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“Everyone! Away from the windows! Keep your masks on, and stay in the center of the floor!” The foreman’s voice boomed through the dye factory as she stood on a tall, metal mesh platform above the entryway.
Han helped Jero put on the leather mask, wrapping the long, elephantine trunk of a filter around his neck multiple times and latching it behind his golden hair. He sniffed through his own- the whole room smelled like lye and milled paper. Vats of near-boiling scarlet, gray, and burgundy dyes lined one side of the room, while shreds of leather and canvas surrounded well-stained workbenches on the other. A dozen workers huddled in the walkway between them, sitting on rusty, iron crates and bone palettes. Two burly men set about barring the three large entrances.
Han sat down himself, fixing the mask he had been given. Those crushing waves of pain pushed through the stone of the building- though muted compared to the intense feeling outside. The inside of his mouth tasted like ozone and iron. “You alright?” He whispered to Jero.
The adventurer had been cradling his head since he entered the factory, and didn’t speak.
“He’s got the worst of it.” A young man with long hair and white burn scars snaking up his forearms sat down on a metal barrel in front of Han. “That quill- he’s a mage, right? Everyone else’s pain is flowing through him. And there’s a lot to go around during a shadowfall.”
“Shadowfall?” Han’s voice was muffled through the mask.
“An unnatural disaster from Dragon of the Desert. It doesn’t like us much. Couldn’t imagine why.” The worker’s grin twinged his words, despite the bug-like, green mask covering his face. “It sends these waves of hate to the cities, especially if someone was stupid enough to trespass in its territory. It’ll be over in a few minutes, but then we’ll have to wait for the guards to chase off any monsters that snuck in.”
“Is it a Nightmare?” Han had seen adventurers fighting one of those corrupted things before, back in Purdan. It had leveled a village before the mages could even confront it.
“Maybe. My pa’ says the Dragon could be a dokku- one of them fallen gods the temple hates so much.” The worker shrugged. “It ain’t friendly, that’s for certain.”
“So, we just wait here?”
As if in response, a loud crack echoed through the room. A few people yelped, and the dockside door bent inwards, its bone reinforcements splintering. Cracks in the door barely showed something writhing on the other side- a flash of yellow scales and white eyes. The workers ran back away to the far edge. Jero winced in pain, as the cracks let more of the shadowfall into the factory.
“Shit!” The long-haired worker grabbed Jero, beginning to drag him back. “It must have gotten in through the bay! Get back!”
He didn’t have to tell Han twice. Another crash, and the stone and bone doors caved. The thing that pulled its way in was an amalgamation of scales and slimy flesh, sprouting out of a pulsating ball of exposed red and blue organs. Three tentacles grounded it, while a human’s head wobbled with blank, white eyes atop a long neck out of its knot of body. Tiny scales fell from it like the water it was drenched in, quickly growing and falling off in a steady flow of dust.
Han had a workman’s hammer in his trembling hand before he knew what he was doing. The monster let out a choking screech, lunging down through the doorway. Han threw the hefty tool- not at it, but at the clay vats beside him. The side of the vat smashed, and boiling dye poured from the tank as Han turned and ran. The thing yipped, stumbling back and away from the burgundy pool.
“What the fuck is that?” Han began to help the others pull palettes around the wall they huddled behind, forming a makeshift barricade. One worker was praying.
“Dragon servant!” The foreman- who had joined her other cowering workforce- cried out. She grabbed a long stirring pole along with some other workers, stepping up between the makeshift barricades. She held the metal rod like a pike. “Form a line! We just need to buy time!”
The dragon servant’s probing arms finally found a thin, metal walkway above the vats, and wrapped with unnatural elasticity around them. Its ball of central organs flipping upside down, it began to slowly crawl beneath it towards the workers.
Han looked around. The workers were terrified, and Jero couldn’t move. The monster gibbered in a long-dead language, and the strength of its tendrils crumpled the reinforced steel it was clinging to. We won’t survive. He realized. Just like the ship. Just like the Nightmare back home. This thing will kill.
Better it be just one, then. Han’s feet were moving before he could panic. His vision was blurry from tears. He screamed- not a war cry, but a burst of raw terror tearing through his throat. He ran for the exit.
The monster took the bait. It swung from the railing, landing on the cooled dye behind Han as he ran. It undulated into a pounce. Han felt a tentacle against his back, and then he was in the air. He didn’t even register the stinging pain of the shadowfall as he was thrown outside- the pavement meeting his shoulder was far more real than that. Something snapped in his shoulder. He rolled right to the edge of the port, smelled the sea, and deliriously thought of home.
The monster crawled out of the building with a jittering, malicious gait. It let the injuries and shadowfall sink into its prey, dragging dyed footsteps across the abandoned street. It loomed over him, dripping golden scales down onto his bruised body.
Han had thought he’d feel more heroic than this, when his time came- but he was just terrified. The monster’s tendril raised, and blotted out the dim suns.
A flash of black steel, and the suns peeked through once more. Black, ichorous blood splattered across the injured torman as the monster’s tendril was separated from its gibbering core, and it stumbled backward. A wet slap of an arm hit the stone sidewalk, and someone rolled onto the docks.
They were wreathed in a cloak of scales, wielding a black weapon that looked like a sickle at the end of a polearm. Tubes ran across the entirety of the shaft, ending at a needle-like pommel with some kind of lever attached. The warrior stepped over Han- the sandals over their paper-white feet were webbed with small flippers. Their square helmet was bulky and completely covered their head, with only a line visor filled with tinted glass.
The dragon servant rested on one leg, and lashed out with the other. The warrior ducked the strike, but its tendril swerved unnaturally, catching their ankle and spinning them sideways across the dock. The warrior slammed into the ground with a cry of pain, but was on their feet before the servant struck again. The warrior grounded themself, blocking the impact with their polearm, then pulling back to shallowly slice its tendril as the monster tried to grasp it. They both danced away from each other, circling each other in a nervous duel.
Han rolled to the side, finding an upturned rowboat to cower under. Immediately, the pain from the shadowfall stopped as he got out of the falling, dusty particles- not dissimilar to the scales falling in plumes off of the dragon servant, he now noticed. His shoulder was dislocated, but not broken. He wasn’t bleeding except for his bruises. Small blessings.
The duel between monster and warrior continued in its prodding state for a while, but the shadowfall was clearly starting to affect the warrior. They must have been hiding underwater from it. Han realized, recognizing the helmet as an enchanted Diver helm. Their strikes were becoming slower, and the dragon servant’s attacks more aggressive.
Han had to do something. He felt around the underbelly of the rowboat- an oar, a crab trap, a net- a net! He yanked at it with his good arm. It was thin, probably for bait-fishing, but it’d have to do. When did I become so stupid? The knight grumbled, rolling out from under the boat and laying the net across it.
The pain of the shadowfall wasn’t as bad as before, nor were there as many dust-scales in the air. It was lifting. Han raised his voice. “Hey! Over here!”
The monster’s head bent all the way around, and it launched away from the warrior, who protested in some foreign language. It pounced at its previous prey.
Han barely managed to dive out of the way, the tentacle that clipped his hip still sending him sprawling across the sidewalk. But he rolled to a kneel in time to see the monster smash into the rowboat- crushing it to pieces and becoming enveloped by the net. It screeched, brushing off bits of wood and tearing its way through the strings constraining its tendrils- but not fast enough, as the warrior’s crescent polearm flew down like an executioner’s axe, burying into its alien core.
The thing writhed and howled, ichor and disturbingly human blood pouring from its wound. Its tendrils fell limp before its head stopped moving. Its large, fish-like eyes stared up at the suns, so inhuman that Han couldn’t tell when life left them.
Worried hands of workers dragged Han and the warrior back into the dye factory as soon as the servant was dead, and the foreman helped the others press up barricades around the door. The long-haired worker was dumping buckets of sand over the spilled dye.
Han couldn’t quite understand the barrage of admonishing, terrified, and thankful dunespeech laid against him, and both he and the warrior pushed through the workers to the back of the factory, where Jero was finally starting to come out of his magical migraine. The adventurer noticed Han’s adrenaline and physical wounds before he saw his companion approach. “Han?”
“We’re fine.” The knight reassured him, sitting down on a palette. “My friend here saved my life.” Han turned to the warrior. “Thank you.”
“You were stupid with that trick.” Their voice warbled through the helmet. “I could have killed it on my own. I am a monster hunter- this was nothing for me.” Despite their confidence, their posture betrayed their bruised legs and exhausted breaths.
Han smiled. “Still, I owe you.” He dug through the pocket in his leather skirt, finding the small pouch of wrapped prayer scrolls. He pulled one out- it was barely larger than his finger- and handed it over. “Here. My name is Han, and I owe you my life.”
The Diver frowned, but took the prayer. “What is this?”
“It is a promise- my phylactery.” Han explained. “I don’t know how they do it, but sacrimen like my friend here-” he patted Jero on the shoulder “- produce these symbols that are completely unique to an individual. That’s mine. It represents a debt from me. If you burn it, I’ll know. If I can, I’ll try to find you to repay that debt.”
“I see. That is appropriate payment.” The warrior opened a canteen-like, metal container under his cloak, storing it with other trinkets and coins. “Call me Twicateel, hunter of the Tierre fishermen. Or, what few refugees of us remain.”
Jero spoke up. “I’d heard you fled the Coral Pact.” He asked. “What happened?”
Twicateel looked around, glancing at the other workers. Guards had finally managed to patrol along the Bend- and young members were knocking on each door, announcing it was safe to leave. The siren from the Idraka Temple had gone silent at some point during the conversation. “It seems I need to go.” They nodded at their polearm. “The weapon laws will be enforced soon, now that the shadowfall is over. I need to be back in the colony by then.”
Han remembered- blades larger than a forearm’s length were confiscated while in the city. The knights’ arming swords they had hoped to smuggle in were stuck in the Red House even now. “We have business in the colony- I need some medicine. Could we come with?”
Twicateel nodded. “Very well.” They hoisted the sickle-blade over their shoulder. “Come, I’ve learned some shortcuts.”
A man covered in pale scars submersed himself in lightly steaming water, eyes closed in a silent expression of contemplation. Dimmed lights flitted around his body coyly like tricksters or sea-sprites, whispering stories into his ears and calling them memory. They curled their small hands into cones and spoke to him of a hotter place, where the water would steam and flow beneath the ashy island, where he made a chapel of palm wood and fishing nets. He heard the voices of his congregation, and those who came to him, that he would place his palms upon their furrowed heads and pull their kind times back. A healer in the truest fashion.
He knew the faerie daydream to be false memories of that place. But he listened attentively- anything to drown out the noise of the post-shadowfall traffic above him. Sel had been lucky- he’d just gotten back to Kamaji’s tavern when the sirens went off. The one-armed Zabifolk’s tavern lies in a renovated, private cistern underground, and its only entrance is easily reinforced. The yards of dirt above him dulled all the experiences and shadowfall dust from harming him. By the sounds of movement on the floors above, the shadowfall had ended fairly uneventfully.
Intrusive footsteps suddenly echoed around the scarred man, sourceless and swift. Sel opened his eyes hesitantly, his story faeries fading into scented candles and oil lamps hidden behind colored glass. The bath Kamaji had made around the spring was a cramped chamber carved directly into stone, little more than a waist-deep, bubbling pool. The footsteps stopped inches away from the back of his head.
Sel let a few seconds go by before lolling his head back, staring idly upwards at the newcomer. “Good news, I hope?” He asked calmly. “I’ve only been waiting for just a moment, you know. I like at least some comforts of home every once in a while.”
He was looking up at an unravelling form of rags and tidy rage. She spoke in perfect Zanrush. “We’re off working- stuck in Lowharf during a damn shadowfall, mind you- and you wait like this is a damn spa?” The woman laid her sandy clothes on the side of the bath before dipping in beside Sel. Her black hair was jaggedly cut short, and geometric tattoos of boxy lines and chains lined the tanned skin from her neck to her chest and shoulders. She chastised him with tired eyes. “Maybe I should get some wine for you, too? Or a plate of fruits as well?”
Sel’s hand rubbed across his chin sarcastically, a grin pulling apart his serious face. “Well, I have been relaxing for quite a while, and some refreshments would be appreciated-” The water splashed as a swift elbow slammed into his side. “Augh, Mnima, I get it, I get it.” He brought a hand to the bruised spot. “I only just got back as well. I haven't just been lounging around, you know. Did you guys get it?” An excited tremble burned into his question.
Ren grumbled as she reached back and pulled a dull red satchel from her pile of clothes, shoving it into Sel’s hands. He leaned over the side of the bath, unwrapping the satchel and rummaging inside. His brown eyes lit up as he pulled out a battered, red and black book, bound by threads of yellow wire. He ripped it open, flipped to the first page, and began reading.
A few moments passed as Ren laid against the frame of the bath, her elbows leaning back over the edge. “I’m fine, by the way.” She said loudly. A few moments passed with nothing but a single page flip and bated breath. “No really. Despite all the danger and the traps and the Nightmare, Mi and I, we’re both just perfectly fine, thanks for asking.”
“Mm-hm.” Sel responded dully.
The Zandai woman sighed in defeat. A minute of silence bubbled up before she burst it with a splash of her palm on the water. “How long are we going to keep doing this, Sel?” She asked quietly.
“Doing what?” His brown eyes didn’t look up from the scratchy text of the book.
“This.” She waved her hands towards the opened folder. “How much more information could we possibly need? How many more stolen manuscripts and ship’s logs, only to lead to yet another damnable book? The Rat told us where Mastrus is, and where we can find him. We’re strong enough to take him down ourselves.” She ran a hand through her hair, revealing some of the intricate tattoos beneath. “I wasn’t named Daikun for nothing.”
When Sel looked back, the gaze that stared at him was every bit as sharp and layered as Ren’s favored blades- which Mi had undoubtedly smuggled into the city for her. But the cleric shook his head, and turned back to fingering through the pages. “You’re strong, Ren. No one disputes that.” He furrowed his brow and squinted as he tried to read through scratchy annotations. “But so were Kurata and Kikuchi, back on Terre. That swordsman, he...” Visions of those bloody duels clouded his vision for a second, terribly vivid memories. The armored beast and his white-haired witch were covered in blood, but none of it their own. The strange blade that the swordsman had held seemed wreathed of shadows and bone, and the wounds it made were covered with a horrible, tar-like poison. Not even Sel’s practice as a physician had helped them, and when his mother had tried her magic...
Ren loudly slapped her palm on the water, sparing Sel his own haunted memories. “We were surprised back then, Sel.” Ren said. “If we get the jump on him, he’ll fall before that witch can do anything about it.” She broke into a wide grin. “Come on. Why do we need some savage to help us, huh? Are you going to trust the word of that Rat?”
“You aren’t an adventurer. You don’t understand how powerful that witch was.” He said defiantly, then shook his head. “We need the Prince. Yura saw his power to cancel magic herself, and I trust her.”
“You met Yura when she was shackled and delirious, ‘lost to reason’, as you said yourself. And you were half on your way down the same path before Mi found you.” The swordswoman pushed her elbows against Sel’s shoulder as she let her feet dip above the water on the far end of the bath. “You put too much faith in that noblewoman, Sel. Hell, you want a warrior, I’m right here! And if you’re so afraid of the witch, you’re as much a warlock as she, right? I’ve seen you shut down others of her type as easily as swatting bloodbugs.”
“I am not a warlock, Ren.” Sel sat up angrily in the bath, the hot water flowing down his scarred chest. “And this woman is different from those imperial sand-shifters we have come against so far. She is professionally trained, or at least very talented. More so than I am, to say the least.”
“There you are,” Ren scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Talking of magic and witchcraft like it is something to be so scared of. You think witchlights or phantom tremors hold up to steel?”
“You didn’t see their magic, Ren.” Sel’s tone was exasperated. “You didn’t see my uselessness against it! You can’t understand-”
“Really?” A now-rising anger seeped into Ren’s once-aloof tone. “Please, brother, how exactly do I not understand?”
“We need patience, Ren. And assistance.” Sel’s shoulder blades tensed as he shut the book heavily and tossed it aside. His own anger touched his tone as he remembered the black wounds, and the disaster that trying to heal them wrought. “It was awful. You weren’t there-”
“I wasn’t?” She laid a hand on her head in mock realization. “Well, I must have imagined the torn bodies and burnt ships then.”
“Ren,” Sel protested. “You know that’s not what I-”
“And perhaps these tattoos were nothing, just a poor decision on a drunken night.” She brushed her shoulders, rubbing her hands along the geometric tattoos that bound her like a hauberk. “The hulls of those slaver ships and manacles were just a dream or fantasy. We couldn’t have been thrown on display like fish.” She spat her words venomously as she leaned forwards, shifting onto her knees in the hot water. “After all, Ra Videk was just so generous to let me into that house of his after we were separated then, with all his other lost girls. Such a nice man couldn’t have trapped and tortured me in that hellhole of a whorehouse for those two damn years because I. Wasn’t. There!”
The two sat up in the bubbling water, facing each other with stubborn, pained eyes, until Sel broke her gaze. “Alright, alright, point taken. Maybe we should act now.” He conceded, slumping back down into the water a bit. A long moment stretched between them before he broke the dripping silence once again. “What would you have us do, then?”
Ren backed up, not a little surprised her brother would give up so easily. “Um, well.” She stammered. “I suppose that… I could challenge him to a duel?” She suggested tentatively. “Or Mi could sneak in and scare him out? Or maybe set an ambush out in the desert?”
“We’ve been over these options before.” Sel blinked, unimpressed. “You didn’t think you’d get this far, did you?”
The sword master fumed for a moment, then bobbed her head.
Sel sighed. “Listen, I don’t like putting all our hope on this guy either.” He admitted softly. “But so far as we know, he is the only one who can ignore the witch’s magic, apart from the Daron knights in New Justicia.” He paused, as if actually pondering whether he could ensnare one of the mage-knights to his side, but then finally shrugged away the thought and shook his head. “And I suppose there is no way we can get one of them to help, wanted and poor as we are.”
He awaited a response from his sister, but she only sank deep into the water until her eyes and nose barely bobbed above the surface, like a sullen child. Which she was. Sel shook his head. Which we all are. He can’t forget that she had scarcely earned her knightly title before they were taken, and even he, the eldest, wasn’t two decades old, though he was close. Maybe he had passed his birthday? Sel sat back down, drying his hands on his wad of patchwork, brown travel robes, which lay on the left side of the bath. He opened up the red tome and read in silence.
It was a long stretch that must have been at least five minutes before the man piped up again, shaking Ren out of a half-asleep trance. “Yes!” He exclaimed. “I’ve got it! Er, we’ve got it!” He amended as Ren rose from the water, rubbing her sharp eyes like a sleepy crocodile.
“You’ve found him?” She asked thoughtfully, failing to stifle a yawn.
“Well, I believe I have a part of it.” Sel gestured for Ren to lean over beside him to glance at the book. He flipped its old pages onto one of the last pages. “I noticed a pattern in the annotations of the Yavi’ver Oasis company’s caravans. Every entry has a symbol and number, likely a date. Every few pages, they repeat this symbol with no date.” He pointed out the missing return signatures on the logbook.
“Yavi’ver Oasis? A Justic company, if I remember correctly.” Ren noted. Sel nodded a confirmation, and she continued. “Tough bunch of bastards they are, with their own little mercenary army following each caravan round and not without a few sand-shifters and veterans. I think Ra Videk used to get some of his girls from them, too.”
“I suppose they work with less than legal business, then.” Sel mused, only half surprised. He flipped rapidly through the ledger. “These exit logs say that they trade fruits and silks, not slaves.”
“Taxes on people are expensive this side of the desert. I should know.” Ren added with a grim smile. “Suddenly, I’m not so suspicious of this Prince.”
“Well, we still don’t know what he does with those people once he takes the caravan. It could be he just sells or ransoms them back, or something worse.” Sel pointed out, trying to shake the last thought from his head. “They disappear into the hills, as far as the ledgers are concerned.” He pointed back towards the book as he continued to dogear pages that contained the anomalous markings. “There is an increase in highwaymen robbing these Yavi’ver Oasis caravans along the Cann Grenil Road, towards Zabra. I’d say that is where he is hiding out, if anywhere.”
“Cann Grenil?” Ren sighed. “We’d have just as much luck finding a ducal in a dragon’s den. That road is massive, not to mention two dutchies away.”
“That is a problem.” Sel shut the book. “I doubt we’ll find exact places the caravans are lost in here, either. But I’ll keep looking.” Sel made to stand.
“What? You’re leaving already?” Ren had to feign a nonchalant glance to her side to hide her disappointment as she soaked in the warm waters.
Sel turned away as he slipped his clothes back on, hiding a smile. “Kamaji was sympathetic after I got in a fight- we’ve got the bath for the next hour or so. Stay if you like. I assume Mi is outside?” Ren nodded. “Then we’ll be back in a few hours.”
Ren happily sunk herself into the bubbling waters a bit as she realized she didn’t have to get out. “So, you have a plan?” The Zandai woman asked. Sel managed an awkward nod as he had halfway shrugged his head through his patchwork, brown robes. “And I won’t like it?” Another nod. “Shi shishaba then,” She added an affectionate jab to his leg at the end of her prayer, “Shithead.”
Sel signed the offensive symbol of the deepfish with his index finger and thumb behind him as he stepped out of the room, and had no doubt that Ren was signing something just as vulgar in response.