94 - Monkeys and Mariners
"...so, Taylor, how did you and… uh, Tis meet?"
Memories of falling out of a wall of roots, utterly terrified beyond belief, and being confronted by an invisible woman that threatened to kill her if her eyes were the wrong colour. Oh, and then being sent to Godrick. Though that barely counted as
meeting her, they didn't even really exchange names. Or should she describe the time she got Telavis to tackle Tisiphone and tie her to a tub? Maybe the blackmail? That was the first time she'd heard the name 'Tisiphone', had seen her face, had known her as anything but a terrifying invisible presence. Or maybe the time that Tisiphone had broken
back into the castle, and had promptly kidnapped her, exposed her to the worst day of her brief life over and over, before genuinely apologising and saving her from multiple fates worse than death several times in quick succession?
"We met through work."
"...oh."
The girl looked genuinely disappointed. Hm. Well, if she and Tis were friends, maybe she genuinely wanted to know more about a past that the woman seemed reluctant to discuss. Understandable, Tis didn't seem like the most…
open individual. And it was strange how quickly she was thinking of her as 'Tis' - Tisipone was long, grandiose, and felt antiquated even by the standards of this world. Tis felt more personable. And it made it slightly easier to put 'Tisiphone', the woman who'd threatened her and tried to blackmail her, as a separate individual opposed to 'Tis', who had… well, done a great deal
more than just threaten her.
"...I tied her to my tub."
Tisiphone gave her a
look.
"I'm sorry, did I mishear that? Did you say-"
"My tub. Yes."
"But
why."
"Business purposes."
Tis was a funny shade of red - well, Irina was blind, she could turn whatever colour she wanted. Taylor, for instance, had a complexion best described as 'sun-starved oatmeal', but you didn't catch
her complaining about it. Mostly.
She really needed to get out more. Ideally somewhere which wasn't continually overcast. Of all the dimensions she got dumped in, it
had to be British-flavoured.
"So, what about you? How'd you meet Tis?"
"She kidnapped me because I can talk good words."
Taylor shot the assassin a
look of her own, one that brimmed with a certain amount of reproach.
Really. Could she just not go a little while without threatening someone? Well, at least she wasn't feeling any guilt about the tub story now. Was Irina suffering from severe Stockholm Syndrome? No - she seemed to be laughing off the event like it was nothing. That presumably was… good? Hm. Dammit, why hadn't she read more about Stockholm Syndrome before being kidnapped by either Marika or Radagon and dumped here with nothing to her name but a few textbooks (now long-gone), and a filthy set of clothes (also gone). Oh, and glasses. Which were gone. Wow, she really had
nothing left from Earth Bet. Nothing but her brain… no, that had probably been messed around enough that it would register as foreign. Probably. Presumably. It was a distinct possibility, was the point.
They were making their way to Fort Haight - and had been doing so for just over a day. Turned out that the Tarnished had left behind a whole herd of horses which no-one had bothered claiming, and now they had been requisitioned for a greater purpose. Conveying her to her new estate, that is. God,
new estate, she still felt weird whenever she thought that. Of course, this process was complicated by the fact that Taylor had never learned how to ride a horse. In her defence, she was
busy, and Crawa had always been faster and more readily available. And she had a lot of room to grab onto when she went full gallop. Sprint? Full scuttle? Gah. Terminology be damned, Crawa was easier. Horses, by contrast, were nightmarish fiends which seemed to insist on unnerving her at every possible opportunity. She had no idea how the Kaiden managed to ride around on these things so often, it was
beyond uncomfortable. Telavis had done her the kindness of sharing a horse, which he evidently knew how to direct a little better than she did. That is to say, he knew how to direct it.
The route was simple. Head east along the main road, cross the Saintsbridge, then go down a series of steep passes into the lowlands of Limgrave, around something called the Mistwood. Then a quick jaunt through that particular area, which would lead them to Fort Haight itself. The fort supervised a small number of villages scattered around the coast, ideally somewhere populated for Tis and Irina to settle down and maybe even have some normal conversation. Fishing seemed like more of a Tis thing than farming, honestly. Fishing was
like farming, but she still got to kill something. Seemed right up her alley. And she'd even brought her own knife for gutting purposes! Stick her in some waders, maybe a silly baseball cap, she'd be right at home. Hm. Silly baseball caps.
They call me 007. 0 bites, 0 fish, 7 hours. Or alternatively,
I am wanted for crimes against humanity, yet here I fish. Or, as a wild card option:
I have killed a god and now I kill creatures subaqueous.
Sue her, she wasn't a comedian. 'Write your own damn jokes' was what she'd be thinking if there was an audience judging her comedy. Which there wasn't. Because she wasn't a comedian, and she certainly wasn't schizophrenic. The gold in her mind wriggled idly, twisting in regular, easy motions that spoke of perfect order, illuminating her to the schemes, old and new, which had taken root in the Lands Between.
OK, she was a
little schizophrenic.
* * *
There are many ways that Taylor's journey could be described. One is long, meandering, and would require a great deal of effort from the part of Y.H.N (your humble narrator) to tell. It would also require a great deal of effort to read. Chapter after chapter of travelling, with characterful moments interspersed by non-stop delays and encounters that would surely drag all matters to a pace somewhere between 'molasses' and 'the endless stasis at the death of the universe;. It would
also require the exploitation of a vast thesaurus devoted primarily to variations on the word 'walk'. Lest anyone question Y.H.N's ability to find synonyms, let this paragraph serve as a balm. They walked. They hiked. They strode. They meandered. They set forth, strolled, sauntered, ambled, trudged, marched, wandered, rambled, trod, trekked, plodded, tramped, trooped, stepped out, exercised their feet in an ambulatory fashion, put to use all the gifts of their bipedalism, set their horses to strict labour for the crime of being born with sturdy backs and endless stamina.
They surveyed the landscape with the air of generals surveying a battlefield, nobles surveying their new domain, and travellers who had nothing better to do but
look at things. They looked, gazed, viewed, surveyed, scanned, glared, glanced, peered, peeped, peeked, watched, examined, studied, inspected, scrutinised, used the wet jelly wobbling around in their face-holes to examine the refractions of electromagnetic spectra which danced upon the jagged atoms of reality as projected by a giant ball of gas set in the infinite void of space. Except for Irina. Irina listened, heard, gave ear to, rotated the satellite dishes set beside her skull to attend to the vibrations of the air. Except when there was something to
smell, in which case, she smelled, sniffed, inhaled, scented, and generally probed the bouquet of the atmosphere with the strangely arranged hairy, mucus-clad bones set in the front of her face.
This is an inefficient way of saying that the group put to use all the gifts granted by millennia of evolution. When the first ape chose to stand upright for the purposes of clawing another ape to death, or for seeking a new, delicious banana, or for picking fleas off another ape's back (all viable theories, that may be addressed more completely in times to come, when ape bipedalism becomes a
vital subject of discourse in this tale of high adventure and never-ending bullshit), surely it must have felt a moment of prescient pride, anticipating that one day a group would make full use of the eyes it had honed, the back it had straightened, the ears it had sharpened, and the nose it had refined on the myriad scents of the prehistoric jungle. A smiling ape beamed down at the group as they journeyed in all the ways people tend to journey. Before presumably flinging excrement at a cloud, or deciding to go to war against other apes for the purposes of stealing the women and eating the children, because apes are complete psychopaths and their smiles conceal a boundless hunger for the destruction of all that is good and holy, and evolution was no advancement, but an
escape from the maw of the raging ape. A genome breaking into full sprint, horrified at what it was inhabiting, desperate to change it by any means necessary.
Y.H.N felt like he had, perhaps, reached a sufficient wordcount.
They walked.
It took a while.
Limgrave was pretty. The weather was tolerable. Conversations were short and to the point. Here are a few vignettes of this great odyssey across a land which was basically half-dead, and thus mostly empty of distractions.
For instance, Telavis chose to describe, at length, for most of a day, the experience of roving the high mountains above Leyndell with his best girl by his side. A girl that he apparently had never seen the face of, given that her people always wore masks and refused to take them off under any circumstances, save for ritual (and highly private) cleaning. Oh, and marriages. But according to Telavis, 'the things we did to one another, there was no chance I was taking her into a church'. He tried to describe those
things, but thankfully, the vignette came to an end and the event receded into the darkness of the things-which-were-not-related-over-the-course-of-this-chapter.
Oh, another vignette - when Irina attempted to cook. Irina was no longer allowed to cook. Tisiphone became rather defensive of the cooking, until Irina brought up that Tis had apparently been eating raw meat until their meeting, barely aware that food
could be cooked. Because Tis was just
weird. Anyhow, the experience did give Taylor a few ideas.
For you see, as it turned out, Limgrave was host to a particular substance made from crushed rowa berries, flavoured with a little twyre. They called it 'steppe paste', or the simple yet descriptive term, 'flavouring'. She found that it tasted alarmingly similar to tomatoes. And that was giving her
notions, notions of maybe reproducing elements of Earth Bet's cuisine. Not that she
disliked this world's cuisine, but… well, she'd peeked into the kitchens of Stormveil
once.
So much lard.
So much lard.
She just wanted something
else, for a change. And anyway, she was moving to her new castle, she could do what she wanted.
Except for charging Tis and Irina taxes for living on her land. That was met with a firm glance, a quiet shake of two heads, and the realisation that perhaps Tis had certain libertarian impulses towards tax and its evasion and/or avoidance.
* * *
And for a final vignette of their journey to the Mistwood, one with a little more seriousness to it, there was a peculiar encounter near a place called the Summonwater. Just beyond the Saintsbridge, drained of troops by the siege in Stormveil, there lay a small village. It was mostly ruined, and no-one had lived there in a very long time. Nonetheless, it had
inhabitants. Taylor felt a sense of distressing deja vu come over her as she rode closer, recognising the jagged quality of the grass, the shapes of a few shrubs, and… and a spot. Just there. Just under a tree. A few branches crushed, and… nothing else. Taylor brought the horse to a halt and stared downwards, feeling an indescribable feeling coming over her. This was where she'd died, with no expectation of coming back. No-one else recognised it, no-one but Potiphar. No marks, no stains, nothing at all. It had no
reason to affect her, but… Taylor stared at it nonetheless, feeling an odd lump in her throat. Potiphar patted her gently, and she remembered crashing here, falling into the ground and scrambling for any hint of water, anything to clean herself. It was strange, but she could
swear that there was a scent of… just the vaguest hint of Winslow.
Winslow.
How long had it been since she thought that word?
It came strangely. Felt old, dusty, creaked when she turned it too quickly. It had only been a few months at most, time being difficult to determine whilst dead, but still everything once familiar had become foreign. Taylor was standing near where she'd arrived, and… she'd changed. No plans out here, nothing but the faint afterglow of a plan which had reached its fruition some time ago. Whatever had arranged for her arrival wasn't here, or had only intended to bring her to the Lands Between and had promptly lost interest. Her body was different, larger, thinner, and stranger in every possible way. Her teeth were far too sharp, and felt like weights pulling her down to the earth. Reminders that she'd changed.
She didn't tell anyone why she'd stopped and stared at this unremarkable spot. It was unremarkable - nothing to be said about it. Just a bit of idle sentimentality.
Summonwater brought back even more memories. Buildings half-sunken into the water, abandoned for years by anything with a heartbeat. No trace of her here either, all washed away. But nonetheless she remembered how that water had felt on her face, how Potiphar had found her and given her a… an actual
hug, for the first time in far too long. And she also keenly remembered being chased by an actual honest-to-god skeleton, because
fine. But now she was larger. Much, much larger. And she had
allies. Even if one of them was blind and had openly confessed to not being much good in a fight, unless the enemy was already mostly dead and couldn't resist. Well, the skeletons already fulfilled
one of those categories, now they just needed to make them less resistant. Taylor was about to send the horse trotting onward when Tisiphone held out her arm, stopping any movement.
"I would recommend avoiding this place."
"Why, exactly?"
The woman grimaced.
"There is a…
mariner here. Deathroot has infested the earth. Those who Live in Death will abound here. It's only a matter of time before they realise our presence."
"A mariner?"
"...I am not aware of their origin. They are gardeners to the Deathroot, and give motion to the undead in the area."
Irina shivered.
"I've heard of them. Their vessels can swim through the sky, they follow the path of dead rivers to conduct the dead back to a half-life."
That sounded… distressing.
"...how tough are they?"
"The mariner by itself is not hugely potent. But the swarm it conjures will eternally resurrect, more and more rising from the muck until there is no hope of victory. Quantity has a quality all of its own."
Concerning.
Very concerning.
Something was bubbling up in her, though. The gold was whirling strangely in the presence of the Deathroot, directing her towards certain… conclusions. No, not conclusions,
components. Destined Death. Sealed, chained, and mostly silent. But even forced into slumber, it could murmur to her, tiny half-words which sometimes resolved into something comprehensible. Being in the presence of Deathroot was making it more active, stirring to something approximating life. The gold clicked happily, happy to see one of its components functioning as expected, as it was
meant to function before it was locked away.
Ghostflame. The pale light of bones rendered up to dust, spirits freed from their vessels to find absolution in the shriving flames. The light stank of lead, and she could vaguely hear the movement of a heavy coin in her hands. A coin bound to her skin by tiny golden chains, forced to remain there no matter how she wished to give it up. A vast, slow river passed by in front of her, waters shaded by invisible willows, lit by the light of a lampwood so far beyond sight it only existed as a memory. The water was riddled with chains, squirming like metal lampreys, clinging to anything which dared to move around their blockage. Taylor could feel…
something moving in the water, though. Dipping in and out, leaving before it could be submerged completely. She heard someone gasping - Tis, Irina? Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe it was
her. Something was paddling through the water, yet it shimmered in and out of reality, like one of Roderika's spirit ashes. Not a memory, but… not
here. Not exactly. Taylor came back to herself, and the slow river passed out of sight - all that remained was a memory of sinking into a beach of black sand, a lead coin weighing her downwards.
Her eyes widened.
A skeleton was before her. Taller than the others, but hunched over. Seated in an ornate chair nailed to a simple boat, gliding just above the shallow water which had consumed most of the village. Slow. Steady. The water was barely there, if she stood up in it she knew it wouldn't even reach her knees. But still, it had slowly consumed buildings greater than it. Even bound, dammed up, chained… it could consume. It could do its work, just on a much longer timescale. The skeleton stared at her through sightless sockets, a strange robe waving around it. A huge, golden horn was clutched in its hands, doubling as a kind of paddle for its little craft. It was alone, no other skeletons, no horrors to menace the group. It waited in the water, doing nothing aggressive… but it wasn't exactly
leaving. Just watching them all, Taylor particularly.
Her mind flashed to a conclusion.
Destined Death was in her, rising at the sight of something it understood, something that would genuinely welcome it back into the world -
had welcomed it back, in some way. The mariner looked half-complete, nothing about it felt…
real. It shouldn't be here, but she couldn't say where exactly it
should be. The great slow river didn't feel like it was anywhere at all, just a snapshot of something that had once been. And this mariner was an exile from a place that had ceased to exist. Lost, homeless, and simply… wandering. The Deathroot had been a lighthouse, something guiding it back to the realms of the familiar. But voyages into the arena of the unknown had left scars - the boat was full of holes, the horn was dented and rusted in some place, and even the skeleton itself looked dry as dust, ready to fall apart. Golden bangles covered its rattling form, but she couldn't recognise any significance to them. They were covered in symbols which wavered like mist before her eyes, fading after a second of intense scrutiny. Relics of a god which had been locked away - and to be sealed away was more than simple imprisonment. It had left wounds where it had been ripped out of the world, and this mariner was a wound that had managed to linger for a while, to make itself known while so much else faded away.
Taylor waved to it.
The mariner hesitated… then raised a single boney arm, waving back stiffly. Mimicking her. Its jaw opened, it seemed to be trying to speak, trying to say
something to her - a secret about Destined Death. Something important she
needed to know on her journey. The wounds that Destined Death had left on its departure, doors through which it could be found, doors that needed a single key to be unlocked. It would tell her about this key, these wounds, these doors, and through it she could find the god-that-was, that god-that-would-be-again. The mariner opened its mouth…
" ███ ████ ████ ███ █████ ██ ███ ████████?"
Unsound. When it spoke, noise ceased.
"Sorry, I can't-"
The mariner looked agitated.
"█ █████ ███ ██████ █████ ████!"
"I'm sorry, I can't understand you. Could you… write it down? Or something?"
The mariner stared… and shrugged lightly, bones cracking as it did so.
"██ ██ █████████."
And that was all. It had nothing more to try and say - and it made no moves to come closer. Though… it raised the horn up and began to rummage inside it, bones clattering against the ancient metal. Taylor backed up, and her companions followed. Irina looked terrified beyond belief, but the others were a little more… reserved. Tisiphone looked almost guilty. Telavis… nostalgic. He'd been around for a long, long time, maybe he remembered when these things had an actual purpose, and weren't just… well, an engine puttering away with no goal in mind, and no-one alive who could really repair it. A machine spinning onwards until, eventually, it would run out of fuel… or something would come along to fix it, install it back where it belonged, and set it to work. A little more rummaging, and the mariner clicked its jaw in something resembling satisfaction. Its hand emerged… and inside was a tiny, pale spark. Ghostflame. Taylor felt her skull ache a little - it remembered almost destroying itself with this stuff. But then it had vanished, and she hadn't been able to get it back - even dying hadn't quite brought her close enough. The first time, she'd been in the presence of a huge face associated with Destined Death. Now, she had one of its few remaining servants offering a spark.
Taylor considered refusing. Backing away, following Tisiphone's advice, avoiding this entire village by circling around. Apparently the undead didn't tend to lurk beyond a certain limit, and if they were quick there should be no chance of being caught. Tisiphone definitely wanted to practise what she'd preached, Irina was a fervent member of that same congregation, and Telavis was waiting outside the church, ready to feast upon the snacks set aside for faithful parishioners. Wait, how did that factor into the metaphor? Dammit. And where was Potiphar in this? Presumably in the cemetery out behind the church, stealing bodies to make himself big, strong, and ever-increasingly
dense. The skeleton reached closer, straining slightly. The light from the spark was bright, but… a kindly brightness. It felt calming. Soothing. Just looking at it made her hear distant, rolling thunder, the crashing of waves, and the crackling of a nearby fire. A slow river with a lone figure paddling downstream, pockets laden with lead coins, each one treasured and remembered. Her jaw ached, remembering the feeling of blasting ghostflame outwards into Mohg while wings of unlight branched away from her back… the gold made no motions to stop her. No warnings, no cautions, just quiet acceptance. The mariner gestured.
Take it. Please.
Let me serve a purpose again, let me show another the way to my long-forgotten god. Please.
Taylor took it.
The spark was small. Barely there, really. Nor was it remotely warm, in fact, it chilled everything around it. But it was the chill of a winter's evening, the blast of cold which reminded someone of the fire waiting at home. The reminder that things
could be warmer, and that this was nothing more than a pleasant interlude, heightening appreciation of the past and future alike. It sank into her hand, a patch of numbness in her flesh. The gold seized upon it eagerly, desperate to fill the slots left for Destined Death, where it had once formed a crucial part of the overall pattern. The mariner had once formed a part, as had this ghostflame. With relish, the gold placed it back where it belonged. A tiny, necessary piece of cold. A balance against the churning ocean of the Formless Mother, a reminder of kindly endings which gave all other things meaning, enhanced emotions and made events
significant. It was integrated, quietly and efficiently. The mariner perked up as this happened, sensing that
something good was happening, something it had desired for a long, long while. Being a skeleton, it was always smiling. But it certainly tried to
widen that smile.
Bloody horrifying, it was. Thankfully, it didn't last long. Sometimes, when faced with a leering skeleton that spoke in unsound and was clearly not of this world… the skeleton decided to do something else with its valuable time. Skeletons, after all, sometimes have places to be - inside a body, usually. And when there is no body, and perhaps never
was, then the agenda of a skeleton becomes hard to define and hard to imagine. It can only be assumed that they're frightfully important, though. If their agenda was unimportant, one couldn't imagine that they'd continue to get up over and over. No-one got up over and over unless they were full of caffeine or had an
agenda. And skeletons, as an obscure fact, do not generally consume caffeine as a point of principle and practicality. The mariner stuck its horn back into the water and started to gently paddle, swinging its craft around. A twitch, and it was sailing away through the river, dancing just over the surface. And Taylor might've been imagining it… but she swore that it was miming a jaunty whistle.
And that, in the humble opinion of Y.H.N, was the end of the last interesting vignette on their journey to the Mistwood. Nothing beside remained, until the shadowy bowers of that ancient wood made themselves known to the travelling quintet. For the Lands Between were very quiet at the moment. And sometimes things just
happened, without a need for mind-melting occurrences or eldritch encounters or vicious combat against an implacable foe. Sometimes people just rode to places and arrived there.
Sometimes things went
well.
Unnatural as it seemed.
* * *
"Crawa?"
Angharad's question was met with nothing but frightened gibbering. Hm. Unfortunate.
"Roderika?"
The girl was squeezing the jellyfish into an hourglass from sheer tension, and made no answer whatsoever. No use there. Now, Angharad's comparative calm might be mostly because she had consumed
several trees-worth of sap, and had convinced Roderika to let her jellyfish slap her in the face - the venom from the stingers catalysed some of the sap, making it
that bit more potent. She thought. Her art was more… art than science once substances got involved. Anyway. Angharad had huffed herself a few trees, and was feeling unnaturally calm. That was probably why she wasn't as terrified as the rest. Remarkable feat, given the fact that a stonkin' massive wolfman was standing in front of them, having leapt down from an enormous tower to
crash into the earth. Beastman, bloody massive, probably a raving maniac. But, armoured, bearing a weapon, and generally holding himself like a civilised creature. He looked only
half-wild, in short, ready to rip them apart and turn them into a delicate stew.
Angharad, in her blissed-out state, was currently thinking that, perhaps, she'd go well alongside some prawns. She wasn't sure how the chemicals she ingested would affect her taste, but prawns went well with most things. Crawa shivered, genuinely about to collapse, and the half-wolf… spoke.
"Hullo there."
Oh
good heavens, he was a
highland Liurnian. Oh, of all the creatures that could encounter her, a
highland Liurnian had to be the one. Next thing she knew he was going to start bleating about the wondrousness of the Carians, and oh-how-lovely they all were, and was going to start gossiping about Ranni's latest endeavour into the field of magic, and how
good it was that she'd condescended to be educated amidst the lowland rabble. And then he'd go and let a Carian knight use him as a footstool, because goodness gracious wasn't it just
darling to be sat on by a servant of dear old queen Rennala? Or, if he wasn't a royalist, he was about to try and gabble to her in that incomprehensible speech of the highlanders, before running off with a woman that was ninety-percent bones and teeth to go and produce a generation of insufferable twats who were going to run around judging 'those awful lowlanders' before weeping messily whenever a mosquito decided to buzz past them.
She was fuelled by
generations of spite, and could feel her ancestors glowing in approval as she remorselessly stereotyped the highlanders. Bloody highland Liurnians. They ruined Liurnia. She looked coldly over at him - with Crawa's help, she could almost avoid looking upwards. Almost.
"Morning."
"It's evening, mate."
Highland Liurnians, always going around correcting people.
Bah.
"So… don't get many travellers. Especially not… hm. Your sort. No offence intended, of course."
Oh this fucker he was talking about her family. She got to insult her family, no-one else did, and certainly not a half-animal ponce made from some Carian's lapdog crossbred with their servants because the two were one and the sa- oh, no, he was looking at Crawa. Who was shrinking backwards, clearly a little alarmed. Something seemed to switch in her, though - the fear flooded away, and she tried to straighten herself up, acting more confident by the second. Angharad could see through it, of course. When you were
actually on someone's back, it was easy to tell when their spine was shaking from nervousness.
"We are but humble travellers,
sir. Please, allow us to continue onwards to our destination. Or…"
She paused.
"...or I'll be
very perturbed."
Well, at least she wasn't flaunting Godrick's name around strangers. Wise. The half-wolf growled very slightly under his breath, taking a
small exception to being pushed around like this. But to his credit, he didn't immediately attack. Good. Excellent, even.
"Just came down to give some advice, is all. You've been wandering in circles for the last few hours, lucky you haven't run into a bear at this point."
Crawa froze. Angharad was appalled. And after all the reassurances that they were going in the right direction! The girl started to splutter, and Angharad ran in to save the day the only way she knew how. Well, she mumbled idly to herself, and the half-wolf just so happened to hear. What a… wild and unpredictable coincidence.
"Know-it-all highlander…"
He took exception to that. A very faintly wolfish grin crossed his face.
"...sorry, I didn't realise you were travelling with a
lowlander."
"What was that?"
"I said,
I didn't realise you were travelling with a lowlander."
"Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of you kissing the collective arses of the Carian royal family."
Oh, he was getting
into it, if that smile said anything.
"Sorry, couldn't catch that, must've been all the mosquitoes that follow you around."
And it was on.
"I'd be surprised if you could
spell mosquito, the smartest thing you highlanders ever did was send your brats to get educated in
our academy."
"Ah, yes, the academy that's built on a
giant pillar. Smartest thing
they ever did was get as far away as possible from the rest of you."
Crawa raised her hand quietly.
"Uh, I didn't mean any offence, perhaps you could-"
No, Angharad's blood was boiling. There could be no peace. And this was
important, the two of them had a proper patter going on. She felt her affection for the wolf growing with each moment.
"Right, yes, the academy
your lot ruined when you installed that over-emotional
gast as headmistress."
"
Your lot were the ones that installed her, and I don't see how you've been running it better ever since she left,
mate."
"Right, of course, that explains why we got rid of her at the first opportunity - if she needed an entire kingdom and a godly husband to stay in charge, it
feels like maybe she just felt like playing at headmistress for a while and forced everyone else to mime along…"
It was funny, Angharad
despised the academy. But when other people insulted it, the red mist simply descended. It was
hers to insult,
hers and other lowland Liurnians. Not these inbred freaks who had to conscript trolls into their service because their
actual servants had muscles with the density of
clouds. Oh, this was bringing her
back… she felt like she was back at the familial dinner table, listening to dear old Da ramble about the highlanders. But Blaidd… a certain part of his expression had changed. Ah.
"Insult Queen Rennala again, and there'll be hell to pay."
Angharad paused. And chose what, in the end, she
had to choose.
"Rennala has lips like a dead fish, and her hat is ridiculous. The best thing she ever did was live forever, so her bitch of a daughter couldn't become queen."
The half-wolf roared, and
sprung. Nuts, Angharad might've gone too far with that one.
To be fair, he
really wasn't helping the stereotype of highlanders as royalist brown-nosers. Crawa… well, to her credit, Crawa did exactly what she
should in a life-or-death situation, which this may or may not be. As did Roderika. Crawa fluffed her wings outwards, squeaking in alarm. The half-wolf was a little surprised by the display, and his leap was very slightly impaired - enough for Roderika to fling a jellyfish at him. Angharad, however, was dosed out of her mind on tree sap and jellyfish venom, and as a result concocted a scheme of the most dizzying complexity and potency that it would've been the envy of the great generals of history, if only they were present to witness it. Alas, they were not. And thus Angharad did her manoeuvre with no-one as an audience but a grafted scion, a terrified spirit caller, and a
bastard highlander half-wolf.
She threw a vial of beast repellent at him.
A lady always went into the wilds prepared. Beast repellent was just the stuff that you needed to have on you in the wilderness of Limgrave, and
especially in the Mistwood. Only an idiot journeyed without it. And she wasn't a
complete idiot. Half-idiot, maybe. Two-thirds idiot at worst, and that was pushing it. Losing the arm had definitely skewed the ratios. The half-wolf jumped, Crawa fluffed her wings and hefted Mohg's spear from underneath her cloak, Roderika threw her jellyfish, and Angharad chucked a vial of beast repellent at a creature with a nose insultingly stronger than any human's. Pity for him that beast repellent smelled like shit.
Not actual shit. He was a highlander, he'd probably enjoy that.
But it smelled
awful. The half-wolf started gagging wildly, reaching for his sword, acting surprisingly well-put together for someone whose nose was being violently attacked by Mysterious Substances. Right,
half wolf, meant he was only
half affected. This made sense. Crawa whirled around, brandishing the spear. The half-wolf struggled to get himself under control… and froze when he saw that particular trident. His tone was low, cautious. No fun left - the bound probably hadn't been meant to kill her, and what insult after insult had failed to yield, now the trident was bringing out in spades. A serious intent that could quickly turn
dangerous. Yet behind it all… a hint of trepidation. Just a
hint.
"...where did you bloody well get that?"
He asked, voice choked by noxious fumes. Angharad glared sullenly from behind a particularly large wing. Crawa saw his reaction, and a nervous smile crossed her face. She hefted the trident once more, trying to look as impressive as possible, flaring her wings to appear larger. Bless her, she was committing. Angharad was getting a severe sense of deja vu, this was eerily like hanging around Taylor. Gods, the girl had gone airborne.
"Oh, you recognise this?"
He flinched as one of the prongs came a little too close for comfort.
"Look, be careful with-"
"TRES!"
He yelped and backed away quickly, while Crawa looked insufferably proud of herself and her genius idea. A few birds fluttered away in fear.
"What in the
bloody blue blazes are you-"
"Don't make me do it again! I'm… I'm ready and willing!"
"Look, just tell me where you got that from, and I'll-"
She thrust it up again.
"DUO!"
Nothing was happening, but the wolf looked nervous regardless. Crawa's jig of intimidation probably wasn't helping, it was like a drowning spider trying to escape a bathtub. If the spider had wings and was spraying feathers everywhere. The beastman prowled around, clearly trying to get a grasp on what the hell was actually happening. Angharad smiled wickedly, readying another vial of beast repellent. She should really be saving this for the journey ahead, but it was
very satisfying seeing him back away gagging.
"Alright, mate, calm your tits. Not coming any closer. Just
talk like a civilised person."
"I have no interest in talking, I have an interest in
moving on!"
"Fine, how about… directions, eh? I know the way out of this forest, if you'll just… put that blasted thing down."
Crawa considered this. Roderika leaned into one ear.
"We
are lost."
Angharad leaned into the other.
"If he gets close I'll throw more repellent at him. So, you know. Your call."
Crawa weighed all available options. Peace, violence. Diplomacy, senseless conflict. Strange words and a strange spear… or talking with a half-wolf in a half-civilised fashion. Being lost in the forest for an interminable length of time, surrounded by spiders, centipedes, and the spectre of a Runebear attack (they'd avoided them thus far, but luck could always turn. It generally did). Or… talking with a highland Liurnian for a length of time without insulting them. Angharad knew what
her choice would be. Crawa settled on her own, taking into account every piece of evidence available, every point of data that could be relevant.
"I'll yell 'unus' if you don't hold up your end of the bargain. And you'd better
pray I don't say the… the one starting with 'n'."
The half-wolf relaxed slightly, his eyes sharpening a little. Ah. Nuts. He was developing a proper assessment of the situation.
Bad. Bad. He knew they were bluffing… but that only made him more at ease. She felt less murderous intent radiating from him. If anything, now he was looking faintly embarassed at his earlier alarm. Understandable, not every day a grafted scion with the mind of a child decided to threaten you with a magical and (apparently) infamous trident she had no idea how to use. Good? Maybe? She wasn't sure how to feel, but she still had beast repellent at the ready if necessary.
"...first, tell me where you got that from. And where you're going. Then I'll tell you the way out."
Angharad poked her head out.
"None of your business."
"Well, if you want to find your
own way out…"
Crawa interrupted."
"The…
trident is none of your concern. But we're journeying to Fort Haight, by the seaside."
By the
coast, you said
by the coast, not
by the seaside, that made you sound like a… well, fitting for Crawa. Still displeasing.
He blinked.
"
Haight? That place is overrun, you know that? A knight, mad with blo- you know what, sounds lovely for you. Show him that trident and you'll be just fine, thick as thieves you'll be."
Crawa brightened.
"Oh, splendid! Now, show us the way out, good sir."
Dammit, they had the
advantage, he'd been
insulted, and now Crawa was spoiling the fun by being
polite. The wolfman looked
very eager to pounce on something and savage it for stress relieving purposes.
"Just…"
He sighed, and pointed through a few trees.
"Nevermind about the trident. The road is that way. Follow it to get out. It's not that complicated. I'm surprised you got lost at all."
Instincts won out, and Crawa bowed very slightly, the tip of her spear grazing against the forest floor, dragging out deep trenches into the loam.
"...alright. Thank you, sir…?"
"Blaidd."
Angharad snorted.
"They called you
wolf, that's
impressively unimaginative."
He growled.
"You want to fuckin' go?"
Angharad sat up.
"Maybe I want to fucking go, maybe I-"
Roderika tackled her, and shot her a look usually reserved for small children that have broken something incredibly valuable. Huh, she'd just aggravated an angry wolfman, she was
blitzed at the moment. She actually felt a little guilty. Great. The blitzing was ceasing. Blaidd nodded to the three of them and began to stalk away. Crawa scuttled to the road, and for a moment the two crossed right by one another. Blaidd looked… not exactly
murderous, but he looked curious. And that was almost as frightening. Curiosity could imply a second meeting. Curiosity could lead to some very unpleasant places if things went poorly. At least murderousness was unambiguous. And… oh, no, he was
amused. Very slightly amused. Dammit, he was a
good sport, that boded poorly for the future. As they crossed one another, he murmured something under his breath, something intended primarily for Angharad's ears.
"Cousin-fucker."
She hissed back, a small smile on her face and a long-forgotten light in her eyes.
"Carian whipping-post"
He grinned wickedly in response, clearly taking
some enjoyment in this most esteemed of pastimes. And like that, he was gone, sliding into the darkness beneath the trees with casual grace despite his vast size. The moment he seemed to disappear from earshot, Crawa and Roderika slowly looked at Angharad.
"...well, he seemed nice. I like him."
Crawa's eye twitched.
"We could've just asked him for
directions, lady perfumer, we didn't need to-"
"We got directions, didn't we?"
"No thanks to you!"
Angharad settled back, the sap having a second wind in her tattered nervous system.
"No, you see, mutual hatred binds us Liurnians together. If you can't take a lowlander insulting you, you're not really
worth much. Vice versa for insults from a highlander."
"He tried to
kill you."
"...
maim, perhaps. And that doesn't really count, if you're not
maiming then there's no stakes. And that makes the insults a bunch of hot air. It's a pastime we
all engage in, the highlanders hate the lowlanders, the lowlanders hate the highlanders, and if we're confronted by someone from anywhere else, we gang up to hate
them. It's the natural order of things, from the moment one of them decided to live on the cliffs instead of the swamp. Look, you heard insults. I heard bonding."
Roderika mumbled something about the Lands Between being one massive asylum for the criminally insane. Crawa just resolved to never travel to Liurnia unless she absolutely
had to. Good move. Without a highland Liurnian to insult, Angharad found her assessment of her home becoming rather more… realistic. Back to normal levels, in short.
They really
did have too many mosquitoes.
But Caria
was up its own arse to the point that they could use their throats for telescopes to stare at the stars they loved so much, bunch of depraved mountain-dwellers.
…but the academy
were a bunch of pricks. Could go hang for all she cared, or jump into a field of those moronic crystals they insisted on farming.
Then again, the highlanders
were responsible for roughly 100% of the mad royal bitches in Liurnia.
But of course,
maybe most lowlanders lived in a massive swamp and
maybe their family trees got a little tangled from time to time.
Nothing compared to the Carians, of course. At least lowlanders limited it to cousins.
…Angharad was rapidly becoming her father.
