The third day of the company’s trek went by swiftly, and without much in the way of incident, thanks to some careful navigation on Andrei’s part. He had indeed taken them off of the main trade road just after the noonday meal, cutting through fields of tall grass astride his geltanian horse. The geltanians had been specially bred over the course of the last five centuries, and had seen a great deal of use by a tribe of half-giants in the western lands when they went raiding into the Whitewood Forest, home of the Elven Kingdom in the southwest. The elves had shortly thereafter become the standard caretakers and breeders of these animals, and three had been available for Andrei and Norto to barter for at the trade station.
Dren had been terrified of the animals when Andrei had brought them from the stables to hook into the traces for the wagon, wanting nothing to do with them. Geltanian horses, ‘gelts’ for short, had all the looks of a normal stallion, but their dimensions were on the enormous side of the scales. Standing on his tiptoes, the top of Dren’s head would not even clear one’s back. Yet these three had clearly been well groomed and thoroughly trained, for they gave no umbrage when being fitted into their harnesses, and when Dren handled the reins, they responded without pause.
Andrei rode slightly ahead of them all morning, keeping a sharp eye out for potential dangers. Now that they were further from the larger metropolis of Desanadron proper, and had moved off of the main trade road, they would be more and more dependent upon themselves for their continued safety and survival. He had taken no drink since awakening, and when the second hour of the afternoon came, he could feel the spirits within him stirring in response to some threat he had not as yet spotted.
What is it, he thought, trying to coax one of the spirits into responding.
-Nothing to worry yourself over, Andrei,- one of the spirits whispered gently in reply. –There are pixies nearby, hiding over in that copse of ash trees. Pass them by, and they will pay you no mind.- Andrei flinched at the mention of pixies. Though not the most powerful of the fey folken, a single pixie could still wield enough magic to reduce him to a quivering pile of guts, if put in a temper. Holly might be able to defend herself against a couple of pixies, maybe three or four even, but beyond that, Andrei suspected she would face the same fate as he. His armor and weapons were tempered steel, and even the block of metal in his tinderbox was not untreated iron. Only untreated iron could negate fey magic entirely, and though Dren might have a small supply of that material among his trunks, Andrei suspected it would not be enough to mount a defense, if push came to shove.
So he smartly guided the wagon and his companions in a circuitous path around the ash copse. After that, their travel took them mostly through fields and hills of low or moderate grasses, until nightfall saw them to the edge of a stream set on the edge of a fair-sized woodland. As they were setting up camp, Dren consulted a map he had purchased before leaving the city and asked Andrei, “Is that Clawwood Forest?” The minotaur snorted derisively and shook his head.
“Clawwood is to the south of us from here, probably a good four or five days’ travel with the way the northern borderlines grow,” he replied. “No, across this stream is Dollswood. Most of the trees therein are poplars, and they’re commonly cut down to be used for furniture and home construction. There’s also pines, firs and maples, all the assorted hardwoods you’d see used to make toys, which is how it became called Dollswood to begin with,” he said. Holly whistled appreciatively.
“You certainly know a great deal about these wilds, Mr. Dolstov,” she reflected aloud, setting down the bundle of sticks she had gathered for the campfire. “How did you come by this knowledge?”
“Well, I’ve come by this area a lot over the years, mostly heading up to Traithrock for work,” he said. “Plus, my home village is up in the northwestern mountains, and I’ve been invited to come visit a few times by my brother since he married. He still lives up there with his wife and their sons.” Andrei sorted several sealed plastic containers, taking the lids off and plucking a few ingredients here and there, dropping them all into a camp pot. Norto brought over a water skin and poured into the pot until Andrei made a cutting gesture with the side of his hand, and the old smithy, who had been unusually quiet throughout the day, plugged the stopper back in and shuffled away to set up his tent.
Dren finished arranging his own tent, then started in putting up Holly’s for her while the cuyotai mage walked a wide perimeter around their camp, pouring a fine yellow powder from one of her pouches as she strode along. Muttering ancient, arcane incantations under her breath as she went, the mage imbued protections and alarms upon the circle she was inscribing upon the soil, enhanced by the powder itself. She could have simply used a knife to carve the circle, but according to her superiors in the guild, the yellow powder, called ‘mana salt’ among sorcerers, proved far more effective and less draining on one’s personal supply of magical energy. Dren looked up now and then in his preparations to watch her, admiring her poise as she wove her magic about them. When she finished, she tied up the pouch and brought it over to him.
“Thank you, Dren,” she said, helping him settle the final support rope with a stake. “I could’ve done this.”
“I wasn’t doing much else to help,” he replied. “If I leave the circle, will it break,” he asked quietly.
“No, it’ll be fine,” Holly answered. “But you’ll be much safer inside of it. That’s why I filled our water skins before I fetched the firewood.”
“Speaking of that,” said Andrei, striking the fire alight with his tinderbox, “we’ll need more than what you brought. I’ll go fetch some, Dren, if you’d be so kind as to keep an eye on the stew here and stir it once it sets to boiling.” Before passing out of the circle, the minotaur paused by Norto’s tent, and Dren overheard him asking the old man if he’d dug a latrine trench. Norto snapped back that of course he had, he wasn’t some dolt who didn’t know how to use a spade, and Andrei thanked him for pitching in and doing his part. Dren quickly looked away from his employer, lest the old man realize he’d been embarrassed and take it out on him.
So the young smithy stirred the stew when it started bubbling a few minutes later, and Andrei returned in short order with more sticks and a whole branch that he had hacked into a few thick chunks, feeding the fire with a few sticks for the moment. Shortly they were all eating, seated silently at the four compass points around the fire. When the meal was finished, Andrei gathered their bowls and spoons, and walked them to the stream to clean them out. Dren stretched and stood up, joining Andrei just beyond the protection of Holly’s enchanted circle at the water’s edge.
“Something I can help you with, young man,” the freelancer asked, shaking water out of one of the bowls and setting it aside on the bank of the stream.
“I hope so,” Dren whispered, peeking over his shoulder at the campfire, where Norto still sat, hunched forward. “I need to have words with Norto, and I suspect he won’t be pleased to hear them.” Andrei ceased scrubbing the spoon he held in his left hand, easing down onto his backside in the grass.
“Oh,” he said. “This is something you’ve been sitting on, I imagine.”
“It is,” Dren replied. “I need to set things straight with him, because I’m not going to be abused for the length of this journey. The only reason I didn’t set up his tent tonight is because we’re away from broader civilization, and you and Holly have stayed close. Just hang back, but let him see you’re close by.” Andrei nodded, finished cleaning the last of the dishes, and followed Dren back inside the circle, where the young smithy took a seat to Norto’s right. He cleared his throat loudly, earning the older man’s attention, and he took a deep breath before beginning. “Norto?”
“Yeah?” The old smithy lifted his wine skin to his lips, took a sip.
“There’s something you should know about, for when this job is over,” Dren said. “Provided, of course, I’m not eaten by some awful thing out here in the wilds.”
“That’s a very real possibility, innit, sonny,” the old man quipped with a sloppy grin. He took another pull of his drink, stoppered the skin, and let it hang between his knees, forearm resting on his knee. “What’s this revelation of yours, then, boy? You want a raise or something, maybe a share of the shop’s profits?”
“No,” Dren said, locking eyes with his employer. “I want two things from you when this is all done, three, actually. One,” he said, holding up one finger. “I want your endorsement to the Craftsmen’s Guild. I’m no apprentice anymore, and haven’t been for well over a year now, and you know it.” Norto made no obvious reply to this, though Dren did notice that the hand and arm holding the wine skin tensed, his bicep twitching. “Two, I’m going to work for you for one more year after we get back, and then I’m going to set up my own forge, probably on the opposite side of the city. I want your word you won’t interfere with the process.” Now both hands were clenched tightly into fists on the older man’s legs, his jaw clenched, brow furrowing. “The third item starts now, tonight, and it is this; you are going to start treating me like an equal, not an apprentice or helper. I’m not your lackey anymore. Do we have an understanding?”
Whether from drink, from madness, or from a long stretch of years of getting his way, Norto’s response caught them all off guard. With Andrei only a couple of feet behind Dren, and Holly unseen but still nearby, none would have reasonably thought the senior blacksmith would dare lash out, but that was precisely what he did, his right hand dropping the wine skin and flashing out in a hard straight punch, blasting Dren right in the face. The younger human made a terrible noise as he fell back, his hands flying up to his damaged visage, blood already leaking through his fingers as he tumbled on the grass.
The minotaur freelancer leapt on Norto to stop further damage, catching the older man as he was rising to his feet to initiate a further barrage. Unlike the previous evening, Andrei still wore his full kit of armor and weaponry, riding Norto to the ground in a full mount, pinning his wrists to the ground with almost no effort. Holly, having only turned her head in time to see this last motion, spotted Dren on the ground, and raced over to him, trying to peel his hands away from his face to observe the damage. When she finally succeeded, she gasped.
Blacksmiths, it should be noted, were usually among the strongest people in any civilization, having the responsibility of brute, physical labor in the forge. Norto, though a man one year over his fiftieth, still possessed the kind of raw strength needed to work his craft, and it had been poured into a blow that had shattered several of Dren’s teeth, as well as breaking his nose, mashing his lips back against his gums and teeth to add to the pool of blood forming on his face. Holly rolled him onto his side so that he could spit out the crimson filling his mouth and thus keep breathing, sobs of pain shaking his narrow frame as she rubbed his back, cooing soft, meaningless sounds of comfort at him.
For Dren himself, the world had narrowed down to a single area of pain, a firestorm rendering all rational thought irrelevant. His mind had been transported to a plane of existence where agony was god and Norto’s fist was the high priest. He coughed, choked, and gagged on his own life’s blood, unable to properly interpret the soothing sensation on his back, the calming non-words being whispered in his ear. Time ceased to have meaning for the moment, and perhaps that was best, considering the one-sided dialogue Andrei was having with Norto just a few feet away.
Sitting atop Norto, the minotaur freelancer leaned his head down until his mouth was right next to the middle-aged human’s ear, and he spoke words not of his own choosing, but belonging to the subterranean voice that only whispered rarely in his mind, the spirit whose presence he knew the least about, but feared the most. “If you try something like that again in my presence, human, I will pull your legs from your body, seal the stumps on the fire, and leave you to crawl for help. I will take your food, and leave you only your shorn appendages to sustain yourself upon. If you understand me clearly, you need only say so. If you refuse to comply, say nothing, and we will begin the procedure in earnest.” To add a layer of intent to this threat, Andrei adjusted his positioning swiftly, letting go of Norto’s wrists and sliding off of him, grabbing his right ankle with one hand while bracing his other on the human’s hip.
“No, no, I get it,” Norto rasped, dread pummeling his soul into submission. “I promise, I promise!” Andrei was slow in releasing his grip, and when he stood up and turned his attention to Dren, he saw that Holly was half-carrying him to the stream to wash off his mangled face. The cuyotai mage helped Dren kneel down on the stream bank, and took a look back at the camp. The ominous spirit attached to Andrei’s soul floated up behind him, so present at the moment that she did not even need the mage’s sight to behold it.
In that brief moment before it faded out of sight again, her own soul trembled.
**
The strangers had, one and all, faced off against some of the oddest creatures in all of Known and Unknown Creation throughout their long, bizarre history. The stranger named Jago had himself been put in deadly straits on a few occasions, most notably when he quite accidentally came across a beast known as the Abominable Snowman. It had extinguished every fireball and cone of flames he threw at it, and gored him with a spear made of magically concentrated ice, nearly slaying him. He had survived the encounter by fleeing, and later that same night, after he had taken time to heal himself, he had discovered its lair, coming upon it in slumber. He had snuck up to it, pulled open its enormous mouth, and fed raw fire down its throat, cooking it from the inside out.
The creature currently facing him possessed none of that awful frosted power, and stood only perhaps a foot taller than he, but it kept blinking in and out of existence, a slim, man-like figure composed of black smoke that kept teleporting out of the path of his flames. It had stabbed him in the left side twice, and once in the right leg, and showed no signs of slowing down. I’ve got to put an end to this soon, he thought, else I’ll be forced to withdraw to my world, then return and start this whole trip over again. The stranger prepared another fireball in the palm of his left hand, feinting at throwing it, holding it back and pivoting as the smoke beast streaked toward him and off to his right flank.
This time he was ready, shuffle-stepping backward and loosing the flames as the beast materialized where he had been, thrusting a solid steel dagger out where his kidney would have been had he stayed where he was. The flames wrapped around the creature, and howls tore loose from it, the smoke whirling and writhing wildly. With an echoing ‘POOF’ it dispersed into wafting tendrils, which dissipated entirely in seconds. Is it dead, he wondered, holding himself at the ready, letting his power flow up the length of his arms to his shoulders.
He held his position for a full minute before allowing his eyes to droop closed, reaching out with unseen feelers to try and detect the creature. All he discovered were moles hiding under the soil nearby, and his horse, petrified in terror a few hundred yards away. The strange named Jago withdrew his feelers and his power, focusing his energies on healing the wounds he had received. As he surveyed the area, he spotted the steel dagger the creature had been wielding a few feet away, right where he had struck it with his final blast of fire. He stooped down to scoop up the weapon, staying his hand just before his flesh could come into contact with it.
“What have we here,” he mused aloud, kneeling down before the weapon. A single splotch of smoky darkness swirled up and down the length of the blade, a tiny fish swimming in the metal. “Not quite dead, are you? No, no, you’re just hiding, licking your wounds. Well, we’ll not have that,” he said, opening his mouth wide and breathing a stream of white fire on the dagger. A banshee shriek rent the air as the weapon melted into the grass and scorched soil, and the smoke beast vanished into the ether. The stranger named Jago got up, whistled to his horse, and made a mental note to inform Lord Quoth about these creatures. “They might be useful,” he said to himself.
**
Andrei watched, fascinated, as the dolak padded silently around the edge of Holly’s circle of protection, its rainbow-striped flank twitching as the beast sniffed the air before it. Dolaks were solitary rashum, swifter than any sentient on their six muscular legs, using hit-and-run tactics to take down large animals for sustenance in the wilds. Some few had been tamed by skilled beastmasters around the realms, and this specimen, an adult male of the species, had the wary look in its eyes of one that had been around sentients before, and did not care to remember the meeting. Andrei could make out several long scars along its side and one on its feline face, a survivor of a brush with some traveler or outpost guard.
He’d only noticed the creature when it let out a hiss after coming into contact with the unseen magical force surrounding the camp, having crept up on their location without making a sound. The stealth such a colorful creature could possess unnerved him a little, for without looking directly at the creature, one had no other way of marking the presence of a dolak. They emitted no scent, left no tracks, and aside from warning sounds and their mating calls, the creatures were entirely silent. Andrei had never even seen one before, only heard of them and seen paintings of them. Now he had one right in front of him, only a few feet away, held at bay by Holly’s protection spell.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you,” the minotaur asked, crouched on his haunches to be eye-level with the rashum. “Well, there’s probably plenty of deer in those woods, so why not fuck off into the trees, fellah, hmm? Go on,” he said, flapping a hand at the creature. “Get.” The beast narrowed its eyes at him, stretching back its lips over several rows of nasty looking teeth. “Man, I know a few dentists who would love to meet you.” The dolak let out what sounded like a scoff, then turned its back on him and loped off into the woods, leaping clear over the narrow stream to disappear into the woodland.
Andrei sighed, returning to the fire. He would be waking Holly up soon to take a watch shift, for she had been quite clear that the circle would not protect against other civilized sentients. As safe as they were from most rashum and spectral entities, a civilized sentient could waltz right into the camp and pilfer or attack at their leisure. For the moment, he sat down crisscross before the warmth of the fire and concentrated on the spirits tied to his soul.
You who spoke through me earlier, he thought, trying to direct his internal dialogue at the aloof spirit. I wanted to thank you for your guidance. What is it you call yourself? This was a new tack, one he never tried before. While each spirit whispered in its own voice, he’d gone all these years without giving a name, a label of any sort, to any of them, save this one. He’d always referred to it, internally, as simply ‘the dark one’. A name seemed fitting, though.
-I would be called, in your tongue, Finnis’itarak’tuombo,- the spirit intoned in its earthen rumble. Andrei let out an amused snort.
O-kay, I’ll just go ahead and call you Finn. That work? There came a dense silence from within, followed by what he thought must be a sigh of surrender.
-I suppose that will work, mortal.-
Good, it’s a start. You do realize that while I loved the script you fed me, it might’ve been a little over the top, right? Another pause came, and though he could see no face, he sensed confusion. It came off a bit strong, maybe too much for a person like Norto to handle?
-The human’s feelings matter not,- Finn replied. –He needed to be threatened into stillness, since you would not strike him. I offered words that would achieve that end.-
Fair point.
-It would have been more expedient to smash his head into so much pulp.-
Homicidal point. Look, we can’t just go around slaughtering people because they do things we’re not fond of.
-Why ever not?-
Well, some folks might think it’s impolite. Most folks, the ones who aren’t numb to the world or psychotic, would say it’s grounds for imprisonment or execution.
-And you, Andrei? What do you think?-
I think you’ve been disembodied for too long to really be expected to view the world through a normal, mortal lens. I think you and all of your buddies tied to my soul have only gleaned a basic understanding of how things work through me, and I’m kind of a dipshit, so you’re not learning all that quickly. Andrei’s rough self-assessment proved true time and again, earning a semi-permanent place in his heart. He possessed an awareness of his own limitations that few members of his race could genuinely claim. However, he had one benefit that many minotaurs his age did not enjoy, which was a great wealth of life experiences beyond the normal tribesman’s purview.
Yet he sensed disapproval from the spirits attached to his soul, and even heard a vague noise like scolding coming from the spirit he had long since thought of as ‘the old man’. The ‘old man’ spirit made its presence known most often when he was feeling foolish or regretful about some decision he’d made that didn’t turn out well, like a father figure trying to reassure him it would all be okay.
-They do not enjoy your emotional self-abuse, accurate though it may be,- Finn rasped, eliciting an amused snort from Andrei.
I like your style, the minotaur thought at it. How come I so rarely hear from you?
-This form of communication is, difficult,- Finn replied. –When we were among the Primal, in the olden days of mana-wielders, we spoke mostly through, what do you call them? Images, yes, pictures in the minds of those who could sense us, commune with us. We gleaned their needs, desires, and inquiries from similar images in their minds, and the inner languages they developed of their own. And there is another reason why I myself remain removed from the fore,- Finn rumbled.
Because you have a tendency to make suggestions that run the road of murder?
-Effectively, yes. The aspect of strength that is my realm is that which is tied to final blows, the release of death for your enemies or any who would try to bring you harm.- Andrei contemplated this for a moment, a grin slowly worming across his lips.
So, when I’m trying to put together some particle board piece of shit cheap furniture, you’re not the guy to come see when Peg A doesn’t fit into Slot B? There was no immediate reply, but the minotaur could swear he heard a sigh of exasperation in the depths of his mind. Understood. Andrei felt the presence within recede further, drawing back to wherever it was it usually held itself when not riding alongside his conscious mind. The remainder of his shift passed without incident, and he soon prodded Holly’s foot, sticking partway out of her tent, so that she could awaken and take up the task of securing the camp’s perimeter until dawn.
The minotaur freelancer’s dreams, unsurprisingly, composed themselves chiefly of scenes of brutality.
**
Throbbing, pulsing, complaining quite loudly, the bones in Dren’s face brought him awake as the sky was beginning to lighten on a new day. Holly’s ministrations and minor magical healing had reduced the swelling and fixed the tear in his nose tissue, but the bone itself was bruised beneath the surface around his left eye. Norto’s fist covered a broad range on the smaller, younger smithy’s face when it struck; he’d known this already , from previous experience. Nevertheless, it still surprised him now that the old sot could do so much lasting damage.
He looked over to where Holly stood on the perimeter of their camp, peering through the flaps of his tent to consider her. The Cuyotai mage had ever been protective of him, and had encouraged him to pull up stakes and strike out on his own as a smithy for a little over a year now. He had promised himself to Norto’s shop for another year before the veteran smithy had struck him, but now, looking at Holly, he wondered if perhaps he should rescind this part of his demands and simply tell Norto to piss off. He had the funds to at least move into his own dwelling, if he could find a vacancy in an affordable location within the city.
The main trouble for him, financially speaking, would be setting up a new forge for himself, or trying to track down another tradesman in the city willing to sell their own location on a mortgage plan. If they wanted up-front payment, he was out of luck, he thought as he let the flap shut and started dressing himself for the day, carefully pulling on his tunic over his head to avoid snagging it on his tender nose. Dren determined to check the market listings as soon as they returned to Desanadron. If I should survive this journey, that is, he quickly amended, considering the strange beasts of Tamalaria’s wilds and the fact that there had been mention of a dragon by Norto.
When he came out of the tent finally a few minutes later, Andrei was starting to prepare a basic breakfast over the campfire for the group, the minotaur’s eyes puffy and sunken, bloodshot from lack of sleep. The freelancer moved with the stiffness of a man who has spent too many hours in an unnatural or uncomfortable position, and has as a result achieved little genuine rest. Dren cast about for Norto, cocking his head to one side as he and the freelancer shared a quick glance. “He’s off making his morning necessary,” Andrei said without verbal prompting, pointing east of their camp toward a stretch of shrubbery. “I’d recommend you head that way,” he added, pointing west to a small copse of trees.
Dren followed Andrei’s suggestion, returning to find Holly adding a rasher of bacon to a corner of Andrei’s portable skillet, his tongs dragging and flipping with the ease of long practice. “How many days until we reach wherever it is we’re heading for,” the Cuyotai mage inquired.
“Norto says the brotherhood’s prophecy speaks of using the fang of a white dragon to forge a blade, one that will be used by a great warrior to defeat some unknown enemy and save their order from destruction,” Andrei said, shoveling eggs into an earthenware bowl and handing it up to Holly. He kept his eyes on the skillet as he sprinkled packaged hashbrowns down where the eggs had been a moment before. “I’ve never seen a genuine dragonbone weapon myself, but folks in my line of work tend to use whatever works for the job at hand, instead of going the whole ‘epic hero’ route.”
“White dragons are fairly rare, aren’t they,” Dren asked.
“Here, yes,” Holly replied, divvying out the eggs evenly onto four flat, brown ceramic plates from their collective travel gear. “They’re much more common in Tallowmere, the continent south across the Blue Divide, and there is said to be an entire family of them on the Isle of Foul, just off the southwestern coast.”
“I know of two white dragons living in the Northcentral Mountains,” Andrei added, now setting the bacon on a small plate, which he handed over to Holly to distribute. “One very old, a great wyrm, and one of middling age. The wyrm is named Hevka T’Chall, and he’s got enough power to give small armies a run for their money, though mostly, from what I’ve heard, he just flies off when people come knocking. The younger one is called Effrain the White, a real hoarder of a reptile.” He finished his cooking ministrations, and soon started scraping off the skillet, setting it aside to cool.
Norto only joined them for a moment, taking his plate and carrying it with a grunt away from the others toward the wagon, opting to break his fast alone. All to the better, given yesterday, Dren thought as he tucked into his food. Between bites he asked, “What makes you say Effrain’s a real hoarder? I thought most dragons kept a hoard.”
“True, but not like Effrain,” said Andrei. “Where other dragons just keep the spoils from people stupid enough to come after them in the name of honor, glory, and blah de blah,” he said, rolling his fork and his eyes, “Effrain takes off from his cave to ambush travelers out in the open wilds when they’re engaging in battles with rashum or other sentients. Everybody’s off their guard, not expecting this big white lizard with wings to come flapping down out of the sky, breathing frost on everything and taking their shit. Most of the time, he doesn’t even kill anybody, just frosts them and snags their gear, then takes off back to his cave.” Dren nodded, thinking this a strange misuse of the kind of power that dragons were said to possess.
“Which one do you recommend we approach, then,” Holly asked, sounding a little hesitant. “I mean, it doesn’t sound like either of them is going to take too keenly to a group of strangers just waltzing up and demanding a fang from them. And no offense,” she said, putting a gentle hand on Dren’s shoulder, “but you and I are the only ones cut out for facing any kind of threat, Andrei, and I don’t think dragons are within either of our pay grades.” The minotaur freelancer took a bite of his bacon, chewed thoughtfully for a moment, and offered her and Dren a droopy-eyed grin.
“We’re not going to demand anything,” he said. “We’re going to offer up a trade.”