SAKRAN 1: NEW HORIZONS

The young adventurer gazed out at the slowly-reforming tower with awe.

He’d been told to expect some crazy stuff, but wasn’t this a bit early to be seeing something like this?

A tug on his tunic yanked him back into the carriage, and his maid started cursing at him. “It’s dangerous out there! You can’t just stick your head out of the carriage in the middle of a freak storm like this!”

Sakran Betza rolled his eyes. “Yes, mom.”

Shekima, the woman who had raised him, scowled at him. “I will spank you.”

He swallowed. “So, what do you think is going on out there?”

Shekima smiled softly for a second, then shook her head at him. “I don’t know, and that’s why you shouldn’t be so careless about it. It seems like that lightning was hitting the same place over and over again, which makes me think that it was a spell of some kind, and whatever caster can do that isn’t the sort that we should draw the attention of.”

Just then, the caravan leader hollered out some command that Sakran couldn’t quite make out, and their carriage started rolling again.

“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” he disagreed. “Didn’t the messenger say that the guy who owns the tower is… eccentric? Maybe this was his doing.”

Shekima frowned. “That wasn’t any normal lightning, and this isn’t any normal Necrosis. Whoever owns this land at minimum has to have an advanced, Death-aligned affinity. Are you supposing that he has two? That would make him, what, level twenty-five? That’s higher than anyone in the kingdom. No, it’s more likely that the lightning was someone else’s doing.”

Sakran shrugged. It didn’t really matter to him, as long as none of that power was turned on him.

He was here for the dungeon– or so they were calling the big tower with monsters in it. He was also here to deliver a letter, but that shouldn't be very difficult.

Shekima and Sakran chatted for a bit longer, speculating about the lightning and what the town would be like. Nobody had ever considered that there might be a settlement in the middle of the Dead Belt, and when the news had gotten out, people had gone crazy with the conspiracy theories.

Some people were saying that they had to be well-disguised undead, while others claimed they were aliens from another realm. There was even some guy claiming that the small city was full of beautiful young women, which was obviously just wishful thinking, but amusing nonetheless.

The cart rolled painfully slowly, but eventually Sakran could make out a gate in the city’s wall, and it was only perhaps another hour or so before they were setting up camp just outside the city.

Once his tent was pitched and dinner was cooking, the caravan head, Kharl left to negotiate with the natives, and everyone else started setting up magical wards and simple quality-of-life things, like campfires to help protect against the cold and posts to tie up their horses.

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It wasn’t too long before everyone was settled in, and the caravan head came back with a bewildered look on his face.

His assistant gathered everyone up over the next few minutes, and then he made a small announcement.

“Apparently, these… folks didn’t know we were coming until just now. They say that the owner of the settlement is a bit of a ditz and the person who helped facilitate communication between them and him spontaneously up and left.”

There was some muttering at that, but Kharl silenced everyone with a shout. “Hey! We’ve dealt with stuff like this before, and we’ve been to plenty of locations that didn’t have anything prepared for us. It just means we might end up spending a few more nights without proper accommodation than expected. That’s not the real issue here.

“The real trouble is that they don’t really have anything to trade with.” This caused some shouts of alarm, and even Sakran was frowning now. Had they really come all the way out here for basically nothing?

“Don’t worry!” Kharl announced with a smile, “They say they’ll be willing to enter the tower with our adventurers and guide them through. They say they haven’t ventured inside, but have been warned of some of the threats within. That’s better than going in without any knowledge at all, in my opinion.”

“What do they expect from us in return? If they’re wanting my stuff in exchange for someone else getting something, that doesn’t really sound like a fair trade,” one of the older merchants grumped.

Kharl shot him a look. “I was just getting to that. With their help, we’ll be able to gather plenty of riches to go around. We give the locals some food, clothing, and tools, they give our fighters information, and the fighters give us loot. Everyone gets something, win-win-win.”

There was some grumbling, but eventually everyone agreed to it.

“Now, one last thing,” Kharl shouted out, adjusting his collar in a way that seemed a bit anxious, “Y’all remember that one stupid rumor about the town being full of women?”

No way. Sakran’s eyes widened.

“Yeah, that was right. But don’t you boys lay a finger on any of them!” He scolded the group. “I have it on good authority that anyone who misbehaves here will die. Not just get in trouble, not get sent to court, just die. I’m not bringing a dead human body back with the caravan, so if you get killed in here I’m just gonna leave you out in the Belt and let you turn into a monster. Understood?”

There were some half-hearted agreements and shady eyes, and Sakran just knew that someone was probably going to lose a finger before everyone else got the point.

Most of the men here were rich enough to get whatever they wanted. The Betza house was considered one of the more respected noble branches, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t any internal conflict. At least some of the merchants present today had most likely, at some point or another, gotten away with harassment by simply paying off everyone involved.

At least none of them were stupid enough to go past that point, though. Rape was taken very seriously by the queen, and offenders were typically executed. It was generally viewed as a very extreme punishment, but it was effective. Even the richest nobles strayed away from that path– or at least kept it so far in the dark that nobody knew about it.

With that matter settled, the group disbanded, each person going to continue setting up their own supplies and preparing their own wares.

Sakran, though, approached Kharl personally. “Do you have any news on where I can deliver the letter?”

The caravan driver winced. “Ahh, yeah, about that…” A finger was slowly pointed towards the top floor of the dungeon tower, and Sakran’s heart sank.