"You're going to be okay," she whispered. Iris turned around. Her eyes met Alessa's, and they held each other's gaze for a long moment during which Iris wanted to lean in closer...
They've just met and they're already brushing their hair together by the riverside and staring longingly by the riverside? What a couple of Girl Best Friends.
They've just met and they're already brushing their hair together by the riverside and staring longingly by the riverside? What a couple of Girl Best Friends.
Meanwhile I've stopped caring about anything but the gobbos. More goblin content! I need goblin anthropology! I need Iris to appreciate a fine gobbo earthenware vessel!
I just love how the goblins are getting a complicated relationship with the human realms as actual people with agency, even if it can often be a pretty stormy relationship with lots of bad blood and lots of attempted and perhaps low-key ongoing pushes of the frontier. They're still tricksy tinkers and trappers raiding out from neolithic cave-complexes and Formorian fairy mounds, but with just as much sheep-stealing from the fencing-in human barons and just a little more character as peer societies that usually only like fantasy dwarves get. Goblins as they are more in the Hobbit than LotR.
Meanwhile I've stopped caring about anything but the gobbos. More goblin content! I need goblin anthropology! I need Iris to appreciate a fine gobbo earthenware vessel!
I just love how the goblins are getting a complicated relationship with the human realms as actual people with agency, even if it can often be a pretty stormy relationship with lots of bad blood and lots of attempted and perhaps low-key ongoing pushes of the frontier. They're still tricksy tinkers and trappers raiding out from neolithic cave-complexes and Formorian fairy mounds, but with just as much sheep-stealing from the fencing-in human barons and just a little more character as peer societies that usually only like fantasy dwarves get. Goblins as they are more in the Hobbit than LotR.
Coming after another story I read where goblins were depicted nearly identically to this kind of concept, except the protagonist denounces them as subsapient (but for a rare few) and therefore it's 100% okay to exterminate them, even the level of care a single sentence in this story shows is a breath of fresh air.
Edit: it gets better. The protagonist herself is an example of a race that the government has declared acceptable to murder, enslave, and steal from without recourse, but somehow the rank hypocrisy doesn't register.
Coming after another story I read where goblins were depicted nearly identically to this kind of concept, except the protagonist denounces them as subsapient (but for a rare few) and therefore it's 100% okay to exterminate them, even the level of care a single sentence in this story shows is a breath of fresh air.
Edit: it gets better. The protagonist herself is an example of a race that the government has declared acceptable to murder, enslave, and steal from without recourse, but somehow the rank hypocrisy doesn't register.
I can't be sure, but it felt like obliviousness, where the author didn't really provide anything to read between the lines and see that the character is ill-informed. It's only that the government has been blatantly wrong about other things, and the assumption that the protagonist is regurgitating government information that suggests author intentionality. As is, it's just exposition provided by the heretofore reliable protagonist, which was what rankled me so bad.
Coming after another story I read where goblins were depicted nearly identically to this kind of concept, except the protagonist denounces them as subsapient (but for a rare few) and therefore it's 100% okay to exterminate them, even the level of care a single sentence in this story shows is a breath of fresh air.
Yeah, I hope that as this story unfolds you'll see some of the complexity I've tried to give the goblins, and some of the variety in their lifestyles, culture, and conflicts with humans - some of which are less justified than others.
If you want your fantasy setting to have vast stretches of uninhabited wilderness that would otherwise be prosperous farmland, dotted with ruins of older civilizations, you might as well do some groundwork.
After that, Alessa had decided that Iris needed to learn how to use her sword, and that meant training. At first, Iris had half-hoped that Alessa would teach her personally, but Alessa just laughed.
"When you can beat the squires, you can spar with me."
The squires kicked her ass every time. Getting hit even with practice swords hurt.
So, traveling involved eating a lot of bland food, and being sore all over, and getting sweaty and dirty — Iris was going to burn these clothes once they reached civilization and she could get some new ones. Between training and riding, Iris was exhausted at the end of most days, but somehow, she felt better than she ever had. And she was getting better at shaving.
At the end of every day, the party gathered around the campfire to pray to the Lady of Light. Iris joined them out of respect, but she didn't fully understand the meaning of the prayers. Zeke seemed to follow the same religion as the others, but he spoke openly of the "land spirits" that dwelled in these parts, and they didn't seem to think he was wrong to do so.
At night, Iris slept under the open stars. They were strange, different from Earth's night sky, and there were more of them than she'd ever imagined there could be.
At least the weather was nice; it was early spring, and for two days and nights they crossed the prairies. The rolling grasslands were roamed by feral horses and a breed of shaggy feral cattle that looked half bison. And wolves. Iris sometimes heard them howling to each other at night. They didn't sound scary, but they didn't sound sad either; they were just talking to each other.
On the third day they left the prairies and entered a landscape of terrible thickets. Brambles grew taller than the head of a rider on horseback, weaving their branches together into impenetrable walls. Thorns snagged on everything – clothes, hair, skin, the horses. Nobody wanted to talk anymore – it was claustrophobic, and there could have been anything hiding in the undergrowth, watching. Even Zeke struggled to find paths, game trails through the brambles that they could lead the horses along.
"This ain't natural," Zeke muttered one day as he hacked a path through the brambles, "Allathis used to be farmland, afore the Great Plague."
"How long ago was that?" Iris asked. She'd been trying to figure out the background of this world without asking too many questions. The others knew she was from another world, but she refused to talk about it, and acting like a clueless foreigner just drew attention to her in a way she didn't want.
"Bors?" Alessa asked. Bors was silent for a while.
"About forty, fifty years ago, that was when it happened. They say three in four people died. I was born after the worst of it, but when I was eight one of the last outbreaks took my little sister. Entire villages died and were left to rot with no one to bury the dead. Those who survived moved closer to the remaining cities. Since then, everything's gone wild." He nodded at the thicket forest. "Farmland overgrown. Goblins have been moving into the empty lands in greater numbers. Monsters are coming back.
Most of the temples of the old heathen gods were overwhelmed trying to care for the sick, their priests dying of the plague. The Church of Our Lady of Light saved more than most, and most of those that survived converted. Some folks went mad, cause it seemed like the end of the world. You still get isolated little places out in the backways that survived, and you see, uh, some weird customs."
Iris didn't know what to say. These people lived in this world, grew up with its troubles; Iris was a stranger to its history, a foreigner.
***
After a day and a night of hacking through dense thickets, the party emerged into more cultivated land. The undergrowth had been cleared and the trees had been coppiced – cut at the trunk so that they would grow back as a bunch of long, thin poles. They rode down a well-marked path with lanes of trees on either side; it was obvious this forest was managed, not wild.
"Family come up in these parts for oh, since afore the Great Plague," Zeke explained.
"Probably were pretty isolated even before then," the young squire Alexa said under her breath, turning her head to hide a smile. Iris could imagine how generations in an isolated settlement like this could encourage some…quirks.
Zeke's home village was a cluster of log cabins that couldn't have been home to more than two hundred people. The village was surrounded by a halo of fields of grain and vegetable plots. Iris saw goats and pigs, penned up or allowed to roam free along with the packs of children and village dogs. Villagers tended their crops and animals, worked leather and wood, butchered deer, or else relaxed outside their homes. About half the villagers had black wavy lines tattooed on their cheeks; the other half had red chevrons. Iris guessed it was some kind of clan identifier.
Some of the villagers stopped to wave a greeting to Zeke as he passed, but most of them ignored the party. Certainly there was little deference given to Alessa as a knight.
"Y'all can stay in the barn," Zeke said, "Straw's soft, n'food fer horses."
"This is where Zeke leaves us," Alessa said as they bedded down in the barn, "The rest of our journey is along more charted paths."
As Iris laid back on the straw, she realized how much she had missed sleeping on something soft. No sooner had she closed her eyes than she was drifting off to sleep.
***
Iris was back in the void.
"Oh, shit, am I dead again?"
"No, just dreaming," the goddess laughed. Iris turned around and saw her as she had been, lounging on her couch.
"Aren't you supposed to be inside my head?" Iris asked.
"Who's to say I'm not?" the goddess teased.
"It's just that you've been awfully quiet."
"I told you, I'm just along for the ride. Well, I did have to take a hand a couple times to keep you alive. Other than that, you're doing quite well. That lady knight, huh? What a cutie."
She waved her hand, and an image of Alessa's face appeared before her. Iris felt a knot of emotion in her chest.
"Right, I guess that was your plan," she muttered, "That was your temple, wasn't it?"
The goddess waved her hand again, and the image of Alessa disappeared.
"It was, once. All my worshipers died long ago, and with them my power in this world."
"What about that…thing we fought?"
If a wolf could look regretful, this one did.
"That's a sad story, and not one that is yours to hear."
Iris shuffled uncomfortably.
"I felt bad for it…and I killed it."
"You were defending yourself. And in some ways, it was…a mercy."
"I guess there's just a lot I don't understand about you."
"It's hard to explain these things to a mortal." The goddess stared off into the distance. "It was beautiful, Iris. I was so powerful, I was loved by thousands and I held all their hopes and fears, their love and suffering in my hands…and now barely anyone knows I existed."
Iris realized that the goddess wasn't so different from her. She was alone, and she had died as well, in a way. Maybe taking on Iris as her avatar was her own way of living a second life.
"Well, you gave me a second chance, and you've been keeping me alive this far," Iris said, "I'm grateful for that. I hope…I hope the two of us can find what we're looking for."
The goddess looked back at Iris, and her wolfish grin returned.
"My, Iris, you are a sweet girl."
Iris felt her face flush with heat, and that deer in the headlights feeling returned.
"H-hey, I never found out your name," she finally forced herself to say.
The goddess' eyes glowed yellow, like a wolf's eyeshine.
"Now that my worshipers are dead, I have no name in any mortal tongue. My true name is spoken in the laughter of swords and the song of hot blood, in the cry of the wolf for her pack."
"That's a mouthful," Iris said, and then she woke up.
At night, Iris slept under the open stars. They were strange, different from Earth's night sky, and there were more of them than she'd ever imagined there could be.
No light pollution does that. Well, the more stars than you'd ever think there be part. The different constellations part probably is because of the "on a different plannt" thing. I doubt the London/SanFran/whatever smog can alter the very shapes of the stars.
God was the poor gollum-werewolf she slaughtered like the last remnant of the goddess' old life, one of her legends with like a really sad fucked up Fenris demigod, broken out of unbreakable chains or led out of infinite liminal shadow by the plague, now but a nameless ill-fated thing?
We know Earth people have been dropped into this world before. I think the Great Plague might've been caused by diseases from Earth that the inhabitants of this world had no immunity from spreading to it via another Isekai.
Kinda like what happened with the Native Americans.
Estimates of Black Death casualties top out at around 60% for Europe, and descriptions from the survivors read like modern post-apocalyptic fiction, so just imagine a plague with a 75% casualty rate. The sheer scope of the emptiness must be incredible.
... what's the over-under on the Lady of Light being responsible for the Great Plague? Am I just paranoid, or does that seem mighty convenient to anyone else?
No more then say Nicene Christianity seemingly coming in perfectly positioned with the pile driver as newer spiritual explanations and offerings of salvation to the late Roman Empire crawling out from like consecutive centuries of earthquakes and great fires and plagues and massive civil conflict and etc... I don't think.
I'm reminded of how the rhinderpest epidemic so devastated Africa that areas of thornbrush rapidly expanded afterwards and wilderness areas grew. A different sort of thing here, but I do like the explanation for all the wilderness being included.
God was the poor gollum-werewolf she slaughtered like the last remnant of the goddess' old life, one of her legends with like a really sad fucked up Fenris demigod, broken out of unbreakable chains or led out of infinite liminal shadow by the plague, now but a nameless ill-fated thing?
I'm wondering if this isn't the first time she's helped someone move worlds? It can't be too straightforward if she doesn't think it's her story to tell, so probably not just a high priestess or something.
"Now that my worshipers are dead, I have no name in any mortal tongue. My true name is spoken in the laughter of swords and the song of hot blood, in the cry of the wolf for her pack."
"That's a mouthful," Iris said, and then she woke up.
Estimates of Black Death casualties top out at around 60% for Europe, and descriptions from the survivors read like modern post-apocalyptic fiction, so just imagine a plague with a 75% casualty rate. The sheer scope of the emptiness must be incredible.
That's like the Smallpox epidemics among the First Nations. Entire civilizations basically vanished, and the post apocalyptic survivors were the people that the European Settlers in North America encountered. There's a reason that settler accounts describe the East Coast as being like the garden of eden, with orchards and fields empty and waiting to be used. Because those used to be native towns that were now all gone.
That would be me. I would never believe I am not just a character in a "stupid isekai story". I read too much of them, statistically being words on a page is more likely than strange women giving out magic reincarnations. This is no basis for reality.
Thanks for the comments everyone! It's true that I based the Great Plague and its aftermath on similar historical epidemics, although the exact causes of the Great Plague (insofar as, like, the historical Black Death had causes) aren't really relevant at this point. It happened, everyone over the age of forty carries the emotional scars, and the world is half-empty. Somehow life goes on.
No more then say Nicene Christianity seemingly coming in perfectly positioned with the pile driver as newer spiritual explanations and offerings of salvation to the late Roman Empire crawling out from like consecutive centuries of earthquakes and great fires and plagues and massive civil conflict and etc... I don't think.
That and the Church of the Lady of Light was better positioned to develop and then make use of the magical technology necessary to actually fight the plague, though where the Church takes it as an article of faith that this is due to the rightness and holiness of the Lady it was probably due to those pesky "complicated historical factors".
God was the poor gollum-werewolf she slaughtered like the last remnant of the goddess' old life, one of her legends with like a really sad fucked up Fenris demigod, broken out of unbreakable chains or led out of infinite liminal shadow by the plague, now but a nameless ill-fated thing?
I'm wondering if this isn't the first time she's helped someone move worlds? It can't be too straightforward if she doesn't think it's her story to tell, so probably not just a high priestess or something.
More guesses! It's been interesting to see all the different interpretations of this creature, some are closer to the mark than others. There will be further clues but I intend to leave this one a mystery at the end of the day.
I will say that thematically it's supposed to be Iris' dark and twisted mirror, an exaggeration of what happens as a result of the kind of isolation and privation that killed Iris. Suffering doesn't make you noble, it breaks you down. So, its connection to the goddess is another parallel to Iris - as for the wolf-goddess, she genuinely feels guilt over what happened to it, and it withholding the story out of respect for the person it once was.
