is your right, so why do you bend before these sap-preserved hedge wizards and traffickers?”

“Because they bring trade, men and supplies, which this city needs. And those three bring me wealth, which I want.”

“Then take it yourself, as Manann teaches us to.”

“Why when it is easier to just make them want to do so?” The king paces well below the blockhouse, giving Stefan a chance to sneak a look.

“Because it is an insult to what the Gods of the Sea teach us. We take as we please, as is right.” Stefan spies the shape of the Abbess of the Sunken Cloister. The dusky-skinned woman is a sight to behold, and that’s coming from a fourteen year old boy who's already seen her multiple times. As always, the abbess wears her villowing dark blue robes covered with a tabard of nets, which competently hide the body underneath just not enough to unarm most men who aren’t Bastjan Borġ. Her onyx hair and robes are decorated with mother of pearl and beautifully carved shell shards. Stefan can’t stop himself from staring at the multiple-rowed shark teeth necklace that dominates her outfit, denotes her standing and, embarrassingly enough for an adolescent Stefan, seems to guide one’s eyes towards her plunging neckline by way of the arrow shapes of the teeth.

“I’m a reaver, I’m a pirate, I very much take what I want, and right now I’m taking offense at your use of ‘we’. I’m a pirate lord, you are a priestess.”

“And do I not take all and every donation freely given by the people who follow my teachings?” Sister Kelba Baħar argues once more, still smiling and testing. Stefan isn’t sure if said argument makes much sense, but then again he’s getting used to working for an ancient man whose arguments never make sense.

“Regardless, this is my city, for me to leverage in business with, and my current business involves building this bridge.”

“And drive us further into land? This city is of the sea, anchor us with your walls and bridges and investments and we will drown like fish out of water.”

“I’m not sure you’ve noticed, sister Baħar, but there’s not much shipwrecking or piracy to do around here, where most trade routes are straight lines across the sea into places where most pirates can’t follow. Here, our share of the booty comes precisely from this inland you are so terrified the sea gods will take affront in. Our gold and the gold we take from others comes from inland, so do the spices and tobacco and the slaves? Well my fellow lords don’t buy or import them to staff crews do they?”

“You will come to regret this, the Sea Gods will not take kindly to your disregarding of our ways.” The priestess begins to leave, Stefan makes sure to slink back into the heavily weathered blockhouse’s structure in case she may see him.

“I’m a reaver -as much as you want to insinuate I am not- so they will take me when they decide to, as is their right. Until then, I will continue to build my wizard’s blasphemous bridge, my walls, my ships and my trade. You, I’d suggest, should do the same. A lot of people coming in, and not all of them are that afraid of the Shark and the Storm.” Grunts the pirate king, himself leaving in the opposite direction.

“Interesting,” Muses the old voice of the Jade Wizard who, much like Stefan, has turned the blockhouse into a temporary home. Also much like Stefan, Von Danling has been listening in. “That Cloister and its pearls of wisdom has not changed a bit in all this time. Eh, at least it has a prettier face this time.”

 

Thanks to my friend Legion for the Oxyi-Cho'a model and once more to Planjanusza for his Port Reaver map.
As an aside, 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. I'm really happy to annouce that the story has reached 100 kudos as of me posting this chapter, which I will celebrate with an extra short story later this month!
P.S. Work on the bestiary continues but will slow down for a while.

 

Thanks! :]

 

Apologies for the lateness on the week's chapter, I have been really busy with my intership!
Hope the chapter and models in it make up for it!

 

Chapter 13: Rubbing of Heads

They did not talk like us, that was obvious even before we actually tried to talk. Theirs was a language of growls and click, of single-syllable words spoken with the staccato of a gun’s cocking hammer. But communication isn’t simply a matter of words. Any merchant or haggler will tell you how much shifting eyes or the twitching of palms can give away. And I, myself an accomplished duelist, will always preach the value of one’s opponent’s body language if he hopes to eke a victory out of even the most dire conditions.

But the part of body language that most of us are familiar with are our people’s mannerisms. Imperials, for example, do not greet each other with hugs or kisses as we do, instead their colder kind avoids the contact of skin on skin. One can spend entire years of his life collaborating with an Elf without ever coming closer together than an arm’s length, while the bustling field kitchens of halflings and dwarves’ workshops will make one squeeze through a proximity that will make a maiden blush.

In most of the world a raised hand can be a call to attention or a way to greet someone from afar, in the Border Princedoms the same gesture can mean a threat of the highest caliber. Bretonnians have warred and feuded over which hand of a lord should be kissed in deference, or over which knee one should kneel with when before an altar of the lady. And such differences only grow even more extreme with distance, ask the ever bowing Cathayans about their backs, and the nature of a race. Try to smack your belly against an Ogres the way they do against each other and you will find yourself smashed or strung by a piece of gut armor. The tamest of greenskin gestures will still lead to injury, as a rule.

So it should have been no surprise when, upon offering my outstretched hand for that skink to shake so long ago, I was met with a confused head tilt and chirp. A confusion that was only followed by the lizardman nipping at my finger! Oh, we almost ruined everything then and there, but diplomacy prevailed, and gave me a chance to learn and adapt.

They bow to their leaders the way we would to a liege lord, but do not reserve this gesture to nobleship, as they don’t have a form of it. Instead, they bow to their generals, elders and priests irrespective of rank: A skink priest will kneel before the sight of a warband’s crocodilian leader, even if that warband is smaller than the settlement’s average patrolling party size. To them the merit of rank is absolute, not tiered or tabulated. Only their amphibian overlords, absolute rulers and supreme mages of their massive holds, are offered enough deference to plant their muzzles on the flooring or soil.

It was strange, if invigorating, to be bowed at by forces and creatures of twice my own size or age.

But on the day to day, be it two friends settling down for a conversation or two warriors showing each other respect after a duel, head rubbing is the preferred method, whereupon two lizardmen will rub the sides of their heads against each other’s, going on to rub their shoulders and upper bodies as well if the relationship between them goes beyond acquaintanceship and into friendship or mentorhood. My men and I were quickly able to adjust to this, after all, the difference between a hug and two kisses, something we in Estalia use commonly to greet friends and family, and a “headrub” is merely a matter of impetus. We quickly learned to greet, signal and gesture as they do after learning this simple way to say hello. Even if there were some issues.

Greeting the slightly shorter but eternally hunchbacked skinks always demanded the most balance and quick-footedness. Kroxigors, on the other hand, could throw a man off his feet with a single amicable push, or a dunking of swamp muck. And saurus? Well, there were a couple memorable if macabre occurrences of men being wounded, from nick to bleeding gashes and lost eyes, because of a saurus’ effusive greeting via a reptilian head full of horns and spikes mounted on a neck as muscular as a war horse’s.

My own old helm bears many marks of such greetings. For every mark born from a deflected projectile or failed attempt at smashing my head open, there is a groove or chafing mark born from a simple and unremarkable greeting. It’s hilarious, in my opinion, that in Lustria even something as simple as an effusive hello can give a man an infected wound capable of killing him.

-Death and Riches: Memories of Estalian mercenary Captain Fernando Pirazzo.

Salamander’s Cove, Isthmus of Lustria​

10th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.4 10 K’an 17 Yaxk'in'​

Like always, Roland enjoys the feeling of marching alongside a skink cohort. The reason why is twofold: Firstly, the Skinks are just noticeable enough for the wildlife to give him a break as long as he is at the loose middle of the widely spread cohort. Secondly, some of them are great conversationalists.

“All I say is that there shouldn’t be a stigma about the interpretations divergences!” Squeaks Tek’Qila, whose leg is now healed up enough -if visibly scared- to rejoin his cohort.

“That’s what everyone says, and then we get a schism.” Roland counter argues.

“Schisms! You say it like we are warmbloods, warring every year! There’s not been a single schism in my -our!- lifetimes!”

“That doesn’t make them any less depraved.”

“As true as that mud is great on a sun-scorching day, but what I say is that almost always interpretations just lead to different cities carrying out the same part of the Great Plan by tackling them from different directions.”

“You will have to explain that to me, because Scar-Veteran Nakor would have my head fastened to his saddle before I accept that two opposing strategies are better than a well organized and singular force.”

“No no, you are seeing it from the schism extreme of it, not simply as a divergence. It’s not two armies going off to fight separately. It’s two forces of the same army carrying out different tasks.”

“Explain.”

“Imagine you lead a temple-city’s forces, and the Mage-lord orders that an army of Itz’xa’khanx threatening the city should be stopped from breaching the walls at all cost, Wouldn’t it be good to send a force to fight them, while another stays to man the walls and defend the city?”

“Sure, but that ignores that all the forces going forward to fight might yield a crushing victory of reduced loses, or that keeping all forces in the city could make a siege untenable for the assailers.”

“You are taking the metaphor too literally!” Tek’Qila grumbles as he descends an upturned tree’s trunk.

“And you,” He jumps down a steep slope to follow along. “Analyze this through a best-case scenario alone. Which is unrealistic.”

“Well you are the one acting like we are schism-easy warmbloods!”

“Why might that be…?” Roland jokes, looking down at his very much scaleless chest.

Ra'kaka, the Skink Skirmisher. ​

“What are the two of you going on about?” A nearby bush rustles, out of which the shape of Ra'kaka emerges, holding the limp form of a black-feathered guan tied to one of his shield’s cords, the junglefowl’s red throat pouch denoting it as a male.

“Schism debate.” The two answer at the same time.

“Really? You mud-brains have been going on about that all day, meanwhile I caught us dinner.”

Quiriguá, the Skink Skirmisher. ​

“ We caught us dinner.” Corrects a second voice from another nearby creeping plant. “Thing got stuck in a spikethorn bed, so I didn’t even have to spear.” Quiriguá speaks of the sizable peccary slung over his back. “Just whacked its head a couple times with the blunt end and it was done.”

“Nice.” Roland sizes it up.

Moments later all four start walking again, now with the jungle-dwelling pig slung over Roland’s back. After all, he’s got the most endurance and upper body strength of them all, so it is no bother. It takes them a good few hours more of walking before the midday heat tells them it's time to stop. The cohort does gather at this point, the forty of them all within sight. On the very smallest of sizes in the sliding scale of cohort compositions, as they don't even have a standard bearer or a drummer.

The place upon which they stop isn’t meant to be a safe camp, just a small patch of ancient trees with thick roots and broad branches with plenty of damp and shaded spots to offer.

Tek’Qila finds a large ant colony between a couple of said roots, drawing around ten other skinks or so, who all quickly start pulling out the diminutive ants and their tasty grubs by way of thin sticks and their own claws. Roland, on the other hand, makes his way to Alpha Pantoran, whose macuahuitls and shield rest by his side under a root so gnarly that it arches enough for the two of them to sit under before plunging back into the soil a meter further.

Alpha Pantoran, Skink Cohort Leader. ​

“Alpha.”

He bows before the green-scaled skink, which is returned by a deep nod and a fluttering of Panatoran’s yellow-speckled crest as the larger than average skink remains crosslegged.

“Herald.”

“Are we making good time?”

“We will reach the Toskitl with the sun’s last rays today. Afterwards, we may traverse the Salamander Cove as fast as the dry season will allow.” The skink clicks and chirps.

“Shall we make the crossing tonight and continue overnight, or make camp tonight?” Roland asks, leaving his own weapon leaning by the side of Pantoran. He makes a little jump to sit on top of the gnarled root instead of under it. For him and his perspiring skin, the shade offered by the canopy is just enough as he takes a greedy drink from his water gourd.

“Tonight. We shall endeavor to make for the stilt-nests as fast as Quetli will allow us to.”

“Great, that means we may catch up to the caravan before they reach Sudburg.” Ronald answers as he gets comfortable on the barky root, his chest against the wood in the way a cat or ape would sleep in a branch.

“Already missing your spawnmates Roland?” Pantoran prods.

“No, simply hoping to be done as soon as possible, efficiency is key when dealing with warmblood diplomacy and trade.”

“Mmmmh… You weren’t talking this much about efficiency during our last task.” Pantoran idly flick’s at Roland’s dangling arm.

“That was different, we had a very specific mission, taking our time to scout and study our objectives and possible venues of completion was paramount.”

“Is that why you decided that I should stay back instead of entering the settlement with you?”

“Yes.”

“You lie, you simply wanted to prove yourself.”

“…”

“Congratulations by the way, I’m proud that our cohort was able to partake in your first non-diplomatic mission.”

“The cohort, your cohort, was crucial to the mission’s success, something Old-Blood Kowaal is well aware of. And don’t act like you don’t know what you are doing.” Roland grunts.

“And what, do tell, am I doing.”

“What Elma told you to. Mess with me because she didn’t have time to do it as much as she wanted.”

“Your spawn-mate? Surely you wouldn’t accuse her of such a ploy.”

“I do, now stop following it and enjoy the nap.”

“Bratty tadpole.” Pantoran answers as he stretches his crest one last time.

“Scheming gecko.” Roland yawns.




The Toskitl is unmistakable, firstly because it’s the largest river flowing northeast in the area, but also because it very much earns its name. Named after the toskak, the High Saurian word for the throat, it indeed is the throat that connects to the massive mouths of the Head Monoliths of the Fallen Gods. And as it is a throat, the monoliths’ screams are born as murmurs within it.

The Toskilt is a loud flowing river in much of its course, a loudness born of rapids and whirlpools. Enough so that no warmblood but the larger of the anathema’s longships and other specialty-made ships can traverse it all the way inland and any smaller vessel can only traverse certain sections. Dangerous enough indeed that the cohort will have to find somewhere else, upstream or downstream, where the throat’s rumbling is quieter.

Pantoran has already dispatched a few to do so, and the rest of the cohort -Roland alongside them-has chosen this as their moment to rest and eat with the sunset.

Roland is enjoying his part of the meal, part of the peccary’s rib rack, alongside some berries he’d luckily found himself. Tlahui is somewhere not very far away, pecking into the rock-impaled remains of some hard-to-identify animal which must have fallen on the worst possible section of river.

The hurled spear shouldn’t have been the first sign of danger. The lack of animal sound should have been, but the cohort’s chatter and river’s hum do a great job at masking the lack of other sounds.

Instead the obstinate-tipped weapon, thrown by Quiriguá, digs into the trunk of the tree Roland is resting his back on. He doesn’t need to hear Patoran’s “BOK!” before he is rolling forward and grasping for his weapon’s shaft. Instincts built into him by years of drills tell him that, while the spear missed its target, he was not the target.

He doesn’t even fully stand up, one of his knees is still solidly on the ground as he braces with his halberd against the side of his body, a chewed-into rib still between his molars. Skinks rank side by side with him, forming a loose defensive circle as they all scan the treeline.

They see nothing, just the dark green of leaves and vines, the light of their campfire providing little help by virtue of being in the middle of the defensive ring, the light seeps between their bodies only enough to give them shadows, and nothing more. And yet when they suddenly see everything hidden a moment ago, by the perceived threat’s will alone, attacking with a volley of javelins and darts becomes the last though in their minds.

The green of a certain patch of forest goes from a mosaic of dark greens to a sudden emerald vividness. Two eyes peer at them. One at Roland, the other at the Alpha skink.

The skinks relax, suddenly chirping with excitement and friendly apologies.

The chameleon skink, unmistakable by its short bony crest, fused eyelids and a prehensile tail that slowly uncurls as it walks down the tree’s trunk. Roland and Pantoran walk forward and their eyes awkwardly meet. They are both unsure of how to greet the errant chameleon skink. On the one hand, Roland is the diplomat and in charge of their current mission. On the other, there’s no diplomacy involved when meeting a Pahualaxa errant, as those are almost always of Pahuax spawning and loyalties.

In the end, the chameleon skink makes the decision easy for them as it walks forward. Each eye maintaining contact with them both simultaneously. It walks until it’s close enough, and knocks its blunt muzzle into the space between the heads of the tall human and larger-than-average skink, knocking heads with both of them simultaneously.

“Alpha and… Herald? I used to think that the stories about loyal Xho’za’khanx were mezcal-induced tall tales. But you must be you if you speak saurian and wield our weapons… Nice medallion, by the way.” The chameleon points at the golden medallion slung over Roland’s heart by way of a leather strap.

“Thank you. I am Herald Roland of Pahuax, this is Alpha Pantoran of Pahuax.”

“I am Oxyi-Cho'a of Pahualaxa. Your cohort is well trained, most would not notice my taking of position.”

“Thank you, we take pride in our skills.”

“As you should.”

After that, with no trace of animosity, they invite the chameleon to sit with them, with Ra'kaka passing a good half of the now defeathered and roasted bird to their honorable guest.

“Do tell,” Oxyi-Cho'a happily asks as he takes a bit of the juice breast. “What brings the Herald to the Toskitl, are you to meet with your unruly kindred?”

“Indeed we are, part of a larger caravan, but the Herald and us are taking a detour to visit one of the stilt-built settlements.” Pantoran answers.

“Not the stone-walled?”

“Later on.” Roland explains. “But we have been ordered to explore this one too, we are seeking new Xho’za’khanx to uplift.”

“Interesting… My task is also bringing me closer to the swamp settlement. More specifically, one of its inhabitants.”

“Do tell.”

“I found an encampment not too far upstream, all of the thieves but one dead.”

“Salamanders? It is mating season after all.”

“No, one of their own, I believe. That is the one I’m tracking.”

There is a rumbling in the circle. Betrayal? A disgusting action, more fitting of the plague-born than even of the misguided warmbloods.

“Mayhaps,” The green chameleon skink offers. “You could track it down if you are to enter the settlement, as I only followed it to the outskirts and didn’t have a chance to study it. It is easy to find, red-furred and scrawny but far from malnourished, stinks of sugar alcohols.”

“What do you think I may learn from it?”

“Well, if you are to find useful warmbloods, like yourself…” The comment makes Roland twitch uneasily in his place by the bonfire. “It likely is just the worse between the worthless. But there is a small chance it may have had other goals in killing its fellows.”

“Such as?”

“That,” The Chameleon responds after a last swallow of bird carcass. “Is what I would hope you’ll helpfully uncover.”

Swampman’s Blockhouse, Port Reaver’s Western Outskirts, Settlers’ Cove​

10th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.4 10 K’an 17 Yaxk'in'​

The bridge is complete halfway through the morning, that is not to say that none have crossed it already. It is impossible to build a bridge without working on both sides of it as far as Stefan knows. But the tenth marks the date when it’s as complete, cleaned up and rot-less as it will ever be. He’s heard of betting between the slaves and Feldown workers involved in its creation, and even the designer-architects, about how long it will take for vines to start growing on it, or algae underneath or about how long it’ll take for someone to take a plunge after a plank rots under their feet.

About that last one, Stefan has already seen a scuffle between those who think that the slave who fell off during construction counts or doesn’t.

Poor guy, he thinks, the Freddo is a tranquil river with a calm estuary. The things that swim in it…? Not so much.

Stefan, now accustomed to shadowing his queer master, is obviously amongst the first to cross the newly minted “Borġ Bridge.” It’s a name he knows from too-close of an experience the king doesn’t care for or may even hate. But Stefan is pretty sure that Von Danling only gave it that name to prod the Reaver King. And in that sense it's done a wonderful job.

Now it’s just a matter of seeing how good of a job it will do at just being a functional bridge. Before him, a new group of workers are marching, their backs hauling all sorts of tools and building materials. They can’t use animals, those are rare and in high demand from the well-paying adventuring parties.

They are mostly slaves and their few handlers. It had been impossible for Von Danling to find willing men, or for Master Azzarello to force hers to go out.

“So, shall this be your first foray outside?” Von Danling stops his excessively happy whistling to look down on Stefan as they cross the first half of the bridge, the one that connects Port Reaver with the largest of the estuary’s islands

“Ye-Yeah?” How can a not-technically hermit dressed in not-technically-rags ask such unnerving questions?

“Good, better with me than alone.”

“I’m never going out there alone! I don’t even want to go right now with all these people!” Stefan answers as they start walking across the second part of the bridge. Before him, all he can see is a dirt path quickly swallowed by the monstrous greenery.

“That’s what we all say!” Von Danling says. “And we are all wrong.”

Sometimes, no matter the food or sporadic lessons, Stefan thinks he’d rather go back to stealing from the scariest people in the New World.

It’d be better for his heart, at the very least.

The Sunken Cloister, Port Reaver Harbor, Settlers’ Cove​

10th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.4 10 K’an 17 Yaxk'in'​

The supreme authority within the dark and humid confines of the subterranean temple complex underneath the seafloor of Port Reaver's harbour postrates herself before the great image of her gods.

The ancient site is dedicated to Stromfels, the Shark God, and Manann, Lord of the Seas. The temple is a marvelous work, a gift from the most ancient and long gone seafaring worshippers of the storm and tide. The ceiling gently arches and grooves like an oyster’s shell when viewed from the inside, made of a blue jade-like material of glossy shine and a pellucid nature, which allows enough blue and sea-green tinged light to shine through thanks to the sun, showing the sea roiling above it with passing ships acting as clouds would under the real sky.

Here, she blesses the faithful of both gods, the brothers locked in constant battle, but whose love for one another stops them from ever striking the final blow. Of course, most priests of either god would call her theology as close to heresy as it can be for unorganized faiths. But here, in Port Reaver, she is master of the faiths, and her proof is infallible.

Her proof? Their voices.

She kneels before the two great images of her lords, effigies which channel into voice what the massive Cloister’s resonance already allows for. She kneels alone, as such communis are far above what any of her disciples or the average amongst the faithful can handle. Before her, where the ceiling curves to become one the temple’s wall which faces away from the harbor and into the sea’s clear waters, the two brothers stand.

On the wall’s left side stands Stromfels, with the head of a Gray Barbed Shark he watches her with eyes made of bloodstone. His body is made of sea bleached and carved whale bones, it is the body of a ship wrecker: Muscular but thick in its rudimentary carving, covered in decade’s worth of shark tooth pendants and decorations, tattoos of his own deeds carved into the stone. His teeth glint embedded into the rock, his tail curls around him making for a massive basin full of seawater and offerings.

On the right stands Manann, his body of carved shipwreck and driftwood as human as it is treemenish, his beard of threaded seaweed and crown of pearl and turquoise shining with reflected light. For Manann, the offerings hang not from a tail but from his albatross wings, each longer than an ogre is tall. His trident, crafted of looted gold, embedded into the oceanic floor of the underwater temple, never to move again.

“K…E…L…B…A…”

One voice sounds like waves crashing against a ship’s hull, the other like a maw biting onto the flesh of a drowning pirate. They are godly and make her shudder and moan with more than religious emotion.

“Yes my lords, your servant hears you!” She screams into the floor, the neverending drip of seawater through the seams between the rock and glassy materials that make up the temple’s walls means that she kneels on a thin sheet of saltwater.

“S…P…E…A…K…” They boom like waves breaking a cliff’s rock face.

The offering she has given onto them has been sufficient, she happily realizes. He had been a down on his luck man, a poor and young pirate abandoned in Port Reaver by a captain too fed up with his mistakes to keep him, but too merciful to give him to the gods. She has fixed that, offering solace within the luxurious and private chambers of the Sunken Cloister.

His drowned corpse floats within the inverted dais at both gods’ feet and tail, his blood made thin in mixing with the saltwater.

“The heretic! The false king! He has again ignored my words, he has insulted you once more with his ideas of industry and expansion, He forsakes you and mimics the Old World hegemons once more!”

“Y…O…U…”

“I tried! I begged and argued! But he is under that jungle-feverish mage’s hold! He is too far gone and I can only pray that your justice shall be shift and a lesson for us all to-”

“F…A…I…L…”

“ You Fail… You…? Fail?” She pieces together.

“YES!” She cries. “I failed you my brother lords! I failed you! Flay me with salt-winds, devour me with your children!” Her manic tears mix with the water.

“N…O…T…”

“You… Fail… Not… No, ‘Kelba, you fail not…”

She climaxes then and there. A combination of whip-like mood changes, gratefulness at not being considered a failure and religious fervor driving her into something most other priests of any god will ever be exposed to. Her mind vibrates with her twin-gods’ voices.

“What, my lords, what will you have me do then? If I cannot release Bastjan from his bonds, what will stop him from… From breaking Port Reaver’s soul? From breaking the covenant?!”

“A…W…A…I…T…” Says the lightning-bolt.

“B…E…H…O…L…D…” Says the thunder-drum.

“Yes! I-I shall await, I shall behold! I shall do both as you weave our salvation like a fisherman weaves the net!”

“ T…E…A…C…H… ” They grow quieter with each sound, eventually becoming nothing more than the thrill of a wrecking headwind.

She doesn’t respond, remaining prostrated long enough that the water reaches her lips. She tastes the salt, and knows it is time.

She raises, her damp clothes dripping with more than water, more than blood. And walks as she collects herself. She walks the spiraling staircase which connects the Sunken Cloisters only entrance with the foundations of the Trident, the lighthouse which stands on Port Reaver’s eastern “arm.”

When she surfaces, crossing a driftwood gate flanked and guarded by two zealous pirates, she is met with the stares of dozens of her aides, apprentices and lesser -single-godded- priests. Dozens more people, mainly pirates hoping to make offerings and receive blessings before leaving port, stands behind and around.

“They have spoken!” She states, the crowd breaks into joyus hollering.

It is not every day that Abbess Kelba Baħar communes with the marine deities.

“Grab the lad.” She whispers to one of her most loyal followers, a young shipwreck-orpahned lass as she plunges into a crowd of awaiting pupils and followers of the true ways of the sealanes. “Give him to the sea, as he deserves.”

Reaver’s Last Henge, Port Reaver’s Western Outskirts, Settlers’ Cove​

10th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.4 10 K’an 17 Yaxk'in'​

Stefan’s head hurts. He isn’t prone to headaches, but one has been mounting since he reluctantly set foot on the Jungle’s dirt paths. It is indeed his first foray into the uncleared forestry of the Settlers’ Cove. He hopes it’s the last time. He’s also caught a couple curious sideyes from Master Von Danling, which doesn’t make him more confident to be honest.

It is as he’s heard dozens or even hundreds of returning explorers describe in taverns and brothels. A mass of green, knotted and thick in ways that feel like he would be choked and strangled just by stepping through it, vines hang over the footpath, enough to darken it at times as if the sunset was much sooner to come. Some of those, the ones that are massed enough for some of the rope-like plants to hang all the way down to the path, are hacked away at by slaves using axes and broad daggers the Estalians call “machetos.”

The way is slow, as the path needs to be remade around them. It’s an old one, Von Danling claims, once used to connect Port Reaver by land to the colonial holdouts or Swamp Town. But Stefan has never seen those in use, at least that he remembers.

At least it means there’s some remnants of the path for them to make use of, making the job just barely easier for them. Not like they probably care or have a say in it, Stefan realizes. He doesn’t either, but at least he gets a few coins a week for it.

It’s slow progress, extremely slow. And Von Danling, despite being a Jade Wizard, seems in no rush to help them. Stefan doesn’t ask why, it’s probably something to do with saving energy for all the spells he’s doing for the king in the fields, those tend to exhaust the old man to no visible effect, so Stefan can only guess that uprooting an entire strip of forestry is just outside of the man’s abilities.

It takes them so long to clear a path not much longer than Port Reaver’s thorough street that the real sunset arrives as they are done. And by being done, Stefan means that Von Danling has given the order to stop hacking at the jungle in a straight line, instead curving their path to the left. Stefan knows that left means south in this context, and that means moving closer to the shoreline again. He should be happy.

He can’t muster being happy, his headaches have followed him all day long, on top of which has mounted a march at a tortoise’s pace, antithesis to the messenger boy. He would complain or draw a fuss, if he didn’t know better.

Ahead, some of the slaves, southlanders by the looks of their coal-black skins, start shouting. They are not shouts of fear or pain, as has happened before today due to the occasional snakebite or falling vypervines. Instead they are of confusion, amazement.

Von Danling marches forward, cutting through the stalled workforce until Stefan loses sight of him. Stefan remains rooted in place until an order makes him jump.

“STEFAN! HERE!” For a man older than paper, Von Danling’s voice seems to make the leaves above and around them shudder for a moment.

Stefan runs, jumping between men and over bushes until he stands by his master and before…

It is massive, made of stone blocks that are so well-carved to fit each other that he isn’t actually sure whether the structure is a building and not just a galleon-sized boulder carved to shape. And carved it is, for the rectangular structure as it stands “anchored” to the soil by massive claw-like pyramidic shapes as tall as himself, is covered in patterns of untouched geometric consistency. Circles and triangles meant to resemble the sun, moon and stars, broad faces of horrible grins filled with fangs, serpents and birds and reptiles and lizard-daemons all dancing within interlocking lines of perfectly fitting puzzle-like basins.

They remind him of the golden pieces still hidden under his cot under Von Danling’s tower. The idea blanches his skin and makes his already sweating body run cold. Should he have expected the tall strangers… Things would be involved? Maybe. Had he refused to consider the possibility? Yes.

“Uh,” The wizard grunts, seemingly surprised but only barely. “I thought the meat storage was closer to the center.”

“That’s… A storehouse…?”

“Well, it used to be, back when this place was worth trading with.”

“Who…?”

“The landlords, of course, now come along boy, there’s much to clear within and without, and we haven’t even gotten to the henge yet!”

Highholt, King’s Hill, Skeggi, Lyssa Bay, Jungles of Pahualaxa​

10th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.4 10 K’an 17 Yaxk'in'​

Inga, Amma to those of her clan, Sigrunsdottir shits upon the ancient throne of her line. Sometimes it feels like the ivory, rusted metal and wood that makes it up will someday simply swallow her, add her old bones to the collection, turn her skin into the leather that will pad the arse of whoever kills her.

She knows she will be killed. With Floki gone, likely to never return, none of her children or grandchildren have the weight in Skeggi to attempt a “peaceful” inheritance. Part of her is grateful that she won’t bear the dishonor of being the first, second or third Losteriksson Clanhead to lose the Highholt and the titles tied to it: The Jarldom of Skeggi or of Lyssa Bay, or even the kingship. In fact, she will be the eleventh. She can only hope it won’t take more than a couple generations for the next Losteriksson to become the eleventh to recover it too.

It is a drab idea, but she wouldn’t want it any other way. After all, she herself has decided it so, none other than the dead Floki would have been worthy. It is how things are done in Skeggi, how they are done anywhere where Norscans can afford to follow the old ways. Kings earn their seat in the high tables just as any other. Getting to the king’s seat, to her Highholt, is like navigating a maze. Only outdoors and vertical, she supposes, in the case of Skeggi.

Intrigue is for lesser squabbles, for clans vying for ownership of Skeggi’s key holds. Such as the ongoing collapse of her nephew’s attempt at kennelmaster-ship. Nothing but a sign that her time and the time of her high table is coming to an end.

First her literal dogs are eaten by larger hounds. Or flee with their tails between their legs. Who remains? An old bitch and the pups unready or too stupid to leave her behind? She won’t afford them sympathy, her nephew wishes to be kennelmaster? He should have not gotten himself killed to keep it.

But the throne ? No, it takes much more than intrigue to hold what every single Skeggialing dreams of. That takes climbing the Scarp. Literally, in that the Highholt sits upon the second closest thing Skeggi has to a peak or hill, one every single king has built upon with more height or rooms to outshine their predecessor’s, including her. She knows well that it’s her brother’s and his wives’ that served as mortar for her own additions.

But also figuratively. The Norse call it the ‘rugl’ - the tumbling-down mess, the trialing. The literal climb up the “palace” is a hardship, but it keeps troublemakers, the physically unfit and time-wasters away. But in its demands, it assures that none climb by way of schemes or the aid of allies and outsiders more powerful than themselves. It is her best clue as to her oncoming end. She is no longer able to climb up or down without the aid of her Jarlvakt, her guard. She tries still, using the publicly reachable longhouse that is Einer’s Hall to host feasts and celebrations, to bathe herself in a gathering of those still loyal or who know themselves unable to attempt rugl.

But the people of Skegii know and see it, their king is an old and frail woman, no longer the warrior who would and could run a berserker through with a dagger and her own nails. The list of possible replacements is long, especially now that the dry season brings thrice as many longships and foreigners back to Skeggi before their raids advance further. Because no requirement other than being able to survive a rugl is needed. It would be insulting for her, a woman who climbed hers flanked by an ogre paid in a cousin stew, to accuse any other would-be king of foul play by paying or indebting themselves to an estalian duelist or an Arabyan mage.

And yet, of all would be kings, the one who stands before her in the empty and dark hall is the only one she would consider unworthy.

Adella of the Graelings.

A body obscured by an old and unearned Lustrian Bear pelt, it is only allowed to stand before her for two reasons. Firstly, Adella has not climbed the hill in a rugl, but in submission and to “parlay.” Secondly, she has gotten herself invited by advisors who Inga no longer trusts but can ill afford to replace.

Adella of the Graelings, pretender to Skeggi’s Highholt. ​

Only a face is visible. A face adorned with a golden nose ring and a complex top-knot of braided hair, beads and horns. A face covered in a hundred diminutive holes that shine with a fleshy sheen under the torchlights that flank the throne. Holes that quiver and tremble with what others will confuse for wind moving through the openings and creases of walls.

Inga knows what they are. A sign of what Adella is: Soothsayer, influencer and alternator, deceiver and deal-maker.

“My king…” Bows Adella.

“I won’t.”

“My… King…?” Smiles Adella with cracked lips.

“Whatever you want. No, by the gods no, you will not have my favor, my sponsorship, whatever you plan this time, whatever you desire -you soft-speaking cunt - You will have to wait until my corpse tumbles down the hill, like all the others.” Inga raises her voice, the men who flank her move only barely for their weapons. Oh how sweet it would be to deal with one last cabalist before her last day.

Adella only bows again, and leaves, her tall frame becoming a shadow as she navigates the halls of King’s Hill.

Inga can only feel like even with such an upfront blockage…

Adella has gotten exactly what she wants.

“Divider.” Inga is devoured by a fit of coughs as he grunts. “You will not break my city, you will not play with my city, not before you and your maws choke on my ratty old bones.

 

Thanks to my friend Legion for the Pantoran model model and Flying Scanian for his work on Ra'kaka & Quiriguá. (the art of Adella comes from the latest WFRPG book)

As an aside, 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. I'm really happy to annouce that the story has reached 100 kudos as of me posting this chapter, which I will celebrate with an extra short story later this month!

 

I'm so happy to hear! I have no words for how big of a compliment that is!

 

Chapter 14: Clearing Out

33.5.3.0.8 - 9 Lamat 11 K'ank'in: Mage-Priest Tlateconi wakes from his 23 Year, 5 Months and 4 Days-long slumber. He commands that: “THE JUNGLE SHALL BE CLEARED OUT. 88 YEARS.”

33.5.3.0.9 - 10 Muluk 12 K'ank'in: A schism occurs within the Monument of Izzatal settlement between the Absolute faction, which believes all jungles in the universe should be cleared out within the given 88 year-long time period, and the Periodic faction, which believes that the Lizardmen of Izzatal should spend the following 88 years clearing out the jungle around the monument. 28 Death: 19 Skinks, 9 Saurus. The Periodic faction emerges victorious.

33.5.3.0.10 - 11 Ok 13 K'ank'in: A schism occurs within the Monument of Izzatal settlement between the Concentric Ring, Strip and Quadrant factions over the methodology for the jungle-clearing command. 10 Death: 8 Skinks, 2 Kroxigors. The Stripping faction emerges victorious after forming an alliance with the Quadrant, forming the Sector faction.

33.5.3.0.11 - 12 Chuwen 14 K'ank'in: Efforts to clear out the Jungles of the Green Mists begin. 138 Death: 87 Skinks, 40 Saurus, 11 Kroxigors.

-Records of the Monument of Izzatal.

Outskirts of Swamptown, Settlers’ Cove​

11th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.5 11 Chikchan 18 Yaxk'in'​

Barra is exhausted by the time he finishes pulling his boat into the old hull’s home between two sturdier-than-average trees. In fact he’s so exhausted that he doesn’t even bother tying down any of the ropes that are actually meant to secure and immobilize the ship in case of a flash flood… Or a slow flood which may catch him black-out drunk enough not to notice.

He still remembers all of what he lost the first time the swamp stole his original home. Or how the second one was destroyed by having its lower hull encased into solidified muck. Or the third one, although that one had been unrelated to weather and instead had been overgrown by bayhops.

…

Truth be told… Barra isn’t very suuure how many boat-huts he’s gone through. They can’t have been that many, he’s only really been in Lustria for about… It can’t have been a decade, so let's just say seven years with the confidence of a charlatan.

What he is sure of is how extremely comfortable it is to be able to actually rest after the last six days. Five days which have been some of the most stressful of his life. He’s lead men who didn’t trust him to their certain death and that didn’t wear his mind down with the force being followed by a jungle spirit.

But the pressure has alleviated by now, enough so that he feels like he can breathe again. The air might be musty and disgusting with decomposition, objectively even worse than the jungle. But as it fills his lungs, he feels as safe as any human can while his feet touch Lustrian soil.

Because Swamp Town isn’t a safe place. It’s the kind of place where men go to die when not even Port Reaver will kill them. The place where the slaves not even Skeggi will buy are dumped, if they aren’t just thrown overboard. Swamp Town is for men like Barra the Entrepreneur: Those so scared of paying their debts up that they’d rather take a devouring landscape over doing so.

Barra’s history might be a slight deviation from the norm, but he still does end like most such men. Passed out at the bottom of their dingy ships.

He’s never had much trouble falling asleep, either because of the drunkenness or the exhaustion, today is not different as his head finds support in a bundle of the unsoiled clothes of dead men.


The Rotting Tongue tavern is like any other tavern in Swamp Town, a dingy structure built upon weak and uneven stilts, with an ever in need of replacement thatched roof, seats nailed to the rotting planks of the flooring and a man behind the bar who looks like he’s sober purely because he does know where the booze comes from. Barra does not, he doesn’t care. But there’s one exception, one that makes the Rotting Tongue special to Barra.

The Rotting Tongue is one of three taverns in all of Swamp Town where Barra is not yet barred entry. Which is impressive. Usually one of two options occur. Either a man doesn’t last long enough alive in Swamp Town to get into enough trouble to get himself kicked out of more than one or two establishments in the area. Or he ends up being a grievance-ladened tavernkeep himself.

Barra is too lucky for the first, having avoided death outside and inside of the informal settlement for longer than any other adventurer or scammer active in the place. And he’s too… Too himself to be able to open a business of any kind and maintain it for more than a moon’s cycle.

But in the Rotting Tongue, named after a famous concoction of its owner’s design, Barra finds a place where he is still welcome. Likely not for much longer, but that’s why he’s enjoying the experience to the fullest.

“Yah know…” Grunt the aforementioned owner, Guido. “Someday a smart guy will contract you, and then you’ll get gutted like a fish.”

“Smart men don’t hire me!” Barra smiles, tankard in hand and cheeks rosy, “Smart men don’t even know who I am! Gunter doesn’t sell the map to smart men!”

“What if it gets lost and a clever guy finds it?”

“Then he’ll walk himself into nowhere, Lustria. Guido is the one who sells them on the idea of me being the guide. Which reminds me…”

“Left two days ago for Port Reaver.”

“Ah, great, I feel we can still get a couple more parties before the rains return. Kinda hard to move the map around without him!” Barra laughs as he finishes the old and leaky mug. “Barkeep! ANOTHER!” He shouts, way too loudly considering that Gunter is just in front of him. It draws irate stares for all the other people currently inside the place.

Barra doesn’t care, stretching back to reach for the sack by his stool. His hand touches around inside, trying to connect the tactile sensations he gets with what he remembers having filled it with earlier in the day. He ends up having to pick the entire thing up to reach for the bottom. He should have been more careful when grabbing things. But his day-long sleep had left him parched, so he simply shoved a couple handfuls of his new possessions into his “wallet” and made a beeline for the closest friendly place filled with drinkstuff.

It’s a simple wedding band, no precious stone, just a ring of smoothed out precious metal. In the darkness of the tavern, with only a couple whale-oil lamps to help make sure one’s drink reaches one’s face, he can’t even be sure of whether it’s silver or gold. Likely silver, because he pulled it from one of Filippo’s mercenaries, and what kind of sellswords has the money to buy his sweetheart a gold ring?

“What do you reckon this buys me?” Barra shoves the thing into the tavern keeper's face.

“Mmmmmh… How close are you to just kneeling over and dying?”

“About a couple hours, I'll recon, a bit more if you have something to eat around.”

“Then that’s how much it’ll buy you!”

“God I fucking love you Gunter!” Barra cries as he grabs onto a newly refilled mug. He starts guzzling, ignoring Gunter’s response of “Fuck off, corpse picker.”

Instead, he focuses on the taste of the beer.

It tastes like piss, goat’s piss. It’s bitter and acrid and concentrated. Nothing compares to the ciders of his homeland.

But thinking of his homeland only makes him drink harder, so all in all, a success.

Reaver’s Last Henge, Port Reaver’s Western Outskirts, Settlers’ Cove​

13th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.7 13 Manik’ 0 Mol​

​

Stefan feels like at some point he should be getting into trouble for how much he eavesdrops on the most powerful people in Port Reaver. Sure, he does it under Von Danling’s direction and with the Hedge Wizard’s permission. But it still feels like walking into a Straggler and shouting that their wives are pigs. At some point all logic dictates that Stefan should get caught and should get punished. By the King, by the king’s men, by the Abbess, by one of the merchants, by the master shipwright…

Are none of them ever going to notice that there’s a kid, Von Danling’s “Message Boy” at that, spying on them?

Stefan certainly doesn’t want them to. But at some point he has to wonder whether he is just a natural spy… Or wether every single powerful person in Port Reaver -with the expectation of the crazy moss man- is just blind.

Case in point. Stefan is currently just using the new moon’s darkness to kind of just lurk behind some of the stacked lumber in the slowly opening-out field in the middle of whatever the Reaver’s Last Henge is, the massive square buildings of carved rock around him melding into the trees that surround the structures. It’s dark, really dark. The worker’s camps are all alight with continuously fed bonfires, and yet those fires’ light feels as dim as a firefly. The only reason he even dares stand around like there, despite knowing that literally anything could come out of the bush as just drag him away like he’s seen happen is that the men he’s spying on would hear his scream.

Von Danling never feels like an “all-there” man. But he’s also the reason why somewhere deep in the jungle, there’s a child-eating monster’s body dug-into by blood-drinking vines. And the other one is a pirate who managed to take over a city. So Stefan will keep an ear out. One to the conversation he’s supposed to be listening-in to, another to the green darkness.

“So this is what you wanted to show me? A bunch of derelict cold blood structures? You know I made my fortune here, don’t you?” Bastjan grumbles as he looks around himself.

“Here, in the Reaver’s-” The wizard starts barbing.

“Tarantula Coast, you know what I mean. I’ve fought them, I’ve raided their buildings. I am not surprised to find their ruins near my city.” Bastjan grunts. “What I’m surprised by is the fact that you are using my resources -and the resources of my dockyards- to do exactly what? Clear out empty buildings?”

“This was our deal, King Borġ. I make sure your fields yield plenty and yield without issues. And in exchange you… Entertain this project of mine.” Von Danling responds.

“It was, I’m not threatening to break this deal, not until the harvest gives me proof to either toast with you or pike your head in the gates of my fortress. But I am demanding an explanation, if not for my sake, then for the sake of all the bridges I had to burn to get you the resources for that damned bridge of yours."

"Technically," Von Danling corrects. "It's your bridge, my king."

"Explain. Now."

"Ahhh, no appetite for humor. Ok then. It's a meeting ground, a place of neutrality, for trade."

"With the Lizardmen?"

“Indeed, and we have until the next full moon, about twelve days, to clean this place up and make it usable for such dealings.”

“Why? What happens during the next full moon?”

“That’s when they used to come, when Lucciano Soprania founded the city, he had me seek them out to set the original iteration of this place up. The final treaty we managed to hammer out was simple. Every night of full moon, a party of theirs would come to trade here, and the morning after the king's officials would sell all the traded goods to the city's captains and merchants for a profit. That's how he funded the old walls. Single-handedly."

“And you managed to put that to writing?” The current king asks, surprised. He’s never heard of true parlay with the Lizardmen outside a couple wive’s tales about a grand and legendary city in the Southlands.

"Managed? Things killed the entirety of the first diplomatic mission. Half of the second one too. It took months to get the concept across to them!"

"You want me to believe you and a man who died centuries ago made a trade deal with those scaled beastmen?"

"First of all. Do not ever call them that in their presence. One of them must keep a pirate king skull collection, don't help them complete it. And secondly, I'd show you the treaty. But their parchment copy is somewhere in one of their temples, no idea which one. Certainly not going to start looking for it."

"What about ours then?"

"Oh it was unmistakable. Lizardmen-made man-leather!" Cryston laughs darkly. "They thought it fitting!"

"Eugh… The king's response is a disgusted grimace.

"And as far as where it may be… Last time I saw it… Must have been the third king who came after Soprania, which didn't last very long."

"Where did he keep it? If it's in either of the forts I can have it secured by tomorrow's end."

"He burned it, devout Stromfels worshiper, the kind who thinks the only valid contracts are those of ship crews. Burned it during the celebrations after becoming king while his crews were having their fun celebrating in the Council Rock.” Von Danling answers, as if it were nothing more than an inconvenience.

“... Please tell me this is just age playing a toll on you… Or a sick joke. Do you mean to tell me that there should be a document that binds this city and the lizardmen into trade and that a man burned it during a party?!”

"Don't look at me like that! I wasn't there when it happened! I learned about it weeks later and by then one of his opponents had already replaced him!" The ancient man retorts.

“Gods fucking damint, so what? Do we just hope that if you clean this building up they’ll just start coming back? I guess there’s no reason to know the treaty isn’t binding them anymore but-”

“Oh, they do know.”

“...”

“Yes.”

“I’ll have you drawn, I will. How in the seas’ name do they know?”

“Those pieces of dried skin were binding in more ways than legally, my king. The glyphs that adorned them… I don’t claim to understand it, but I know enough to understand that more than ink and parchment burned that night. And if it hadn’t, the man who burned it did go on to do one other thing, he ambushed the trading party which arrived after his coronation. First and last time I’ve ever seen those creatures caught off guard. They had likely expected an accident, or a tragedy, not a knowing breaking. The last thing he -Ponziano? Maybe Ponziano was his name- ever asked of me was to treat a wound he received in that battle, he ended it victorious, but with a shard of the lizardmen’s black glass embedded between two of his ribs.”

“Did you do it?”

“Never had the chance, the day I was going to visit him in the fortress was the day he was smothered to death.”

“So what’s the point then? A king I’ve never heard about broke a treaty no one in this city remembers-”

“No continuous records exist here. And no family lasts long enough for an oral history to develop, in case you wonder why.” The mage, ever the bored teacher, adds.

“-and you expect that if we waste weeks, manpower and resources on tidying this place up, they’ll just forgive and forget? And what do you mean there’s no oral history here? This is a pirate port, I could throw a pebble while blindfolded and it’d hit three drunk sailors telling stories before hitting the ground.”

“I’d say there’s a marked difference between a city’s oral history and the high sea-tales of pirates looking to out-impress each other. But I digress. As hard as it may be for you to believe, I do have a working plan.”

“Let’s hear it, then.”

“I believe, if sufficient preparations are made, we could re-establish the treaty. Or establish a new, if similar, one.”

“Sure, and that would be a boon for the city. You know what else might be? The Phoenix King arriving tomorrow and giving me his entire treasury as an early nameday gift!”

“Well, I’m not expecting them to swarm to us the moment the slaves are done clearing the Henge. But it’ll attract attention. And besides, there’s recent precedent.”

“Please, you’ve barely been awake a month, don’t tell me you have already fallen for the rumors.”

“How else would you explain that imperial colony’s exports, if they have banned expeditions and hunt pirates? Lizardmen artifacts and gold don’t fall from trees. Sudburg must be getting them somewhere.”

“From the pirates they capture, confiscating their hauls. Or they simply break their own laws, would not surprise me. But the idea that they -or you and I, for that matter- could establish that trade… I could believe that long ago, back when man’s presence here was anecdotal, Lizardmen might have been trusting or dimwitted enough to trade. But they are cold animals, and we’ve been fighting them for centuries now.”

“They could be tired of fighting.”

“Be serious, for once.”

“They are not dimwitted -at least not their leadership- and they are uncaring of the past. They don’t hold grudges like the dwarves. I do believe I could make this into a new venue of profit for you.”

“Fine, suppose I humor you and keep funding and strong-arming every powerful person in this city into making this work. Then what? You just hope that they will come, and then hope that they will parlay, and then assume that parlay will lead to trade?”

“Well, I do have an ace up my sleeve.” Von Danling walks around the bonfire the two have been pacing around as they talk. The two men lean together for a second, with the wizard saying something Stefan is too far to listen in to. It takes a few long moments, as if the wizard is explaining something long and complicated. Once they separate, the king now has a mercenary look in his eyes Stefan doesn’t like.

“Oh, so that’s why you are so keen on keeping him around.” Bastajan laughs, palming his belt. “Mmmmh… You have what I’ve already given you. Consider however much long it takes to spend these men and viands the period I’m giving us both.”

“Period for what, my king?”

“A few days for you to muster some serious proof that this is actually worth it, and a couple more for me to go through it. Unless you can offer me something right now. Or know you won’t be able to. Both would save us time.”

“Ah, my king… It pains your humble servant to know you have so little trust in his counsel.”

“You are as humble as I am skinny.”

“Perhaps, but as much as it pains me… I will have your proof.”

“Well then… KINGSGUARD!” Bastjan bellows, suddenly earning the attention of his own men, who have kicked out the workers from the first of the cleared stone-works to fortify themselves and spend the night. “We leave, now!”

As Stefan slinks off, he’s grateful that he and Von Danling will be staying. The Henge may be an unnerving and derelict set of structures in the middle of the jungle. But at least they are structures. With stone floors, walls and ceilings.

He is very happy about not having to make the trek back to Port Reaver even one more time than necessary.

“Stefan!” Von Danling calls to him a while later, once the king is well and gone, and the light of his guards’ torches has been snuffed out by the jungle’s thickness. “So, boy. What do you think of my plan.”

“I think, sir…” Stefan swallows. “I think that you are crazy, and you make me wish I was still living off of the pockets of tired explorers… With all due respect sir.” He adds the last part with an awkward bow.

“HAHAHAHA! Oh boy, it’s good to know lads your age are always blunt, no matter the time.”

All Stefan can do is sigh and remain confused.

Which is rapidly becoming his new state of being.

Inland from Lyssa Bay, Jungles of Pahualaxa​

13th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.7 13 Manik’ 0 Mol​

The hunt is exhilarating.

Torfi has missed it, missed it dearly.

The rush of running wild, of leaping over logs and skidding around trunks and shrubs, the cacophony of the hounds sprinting alongside himself as they harry the prey and nip at it, exhausting it, making it lose its footing.

It takes all his energy to keep pace, but then again, he’s kennelmaster. If anyone can keep pace with the hounds of Skeggi, it’s Torfi Ornolfsson.

Kotte and the ever loyal Brorsan flank Torfi, while up ahead Gnista nips at the heels of the prey. Rapp and Tindra have managed to well outpace them all. And while Torfi can’t hope to see or hear them, he knows that they are covering the wider avenues of escape, just in case the tapir veers off in an unexpected direction the rest of them will need time to close the distance for.

The animal is not making things easy, but why would it? He’s trying to kill it. It simply keeps screaming with its high-pitched whistle as it flees the barking of the sarlish hounds. It’s big enough to be worth using the hounds in a hunt. But not so much that instinct tells it to stand and fight. That’s Torfi’s own mistake in choosing a target, he’ll accept.

Usually, if he hadn’t unleashed them against the first thing to cross the trail he had been stalking, the animal would be big enough that it’d choose to stand its ground against the five or six hounds. And then would come Torfi, or however many people would be involved in the hunt, to pelt the animal with spears and arrows.

Having to chase like this is embarrassingly less effective. But it’s what makes him feel good and that’s what he needs right now.

So he keeps running, running until the cries and growls and barks grow louder, because that can only mean one of two things: The tapir is tiring and they are catching up to it… Or…

“Yes!”

There it is! Caught in between some brambles and an arc of barking and nipping dogs, a tapir large enough to be on the upper limit of what Torfi could carry back to Skeggi. One of the black-and-white animal’s legs is bleeding and held aloft, the work of Gnista, judging by the hound’s frothing and bloodstained mouth.

Torfi gives a harrying shout, and with that Brorsan and Kotte join in on the tightening noose. He doesn’t want the dogs to actually tear into the tapir much further than nips and shallow bites, that would devalue the skin and make the meat harder to butcher for little gain.

But he doesn’t need that. All he needs is to pull back his arm as the animal is frozen by the terrifying animals around it and…

THUNK

“SKREEEE!!”

It hits more or less where Torfi wanted it to, he’s always been better at directing the dogs than with the spear anyways. But it’s enough for the weapon’s metal tip to dig in, between the ribs and likely puncturing something very important, and down the animal. It’s not a clean kill, it only frenzies the hounds further as Torfi is forced to run in shouting out the commands for them to back off. The tapir is kicking around as it fails to breathe.

Torfi’s dagger fixes that up, slicing the animal’s neck open, just as his father taught him to.

“Back in the peninsulas, we would quarter or skin the thing up in place. But we can’t do that here, son. Here you need to leave fast. And if you just bleed it before leaving, you essentially leave behind a clear trail. But not a dangerous one, because here anything big will take the entire prey away. Better to be fast than careful, in Lustria.” He can always remember clearly, the speech repeated multiple times across Torfi’s first and youngest hunting trips. “And the Hound loves spilt blood. Remember to always honor the Hound in the hunt and you will never have to in the hearth.”

The hounds know not to interfere, and while a couple do take to lapping at the pool of blood forming up, most stand guard with varying levels of attention. Torfi works fast, digging out the spear, tying the lower legs together first and pulling them up to aid in the bloodletting, moving onto the front ones next. Once that’s done and enough blood has drained, he used the two short ropes to haul the animal, using the spear’s haft to comfortably pull on it, like a massive and lukewarm furry backpack full of meat.

The dogs around him are happy, they know that with the hunt over they are allowed to stray slightly more, to sniff out and bite at anything their noses might tell them is edible. And more importantly: Actual food once they return to the kennels.

Torfi knows the path well, it’s long but it avoids the more problematic regions of the jungle near Skeggi. Both the natural, as in the territories of the hunters bigger than the Norscans and the more daunting features of the landscape. But also the man-made ones. The Skinken Tribe are always more active in the dry seasons, so are the Mission’s patrols, always looking for “volunteering converts.” And now, sadly a new addition to the list.

The Reidarsons and their hunting grounds.

It takes Torfi a few good hours to make it until he’s close enough to Skeggi that he can hear the sounds of activity. Or to be specific, one sound. One extremely recognizable sound. The sound of an ax striking a tree’s trunk, and felling it. Not multiple axes in a logging yard, with teams of men and women working in tandem to create the lumber needed to -literally- keep Skeggi afloat. Not lumberers working their axes into a trunk to slowly weaken it until its weight downs it.

A single axe strike, followed by the thunderous sound of a falling tree, often of trunks wide enough for Torfi not to be able to touch his fingers if he were to hug the things.

“Hello, Drenok, busy morning?”

Drenok Johansen wielding his father's axe, the alleged Great Axe of the Icefang.​

“Same as always, Ornolfsson.” Grunts the voice of the hulking shape that stands by what’s now just a tree stump.

A long exiled Icefang norscan. People in Skeggi say Drenok left his home fjord in search for his father -and clanhead- Icefang Johan. Stories say the man had left for Lustria after being possessed by a vengeful spirit. But stories also say that no spirit of the Old World dares enter Lustria. So, and this is something Torfi will never be stupid enough to say out loud, maybe the man was just tired of being clanhead and wanted to raid somewhere with less frostbiting weather.

But everyone agrees that Drenok did come to Lustria in search of his father, to reclaim their clan’s heirloom ax. With the ax, everyone muttered, Drenok should have been able to claim the Icefang throne for himself.

And yet, there’s Drenok, legendary axe in hand and tall and strong like a hill… Using both to fell trees of all things for just enough to pay his bed and food in one of Skeggi’s longhouses.

Some say that the story is just a lie, and that Drenok is an exile who made up a story so he could avoid actually telling people what crime earned him the punishment. Others say that his axe is not the true one, and that Drenok simply cannot return to Norsca empty handed, but has given the search up. Others claim that the entire story is true, but that in killing his possessed father, the man had killed without honor and decided to punish himself by not leaving Skeggi.

All Torfi knows is that Drenok Johansen is a terrifying man who talks little and always has fairly-priced wood in hand, in account of his ability to chop down a tree every few minutes.

“Good hunting today, I see.” Rumbles the voice of the Icefang from within his massive horned helm.

“Yeah, good lumbering yourself?” Torfi returns, his own voice much less massive.

“Aye… Dry season, less mud, easier to work.” Responds the man as he leaned the weapon, as tall as Torfi himself, on what he can only guess will be the weapon’s next victim.

“Good to hear… Uhhhh… See you later, Drenok.”

“See you later, Kennelmaster.” The man nods back. Unnervilly, Torfi can’t always see the man’s eyes, inside the black-metal helm.

“Kennelmaster,” He thinks to himself. “That’s going to take time getting used to.”

Outskirts of Swamptown, Settlers’ Cove​

13th of Nachgeheim, 2538 IC /40.0.9.13.7 13 Manik’ 0 Mol​

“It smells horrible.” Tek’Qila mutters, to Roland’s left.

“It looks horrible.” Ra'kaka adds, to his right.

“It sounds horrible, what is that moaning?” Is Quiriguá’s addition.

“Anything from you, Stalker Oxyi-Cho'a?“ An amused Alpha Pantoran adds, not even bothering to stand inside the bush the rest are using to peek at the filth of the warmblood settlement.

“Mmmmmh… I’m sure it tastes horrible.”

“Great, If none of you have anything useful to add, I should get going.” Roland grunts as he moves back. Which means that the two other skinks who’ve clambered upon his back also have to scamper off.

“Don’t eat their filthy food?”

“Don’t drink their filthy drinks?”

“Don’t enter their filthy buildings? And certainly don’t sleep in them?”

“You warmblood breed like animals right?” Asks the chameleon. “In that case I recommend not rutting any of their females.”

“I meant specifically, ideas for tracking this one warmblood.”

“It had red fur, is that rare?”

“Yes, but not enough.”

“It wore a white chest cover, which was strangely clean. As in, I believe the piece was somehow cleaner than the skin it was covering.”

“Ok,” Roland stretches as he begins walking off towards. “That’s actually actionable. Anything else?”

“It reeked of fermented fruit alcohols.”

“That’s all of them.” Three voices state in unison. Roland himself, Tek’Qila and Pantoran.

“Then that’s it, I think… Oh, It can’t have already lost all it took from the dead warmbloods I found it ransacking.”

“Look for a red-headed, drunken, white-shirted and gold-heavy human in a malarial and grubby settlement of crudely built huts and hovels riddled with termites and slimed with mould, stinking and dank enough to make one’s eyes water… Yeah, I’m sure this’ll be easy. Tlahui,” He shakes his arm towards the carrionbird observing them from a branch even higher than Oxyi-Cho'a’s. “Scout ahead… And don’t eat anything you find, for your own good.”

“What about you?” Asks Ra'kaka.

“Help me find a place to wash myself. Far from here, preferably.”

“I think I saw one of them dump a body behind its hut. So that sounds like a good idea.”

“Old Ones… What have we agreed to….” Pantoran sighs.

 

Very curious about what ya'll think these chapters are building up to!
t 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. I'm really happy to annouce that the story has reached 100 kudos as of me posting this chapter, which I will celebrate with an extra short story later this month!

 

Happy that I continue not to disappoint!