It took me three days to walk westward along the coast to reach the very modest port village of Tarvu. There were Rutar fishing villages in this region, and fishermen with boats out taking advantage of the recently retreated ice. Several of these aided me in crossing sodden tongues of the delta, though they did so at their own pace, which accounted for my slow progress. Word had passed among the fishermen of roving marauders, and several bands of young men had gone to Tarvu to join a hunting party to destroy this threat. Thankfully, it seemed that rumor had also preceded me, and I was identifiable to these fishermen. This did mean that I was obligated to relate the tragedy of Giant’s Grove repeatedly, a most miserable task, but considering that many had lost relatives to the carnage, the Rutar certainly had the right to know.
I confess that I spent this time beset by worry. The possibility of being targeted by wizards was a part of this, and a serious danger, but I was also fearful of the possibility that Lady Indili would learn of events at Giant’s Grove and come to the conclusion that I had perished. In addition to the considerable regret I felt as to possibly burdening her mind in such a fashion, there was also the deeply practical concern that she would choose to take her students and board the first ship available in order to escape oncoming danger. I could hardly expect her to wait for someone who might never arrive, painful as it might be to admit such things.
As it happened, she was spared this cruel decision. The first trade ship of the year, under the command of Captain Broadoar, it being trader convention to use only pseudonyms when dealing with outsiders, arrived four days before I did. He agreed to carry Lady Indili and the girls for a considerable sum, but he remained anchored in Tarvu as the chaos in the region delayed his acquisition of sufficient goods to justify departure. This delay was critical for many reasons. It not only allowed me to reach the village in time, but it also allowed the Pustulant Jade to complete his encirclement of the port in the hope of intercepting new arrivals. The wizard, curiously, believed most strongly in my survival and expended considerable effort based on the assumption that I would make for the port and the expedition’s only other surviving member. Reflecting upon this, it is true that my path was obvious, but I did not at the time fully understand that the wizard was specifically targeting me.
There is a Nikkad proverb, one I heard used many times, that says ‘a misplaced needle can doom the best assassin.’ It is a summation of the power of some tiny, unexpected complication to collapse great and devastating schemes. Traveling in Shdustu, with its incredible variation in peoples, mystics, and even weather, I have been greatly impressed by the truth of this maxim. Humans can glimpse only the least part of the mechanisms by which the Divines control the cycles of the world. To believe otherwise is to step above ourselves absolutely. Of course, such hubris is a common failing of those who practice wizardry.
In this case the unanticipated factor was the presence of mud flats to the east of Tarvu. These received periodic deposits of sand and silt from the tides and, with the arrival of the spring floods, huge amounts of soil and stone carried by the Shdulus River from across Shdustu. Inevitably Lady Indili, confined and forced to wait in a tiny village, would come out onto this expanse to search for fossils, a practice she was eager to teach to the girls in her charge. As I was aware of those predilections, I expected this and approached the town by way of the mud flats rather than circling around to the main entry trail.
Being wide open due to scouring by flood and tide, the flats allowed sight across great distance. Lady Indili, wearing dark sorcerer’s robes and tall pointed hat, was easily recognized. The presence of four young girls trailing her and splashing about in the tidal pools provided additional confirmation of her identity. The pair of Nikkad fighters who emerged from the reeds as I crossed into the open on the muck and seaweed were obviously hostile, but as the tide was low, the distance from cover was such that their throwing darts failed to pierce the hardened boar-leather lamellar I had been gifted by Ludun-Mulun and been wearing for weeks. Rather than attempt to fight these soldiers, who though they appeared ragged and worn were surely still more than my match in an open contest, I simply ran as fast as I could toward the sorceress. Having eaten my fill of fish in the past few days, I retained the strength to easily outpace my pursuers.
Foolish, desperate, or both, they pursued. Lady Indili recognized me immediately. When those who followed reached to within bowshot, she raised her staff. Something lightless and indescribable pulsed out twice from that curled piece of dryad-gifted wood, and the two soldiers collapsed. They were not slain, essence sorcery does not claim lives outright in that way, but those who fall insensate upon the tidal wash will see the water serve as their executioner.
Neither Lady Indili nor I considered this attack an isolated incident but rather a likely prelude to a large-scale assault upon the broadly undefended port village. Knowing this, we ran back to town with all possible speed. Even as this was done the Pustulant Jade, perhaps alerted by someone in the village, gathered his fighters to commence an assault.
The attack was not a large one. The wizard had gathered not even fifty under his command, and only a handful of these possessed bodies augmented by mystical treatments. However, Tarvu contained only a few hundred residents, and most were either unready youths, women, or elders. No more two dozen or so bowmen were present to conduct any sort of defense. Lady Indili called out a warning to these as we fled toward the docks, and from the sounds that followed us it seems a valiant effort was made to halt the wizard, but it was a doomed endeavor. Like the dominator in the mountains, the Pustulant Jade wielded an iron staff, and his body was almost completely proof against arrows. He led his troops from the front, body green-stained and leaking with each step. Escape onto the salt sea was the only real option.
Lady Indili, knowing there was much violence in the region, had loaded all her supplies onboard the trade ship in advance. The captain accepted them aboard at once, and his crew raced to rejoin the ship at the first sign of conflict. Even as the attackers spilled down the village’s raised walkways, escape beckoned. There would be no chance of a pursuit across the waves. Unfortunately, as any who have taken a sea voyage will know, launching a ship is not the same as mounting a horse. This time the Divines were not with us, for the tide had not yet come in and the ship wallowed low. What little wind the sails could catch did not suffice to match the current. Even as I stood ready to board, I saw the Pustulant Jade emerge from the shadow of a house and point his iron staff directly toward me.
The title of Pustulant Jade represented a fairly succinct description of this member of the Obsidian Order. His skin had been discolored, transformed to a pale green shade, and it was unnaturally smooth and hard, resembling a polished stone surface. At the same time, the distorted essence raging inside his body caused the same skin to swell and burst all over, leaving him coated in pustules that leaked out a greenish-red fluid with the consistency of boiled curds. A hideous visage, but one that carried with it inhuman strength and toughness equal to that of the mountain-dwelling dominator, if achieved through crude methods. I do not know what benefits this man thought human blood mingled with a dragon’s essence might provide, especially not a single drop, but he ordered his minions to capture me without inflicting any cuts, and they carried heavy maces well suited to that task.
With the ship unable to depart, and this discovery that I was the target, I made a decision. I will not claim that it was sourced to courage or any spirit of righteous sacrifice, it was simply the only option that remained. I pointed to a rocky promontory to the west of the village along the coastline, where a tower of stone leaned out over the sea, and begged Lady Indili to have the ship meet me there. No time existed to consider other alternatives. The rest was simply flight.
As the traders were armed with long spears, hooked and barbed for their use against seal and sturgeon, and able to shelter behind the heavy planks of their craft for defense, the wizard’s followers ignored them. The ship was left to launch unopposed. All followed me instead, tracing my path through the village, across dunes and marsh, and out to the water’s edge. Memory supplies little recollection of this flight. All my attention and execution were given to maintaining speed and evading the pursuit from behind, noisy with rattling weapons. Doubtless the run would have been wholly doomed conducted alone, but at least some Rutar archers remained alive to harry those who had dared invade their village. In this way many were slain, the marauders scattered, and Tarvu spared pillaging, but the handpicked agents of the wizard who followed me to the exclusion of all else were more than sufficient to overcome any defense I might offer.
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I will not claim to be a great sprinter, but desperation impels a certain strength to the legs. More importantly, hard-won knowledge of the swamps and their contours allowed for efficient pathfinding in the complex landscape. Nothing to match the fluid navigation of the Rutar, but enough to maintain a lead over those who relied upon strength rather than finesse. As much as this allowed me to maintain distance for a time, it still required becoming soaked, mud-covered, and exhausted. Nor was it possible to fully evade pursuit. Headlong flight through the shoreline swamps inevitably provoked countless birds. This feathered alarm allowed the Pustulant Jade to follow my progress and to seize control by sending his agents further westward to complete an encirclement with the only outlet the salt sea. It took nearly two hours of running to reach the promontory. By that time all strength was gone from my limbs and the wizard had finished arranging his ring of armed monsters.
The wizard also revealed a knowledge of winds and currents superior to my own, for I had never understood the sea. The traders evacuated Tarvu in good order and sailed west with their passengers aboard, but while Lady Indili convinced Captain Broadoar to try and reach my position, the salt sea did not permit this. The vessel moved into a position, bobbing gently atop light waves, over two kilometers offshore, and could come no closer. I was only able to identify Lady Indili, standing in the bow, by the distinctive shape of her hat.
This was all as the Pustulant Jade had anticipated, something he told me himself.
Our confrontation took place at the very last, the seaward cliff edge of the rocky sea stack, surrounded by screeching gulls furious at the humans who dared to intrude upon their nesting ground. Behind me was open sky and the waves lapping at rocks many meters far below. There was no path off the stones, only the desperate dive into the salty waters, which did not represent an avenue of escape. The wizard knew this, he had happily herded me to this point with that intention.
It was still spring, and the waters of the Udultu Salt Sea were bitterly frigid, worse than any river and barely above the point of forming ice. Anyone who fell within would expire from the cold in minutes. Even if the cold could be overcome, it was impossible for someone in my position, exhausted by flight, to swim the brutal distance needed to reach the ship. The sea is merciless.
The wizard claimed this made no difference. His thralls were proof against cold and tiredness alike and stated that blood drained from the body of a dead man contained just as much essence as that of the living, so long as the corpse was fresh. Presumably, deep in the distorted arithmetic of wizardry, this holds true. Believing there was no escape, he offered me a swift death, a single blow to the neck to end it all, rather than the slow, chilling doom of the black water below.
These were all true statements. His trap was well-crafted, his encirclement complete and bearing overwhelming strength. Yet, as I stood before the green-bleeding monster with nothing more than a knife, it was I who found that the arrangement had been carefully turned to my advantage. The wizard had, in his avarice, overlooked the implications of mingling human essence with that of a frost dragon and how it would change the body of one with mixed blood who he sought to claim as a prize.
The frost dragon laired in a cave in the center of a glacier, one of the coldest places in the whole of the world, and did so in perfect comfort. A single drop of blood contained the barest fraction of its essence, but dragons are crystallizations of the power of the Divines. One drop is an immensity. Husun the Fifth found powdered scale rendered him immune to the worst ravages of summer heat. I discovered that the infusion of blood, unfiltered by apothecary formulations, had the opposite effect. From that day on the ice forward, cold lost its grip upon my flesh. I would never have survived the long winter among the dryads or the brutal trek through the soaking swamps in the chill of spring. The waters of the salt sea might have frozen the life from any other human, but they offered no threat to me.
I dove, and though the impact drove the breath from my lungs and left my flesh covered in bruises, the chill waters offered nothing worse than a slight numbing sensation.
Witnessing this, the Pustulant Jade did not give up. He leaned forward over the edge, ordered his minions to descend and capture me, and hurled taunts in unceasing tirade. This was an even greater mistake. He knew I could not swim to the ship, my strength did not suffice to that achievement, but such a feat of athleticism had never been my intention. In his obsession with claiming dragon blood, he had forgotten that the Dragon Expedition retained a master sorcerer, one whose shades manifested not as predators or land or sky, but the ocean depths. Nor was my encounter with Lady Indili that day the first time she had taken her students out onto the mud flats to look for fossils. They had scrambled through the earth and dunes many times, collecting bits of bone, shells, spines, and teeth. The girls, with the eager energy of children introduced to a new game, took to this and prospected extensively. Of their efforts, it would be Unura, the youngest who had the sharpest eyes, who discovered the instrument of our deliverance.
In order to shape her shades, Lady Indili would draw upon the echo of essence embedded in the stony matrix of fossils. When she raised her hands standing atop the bow of the ship on that dark spring afternoon, one hand held the dryad-crafted staff, and the other a shark’s tooth that filled her palm from the tip of her pinky finger to the end of her thumb. A knife-shaped dental blade belonging to a monstrous giant marauder of the depths from a cycle of the world before the coming of humanity.
Reborn as a shade, it was jet black and bled shadows with every motion, but it overwhelmed all other thought through shear predatory immensity. It was the size of a great whale, longer than the trader ship and nearly as wide. The massive maw contained dozens of dagger-sized teeth and could have swallowed a full-grown donkey whole. It slashed through the waves with uncanny speed, red-black shade eyes obedient to the commands of the sorceress. After I dove over the side and the Pustulant Jade moved to the very edge, no obstacles remained.
The immense shark breached the waters. Its body rose completely free from the waves to rise into the air. The tip of its tail was no more than the height of a man above the liquid surface, but the creature was by itself the length of a wagon train and needed no more height to reach up to the top of the sea stack. This motion was stunningly swift, so much so that the wizard did not even have the time to scream. Huge jaws opened impossibly wide till they seemed to burst free of the mouth, then snapped closed once. The reinforced, stony flesh of the wizard, proof against arrows and warded against blades, offered no resistance to those shearing teeth. He was snapped cleanly in half. Ruined remnants of distorted tissue fell to the water in a spray of green and red ruin.
Unlike a living animal, when the shade dropped back to the waters it made no splash, but it retained solidity. It this way it offered a second means of salvation. I was able to grasp the vast dorsal fin, itself longer than I was tall, and let the construct pull me easily and swiftly over the distance to the trader’s ship. Lady Indili collapsed to the deck after the sailors pulled me aboard, a state I soon matched. Thereafter we sailed away to the west, leaving the remnants of the Obsidian Order behind.
It was later reported that the Rutar hunted down and slew the Pustulant Jade’s followers to the last. In this way, the southern branch of the Obsidian Order was extinguished. Though all estimates regarding such matters are crude and speculative, it can be stated with some certainty that the Dragon Expedition, and especially the Lady Indili, dealt a crushing blow to the strength of wizards in Shdustu, clearing the region of such cruel and dangerous mystics for a generation. Though the price was high, this may be counted an unmitigated good, one that would have justified the dispatch of the expedition even if it had accomplished nothing else at all. Among the Bahab and Rutar especially, the Sanid Empire acquired a glorious reputation as valiant enemies of all wizards, and much respect followed from this. Sairn merchants reported greater success in trading with those peoples for many years, and increased safety along the minor trade routes throughout Shdustu as the danger of predation by wizards was severely reduced. There were also implications for the Chapter House. Lady Indili’s actions won considerable goodwill among the people towards sorcery. Recruitment increased considerably, and the strength of sorcery in the region grew measurably.
In opposition to this, I must admit that though the wizards were destroyed, the actions attendant to that destruction unleashed great chaos and inflicted considerable suffering. Shdustu remains a land where dark forces remain, lying in wait, and pulling them into the open demands a severe price paid in blood. The question, doomed to remain unanswered, is how much of this was inevitable, with the dragon merely as the trigger, and how much was determined by human choices. I cannot know, and I am sure I will never grasp the truth until the time comes to face the Lord of Death’s judgment.