Taur was an ugly city, really – Tyr had observed that once, and he'd do it again. Well organized, surely, but completely lacking in any kind of aesthetic beauty, Tyr didn't favor things like that. Men were given hands, imagination, creativity – and they often made little to no use. All art became a standard, city planning revolved around efficiency rather than the idyllic. They'd all last, what, 70 years at the average on this world? This is where they'd spend their insignificant speck of an existence, toiling away for no reason in particular. Working just to live, so that they might continue working, amidst the geometric shapes of sturdy stone shells.
Drab and monotone, with the washed out gray of that limestone used in every part of its construction. Buildings were low, blocky, and wide with flat tops lined with crenelations – not enough wood in the region to make for more northern style structures. Everything here seemed to be made a miniature fortress.
Baccian's were a warlike, dusky skinned people, but they seemed kind – dealing with one another with smiles and open hearts.
Not as depressing as their architecture, at least. Quick to declare a festival, with fair working hours and a long break in the middle of the day to get away from the heat. They were dressed more gaudily too, it seemed that color was the sign of wealth here. A scarlet sash as good as any piece of jewelry in Haran, an odd custom that didn't seem bound to conventional trade wisdom. Purple was their most favored color, only the nobles could wear any shade of it – and silks were always in high demand. Coming through Milano via Assyrian traders, another part of the global system of economics that didn't make sense.
The city itself was surrounded by lush fields, miles and miles of greenery standing in stark contrast to the yellowed flatlands. Pattoli said that Taur was built in such a place because of the plentiful springs beneath the earth.
This was true, on observation. Less springs as in the aqueous sort and more of the magical, something decidedly not built by humans, a truly monolithic ward designed to push away the corruption.
A city of fertile earth, an oasis in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and it was thronging with people about all manner of tasks. It was jarring, tens of miles of nothingness, and then 'boom' – a city. At least Lyra, which had similar stretches between settlements, was lush and green and beautiful. This place, to be crude, sucked.
Baccia was fairly large in comparison to the other successor states, in terms of national borders, but its population density left much to be desired. Their warlike ways were necessary, considering that the core of the nation wasn't good for much of anything without magic. Badlands, the chief exports being limestone brick and the finished products of artisans. Red clay and tools, not much of an economy, and though there was no shortage of monsters in the lowlands – traversing that harrowing topography wasn't for the faint hearted. Thus, they'd conquered the periphery states and turned them into sources of domestic product, bolstering their wealth and enforcing brutal trade agreements with their neighbors. Want to get through Baccia safely to reach Brotherhood lands, Amistad, cross the span? Overland routes through the badlands were rare, but they'd earn their capital from where they could.
For some unknown reason, keeping the center of their nation here, in this city where the nearest settlement was over fifty miles away. Tyr supposed it, in its isolation, would be by conventional wisdom fairly easy to defend. Especially considering how all the structures were built like segments of a castle, hard to climb and flat roofed. But... There were no dimensional wards in the kingdom at this point in time, not that he could smell – at least.
Something else, though, something he'd been feeling for some time now, a thing that would become both blessing and curse to the nation that would emerge from this hellish environment. Slayer of armies, poison in the earth, the great arid salt flats radiating an unnatural heat that came from deep below.
His time here with Nala had been mostly on the periphery, and he hadn't possessed the senses necessary to properly feel it back then. Dead to most sensations at that time, but nowadays it was plain inconsistent – the only universal component of his very existence seemed to be the pain and the eye watering migraines. In a way, if he'd given voice to it, Tyr might've said that his body seemed in a constant state of not wanted to exist. At least in this form, which he'd attribute to his supposed half blooded heritage, ensuring he was in a constant state of growing pains – a body that would not allow him to change into whatever it was supposed to be. Perhaps a mighty winged cucumber with great curling horns, nine mouths and the biggest phallus any man had ever seen.
He didn't really care, and depending on how he was feeling, might say that he didn't want to know what his mother was in the first place. There was some trepidation in uncovering that information, and he quite liked how he looked – not willing to see that change any time soon. Signe had made no effort to reconnect with him despite being alive, leaving him a bit lost and embittered regarding that whole situation.
“Hold up a second.” Tyr hopped off his flatter and put his hand to the ground. They were 400 meters or so from the fields of wheat and vegetables, fruit and olive orchards. Here where it was still yellow and lifeless, the irrigated channels not quite so far out. The land in Haran was rich, growing richer the deeper one got, typically until the water table or a shelf of rock separated fertile soil from silt deposits and bare mineral.
Here, there was a thin layer of life before it abruptly cut off, and no obvious reason for it. It wasn't sand, or a real desert, only dry dirt for miles around. The plants evolving shallow root systems so as to avoid reaching deeper, it had to be for a reason. Tyr wanted to know why.
“Why is the land like this?” He asked the animist, something fairly attuned with life. Couldn't remember their name though, once again wondering why his memory was so... Selective? Ravioli?
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“Some say a great war was fought here millennia ago.” Pattoli answered sagely. “That it poisoned the land so potently that Freyja herself revoked her blessing at the brutality committed on her flesh. Once upon a time, these were called 'the wastes', as they are in the east toward the mist, but magic has fixed many of these problems. That, and imported sod from Varia. It's always summer in Baccia, it cools a bit in the winter, the harvest season, but it never snows. Barely rains either. It's always interested me. Considering that Krieg, Milano, and Brotherhood lands are all relatively green themselves, and not so far abroad.”
“One of the few lessons I've learned is that nothing makes sense...” Tyr shrugged. Their journey here had continued without incident. No more finger biting, at least. He extended his spira through the soil, combing it wide at first before compressing it and sending it downward. There, he found it. An extremely ancient curse of sorts, but not one that had been cast. Unlike other battlefields that burst into wild fertility due to all the phosphorous rich corpses, this place was just so... So dead. There were countless bodies all compacted together from a variety of races. Mummified. A great number of which Tyr did not recognize, but they retained enough of their shape for him to make an educated guess.
'Pointy ears' – 'must be elves'. And so...
“Elves?” Tyr tilted his head, frowning. “Did elves used to live in Baccia? Do they have big tits?”
“Humans have lived here since recorded history, I have never met nor heard of an elf outside of old wives tales telling us they steal the shoes of naughty children.” Pattoli said. “I suppose anything is possible, though, including the size of their breasts... What do you see down there?”
“An incredible amount of something with tapered ears and fomorians all tangled up. Ah, the fomorians were--”
“I know what fomorians were.” Pattoli interrupted. “Point being?”
“I think...” Tyr mused quietly, curiosity welling up within him again, he wanted to know this and more – to know everything. “I think there was a war here, a three way war between races. There is Orik technology here, but not many bodies. And a... A humming in the earth. The rocks are poisoned and it's preventing anything from growing. Taur is built on a leyline, and there is a bowl shaped ward in the earth that pushes it away. Everywhere else is just... Dead, I guess. I don't know how else to say it. Something really bright and really hot scorched the earth all the way down to the bedrock, it's still burning and I can feel it. The world is in incredible pain, like we're standing on a wound, even bacteria can't survive beyond eight inches or so into the topsoil.”
“Who cares?” Hans asked, nervously edging his flatter behind Raj. Anyone who Tyr seemed friendly toward was well enough, the man had eaten his liver over twenty times now. Cortus didn't have enough replacement bodies to keep this up, and their master had blamed Hans for that, not Tyr... “We are expected at the villa, and we don't have time to--”
“It's fine.” A voice came. One familiar to all of them, even Tyr. Hastur, Cortus' past and present vessel, stalking between the flatters with an elegant confidence. Smiling with great familiarity down at the boy bent to the dirt. “Hello, little brother.”
“Yo.” Tyr replied simply, and surprisingly he wasn't snarling or making a show of threats and demands. His brows were screwed together, his focus wholly on the dirt and altogether ignoring the arrival of his so called nemesis. And then, abruptly, he began to shudder and wheeze. A fountain of blood erupting from every orifice, his eyes popping out of his head as his flesh changed and warped. Bulbous tumors stretched his face so violently that his skin split apart, revealing the bunched muscle tissue beneath.
Groaning under what must've been incredible pain, Tyr writhed. Extra limbs and eyes where none should be burst from a bloated frame. Muscles too large for his taut skin did the same, making him the monster many of them considered him to be. Mewling from a dozen mouths, each speaking a tongue they did not understand. Voices of the long dead trapped inside the blaze that had stripped the dirt bare of everything necessary for life.
The changes wracking him seemed to sink into the ground as well, beginning to vibrate gently around them. A minute earthquake of sorts that stretched on for a hundred meters in all directions, felt through their boots for those who'd dismounted.
“Oi...” Rommel cursed, the others were too busy pulling their steeds away from the black veins splitting the ground, emitting spouts of super-heated air in the process. Little bubbles of energy that burnt their skin, but it didn't seem to affect their flatters much. If anything, the basilisks twitched, wanting to get even closer to the energy coming free of the earth.
Green life burst from the newly enriched soil, flourishing in a way that even the fields didn't. New, vibrant, reaching high for the sun – all within the span of no more than a single minute.
Tyr was a twisted mound of flesh violently convulsing on the ground, unable to keep the spell up any further. But as always, he would heal. Eventually, that was the best way to describe it, Tyr had long ago realized he had no healing or regeneration factor. It was more along the lines of him being a template of a bipedal lifeform, crammed into it like some kind of mold. Springing back together, as if every cell in his body was magnetically polarized to come as one in that shape. There were very little exceptions to this rule, he 'healed' the same as any primus might.
“Wait, he's a bloomer too?” Bergen never seemed to be 'looking' at anything considering his eyes were bound with bandages, two ocular artifacts beneath. All adepts had their glaring weakness, and once upon a time it had been the Bergen couldn't see through his own dream magic. Which bore some rather unfortunate effects, discarded as a mad child in his youth and left to rot as a homeless urchin in a place that allowed no such thing, that being Milano. A life of crime had come naturally, but all of his old compatriots were dead, courtesy of his 'blindness' to reality, if that could serve as an apt descriptor.
“What the hell was that?” Shine stared on at the fire hydrants of bodily fluids before her, spraying in all directions.
“Spellbreaking, my lady. And a splendid display, at that!” Hastur clapped happily, a flamboyant man when in familiar company quick to act in a brighter sort of way. “Simply incredible. Though I'm afraid it'll take some time for our young friend to recover. The ability to feed on Orik earth-venom... Marvelous, and quite unexpected... One question, if you wouldn't mind. How'd you convince him to come?”
“Well...” Pattoli cringed back from the disgusting sight. Tyr was now little more than a ball of flesh run rampant in the growth process, the mouths riddling his skin popping disgustingly. Joined by others that seemed intent to cackle like a hyena might. “He told us to take him to you. There was no convincing necessary on our part.”
“He is an incredible man, my little brother.” Hastur chuckled. “Then let us go. Hans, if you'd be so kind as to transit our resident aberration of the flesh...”