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Mr.Crocodile
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Robber Killer, Killer Robber - Part III: Blood on the Rocks
“It took not long to notice, they would never make an attempt to hide them. Wherever the Al-Zayiyr would make camp -permanent or temporary- they would construct their pagan altars. Rarely tall or ostentatious, only as decorated as the rest of the surrounding context, magnanimous when constructed atop a pyramid, chipped and bare when in a nameless oasis. Plinths and platforms of bare stone, wider and longer than they are tall, some so used as for them to be smoothed by touch or scored by failed strikes. But always marked and painted with the metallic oxide blood, dry or wet, glistening or crusty. Sacrificial altars for their pagan gods.
Early in my travels I encountered them as bad omens, the signs of recent use -or lack thereof- warnings for me and my men. By the time I had made contact and diplomacy with them, It became disturbingly predictable that they would always invite me to behold the deeds themselves. What disturbed me most, I found myself learning, was not the victims -often animals, almost as often things other than animals- or the raucous nature of the faithful reptiles, but the competence of their priesthood in their dozens of sacrificial “formats.” That, truly, gave a scope to the culture I was to ingratiate myself with.”
“So, any actual details this time around?” Torfi asks as he walks. They are now far enough from Skeggi’s palisades that they have left behind the beaten paths created by outgoing and returning expeditions; they have even left behind the winding logging paths of Drenok and his fellow axemen. And none of Skeggi’s fur-trappers would ever share with him the routes that they had only confided onto his father after years working together, and of the few Torfi already knows by associations, none lead in the direction that his companion has demanded they travel in.
“Nothing more than the previous dreams.” Njal answers as they walk side by side -a rarity, considering that they are moving cross country- through a thankfully unclogged copse of trees. Njal looks up at the canopy while poking his tongue out and gliding it along his chipped canine, an old tick that the young witch has had ever since the damage occurred.
Torfi looks up as well, there are things in the branches, even if none of them give him pause. Like him, the tree-dwellers seem to just be happy to keep moving across the long and horizontal branches. The critters disappear among the fanning leaves that create so much shade that even he can barely tell that the morning sun is rising. The darkness and dampness is such that none of the usual understory trees and shrubs make their walking any harder, their books sinking into the rotting layers of leaf litter.
Torfi has heard them being called “Lustrian Bøks” but he’s sure that they probably have a dozen other names, the hunting is bad in them, but right now he’s just walking and for that they are perfect, few predators stalk in groves with so much visibility for the same reason he does. Still, he makes sure to constantly stir the leaf litter ahead of them with his spear’s butt. Maybe there are no lesser saurians stalking them, but he can think of an army of different things that could be happily hiding under their feet.
“So, what?” Torfi wonders outloud. “Literally the same as always?”
“Yeah, same stone entrance at the foot of a hill, same vault full of great shields of gold, same chorus of voices calling for me to release them.”
“Have you ever tried looking around instead of walking into the vault?” Torfi wonders as they catch up to Käck, the Sarlish hound happily accepting the scratches Torfi gives without breaking his stride. “I don’t know, maybe climbing a tree? See if there’s any landmarks we could track down? This is the seventh time we’ve done this since you told me and my dad about the dream.”
“That’s not how prophecies work, I can’t walk around them like my hut.”
“Well, the boat part doesn’t always happen, does it?” Torfi brings up. The “boat part” as he calls it is how Njal’s retellings of his repeating dream often end with the witch being drawn to one of the aforementioned grand discs of gold, only to be moved away to a completely different dream upon even grazing them. A dream consisting of a ship -Estalian galleon, they had figured out years ago by comparing drawings based on the dream to the ships arriving at Skeggi during raiding seasons- sinking under the waves of the Sea of Claws during a storm, the vessel’s captain clinging to one such shields as if it could float and save his life.
“Okay, sure, but that’s because it fucking sucks and I’ve stopped trying to grab the discs because of it. You try to sleep through a nightmare that makes you go through drowning in the freezing seas. I still remember puking saltwater the second time it happened.”
“Okay, fair.” Torfi shrugs, he certainly wouldn’t want to relive some of his latest dreams, that is for sure. “You still haven’t told me what made you pick this direction this time around, though.”
“Ahhh… Well~ I…” Njal’s tongue once more flicks out, the witch suddenly interested in some bird hopping its way through one of the trees.
‘I knew this would happen.’ Torfi sighs. “There wasn’t a dream this time around, was there? Who was it this time?”
“Hey!” Njal turns back to look at him, exaggerating his offended expression in a -failed- attempt to derail the conversation. “You dare delay a witch’s powers? The Gods will not take kindly to such an insult, dogboy!”
“I ‘m pretty sure that it's dogman now, Njal.” Torfi answers, readjusting the leather strap from which his supplies are wrapped inside of a notched cloth. “Now spill, witch.”
“I… may have overheard some imperials talking about a place their boss from a previous expedition had found, a bunch of gold, not a mine but underground. They wondered if it could be some kind of collapsed øglemann tomb.”
“Njal…”
“Oh come on!” The witch defends his lies. “You wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t told you about the dream, and I have a really good hunch about this one!”
Torfi stops walking, dragging his hand up his forehead and along his hair in frustration. “I have so much stuff to do, Njal.”
“Your mother can helm the ship for a week, just as she did when we were kids and your dad went hunting. Plus, we are going to be doing hunting on the way back!”
“It’s different now, Njal. Without my father… It’s…” Torfi tries to argue, even if in his insides he knows that his friend will not fail to drag him halfway into the peninsula.
“Is it?” Njal starts walking once more, leaving him behind and now being the one to catch up to the hounds. “Because I think that he’d beat you up, if you dared to abandon poor little Njal to the jungle.” And with that, the witch crests a hill, and starts disappearing from view.
For a second, Torfi considers whistling the hunting dogs back to his side and forcing the matter.
A few moments later, he’s jogging up the same hill at the grove’s edge, and shouting for Njal to wait up before the fool stumbles into something’s nest and gets eaten alive. That would really get him in trouble with the gods, and his mother, which would be even worse.
“Bah, I don’t have any need for you today.” The wizard had said, crooked over his desk full of tomes Stefan has no understanding of, not even looking at him as he had said the words. “The dear king and I are done with our business for now and the fields of his farmers are doing as well as I can ensure they will. Go and do whatever passes for child’s fun in a pirate freeport.”
That is what the wizard had said upon Stefan waking up as early as he always does, readying himself and bringing the ancient man’s breakfast -an infusion of herbs in boiled water and some bread- to the office at the top of the tower.
Which had left the young boy… Dumbfounded. Sure, he had then taken the luxury of eating his own breakfast slowly instead of shoving it into his own face-hole during his first messenger’s run of the day.
And then he had… Just… Waited around? An hour -by his own reckoning at least- spent in his own semicircular room on the lower half of the tower waiting around for Von Danling to spring some surprise task on him, some emergency run all the way from jungle’s edge to the Citadella. The idea of just having a day when little to no work would have been demanded of him?
Von Danling could have told him that he was to be minced into fertilizer for one of those plants creeping up the tower’s walls and he would have had an easier time really understanding what was being asked of him.
Leisurely time just isn’t a thing for a child that has grown up an orphan like himself. Every hour of his life until not too long ago had been spent scraping to survive, enjoying those scraps or just trying to rest. Sure, he knows games, but most of those games involved betting, be it based on luck or skills, he’s never played a game that didn’t involve whoever wins getting an extra ration or the slightly less-ratty shirt some other idiot had wagered. He’s never had more than an observer’s role in what he assumes are other children’s names, hell, that’s exactly what he is doing right now.
Because Stefan, in his inability to just spend his “day off” resting, had ended up wandering into the city anyways, only barely stopping himself from wandering down to the Felldowns and wondering whether his very short-termed previous employer had any extra work for him. But only barely, as he finds himself sunning his slowly growing body -the wondrous magic of multiple daily meals- while seated on top of a forgotten crate in a corner of Butcher Street.
His initial impetus for that had been that while wondering, he had come across a ring of other kids cheering on what had ended up being a fight between two stray dogs. He had climbed up the crate to be able to see better and cheer for the dog he had arbitrarily chosen to be a fan of -it just looked a tiny bit scrappier, that was all- and then had just remained there when the fight had ended.
‘Maybe I’ll spend all day here, yeah.’ He ponders to himself. ‘Just hang around for a bit, walk places, for once, instead of running… Maybe I could check up on Saint Sissy’s, or see what they are building at the Grails… Maybe… The Blushing Maiden?’
And, of course, it is then that whatever god he is supposed to worship -religion is something both Saint Sissy’s and the seaborn priesthood were very talkative about, which is why he’s avoided it for so long- decides that Stefan has offended him with his laziness, or with his indecision, or just for the fun of it.
Because it is then that his damnable ears pick something up, coming from the window above the crate he is resting on.
A few simple words, and suddenly he’s just hooked in like a dumb fish.
“Can’t wait to get a taste of that king’s flesh, you think royal pig’s meat tasted better than average swine?” The voice is low and grumbling, like a cauldron, but also like a cauldron, large and hard to miss.
An ogre's voice.
Pieter the Butcher’s voice.
“You won’t have to wait for long, boss.” Another voice, clearly human, responds. Most ogres who come and go from Port Reaver pay their respects to Pieter as the closest thing to a “tyrant” or paymaster that the city has, but only a few of them are directly under his employment. Most Butchers are humans, including the one who continues to speak. “He’s got this secret meeting planet with Sharp Kristoff in a couple days, something about getting shiny new pokeys for that guard of his. In Kristoff’s workshop, prime chance to shake up how things work around here.”
“I don’t buy it.” The ogre speaks once more. “I can count on one hand the people Bastjan will move his pompous ass for. Kristoff isn’t one of those, he’s just a blown-up guildmaster.”
“I have it in good standing, boss, the source is solid.”
“How solid?”
“One of his guards.”
“Now I really don’t believe you!” Laughs the ogre, a slapping sound cracking like thunder alongside it, it makes Stefan jump in pace, even as he scoots back towards the wall, to rest his ear on the windowsill. “One of his guards stabbing his back? What next, are we going to wake up tomorrow to a completed city wall?”
“Boss, I wouldn’t come here to you if I didn’t trust it with my life!” The man defends himself, panic in his voice
“Would you come here trusting it with your arm?” Pieter’s tone changes as his laughter suddenly dies. “Because that’s what I’m having for dinner, if you don’t have anything more solid.”
“I-I do boss! I can get you the snitch tonight at your mansion!”
“Good, invite him over for dinner, then, just in case I need seconds. Now!” The sound of an arm slamming into a table once more shakes Stefan. “If this is real… I’m not going to start planning my kingship of Port Reaver on an empty gut!”
The conversation then turns to topics much less surprising from a gang-leading ogre’s mouth. But Stefan is not there to hear them. He’s got places to run to.
“Sir,” The guard knocks on the heavy door to the Governor-General’s private office without entering it. “ Herr Brocco has arrived for your meeting.”
The Governor-General in question looks up from -of all things- his daughter’s work, giving the author a tired look as the young woman sits across from him.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you sometimes, daughter.” He rubs his head, in his hand still holding the letter he’s just dictated to her. An old bite-wound from his service in the Imperial Armies against the slaves to darkness had not left his dominant hand unusable, but the finest movements -such as calligraphy- had become enough of a challenge in his age that he’s taken to trustring the inkwell and quill to Noémie. He begins to roll the piece of parchment up, trusting that the second half that he didn’t have the time to read would be as impeccable as the first. “Send him up!” He speaks up loudly enough for the soldier to pick it up.
“Want me to stay, father?” Noémie asks, a mischievous smile on her face.
“Name your price.” The veteran scoffs, knowing that his daughter wouldn’t help him deal with the usurer if she didn’t stand much to gain.
“Mmmmmh… How about permission to head-”
“Denied, name your reasonable price.”
“Mph!” She scoffs without losing her smile. “I heard that there’s a few Estalian ships on dock, one of them has a naturalist aboard, his work seems interesting, I want to meet him in private and exchange notes.”
“I’ll arrange for something.” He accepts easily enough. Years ago he might have refused the idea of allowing his daughter to privately meet with a man in such a brazen way. But at this point in his life, not only is he actively hoping to find someone for his daughter to be engaged with -hopefully back across the sea, if unlikely- but the very solid awareness he has of the fact that if there is such a thing as a “naturalist” involved, the last thing in his daughter’s mind will be a breach of decorum.
“Thank you!” She smiles and tilts her head in a way that reminds him of her mother.
“Can you get some wax melting?” He asks, gesturing to one of the office’s oil lamps, as it would be absurd to have constructed a fireplace into any kind of room in Lustria. “We still need to have this letter sealed.”
“Of course.”
It is as his daughter is using said lamp’s heat to melt some wax, and as he organizes his endless, desk-covering amount of to-dos, deal-with-laters and other headaches, that the office’s door opens. For a few moments, that causes the seabreeze to pick up, something that he is happy about, considering the onset of the dry season.
“Governor-general.” The financial attache greets him with a nod. “Lady Armbruster.” He greets the veteran’s daughter too. Justus Brocco may be a detached and curt man, but he isn’t one to forget the utility of good manners. “I have dire news to share with you.”
“I sincerely doubt that.” Noémie coughs into her fist as she brings the small ladle of hot wax to her father, coating the letter with heavy dollop as he presses the city’s into it, himself letting out a bare smile.
“I have been in talks with both some of our landowners and the representatives of their customers in the Old World, there is an issue at hand in need of swift solving.”
‘What is it this time, crop ruining plagues? Predators stealing cattle? Farmer’s wells being poisoned by native fun-’
“Sir, something simply must be done about the Estalian sugar exports!” The tone with which Justus says it, one would have usually reserved to news about an entire greenskin Waaagh! being launched against one’s personal residence.
“Excuse me?” The father asks.
“Sugar?” The daughter follows.
“Not any kind of sugar. Estalian sugarcane sugar!” Justus clarifies. “At this very moment, there are two ships full of it in our harbors, ready to be sent out to Bretonnian ports. They are practically robbing us in plain sight.”
“I believe you just said that the sugar comes from their farms?”
“Santa Magritta, correct?” Noémie brings up the Estalian “viceroyalty”’s capital.
“Indeed!” Their farms are preposterously large, and their island colony much more civilized than Settler’s Cove. This has greatly lowered their costs, and their much cheaper sugar sells much more easily than ours, especially with how we allow them the use of our ports as launch-off points for the trip to the orient.”
“I…” Siegsmund leans back. “I certainly am not against incentivizing more incoming settlers to pick up sugarcane plantations as their way of life, but this is hardly something to be solved over months, not a hurried conversation.”
“Sugarcane doesn’t grow that fast, Herr Justus.” His daughter jokingly points out.
“This absolutely is an issue which can be swiftly solved!” The man -for once- has some energy in his voice. “I propose an effectively immediate embargo of all Estalian goods sailing out of Sudburg!”
‘Oh no,’ Both father and daughter -somehow- think in unison. ‘It’s going to be one of those meetings.’
The kind that makes Noémie regret not having demanded more, and her father regret ever having set foot on that west-bound ship so many years ago to begin with.
The attack had fallen upon them with Chotec’s departure, predictably so. Grak-Graq had planned for it, but even from the first signs of trouble, the Spawn Leader had known that he would be mounting a defense to the last.
No help would have reached the Monument of the Sun fast enough, he had known. And now, as his obsinite blade disembowels yet another foe, he knows that to be a fact, and not merely a tempered estimation.
‘No matter,’ the saurus pulls his blade out of an entangled mesh of steaming entrails. ‘Such knowledge has changed nothing.’ His task continues, the spotted reptilian warrior raises his neck, surveying the battlefield. He derives a minuscule amount of satisfaction from what he beholds.
The Monument of the Sun is a glorious edifice, as befitting of the Old One it honors. But it is not a temple which is easy to defend. The temple takes the form of a massive causeway racing the sun’s own path across the firmament, framed by hundreds of pylons, archways and spires all the way to its end, where he stands.
The waves lap at the temple’s edge behind him, as it ends -just as the sun’s visible path does- below the waters of the Sea of Squalls. What a pity, then, to have been attacked by a fleet of warmblooded filth. The first attacks had actually come at the temple’s opposite edge, hours to the east, but Grak-Graq had not hesitated or committed his forces, as he knows well that the Itz’xa’khanx’ s misbegotten offshoots would never not make use of their vessels. And so, when the fleet had arrived to pelt them with bolts, arrows and many worse things, his force had still been fresh and plentiful.
But that had been some hours ago, and while the solar engines kept atop the temple’s sun-scorched shrines had turned landing parties into a deadly proposition for the thiefs, numbers and range had eaten away at his own forces.
The saurus twirls once more as the newest wave of assailants reach him atop the temple’s great altar, long-ago built to ensure that Chotec could spend his charge across the darkness drunk on blood and strengthened enough for the following morning to come.
The elves are not fully mud-brained, the force surrounding him has given up on trying to cut him down with swords or pelting him with their crossbows, no close combat so far has ended for them in anything other than being added to the last sacrifice Grak-Graq is to make, and the dozens of shafts sticking out of his chest have done little to stop him beyond rotting one of his lungs. Now, he finds himself surrounded by the pale-skinned invaders, of a kind who cower behind massive shields and spears too long to be held with any courage.
They are hoping to down him like an exhausted great grazer, to kill him by small cuts and stabs.
They have made a terrible mistake, for Grak-Graq still has one working lung, and it burns .
The saurus doesn’t need to do much to break the ring surrounding him, he simply chooses the direction in which he knows the lies are thickest, and slams himself into them, his Burning Blade melting and burning its way through whatever defense that jaws and claws can’t get through.
The Spawn Leader quite literally sears his way into the heart of the unit of dreadspears, turning their long weapons and heavy shields against them as every shove and kick of him catches and tears onto something and burning bodies flail their way into being convenient distractions.
So focused is the Saurus, that he doesn’t even notice as the last of the warriors protecting the temple fall in their following of his example, taking dozens more of the enemies with them.
So focused is he, in fact, that he lets little more than a grunt out as -finally- one shape among the dozens of warriors twirls its way under one of his punitive slashes. This one is more lightly armored, yet the equipment is of much better make. The same shape that his burning eyes had come across, when the fleet had arrived after realizing that their poor attempt at a ruse had failed.
A great dagger digs into his chest, just as the great macuahuitl that is the Burning Blade behead another spear-elf in its trajectory towards the enemy’s leader. Grak-Graq’s grip on the weapon doesn’t loosen, his body doesn’t collapse even as he begins to taste his own broth-like blood.
“May Chotec feast on mine and mine kin’s blood.” The Saurian growls out even as the foe steps back. “For before he starts sampling your kin’s own, this temple will already be reconsecrated. Count the days, filth, they will not stop.” His words, speaking in his own tongue, mean nothing to the female who has dealt the killing blow and who stares down on him as his body collapses.
And with that, Davara Coldhide finds herself victorious in the Battle of the Monument of the Sun, the first of her campaign. The maritime Drucchi’s skin itches, as if sunburnt, as her forces cheer and hail both her and the gods.
“It took not long to notice, they would never make an attempt to hide them. Wherever the Al-Zayiyr would make camp -permanent or temporary- they would construct their pagan altars. Rarely tall or ostentatious, only as decorated as the rest of the surrounding context, magnanimous when constructed atop a pyramid, chipped and bare when in a nameless oasis. Plinths and platforms of bare stone, wider and longer than they are tall, some so used as for them to be smoothed by touch or scored by failed strikes. But always marked and painted with the metallic oxide blood, dry or wet, glistening or crusty. Sacrificial altars for their pagan gods.
Early in my travels I encountered them as bad omens, the signs of recent use -or lack thereof- warnings for me and my men. By the time I had made contact and diplomacy with them, It became disturbingly predictable that they would always invite me to behold the deeds themselves. What disturbed me most, I found myself learning, was not the victims -often animals, almost as often things other than animals- or the raucous nature of the faithful reptiles, but the competence of their priesthood in their dozens of sacrificial “formats.” That, truly, gave a scope to the culture I was to ingratiate myself with.”
- The Roaring Ones, Autobiographical Memoirs Of Nasser Al-Fil.
Outskirts of Skeggi, Settler’s Cove, Isthmus of Lustria
3rd of Kornskurðarmánuður, 2545 VR // 40.0.9.15.5 12 Chikchan 18 Chʼen
“So, any actual details this time around?” Torfi asks as he walks. They are now far enough from Skeggi’s palisades that they have left behind the beaten paths created by outgoing and returning expeditions; they have even left behind the winding logging paths of Drenok and his fellow axemen. And none of Skeggi’s fur-trappers would ever share with him the routes that they had only confided onto his father after years working together, and of the few Torfi already knows by associations, none lead in the direction that his companion has demanded they travel in.
“Nothing more than the previous dreams.” Njal answers as they walk side by side -a rarity, considering that they are moving cross country- through a thankfully unclogged copse of trees. Njal looks up at the canopy while poking his tongue out and gliding it along his chipped canine, an old tick that the young witch has had ever since the damage occurred.
Torfi looks up as well, there are things in the branches, even if none of them give him pause. Like him, the tree-dwellers seem to just be happy to keep moving across the long and horizontal branches. The critters disappear among the fanning leaves that create so much shade that even he can barely tell that the morning sun is rising. The darkness and dampness is such that none of the usual understory trees and shrubs make their walking any harder, their books sinking into the rotting layers of leaf litter.
Torfi has heard them being called “Lustrian Bøks” but he’s sure that they probably have a dozen other names, the hunting is bad in them, but right now he’s just walking and for that they are perfect, few predators stalk in groves with so much visibility for the same reason he does. Still, he makes sure to constantly stir the leaf litter ahead of them with his spear’s butt. Maybe there are no lesser saurians stalking them, but he can think of an army of different things that could be happily hiding under their feet.
“So, what?” Torfi wonders outloud. “Literally the same as always?”
“Yeah, same stone entrance at the foot of a hill, same vault full of great shields of gold, same chorus of voices calling for me to release them.”
“Have you ever tried looking around instead of walking into the vault?” Torfi wonders as they catch up to Käck, the Sarlish hound happily accepting the scratches Torfi gives without breaking his stride. “I don’t know, maybe climbing a tree? See if there’s any landmarks we could track down? This is the seventh time we’ve done this since you told me and my dad about the dream.”
“That’s not how prophecies work, I can’t walk around them like my hut.”
“Well, the boat part doesn’t always happen, does it?” Torfi brings up. The “boat part” as he calls it is how Njal’s retellings of his repeating dream often end with the witch being drawn to one of the aforementioned grand discs of gold, only to be moved away to a completely different dream upon even grazing them. A dream consisting of a ship -Estalian galleon, they had figured out years ago by comparing drawings based on the dream to the ships arriving at Skeggi during raiding seasons- sinking under the waves of the Sea of Claws during a storm, the vessel’s captain clinging to one such shields as if it could float and save his life.
“Okay, sure, but that’s because it fucking sucks and I’ve stopped trying to grab the discs because of it. You try to sleep through a nightmare that makes you go through drowning in the freezing seas. I still remember puking saltwater the second time it happened.”
“Okay, fair.” Torfi shrugs, he certainly wouldn’t want to relive some of his latest dreams, that is for sure. “You still haven’t told me what made you pick this direction this time around, though.”
“Ahhh… Well~ I…” Njal’s tongue once more flicks out, the witch suddenly interested in some bird hopping its way through one of the trees.
‘I knew this would happen.’ Torfi sighs. “There wasn’t a dream this time around, was there? Who was it this time?”
“Hey!” Njal turns back to look at him, exaggerating his offended expression in a -failed- attempt to derail the conversation. “You dare delay a witch’s powers? The Gods will not take kindly to such an insult, dogboy!”
“I ‘m pretty sure that it's dogman now, Njal.” Torfi answers, readjusting the leather strap from which his supplies are wrapped inside of a notched cloth. “Now spill, witch.”
“I… may have overheard some imperials talking about a place their boss from a previous expedition had found, a bunch of gold, not a mine but underground. They wondered if it could be some kind of collapsed øglemann tomb.”
“Njal…”
“Oh come on!” The witch defends his lies. “You wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t told you about the dream, and I have a really good hunch about this one!”
Torfi stops walking, dragging his hand up his forehead and along his hair in frustration. “I have so much stuff to do, Njal.”
“Your mother can helm the ship for a week, just as she did when we were kids and your dad went hunting. Plus, we are going to be doing hunting on the way back!”
“It’s different now, Njal. Without my father… It’s…” Torfi tries to argue, even if in his insides he knows that his friend will not fail to drag him halfway into the peninsula.
“Is it?” Njal starts walking once more, leaving him behind and now being the one to catch up to the hounds. “Because I think that he’d beat you up, if you dared to abandon poor little Njal to the jungle.” And with that, the witch crests a hill, and starts disappearing from view.
For a second, Torfi considers whistling the hunting dogs back to his side and forcing the matter.
A few moments later, he’s jogging up the same hill at the grove’s edge, and shouting for Njal to wait up before the fool stumbles into something’s nest and gets eaten alive. That would really get him in trouble with the gods, and his mother, which would be even worse.
Port Reaver, Settlers’ Cove, Isthmus of Lustria
17th of Erntezeit, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.15.5 12 Chikchan 18 Chʼen
“Bah, I don’t have any need for you today.” The wizard had said, crooked over his desk full of tomes Stefan has no understanding of, not even looking at him as he had said the words. “The dear king and I are done with our business for now and the fields of his farmers are doing as well as I can ensure they will. Go and do whatever passes for child’s fun in a pirate freeport.”
That is what the wizard had said upon Stefan waking up as early as he always does, readying himself and bringing the ancient man’s breakfast -an infusion of herbs in boiled water and some bread- to the office at the top of the tower.
Which had left the young boy… Dumbfounded. Sure, he had then taken the luxury of eating his own breakfast slowly instead of shoving it into his own face-hole during his first messenger’s run of the day.
And then he had… Just… Waited around? An hour -by his own reckoning at least- spent in his own semicircular room on the lower half of the tower waiting around for Von Danling to spring some surprise task on him, some emergency run all the way from jungle’s edge to the Citadella. The idea of just having a day when little to no work would have been demanded of him?
Von Danling could have told him that he was to be minced into fertilizer for one of those plants creeping up the tower’s walls and he would have had an easier time really understanding what was being asked of him.
Leisurely time just isn’t a thing for a child that has grown up an orphan like himself. Every hour of his life until not too long ago had been spent scraping to survive, enjoying those scraps or just trying to rest. Sure, he knows games, but most of those games involved betting, be it based on luck or skills, he’s never played a game that didn’t involve whoever wins getting an extra ration or the slightly less-ratty shirt some other idiot had wagered. He’s never had more than an observer’s role in what he assumes are other children’s names, hell, that’s exactly what he is doing right now.
Because Stefan, in his inability to just spend his “day off” resting, had ended up wandering into the city anyways, only barely stopping himself from wandering down to the Felldowns and wondering whether his very short-termed previous employer had any extra work for him. But only barely, as he finds himself sunning his slowly growing body -the wondrous magic of multiple daily meals- while seated on top of a forgotten crate in a corner of Butcher Street.
His initial impetus for that had been that while wondering, he had come across a ring of other kids cheering on what had ended up being a fight between two stray dogs. He had climbed up the crate to be able to see better and cheer for the dog he had arbitrarily chosen to be a fan of -it just looked a tiny bit scrappier, that was all- and then had just remained there when the fight had ended.
‘Maybe I’ll spend all day here, yeah.’ He ponders to himself. ‘Just hang around for a bit, walk places, for once, instead of running… Maybe I could check up on Saint Sissy’s, or see what they are building at the Grails… Maybe… The Blushing Maiden?’
And, of course, it is then that whatever god he is supposed to worship -religion is something both Saint Sissy’s and the seaborn priesthood were very talkative about, which is why he’s avoided it for so long- decides that Stefan has offended him with his laziness, or with his indecision, or just for the fun of it.
Because it is then that his damnable ears pick something up, coming from the window above the crate he is resting on.
A few simple words, and suddenly he’s just hooked in like a dumb fish.
“Can’t wait to get a taste of that king’s flesh, you think royal pig’s meat tasted better than average swine?” The voice is low and grumbling, like a cauldron, but also like a cauldron, large and hard to miss.
An ogre's voice.
Pieter the Butcher’s voice.
“You won’t have to wait for long, boss.” Another voice, clearly human, responds. Most ogres who come and go from Port Reaver pay their respects to Pieter as the closest thing to a “tyrant” or paymaster that the city has, but only a few of them are directly under his employment. Most Butchers are humans, including the one who continues to speak. “He’s got this secret meeting planet with Sharp Kristoff in a couple days, something about getting shiny new pokeys for that guard of his. In Kristoff’s workshop, prime chance to shake up how things work around here.”
“I don’t buy it.” The ogre speaks once more. “I can count on one hand the people Bastjan will move his pompous ass for. Kristoff isn’t one of those, he’s just a blown-up guildmaster.”
“I have it in good standing, boss, the source is solid.”
“How solid?”
“One of his guards.”
“Now I really don’t believe you!” Laughs the ogre, a slapping sound cracking like thunder alongside it, it makes Stefan jump in pace, even as he scoots back towards the wall, to rest his ear on the windowsill. “One of his guards stabbing his back? What next, are we going to wake up tomorrow to a completed city wall?”
“Boss, I wouldn’t come here to you if I didn’t trust it with my life!” The man defends himself, panic in his voice
“Would you come here trusting it with your arm?” Pieter’s tone changes as his laughter suddenly dies. “Because that’s what I’m having for dinner, if you don’t have anything more solid.”
“I-I do boss! I can get you the snitch tonight at your mansion!”
“Good, invite him over for dinner, then, just in case I need seconds. Now!” The sound of an arm slamming into a table once more shakes Stefan. “If this is real… I’m not going to start planning my kingship of Port Reaver on an empty gut!”
The conversation then turns to topics much less surprising from a gang-leading ogre’s mouth. But Stefan is not there to hear them. He’s got places to run to.
Waldeswacht Fortress, Autonomous Imperial Colony of Sudburg, Settler’s Cove, Isthmus of Lustria
17th of Erntezeit, 2538 IC // 40.0.9.15.5 12 Chikchan 18 Chʼen
“Sir,” The guard knocks on the heavy door to the Governor-General’s private office without entering it. “ Herr Brocco has arrived for your meeting.”
The Governor-General in question looks up from -of all things- his daughter’s work, giving the author a tired look as the young woman sits across from him.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you sometimes, daughter.” He rubs his head, in his hand still holding the letter he’s just dictated to her. An old bite-wound from his service in the Imperial Armies against the slaves to darkness had not left his dominant hand unusable, but the finest movements -such as calligraphy- had become enough of a challenge in his age that he’s taken to trustring the inkwell and quill to Noémie. He begins to roll the piece of parchment up, trusting that the second half that he didn’t have the time to read would be as impeccable as the first. “Send him up!” He speaks up loudly enough for the soldier to pick it up.
“Want me to stay, father?” Noémie asks, a mischievous smile on her face.
“Name your price.” The veteran scoffs, knowing that his daughter wouldn’t help him deal with the usurer if she didn’t stand much to gain.
“Mmmmmh… How about permission to head-”
“Denied, name your reasonable price.”
“Mph!” She scoffs without losing her smile. “I heard that there’s a few Estalian ships on dock, one of them has a naturalist aboard, his work seems interesting, I want to meet him in private and exchange notes.”
“I’ll arrange for something.” He accepts easily enough. Years ago he might have refused the idea of allowing his daughter to privately meet with a man in such a brazen way. But at this point in his life, not only is he actively hoping to find someone for his daughter to be engaged with -hopefully back across the sea, if unlikely- but the very solid awareness he has of the fact that if there is such a thing as a “naturalist” involved, the last thing in his daughter’s mind will be a breach of decorum.
“Thank you!” She smiles and tilts her head in a way that reminds him of her mother.
“Can you get some wax melting?” He asks, gesturing to one of the office’s oil lamps, as it would be absurd to have constructed a fireplace into any kind of room in Lustria. “We still need to have this letter sealed.”
“Of course.”
It is as his daughter is using said lamp’s heat to melt some wax, and as he organizes his endless, desk-covering amount of to-dos, deal-with-laters and other headaches, that the office’s door opens. For a few moments, that causes the seabreeze to pick up, something that he is happy about, considering the onset of the dry season.
“Governor-general.” The financial attache greets him with a nod. “Lady Armbruster.” He greets the veteran’s daughter too. Justus Brocco may be a detached and curt man, but he isn’t one to forget the utility of good manners. “I have dire news to share with you.”
“I sincerely doubt that.” Noémie coughs into her fist as she brings the small ladle of hot wax to her father, coating the letter with heavy dollop as he presses the city’s into it, himself letting out a bare smile.
“I have been in talks with both some of our landowners and the representatives of their customers in the Old World, there is an issue at hand in need of swift solving.”
‘What is it this time, crop ruining plagues? Predators stealing cattle? Farmer’s wells being poisoned by native fun-’
“Sir, something simply must be done about the Estalian sugar exports!” The tone with which Justus says it, one would have usually reserved to news about an entire greenskin Waaagh! being launched against one’s personal residence.
“Excuse me?” The father asks.
“Sugar?” The daughter follows.
“Not any kind of sugar. Estalian sugarcane sugar!” Justus clarifies. “At this very moment, there are two ships full of it in our harbors, ready to be sent out to Bretonnian ports. They are practically robbing us in plain sight.”
“I believe you just said that the sugar comes from their farms?”
“Santa Magritta, correct?” Noémie brings up the Estalian “viceroyalty”’s capital.
“Indeed!” Their farms are preposterously large, and their island colony much more civilized than Settler’s Cove. This has greatly lowered their costs, and their much cheaper sugar sells much more easily than ours, especially with how we allow them the use of our ports as launch-off points for the trip to the orient.”
“I…” Siegsmund leans back. “I certainly am not against incentivizing more incoming settlers to pick up sugarcane plantations as their way of life, but this is hardly something to be solved over months, not a hurried conversation.”
“Sugarcane doesn’t grow that fast, Herr Justus.” His daughter jokingly points out.
“This absolutely is an issue which can be swiftly solved!” The man -for once- has some energy in his voice. “I propose an effectively immediate embargo of all Estalian goods sailing out of Sudburg!”
‘Oh no,’ Both father and daughter -somehow- think in unison. ‘It’s going to be one of those meetings.’
The kind that makes Noémie regret not having demanded more, and her father regret ever having set foot on that west-bound ship so many years ago to begin with.
Monument of the Sun, Coast of Squalls, Isthmus of Lustria
62th Day of Despair, 238th Year of the Age of Vengance // 40.0.9.15.5 12 Chikchan 18 Chʼen
The attack had fallen upon them with Chotec’s departure, predictably so. Grak-Graq had planned for it, but even from the first signs of trouble, the Spawn Leader had known that he would be mounting a defense to the last.
No help would have reached the Monument of the Sun fast enough, he had known. And now, as his obsinite blade disembowels yet another foe, he knows that to be a fact, and not merely a tempered estimation.
‘No matter,’ the saurus pulls his blade out of an entangled mesh of steaming entrails. ‘Such knowledge has changed nothing.’ His task continues, the spotted reptilian warrior raises his neck, surveying the battlefield. He derives a minuscule amount of satisfaction from what he beholds.
The Monument of the Sun is a glorious edifice, as befitting of the Old One it honors. But it is not a temple which is easy to defend. The temple takes the form of a massive causeway racing the sun’s own path across the firmament, framed by hundreds of pylons, archways and spires all the way to its end, where he stands.
The waves lap at the temple’s edge behind him, as it ends -just as the sun’s visible path does- below the waters of the Sea of Squalls. What a pity, then, to have been attacked by a fleet of warmblooded filth. The first attacks had actually come at the temple’s opposite edge, hours to the east, but Grak-Graq had not hesitated or committed his forces, as he knows well that the Itz’xa’khanx’ s misbegotten offshoots would never not make use of their vessels. And so, when the fleet had arrived to pelt them with bolts, arrows and many worse things, his force had still been fresh and plentiful.
But that had been some hours ago, and while the solar engines kept atop the temple’s sun-scorched shrines had turned landing parties into a deadly proposition for the thiefs, numbers and range had eaten away at his own forces.
The saurus twirls once more as the newest wave of assailants reach him atop the temple’s great altar, long-ago built to ensure that Chotec could spend his charge across the darkness drunk on blood and strengthened enough for the following morning to come.
The elves are not fully mud-brained, the force surrounding him has given up on trying to cut him down with swords or pelting him with their crossbows, no close combat so far has ended for them in anything other than being added to the last sacrifice Grak-Graq is to make, and the dozens of shafts sticking out of his chest have done little to stop him beyond rotting one of his lungs. Now, he finds himself surrounded by the pale-skinned invaders, of a kind who cower behind massive shields and spears too long to be held with any courage.
They are hoping to down him like an exhausted great grazer, to kill him by small cuts and stabs.
They have made a terrible mistake, for Grak-Graq still has one working lung, and it burns .
The saurus doesn’t need to do much to break the ring surrounding him, he simply chooses the direction in which he knows the lies are thickest, and slams himself into them, his Burning Blade melting and burning its way through whatever defense that jaws and claws can’t get through.
The Spawn Leader quite literally sears his way into the heart of the unit of dreadspears, turning their long weapons and heavy shields against them as every shove and kick of him catches and tears onto something and burning bodies flail their way into being convenient distractions.
So focused is the Saurus, that he doesn’t even notice as the last of the warriors protecting the temple fall in their following of his example, taking dozens more of the enemies with them.
So focused is he, in fact, that he lets little more than a grunt out as -finally- one shape among the dozens of warriors twirls its way under one of his punitive slashes. This one is more lightly armored, yet the equipment is of much better make. The same shape that his burning eyes had come across, when the fleet had arrived after realizing that their poor attempt at a ruse had failed.
A great dagger digs into his chest, just as the great macuahuitl that is the Burning Blade behead another spear-elf in its trajectory towards the enemy’s leader. Grak-Graq’s grip on the weapon doesn’t loosen, his body doesn’t collapse even as he begins to taste his own broth-like blood.
“May Chotec feast on mine and mine kin’s blood.” The Saurian growls out even as the foe steps back. “For before he starts sampling your kin’s own, this temple will already be reconsecrated. Count the days, filth, they will not stop.” His words, speaking in his own tongue, mean nothing to the female who has dealt the killing blow and who stares down on him as his body collapses.
And with that, Davara Coldhide finds herself victorious in the Battle of the Monument of the Sun, the first of her campaign. The maritime Drucchi’s skin itches, as if sunburnt, as her forces cheer and hail both her and the gods.
