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A scale-laden arm laid across a raised pedestal, a stream of golden blood pouring out from its severed stump. Below it, the blood fell into an unfathomably large pit, turning into a roiling mist of golden sand. Bodies- wrapped in yellow bandages and painted in holy ochre- would surface from the sand pit occasionally before being pulled back into its stygian depths.
Angean and most of his men- a dozen sea-worn soldiers with too-thick clothes for this desert- sat on the benches surrounding the Dusting Pool. The Idraka monks had stepped out to take care of the Shadowfall- whatever that meant. One had explained it as a supernatural storm, which comes before incursions of otherworldly monsters. Angean wasn’t too worried. He’d seen stranger.
A person dressed in long robes with red dots strewn across it in an intricate, skeletal pattern stepped into the room. They seemed to glide across the uneven bricks, their mask and voice measuredly placid. “The Shadowfall is over, outsiders.” The Idraka monk- who Angean only knew as the Dustkeeper- barely whispered their words. “You may leave the way you came in. We must prepare for the cleansing rituals.”
A snort from one of the men was quickly shut down by Angean’s glare. The once-Crusader turned to the Dustkeeper. “You’re certain our men will be free in there?” He nodded at the roiling dusting pool. “If their spirits can’t find their way to Neia’s Throne, they’re liable to come back with a vengeance.”
“The Dusting Pool connects spirits to the Gor-Canta Calnima, a crossroads of all dream-worlds.” They explained. “Once they pass the Lethe, their spirits should be able to pass onto Neia’s realm- barring the interference of a mage or nightmare, of course.”
Angean didn’t like it. He remembered the revenants crawling out of battlefields- bodies possessed of lost and degraded souls. He shook his head to scatter the fetid memory. “Fine. Just be careful.”
“I appreciate the concern, master knight.” They didn’t sound like they did. “Would you follow me out?”
The knights were slow to leave the pool, but eventually followed Angean back out into the hallways of the Idraka temple. Tiny witchlights burned in brass sconces, sending the procession’s shadows squirming across the yellow and red walls. The air smelled of incense and dust.
The hallways themselves were empty, but for the masked and silent knights who patrolled in pairs. They were lanky and too tall for the stooped hallways, their black cloaks obscuring everything other than their featureless, clay masks. Angean’s hand twitched towards his belt, searching for his confiscated sword as they passed. They didn’t move like humans, or even like the trolls who live deep underground. Their staggered gait was constrained, measured. The movements of a monster bound to service.
Still, the knights all made it out of the hallways without incident. The hallways made way to a wider antechamber with several archways leading out into the lowest terrace of the ziggurat that made up the main temple. The masked knights guarding the entrances stepped to the side, their heads bowed.
Despite the antechamber being no different from when the crusaders entered the temple, the Dustkeeper stopped. A curt tenseness stiffening their posture as they extended a hand to stop the Idranians. Their head twitched, the skeletal design of their mask seeming to scan the antechamber’s esoteric murals and flickering witchlights. “You know you are not welcome here, Hound of Agara.” They growled. “Make yourself known.”
“Dustkeeper, you wound me. I’ve been nothing but loyal to this great city.” One of the masked knights stepped forward. The surreal blend of an adventurer’s magic caused the mask to meld into their head, revealing a jagged, gray face made of cracked stone, capped by a bowl cut of thin, white hair. The face of the stone-bound Orcan. “I simply wish to relay a message.”
“I will say it again- you are not welcome, Nettle. Not after what you did at the Zaban Gate.”
“It was a simple misunderstanding.” The cloak around the adventurer blended into a suit of armor- bronze plates, with loops of black fabric dripping from it like a net. The sharp scent of pepper punched through the incense in the air, inexplicably drawing attention to the Orcan as an adventurer. A signifier. “Those paddyfolk were all too suspicious, and rude. Hardly anyone who would be missed.”
“You didn’t have to bury the bodies.” The Dustkeeper shook their head. “What do you want? Your stink will rouse the spirits.”
The Nettle adventurer raised their hands in mock surrender. A spark of magic flicked between their meaty thumb and forefinger. “I simply wanted to see an old war veteran again.” A smile slashed across their stone face, and they turned to Angean. “Who are these poor saps you keep for your company, General? A couple of criminals, seventh-in-line heirs, and a liaman for a mage? Are these your replacement for the great Kelrynn?”
Angean hadn’t realized he had raised his fist until it was stopped. An arm, smaller than his, wrapped around his bicep. He looked down to see Salik Valentyr- the pale boy who took down the lanisiri aboard Larissa’s Rage- planting his too-large boots into the ground. Another, rotund knight was holding him by the scruff, grounding both the general and squire. Salik’s eyes were closed tight. “Don’t! You’re better than them, commander!” Salik’s voice squeaked.
Angean lowered his fist, coaxing the squire off of his arm. He hated to admit the boy was right. He sighed. “Kelrynn was a traitor.” He finally said. “A madman, too lost in bloodlust to see what he’d done. What we had done.” He leveled a frigid glare at the adventurer. “I remember you, Nettle. You were a mercenary, yes? In the battle at the Sanguine border.”
The adventurer’s grin widened a little too wide, his teeth sharpening as his magic manifested his excitement. “It’s an honor to be remembered, general.”
“You took the form of a beast. Helped us break Kelrynn’s line.” The memories flashed in Angean’s mind. They weren’t pleasant.
“A simple task. Not like your shooting.” Nettle leaned forward. “A hundred yards, through the smoke. I saw it, you know. You shot Kelrynn right off of his ship. Oh, I remember the utter betrayal he felt. It was such an exquisite experience.”
Angean dug his nails into his palm. He wouldn’t let this monster goad him any more. “If it is all the same to you, I must be on my way.” He gestured to his knights, who followed suit out of one of the other archways.
“I will experience you again, general.” Nettle called out. “Mark my words.”
Mi Ito waited out in the din of the city streets, leaning against sandstone walls. Her black shroud whipped against her face, but she’d taken the time to tie her black hair in braids interwoven with a long strand of reflective, light blue string. She had wrapped a black cloak around her body, as wind on the dusty streets had been picking up, blowing the salty sea air.
Eager to get back to their hours of lost time since the shadowfall, throngs of people rushed past. They walked in between the red sandstone and white clay warehouses of Eastport Row, some carrying flowers or squares of brocade silk as gifts to those who sheltered them during the disaster. Mi had always liked this time- people of all shapes and sizes spoke as if they were all family, talking of the monsters that narrowly slipped past their houses, of the guards in their bright armor finally using all those hoarded weapons, and of those few adventurers they’d seen that were strong enough to weather the storm, changing form as fast as the beasts they drove away. They were all lively and talkative, ignoring the differences they so clung to otherwise. The languid mixture of languages, laughter, and anger was a haven of noise, compared to the otherwise barren desert that Mi has spent so long riding through.
It wasn’t a few moments later that Mi’s trained ears heard the sound of ragged breath underneath the din. The sound of bamboo sandals tapping against the stone, then, a blade and barely stifled yelp. The red sun above loomed heavily over the city like a ripe apple, the second, blue sun barely a star next to it. Through that light, Mi caught the glint of a jagged blade in an alleyway directly ahead of her. She zigzagged towards the alley, her hand clutching a couple small darts she kept beneath her cloak.
She stopped beside a beggar man with a single eye that was well on its cloudy way out, asking him if he knew where the Tower of the Zabira was in this city and slipping him a single copper bit. While the blind man was busy issuing directions in his incomprehensible dialect, Mi glanced up towards the alleyway beyond.
It was hidden between one building of dark, crumbling sandstone, and another which cast a long, thatched roof over the yard-wide alley, darkening it except for the few strands of light which braved the weave above it. In the desolate alley, barely a half dozen yards away from the Zandai girl, a girl was pressed against a wall with her hands raised above his head. A warped blade wagged inches from her throat. Two men with hawkish grins and drunken sways loomed over her- one holding her hands, the other a satchel. They were lightly armored in boiled lizard-leather, with short feather-knives glinting in their hands- Justic mercenaries. Mi began to unravel the string from her hair, her other hand searching for just the right dart in her hidden pockets.
“We aren’t holding out on shit, you freaks!” The girl’s oiled locs and calloused hands marked her clearly an islander- maybe one of the Divers from Tierre? Mi thought she looked familiar. “We’re looking to fix it, right now. Your payment-”
“‘Sunk’, is that it? Ye’re telling me ye’ve no money, except fer that dragon hoard y’ kept in that stinkin’ lab y’called a temple?” One had a thick, drawling accent that Mi couldn’t place. “We did the Colony a solid, girl, but it wasn’t no favor. Where’s the fuckin’ gold?”
“I don’t know shit, you apes! Let me go or I’ll scream!”
The blade pressed closer, drawing a bead of blood on her neck. “Y’know why we carry these feather knives?” He twisted the knife up, showing off its jagged teeth. “They rip, not like a sword or a spear. They bite, such that whatever carrion left behind looks like it was torn up by beasts or monsters. Keeps the Dragon’s scouts off our back in the wastes, but I imagine it wouldn’t be too hard to convince the guard that y’ were killed during the shadowfall. Torn up by some drake-damned Servant.”
The girl couldn’t speak for fear of pressing her neck too close to the knife.
The man turned to his partner. “Anything in the bag?”
The other mercenary overturned the satchel, letting letters flutter to the ground- and a couple of steel flasks fall out. “Just these tonics is all.” He tore open a letter, reading carefully. “Rest is trash.”
“Not worth a tenth what her kin owes.” He growled, kicking them. “She’ll cover some cost. I know some folk out of the east gate who’ll buy damaged goods.”
It was only when he’d turned back to look at the girl did he realize he wasn’t holding her anymore. Instead, the girl was at the other end of the alley, wrapped in a too-long, black cloak and Mi’s shroud, and his hand was wrapped around the wrists of a pale Zandai woman, her taller frame stretching against the Diver girl’s clothes. A gum-tipped dart sprouted form her ankle, connected to a blue strand of string- a conduit of transposition, and a rare treasure. “Damaged goods?” Mi’s grin curved with something born between playfulness and malice. “Maybe they’ll get a good price for you, then.”
Her hand cracked and dislocated in a practiced, painful instant, and both slipped down out of the man’s grasp before he could tighten it. One palmed his dagger’s pommel, the other cracked onto his wrist- the jagged thing was out of his hand, into Mi’s, then into his leg.
The man howled and leapt back, tearing his wound and collapsing onto the ground. The dagger was uselessly bound in flesh by the time the other man had finally reacted, lunging forward. Mi only barely ducked back to avoid the dagger. She threw the blade, and he stepped away, towards the edge of the alley- then was suddenly where Mi had been, his own arm outstretched. Mi stood where he had accidentally stumbled onto the string, his leather armor weighing uncomfortably around her body and his dagger held in her hand. She knelt and yanked the blue thread back, letting the gum-tipped dart that was now stuck to the man’s leg pop off before it transposed them again. “Go.” She growled, gathering the string with one hand in a practiced manner. “Consider your armor and dagger as payment for your lives.”
Stuck in little more than an ill-fitting skirt and torn shirt, the mercenary stepped back, hands up. Once he was certain Mi wouldn’t lunge at him, he grabbed his injured companion and limped away- doing his best to ignore the looks of others as he stumbled in search of a medic.
Mi waited a moment, then sheathed the jagged blade by her side. “You alright?” Mi spoke in Zanrush to the girl, who had finally managed to tear off the vaikal shroud. “Transposition’s weird, I know. Blink and look straight ahead. The blurring in your eyes will disappear in a second. If you’ve lost any bits, that’s permanent. If you want them back, become an adventurer.”
The girl looked up at Mi with wide eyes, brimming with tears. Mi hated that. She hated being someone others cried around. “Thank you…” She breathed shallowly, then with a ragged terror she hadn’t allowed herself to feel. Then, to Mi’s surprise, she took a deep breath, wiped the blood from her neck, and breathed steadily. Her tears never shed. “Are you Daikun Ito? Don’t be worried, I just have a message- and a gift.” The surprise must have shown on Mi’s face. Vaikals meant Zandai women rarely learned to control their facial expressions.
Mi coughed, adjusting the man-fitted breastplate with unease. “Ito? Yeah. Daikun? No.” She raised a thick eyebrow. If only she’d known she’d be showing her face, she’d have shaped them. “My sister’s a private type, though, so what’s it to you?”
The girl picked up the letters and flasks, handing one of each to Mi. “I had orders from the Master Alchemist, to give these to Daikun Ito should anything happen to him.”
A knot twisted in Mi’s stomach. She hadn’t liked the old man, but he was one of the few elders left from her home island. She took the letter. “Did the shadowfall get him?”
“No. Well, I hope not.” The messenger looked around conspiratorially, then remembered few would even know their language, much less hear them during the post-shadowfall rush. “Look, the other Divers may have disowned your clan for losing Tierre, but the Master Alchemist believes you have the strength to take it back. He had been making something to help you fight the Swan Witch.”
Mi blinked. She knew the old man hadn’t hated her like the rest, but to believe in her? Even Mi didn’t believe they could take back all of Tierre, not really. This quest was always Ren’s idea.
The girl rolled her eyes. “Look, if you don’t trust me, just take the potion as a gift. If you do, then come to the colony tonight. The Alchemist has gone missing- and the weapon we were making for you with him.”
“‘We?”
The messenger’s jaw tightened, then she sighed. “Damn it.” She muttered. “I’m Kao, the Master’s apprentice. Or, I was. Look, we don’t have time before those Justic assholes come back.” She tossed the vaikal back to Mi. “Just read the letter. If I’m not at the meeting spot there, find Twig at the Saint’s Pint. Assuming he hasn’t gotten himself killed.”
A shout- Justic speech. Ones not slurred by drunkenness. Backup was fast. Mi stepped back, slipping through the crowd and into the rounded hatch that led to Kamaji’s tavern. Kao’s eyes- wide and hardened with determination- locked with hers just before she turned to follow the crowd away, back towards the colony.