Chapter 21: Exchange

Non-Combatants - Barge Operators

Harold stood on the brim of his barge, and looked at the lazily flowing river below. It was more clear than it had any right to be, and he could see gleaming stones in its depths. He occasionally disturbed the waters with his pole to guide the barge, but otherwise he just relaxed. If he got lucky, a fish would swim close enough to catch with his fishing spear.

He was making barely any money by transporting copper down this route, but there was something calming about being so away from the cities of the west. If something threatened you around these parts, at least you knew it was some wild animal and not a person. Wealth and desperation had a strange way of coexisting in the same places.

It was a simple route. Copper and tin went downriver, passing through Riveg and eventually ending up in Bronzetown. Knickknacks and tools went upriver to the mines. You could do a little bit of trading with the villages along the way, exchange an axe for pelts or buy a rare herb for a pittance. Winter was coming though, so people were not buying many luxuries. Word was, that it was going to be a rough one.

Harold looked to his two companions for this trip. Emily had some errand to run in Riveg, and would help him get the barge upriver again later. She didn't look particularly pleased about the errand and kept scowling when she thought nobody could see it. And Victor refused to say what his goal was, as he was heading all the way down to Bronzetown. Harold didn't need his Skill for seeing basic intent, to know that Victor's silence wasn't due to malicious reasons. Just a private person doing private things. Of course the Skill helped, and showed him that the boy concentrated more on the boat than on anything else. He would have bet money that he was going to try to join a ship crew and was afraid someone would talk him out of it.

There was a time when he would have skimmed both for all they were worth. Shined a few trinkets or nuggets of knowledge at them, promised them exactly what they were dreaming of. But as his wealth and levels had grown, so had his Skill. And he hadn't liked what he saw. Those he considered his friends cared for little more than his money, and his enemies were more justified than he could still admit to himself. After a while he saw a scheme brewing, something that would almost certainly ruin him if he didn't fight it.

And so he had simply left. He took a pittance of coin and left them to fight over the rest. A few months of having to eat gruel to save money showed him just how stupid that was, but he couldn't find it in himself to truly regret anything. A fresh start was a luxury, and he had bought it at a high, albeit justified, price. He had promised to do better this time around.

He should probably talk to the boy later. Make sure he doesn't join a ship with an idiot for a captain. Maybe also see if Emily would share what was putting her on edge.

Harold spent a few minutes looking at the woods. These were old and tall trees that had grown here for as long as anyone could remember. Excellent wood. He could see a glimpse of the occasional squirrel or bird as they jumped between the trees. Finally, he noticed something bigger moving through the trees.

Seconds later, a pair of harpies emerged from the woods and flew directly at the barge, their movements perfectly synchronized and each stroke of their wings identical to the previous. Their faces were expressionless and their eyes utterly focused. It reminded Harold of high-leveled soldiers that had sometimes escorted his caravan, like their movements were too smooth and precise to feel natural. The intent coming from the harpies was muddled, as if behind a veil or far away, but it shone through regardless. They sought to learn something, and were utterly indifferent towards how they would do it. Like the worst kind of bandit, that could stab you at any moment and wouldn't even care.

Emily picked up the fishing spear, to scare the harpies off and Harold could almost feel a snap in the air through his Skill. The intent emanating from the harpies instantly shifted towards hostility, without even the slightest hint of fear or doubt. Only a split-second of thought and it had fully changed its plan.

Harpies didn't think like this. Wild animals didn't think like this. Not even people thought like this.

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He quickly grabbed the fishing spear Emily held, and pushed it down, away from whatever was pretending to be a pair of harpies. Emily looked at him, confusion evident on her face. Harold looked into her eyes as he shook his head and warned her. "Not a good idea."

She seemed to get the message, as she dropped the spear. Harold felt the focus of the harpies move away from her, and instantly snap back to what it was previously. They were now focused on him as the target.

The harpies changed their approach and began to circle the barge when they came closer, their movements still synchronized as they flew on opposite sides of the barge. "Look at the way they move. Those aren't harpies." he said to Victor and Emily, to stop them from doing anything stupid. It would have taken too long to tell them about what he felt coming from them.

Then the harpies...spoke. A pair of horrible sounds added up to a single voice that he could understand. He realized that it was a singular entity behind them. Puppeteering them somehow. "Stop the vehicle and lie down on your stomach." it said.

Harpies could not speak. They would shout, they would scream, and they would shriek. They would spook horses and tear them apart as they ran, but they did not make calm demands. But Harold already knew he wasn't talking to a pair of harpies. Whatever it was, might have come from a breach or from the far east. He needed to stall for time until he figured out a way to get it to go away.

He nodded to the others, trying to impart upon them the seriousness of the situation. Emily was about to speak, but he made a quick gesture for silence with his hand to make her stop. Harold needed the entity to keep its focus on him. Maybe the others could escape if he did that. Victor was planning something, but Harold had no way of knowing what that was.

He began to stop the barge, placing a couple of the poles against the river floor to anchor the boat. "And if we do, you will not kill us?" he said, already knowing the answer would likely be a lie.

"Yes." came the obvious lie from it, its intent unchanged. He was hoping to...feel at least some change from the entity. Some deal that could be made, before they lied down and were completely at its mercy, but he had no idea how to proceed.

"Fuck." Harold mumbled to himself as he began to lie down. "Not like we have a choice." At least not yet.

He responded loudly to the entity. "What do you want?" Hopefully indicating that he was in charge, possibly keeping the others out of its mind. "Going to steal our bodies?" he added. The remark might get him killed, but the entity didn't seem to be hiding, and he needed to tell the others what was going on without bringing attention to them. There was no reaction from the harpies.

When the three of them lied on their stomachs as instructed, the harpies finally landed and allowed him to properly look at one of them. They looked as harpies did, like birds with the upper-torsos and heads of women. Harpies had the faces of old crones, wrinkly and perpetually sneering, but their eyes were that of eagles, their teeth sharp like a predators and instead of hair they had only strange long feathers. Instead of the usual sneer, these harpies had...nothing. Not a single tic of the mouth or eyebrow, or a twitch of the eye. They even blinked wrong, with one eye after the other instead of with both at the same time, staring directly at him without ever looking away or averting their gaze.

The harpy stepped closer to him, each step so smooth it made no sound when its talons touched the wood. The harpy contorted herself, placing her leg on his neck and lowering its head to look directly into his eyes. She was perfectly still, like something dead or stuffed. Harold felt the talon on his neck, directly on a blood vessel, tight enough he felt like an errant twitch would make it slice into him and make him bleed out.

And then the entity spoke. "Tell me about the gods." It said, which meant it was more than just a random horror that had crawled through a breach and found its way here. Was it just these two harpies, or did it have a forest full of animals under its control?

Harold faltered, as he was trying to think of what to say. The harpy didn't move, merely awaiting his answer. He would have delayed, but he could still feel the same intent from the entity, still considering him utterly expendable. If he stalled too long it might just decide to slice his neck open and move onto the next person. "There are seven." he said, without a reaction from the entity.

"They made this world and watch over it. They create and destroy as they please." he continued.

"What process did they use for making this world?" the entity asked.

"They..." Harold began to answer, as he considered what the actual fuck. "...say this world began as a lifeless rock. Aaris formed the soil and the seas from mana. Th..."

He paused, as he felt a shift in the focus of the entity. Each question it asked would reveal more of what it wanted, so it was best to answer as shortly as possible

"How did they gather sufficient mana?" it asked, as if mana was something you could put in a bag and collect, or something that could run out. Mana did as it pleased and created more of itself. Harold had no idea how to answer the question, but it was evidently important to the entity.

Harold decided to take a gamble, having found something that mattered to it. "I can show you." he said. "But we need to be further downriver for it to work."