y
Dar pulled her cloak tighter and braced for another lurch as the cart rumbled down the road. The chill that she would normally keep at bay with barely a thought crept through as her mind wandered. Behind her, Sartull had vanished below the treeline but her memories refused to disappear as easily. Winstin was laying in a bed, his right arm lost. He had been a steady force in her life, one of the few survivors of the massacre at the Redfern Farm against the Tohri and one of the few people in her life that she would trust to guard her back. Their friendship had been frail in the best of times, but his fall and injury had been the final straw atop a mountain of straw. She had left her post, quit the Tivar army and walked away.
Against her chest was another failure, another broken promise. The tiny gem of the Angelics, the Doorkeepers hung there. It had been bestowed on her when she graduated the few required courses and took her oath. It represented the lowest order of the group, a group that had a reputation for requiring almost nothing of it's graduates. Unless they encountered a daemon or a circle or a summoner. Of course, no one ever encountered daemons or summoners or circles. Except Dar. And when she encountered those things, she ran.
She had no clear idea where she was going. South, at least, away from the Tohri and the Daemons. It would take her away from everyone she knew in this life and toward an older life in Huntsdelve. It was not an easy journey, partly because Dar had no desire to return to her poor weaver family and partly because the trip itself involved a difficult bit of terrain. There was scrubland and hardpack desert south of Cattras that stretched for weeks. Few roads crossed it, so any travellers would head west toward Bridgeton and turn south along the Malloron on a road that went far west of her intended destiation. Whatever the safety or distance of that road, however, Dar planned to take it.
The Foamdancer slid slowly into port and its shocked crew watched as Tohri caught the lines and secured their ship. After passing the still burning remains of the outer city it became clear that there would have been no point in running. Lines of bowmen and soldiers marched down the docks and Tohri manned boats that sailed easily past. A thin haze of smoke hung over everything and towers of smoke climbed all around them from huge piles of debris. The Captain's curses had finally eased into silence when the first Tohri stepped lightly off the dock and eyed them.
“Who has Captain title?”, the Tohri asked carefully. His voice was surprising, it was nearly singsong and for a moment everyone wondered if they were being taunted.
The Captain frowned and stepped forward. “I am the Captain.”, he said dejectedly.
“Your ship has cargo?”, the Tohri demanded. His tone shifted and fell again, an odd musical cadence that contrasted dramatically to the Captain's monotone reply.
“Some. Mostly Passengers.”
“Passengers pay one silver denk to come off. Cargo at one lug for each silver denk to sell. No sell weapons here. You pay enross in red hat”, the Tohri said, pointing to a soldier on the dock wearing a huge tufted red helmet.
The Captain stammered for a moment and nodded.
The Tohri seemed satisfied, then looked at Jenk and Talbert's tabards and stepped towards them. “Soldiers of Tivarah are to surrender weapons. Unless you are Siv... Off ah sirs?”, he stated.
Jenk stepped forward and nodded. “We three are officers, Lieutenants of Tivar's greyward. We...”
“You are off ah sirs. All are to be met at the counsel. You will come with me.”, he interrupted. There was no real menace to his tone, the song of his statement was simple and direct though.
Jenk, Ren, Arasen and Talbert exchanged confused looks and followed the Tohri onto the pier. There was activity on all sides as Tohri and citizens of Tivar worked side by side. The citizenry all had the same dazed, concerned look on their faces, but it was clear that they were not under constant surveilance, nor were there enough amred Tohri in evidence to pose much of a threat.
The group's confusion and concern mounted when they reached the inner city gates. Tohri camps spread east and curled south against Tivar's inner walls. Thousands of neat tents and campfires stretched as far as Jenk could see and Tohri walked freely well within bowshot of the walls. Most concerning were the large Northern gates that allowed traffic from the docks. They were wide open.
On her thirteenth day with the Monks of Sartull Vallen finally broke Master Yorn's patience. “Hells, girl... stop doing that!”, he snapped.
Vallen jumped from her meditative pose and recognized the source of Master Yorn's aggravation. She had been subconsciously wandering through the minds of the other students again, something she tended to do while in deep meditation. Her classmates were giving her frustrated looks and she blushed and moved slightly further away, as if it would help.
Yorn came over and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Focus! Why can't you focus, girl!”, he demanded. He pressed his palms into his cheeks and rubbed, his face softening. “You will wear my focus down until I have to don the robes of a student, girl. Do you know that?”, he asked in a half-teasing tone.
Vallen winced slightly and sighed. “I'm sorry, Master Yorn. I don't...”
“I know you don't mean to, child. You are gifted, moreso than many I've seen in my long years, but your abilities are... disjointed. Unfounded.”
Vallen nodded sadly. She had heard the conclusions of the teachers on her third day. Ren's teachings had been scattershot and he lacked the skills of a trained teacher. He had skipped certain basics and fostered those abilities that she showed rapid appitude in. Her training had therefore been both terribly unstructured and fantastically advanced, taking Vallen into regions of the art that few teachers understood. Vallen could connect to people almost effortlessly when she focused. At first it was only with Ren, and then a few of the teachers. Within days of study, however, she was all but dancing in the dreams of every student at the school, pulling information and sensing feelings with alarming speed.
Head Mistress Tinsurri had isolated Vallen as much as possible from the larger groups of students, but it was of little use. Each new step forward became a leap and Vallen outstripped the understanding of the most seasoned Teacher. Focus was now all she lacked.
“Imagine a sheet of parchment, Vallen”, Yorn instructed.
Vallen sighed and started the routine. Imagine parchment, pour your mental power into it as written words and hold them there, releasing only when you mentally recite them. Roll the parchment up and keep it in your mind's pocket until you needed it. It was routine and mostly useless. She would eventually lose focus and her mind would leap out like a deer in the wood, darting wherever it would.
Nessom watched the dance with minimal interest. The women were beautiful, achingly so, thin and lithe and highly skilled in their art. He had pulled them from two of the thousand halls of flesh he frequented in the hopes of finding his next pleasure. But it never worked. Their gyrations, the fleeting touches they shared in the complicated and lurid dance would have driven most men to tears of lust. But Nessom was far beyond that.
He eased himself into a more comfortable position in the grisly throne he'd built. Once he'd built a throne of skulls, but in short time it bored him. Later fine jewels stolen from the necks of women he killed in the streets were added, but even these trophies failed to bring him lasting joy. Now it was a chair built from caskets stolen from tombs he had defiled, sitting in a manor house of a family abused and killed for sport. Nessom would have found it difficult to remember where he'd gotten the idea for caskets or why he thought this would be a comfortable chair. In reality it wasn't comfortable at all, but Nessom had not come up with any new ideas and so it served to keep him upright.
Across the ruined dining hall, Kiso sat in a similar funk. The warrior was dressed in one of his ugliest sets of armor, at least in Nessom's opinion. The sharply angled black plate was eroded with rust on numerous edges and covered with a hundred mismatched spikes, several of which seemed to be intentionally placed so as to potentially cut the wearer. Kiso steadfastly ignored Nessom's attention, idly carving chunks of flesh off of a large carcass and throwing them into a pot of brown liquid. The pair rarely managed to keep servants and whenever they left the bowels of a city Kiso would have to fend for himself in the culinary arts. Nessom had his own devices and wouldn't have touched the stew except to torture someone with it. Which, now that he'd thought of it was something worth considering.
The crackle of Kiso's small cookfire threw odd shadows on the walls, themselves charred and cracked by the pair's entrance and pillaging. The manor had been far enough away to avoid notice and the occupants were a temporary diversion so as to be a tempting temporary lodging. Nessom would have traded everything he possessed, which admittedly consisted of the two women, his small bag of necessities and some tools for the old days. Now forty years gone, the days of running and scrambling, hiding and chasing, hunting and warring with the one creature to have ever held Nessom's attention. True, Kiso was the man's true enemy, a warrior of hate and brutality to the man's light and justice, but Nessom had savored those encounters. Each test of will, each frantic game of life and death with crossed swords, dueling spells where even the gods had thrown in their lot. Even after all these decades, nothing got his blood flowing like konwing that the man would be waiting for them, glowing blade drawn. That was living, right there on the teetering edge of the abyss. And then, one day Vincent was gone. Lost to Kiso's internal radar, wiped from the face of reality in a flash, leaving the pair rudderless with nowhere to go and worse: nothing to do.
Nessom sighed and drew his hand down one pale arm, every inch covered with arcane lines tattooed into his flesh. He lingered on one for a moment and waited for any stir in his loins. The women saw the hand stop and one almost missed a step. Should he linger too long, they knew, should he invoke the spell buried in the abomination of ink and his own charred blood marked in his flesh there was no telling what would happen to them. The fear, that chance hesitation intrugued Nessom slightly and Nissom looked up at the fear behind the two's gorgeous faces. And he smiled.
One of the two, bent nearly double backwards toward him stumbled and rolled carefully out of her bridge position. The other moved to cover the mistake, but Nissom already had the girl in agony. Perhaps this new game would amuse him, at least for a day or so.
The agony was not new. Days, weeks of it had dominated the dark waves of half dream that came without pause. What was new was the voice. It was cold and steady, not angry but persistent in its demand for attention.
“Wake up.”, it demanded.
A new pain emerged, a low burning fire that was more acid than the inferno that had dominated. There were growlings and gutteral sounds that made little sense in the fog, but the voice returned, persistent.
“Wake up.”, it demanded again.
Tegg managed to loll his head sideways against his shoulder. His arms were above his head, shackled to the wall and supporting him. This might have otherwise hurt, but the massive trauma to his lower back and side made such pain moot. His eyes opened slightly to a grey fog. Dark red shapes moved past, one of which seemd to be shoving something into his side and muttering odd words.
“Wake up.”, the other red blob demanded.
Tegg tried to move but the first blob was shoving him back into the wall and suddenly he couldn't feel anything below his armpits. The other shape moved forward, but Tegg could not seem to focus on it.
“Good. You are awake.”, the red thing growled. “I believe I will even manage to keep you alive.”, it said.
Tegg marvelled at the threat of continued existence and tried to turn his head slightly. The world swam sickeningly and cold seeped into his arms. The blob that was handling him so rudely finally stopped and moved back, grunted something to the first blob and left.
“You and your friends are unexpected.”, the voice went on. “You are quite fortunate that we stopped the Kaaedenndos from eating you.”, the red thing growled.
Tegg considered debating this point, but the waves of nausea stopped him. The world slowly slid into slightly clearer focus and there was a new red shape entering his limited range of vision.
“By what name are you called, human?”, it asked in a perfectly agreeable tone. Its voice carried only a trace of the gutteral growls the other shapes shared and Tegg squinted hard to see. There, but three feet from him stood a remarkable Daemon. It was tall, perhaps half again as tall as Tegg, and dressed in ceremonial looking armor. It had large wings and sharp humanoid features with small horns at the forehead and cheekbone. One arm of the armor was missing, and there was a clear number seven tattooed on its flesh.
“Tegg..”, Tegg managed to croak.
“Wonderful.”, it answered in a flat tone. “My name, at least for the time being, is Seven.”, it said.
Tegg couldn't tell if it was offering him its hand to shake, but given how surreal this situation was he could hardly have been surprised.
“Understand, Tegg, that I have only the slightest inclination to keep you alive. I'm sure that even with all the Datrum seeping into your body you have some understanding of how easy it would be to dispose of you, however, there is a slight chance that you could be of use to me. That possibility, and that possibility alone is what is keeping you alive.”, it noted. The tone was absent of threat. It was matter of fact, straigthforward and almost cordial. It was also utterly chilling in its lack of emotion. If Tegg wasn't freezing from the effects of whatever they'd smeared on him he would have shivered.
For more than twenty days Duke Malloy and his advisors had been in discussions with the Tohri. Even having witnessed it, at least from afar and with no understanding of what was going on, the Duke could still barely grasp what had happened. The Tohri, to a man, had committed mutiny against their officers and their lone general. Every commander had fled the field in terror and the soldiers had remained, camped at the doorstep of the enemy they had marched to attack. The scope of such an act, one in which thousands of mutineers had acted in unison and without a single dissenter was simply beyond the Duke's ability to understand.
Sitting across the room from him in the ongoing discussion were those who clearly would have won the battle. The first was some sort of religious leader, a man with clear markings of rank on his face. The other Tohri deferred to this man in ways that, to the Duke, would have made him their commanding officer. However when he attempted to determine the man's rank, he was described in terms that would have barely identified a town priest. It was, at best, baffling.
For the Tohri the citizens and army of Tivar were nearly as incomprehensible. The division between soldier and citizen, the infinitely complex levels of command between their Siv and Dom, and especially the ways in which their version of leaders treated and even occationally allowed dissent from their underlings was astonishing. The city, with it's vast avenues and seemingly endless fields, it's massive walls and highly organized military had worried them. Their sheer numbers may have eventually won out, but it would have been a bloody, ugly crawl through their bretheren before this walled monstrosity of a town would have fallen.
Early disscussion had been slowed by a lack of available translators and a litany of mistaken impressions. Duke Malloy had demanded terms of surrender, a concept so unfamiliar to the Tohri that they lacked words for it. Tohri conquests were remarkably peaceful, at least after the local Siv leader had been executed ceremonially. The Tohri Dom, meanwhile, seemed to be demanding what amounted to asylum
Master Adsentis finally allowed a deep sigh to escape, his age, language and cultural avoidance of political affairs were making this a tediuos process. Dom Yanim, a young soldier with no blood on his blade had proven to have some early skill at the Southerner's language, but it was a slow process still.
"Master Adsentis does not... understand", the youth repeated. The phrase was one he was well familiar with at this point.
The Duke rubbed his temple and tried to rephrase. "The Tohri at Bridgetown. Are they.... do they follow Master Adsentis in ... ", Malloy turned to some of his advisors, none of which had been able to pick up the complicated singing system the Tohri used to speak.
"Will they... stop fighting also?", Kiev interjected.
The young Tohri's eyes brightened. "Yes. When the Dom at the city of the bridge learn of the blasphemy".
The unfamiliar, gutteral word had been a topic of debate amidst the Tivar council. No one could determine it's meaning, and the Dom seemed absolutely unwilling to discuss it beyond vague hand gestures and songs that made the Duke's teeth hurt to listen to. At first everyone assumed they were speaking of the humanoid monsters at Port Redcap, but while those were described as something unclean and somhow wrong, it wasn't the same. "That word again.", Kiev grumbled. "What would turn an entire amry against their officers?", he asked no one.
Yanim frowned and shook his head. Adsentis had discussed the matter at length with the Dom and they couldn't determine whether these Southerners were somehow blissfully unaware of the blaspheme Daemons or if they just lacked an understanding of the words to use. "For the Siv to use the blasphemy is to kill Ja.", Yanim said for the hundredth time.
The Duke shrugged and waved this topic off again. "So if the Dom at Bridgeton know of the ... of this violation of your Ja, they will stop fighting us?"
The Dom looked uncomfortable. "The Tohri take lands. We make those with less strength part of us, so that we are stronger with each other", Yanim started. "But we did not... take your city of Bridge through our own strength". It was a sour admission, a card player realizing his partner had been cheating. The weight of the admission had been a long discussion between the Dom priest and the Duke to little satisfaction.
"Then you'll return to your own lands?", the Duke asked.
The Dom discussed this in a song with a melody that did not lend much confidence to the Tivar council. "We... can not", the young Tohri finally said with a tone of deep regret.
"You came in this gateway, we saw it. Just go back through!", Kiev grumbled.
"We now know the gateway is a blasphemy. It is a tool of the Blasphemers. We have no means to make it work, and cannot use it or we will have broken Ja. We may... already have been touched by the blasphemy", the youth said slowly.
"Gods and hells", the Duke barked. "It would be a world easier if we knew what this... blasphemy was!"
“Daemons.”, Mogisor said from behind the Duke as he entered the room. Jenk followed, taking in the Tohri around the table with a frown.
“Dae... how do you know this?”, the Duke asked, standing.
Jenk stepped forward. “We found them, we know where they came from... and we have some idea what they're after.”, he answered.
- Jenk and Talbert considering command - Talbert and Mogisor, name Talbert Lambart - Arasen and Blue, meet blue's dad, Blue has been AWOL - Update on Dar, have her flee to Cattras for now - Set Avendoor? Ro? as loc of church of Diur - Update on Vallen - Meeting btwn Duke and Dom Tohri - Tohri update, remanining Siv leaders, Dom council. Introduce Dom homeland. Have them believe the daemons have revolted. Have the Siv plan to use the free daemons as a motivator for remaining Dom Introduce a reluctant Siv - Siv army in bridgetown
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