High Sergeant Boldbounty sat across from the pirate captain Sheila Scott with a rickety wooden table between them. Scott was staring daggers at a slice of buttered bread in front of her.
“It’s the only dinner you get today, Miss,” Boldbounty sighed. He had been sitting in the holding cell with the captured captain in silence for quite some time. Scott had been talkative when the paladins had first pulled her from the seafoam, but once Boldbounty’s men began to ask about just what she was doing in the water, she had clammed up.
The watchmen on the chapel’s walls the night before Scott washed up claimed they saw lightning on the horizon. The flashes are the calling card of the pirate known only as the Sea Witch. A pirate that had been circling like a hawk on Dawnbreak for months, and the reason Boldbounty had been installed at the command. He would keep the city safe by defeating its threat.
“Are you going to eat or are we just going to sit here together until we both die of hunger?”
Scott gave Boldbounty an icy glance before finally reaching for the bread. “What do you want, my gleaming host?”
“I want to know what a pirate queen was doing face-down in the sand, no ship or crew to be seen.”
“Won’t say a thing, sir,” she said, her mouth full and the words spewing crumbs in Boldbounty’s direction. “It’s policy, you know.”
“Pirate code,” Boldbounty chortled. “You will draw a blade across each other’s necks but Dreamer forbid you get the authorities involved.”
“Consider it me saving you and your men’s lives,” the pirate said, tossing the final bite of food into her mouth.
“Why’s that?”
“Because they’re a dangerous bunch! They’ll drag you ‘neath the waves before you can even plug your noses.”
“Who are they? Is it the Sea Witch?”
Scott scoffed loudly, crossing her legs and turning her nose up defiantly. “Pirate code, sir. It applies to mortals and gods alike.”
Boldbounty grinned, pulling the plate over as he stood up from the table. “Thank you for sharing your meal with me, ma’am. Talk to you soon!” With that, the armored paladin walked to the thick wooden door to the cell. Holding up a golden-glowing gauntlet, he turned the knob to the sound of clanking lock mechanisms and pushed out to the hallway. A middle-aged fanged folk priestess was waiting for him.
“Anything today, Sergeant?”the priestess asked as they began walking and talking.
“More than she knows. The Sea Witch has the Laughing Buccaneer on her side.”
“What!?” the woman stopped suddenly in the prison corridor.
“You heard me correctly,” Boldbounty said, his boots clacking on the polished stone floor as he turned to look at the priestess with a frown. “We’re not just fighting a dangerous pirate, Sister, but a god, as well.”
“How do you know?”
“Scott made it clear she would be selling out no mortals or gods. I had my suspicions as to why the Sea Witch only sunk ships at night, but I think this explains it.”
“Well this is bad news.”
“Not wholly. At least we know if she has any big plans, they will have to occur after sunset.”
“Wow, what a blessing,” the priestess said, exasperated. “Have you ever fought a god before, High Sergeant?”
“No,” Boldbounty said shrugging. “But I wrestled a four-armed syzzyth. Same sort of thing, I’m sure.”
“Sorry to interrupt, Sister, High Seargeant,” a young paladin called from the doorway at the far end of the prison corridor. “High sergeant, there’s a gold slip claimant at the front.”
“So give him his geld and thank him,” the priestess said matter of factly.
“No disrespect, sister, but I think the High Sergeant will want to speak with him, actually.”
“By your leave, ma’am,” Boldbounty said, nodding to the priestess. “How many arms does he have, m’boy?”
“Uh, two, Sergeant.”
Boldbounty looked back at the priestess with mock relief as he walked to the door. She rolled her eyes and began walking the opposite direction. Boldbounty and the young paladin began making their way to the front of the chapel.
“Does he not have his coupons?” Boldbounty asked as they walked.
“He has them,” the paladin said, nodding. “That is what’s so strange, Sergeant.”
Finally, the paladin pushed through the mahogany double doors into the main entrance of the chapel. The entry hall was a grand rotunda that climbed up three floors to lead to the dormitories for those dispatched to the chapel. Paintings and bronze statues adorned the white stone walls of the chapel’s hall.
But none of the ornaments or architecture caught Boldbounty’s eye at the moment, even though he often made a point of appreciating the craftsmanship of the room. Today, at the other end of a large, dense wooden counter with several administrative personnel sitting in nervous confusion, was a tall man.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The man was wearing an oversized, extremely decorative robe with the hood in a pile on his shoulders. The cloak was a dark coffee color with intricate black designs stitched all around the cuffs and across the chest. The man’s shaved head was several shades darker than the cloak, giving away that he was originally from the southern flatlands of Gavundar. Very far from the Church of the Will chapel in Dawnbreak.
“Hello, sir,” Boldbounty said with a friendly wave as he approached the stranger. “I am High Sergeant Boldbounty. What can we do for you today?”
“Nice to meet you, High Sergeant,” the man replied with a deep and smooth voice. It was the voice of someone who could teach you hundreds of things, but only if you asked. “I am here to claim my gold slips.” He gestured to a neat, surprisingly tall stack of golden papers on the counter.
Boldbounty picked the first slip from the stack and began to read. A grin began to form as he moved to the second one. And he could not stifle his laughter when he looked at the third and fourth. SevenThree more slips were on the counter, but he had seen enough.
“So, according to these slips you spent a year escorting Church personnel through the Scorched Cities?”
“That’s correct, High Sergeant.”
“What may I call you?” Boldbounty asked, holding his hand out to shake.
“My name is Cayd.”
“Well, Cayd, follow me, if you would. Private, please do not worry about his payment just yet. I will let you know how to handle our friend, here.”
Boldbounty and Cayd made small talk as they walked through the chapel to a second floor courtyard on the roof above the chapel’s dining hall. The courtyard was a gift from the Verdant, with a druid stationed in the chapen to ensure the grasses and trees were as green and lush as they possibly could be, while also using the Verdant Stage as a communications tool for Church and Druids alike. Small ponds and fountains filled with tiny fish invited chirping birds. In the center of the courtyard, a stone table flanked by stone benches were waiting for the acquaintances.
Boldbounty gestured for Cayd to sit across from him at the stone table, as he reached for a dark-stained wooden box on the side of the table.
“Your chapel is beautiful,” Cayd said, looking around at the white walls and blue-tiled roofs of towers and parapets that stuck up over the trees.
“Oh, it’s not mine. There’s a priestess downstairs who’s truly in charge. Her office is in the prison corridor if you need some evidence to her personality.” Boldbounty and Cayd shared a laugh as the paladin opened the small box of masterfully metal cast Divine Intervention chips. He plucked one of them from the collection.
On one face was the crest of the chapel, a priestess’s habit with the sun rising over it, and on the other side was a turtle, its shell seeming to be a map of Kraagheim. “Did you happen to see Kraag during your trips through the Scorched Cities?”
“Never up close,” Cayd said. “But from a distance. It can be quite unsettling for a mountain to end up somewhere you did not leave it.”
“Oh, I hear you,” Boldbounty said, dropping the coin back into the box and fishing for another. “I feel a lot of people on our side of the world take for granted that we have an elder god stomping around. You would not even guess how many people up in The Throne or over at Duskfall have never seen our titanic friend.”
“Well that is a shame,” Cayd said. “Although, I have never been to Loamy back home.”
Boldbounty finally found the coin he was looking for. He set it down on the stone table, god’s crest up. On the coin was a skull engulfed in flames. “Mister Cayd, do you know the story of how those cities came to be scorched?”
“Only vaguely,” Cayd admitted. “We do not talk much about it in Gavundar.”
“Well, the string of events that birthed the Wroth is long and complex, but a large portion of it was when Gavundar and Talnorel readily began to communicate almost a century ago. The blended magics of the folks across the ocean were shocking and novel to the purists we have over here.
“The Church of the Will was quite fearful of it, especially after the Duskfall rebellion was such a disaster. Yet we bit our tongues. We warned about the dangers of malpracticing magic, but there was a lot of eagerness to share and learn. For so many people, the exchange was a positive and beautiful thing, but for one man it was a weapon in the making.”
Boldbounty took a slow breath. “Sixty years ago, a young man named Dorvan developed a school of magic that blended red and blue. Mortal emotion and mortal will. He tossed faith and logic aside to power his spells.”
Cayd grimaced at the thought and Boldbounty nodded.
“It worked just as well as you imagine. His followers called themselves the Wrath Liches, and they specialized in flames. Large, loud, liquid flames that would pour over the congregations of their cult filling them with what he called ‘the heat.’ They hated and seethed and openly raged against those who spoke out against them.
“Before long, and before anyone even realized that we had a problem on our hands, Dorvan and his liches had total control of three cities in the southeast of Talnorel. They installed their own laws and society, and held visitors and traders to their impossibly high standards. People died.”
“How many?” Cayd asked as compassionately as he could.
“No one knows. But it was not long before the stench of burning corpses and the black smoke of torched land drove the academics of Duskfall, the Church of the Will, Kraag’s Host, and Talnorel’s Grove together. The four parties each sent an ambassador to Dorvan’s audience chambers to try and learn something of what was going on within those infernal halls.
“One of the ambassadors returned, missing a tongue, but with the charred skulls of the other three. So the armies were gathered. And before the siege could even begin, Dorvan did the unthinkable. The fires burned for weeks and the alliance moved from warmaking to damage control as they tried to save as many people as they could, but by the end of it, Dorvan was all that remained.
“Sitting atop a blackened throne made of the bodies of his closest devotees, Dorvan’s spark of greatness had ignited. He was ascended. And now he’s a damned coin in this box and everyone knows his name. They speak it with disdain and hatred. Yet here he is.”
“Wow,” Cayd said, looking down at the coin. “I appreciate you telling me that story.”
“So,” Boldbounty said, slowly allowing himself to smile. “You marched our men and women through one of the most feared and hated areas in this world with no compensation outside of a promise we don’t always intend to keep. So I am inclined to think that maybe this was not a favor. Something more like an audition?”
Cayd grinned. “You know, we have a saying in Gavundar. Smart as Duskfall, sly as the Throne! You are a clever man, Boldbounty.”
“Well Mr. Cayd, that is clearly a Gavundar saying. The priests here couldn’t sneak a mouse past a blind old woman.”
The two shared a laugh before Cayd cleared his throat. “I wanted to prove that I could be trusted, High Sergeant.”
“Well, I feel we are well on our way to trusting you, Cayd. What do you need our trust for?”
“For information. I’m looking for someone. A former court magician for the Emperor. He is here in Talnorel and I need to find him as soon as possible.”
Boldbounty frowned. “Mister Cayd, may I ask if you have a family?”
Cayd paused. “I do not.”
“I have a wife. Three kids, as well. Two daughters and a son. My oldest daughter wants to cook. Open a little corner restaurant. My son, for some reason, wants to be an undertaker. He says the headstones are pretty. We live just outside of this city, actually.”
“That’s very lucky that your family is nearby.”
“That it is! But I mention them because you see here what I am responsible for when I am in my armor.” Cayd gestured at the chapel around them before lowering his hand to his heart. “I wanted to give you a peek at what I am responsible for outside of it. So, Mister Cayd. As a warrior of the Church of the Will and as a husband and father, before I can trust you, I must ask you: who should I fear more? The man you are searching for? Or you?”
Cayd paused for a long moment. He looked at the coin of Dorvan the Wroth, into the sad eyes of High Sergeant Boldbounty, then up to the clear sky above them. “Him.”
Boldbounty suddenly stood. “That’s good enough for me, sir! Now, for intelligence? You have come to the right place. Gavundar thinks our priests sneaky? Just wait until you hear them gossip. If the man you are looking for has even spoken to a friend of a friend of a friend, we will find him.
“Until we can seek him out, though, I was hoping you could make yourself at home on my team!”
Cayd jokingly narrowed his eyes. “Are you offering me a job, High Sergeant?”
Boldbounty laughed heartily. “What do you think of pirates and ocean gods, Mister Cayd?”