Dorian’s reply to RC’s pouch of dragongeld was a falcon delivered missive requesting a meeting the next day, listing a time mid-morning and a pier number. Joe also found Cricket and was told that Margen still very much wanted to meet with him. That was scheduled for tomorrow evening. With those two tasks nailed down, Joe and Earcellwen split the remaining two items. Joe would hit the booksellers and libraries for information on the Marks, and she would see if Puqmup had anything they should bring with them.

Bookstores and libraries were a few of Joe’s favorite things. He had already looked over the Guild library for information about the Marks. What was there were very slim pickings, just a few references from books on other subjects. The only good source was the diary of Pacular Deville, the Great Judge. Judge Deville bore the Eleventh Omen, the Mark of Justice. He presided over the Pirate Trails, a period roughly eighty years ago when piracy had become so rampant that Fort Coral had almost become entirely cut off from the rest of the world. This book had been on Joe’s reading list for a while, but the autobiographer's writing was so dry and stilted that he had started and quit the book twice already.

Considering he could obtain information about marks, pirates and the history of the region, Joe groaned to himself and requested the guild library make him a copy to take with him. Typically, book duplications took a few days, but thankfully, Joe’s favorite sorcerer was present. Vexor was at his usual table researching spatial enchantments and was happy to perform the evocation for a fellow guilder. It only cost Joe the price of a blank book, a small guild credit, and a short stint of breathing carefully around the brimstone-infused conjurer.

Vexor laid the two volumes side by side with an inkwell in the middle. He cast a spell that outlined each book in glowing amber runes. A tiny portal of the same hue opened above the jar of ink a second later. Glowing energy flowed out of the rift and through the diary before looping back toward the portal. The golden light exiting the first book contained faint translucent marks. As the stream passed through the small gate, the wispy symbols were infused with ink, clearly distinguishing them as letters. The cycle repeated at a rapid pace as page after page was copied from the original diary to Joe’s replica.

Vex even created a stamp out of solid light to press the cover lettering. In less than ten minutes, Joe had a perfect copy of Deville’s diary. The only exceptions were that his was obviously newer, and the leather on Joe’s book was tan instead of gray.

Joe spent the rest of the morning and afternoon shopping. Primarily, he was after books, but he also wandered into several marine shops just to see if anything caught his eye. Thanks to Joe’s repertoire of skills, he found he didn’t need the majority of the everyday items sailors purchased. He didn’t need swimming, climbing, or steadying enhancements. Telescopes were only a tiny fraction better than the vision he could achieve by making hawk eyes. Underwater breathing was covered.

He saw a few things he’d buy if RC did not already come back with them. Wands of Drying Powder were cheap and would protect his books, gear, and himself from the constant moisture of the ocean. Halfer Hammocks would be worth their six hundred gold price tag aboard a trim-decked sloop. The sleeping sling shrunk the person reclining in them to half their size, allowing more people to bunk in the tight confines of a smaller ship’s cabin.

The one item Joe did buy was a map. Even if the captain already had one or Earcellwen got one from Puqmup, Joe wanted his own. He paid a little extra to increase its durability and have a locator blot enchanted into it. This feature allowed Joe to expend a tiny bit of mana into the sheet, and by doing so, a black inkblot would appear wherever he was. The little stain would fade away when the mana was expended. He could only afford this feature with a general map, one that did not list every hamlet and fishing village, which was an easy trade-off for Joe. He would much rather know where he was at sea, how far they had come, and how far they had to go over the names of every settlement in the Hornwood.

He pulled his new map from its leather case and unrolled it, loving the look of the cartography displayed on the heavy, almost leather-like, parchment.

image [https://i.ibb.co/zbTP6pd/Hornwood-Map.jpg]

He saved the rest of his money for the books he was trying to hunt down. Joe picked up a treatise on the nature of marks, and two codices outlined each individual mark and its presumed meaning. Joe mentally added the ‘presumed’ caveat because just thumbing through the books showed him several disparities between the two volumes. The last book he bought was a very bombastic telling of many of the most famous Mark-holders. Even though the writing was overly sensationalized, the bookseller assured Joe that the tales were rooted in facts. While the depictions in the guidebook were obviously heavily exaggerated, it looked like a fun read, even if Joe would have to parse truth from fluff. To be honest, he was looking forward to it far more than slogging through Judge Deville’s passionless prose.

He also looked for anything regarding their destination, but it seemed as though travel books were not yet a thing in Illuminaria; at least nowhere in Fort Coral could he find histories of the regions of the Hornwood. The best he uncovered were more diaries and journals of sailors who had been to these places. Joe grabbed a few affordable ones the seller recommended before she suggested that Joe find his information elsewhere.

While it would have been nice to have his knowledge in written form, the best source of wisdom regarding the coastline would not be found in libraries or bookshops. It would be on the wharves. Sailors loved to talk about what they knew and where they had been. The trick was to discern what was real from the tall tales. Joe had found the best way to filter out the majority of the bullcrap was to get the seafarers in numbers. One sailor alone will spin yarns of ravishing, rainbow-haired mermaids but get a dozen together at once, and the tales become significantly more plausible. Especially if you were the one paying for the drinks.

Joe visited a handful of taverns as the afternoon turned towards evening. The Leaky Dory was a bust as a belligerent drunkard kept shouting over everyone. The whole endeavor spiraled into a brawl after the sodden sailor threw a punch at an old sea-dog who bellowed for the sot to shut his yap. Taking the side of the old mariner, Joe found he more than held his own in the fray. He was likely the highest leveled person in the room, and his virtually unbreakable fists and forearms allowed him to hit harder and block anything swung at him, including the heavy chairs the tavern used.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He had better luck at Puckered Mug and the Salty Stout. At the Mug, he learned that any ships making the trip to Wildroost or Peregrine Bay that had to stop at the marshlands for freshwater did so with fully armed longboats and as many tough hands as they could muster.

Joe learned the scaled tribes of saurians and shelly-coats were merciless to anyone in their territory. Shellycoats were a problem on every coast, but the crews all agreed that the ones dwelling in Otter Slough were far more dangerous. The amphibious raiders there were higher leveled and had far more spellcasters than anywhere else they were typically found. The saurians of the marsh were also tougher opponents than the lizardfolk found elsewhere. They were more thickly scaled and densely muscled, with larger jaws and heavier tails. The descriptions he received painted a picture of creatures more gator-like than lizardesque.

The Salty Stout was a dwarven tavern. Their heavy war-galleys were rarely raided as they passed the wetland delta, or at least successfully raided. Still, enough foolish scaled folks made the attempt now and then for the dwarves to confirm what Joe had learned at the Puckered Mug. Additionally, thanks to the longer lifespan of the bearded folk, they had tales of the Slough before the croaking tribes of Tarkik overran it.

Otter Slough was so named as it was the home of the ottermay fey. Before the coming of mortal races to the Horn, the whole forested promontory was home to the fey. As more and more mortal races migrated into this region, most of the feyfolk moved across the Veil, the magical barrier separating the physical world of the Midland from the more ethereal Feylands. The mayfolk tragically chose to stay in the marshlands at the end of the Washanok River.

These shapeshifting people could transform themselves between elven-like humanoids and man-sized otters. They were a fierce people, and battles between the invading mortals and the ottermay became a constant war. Fey magic was powerful, but iron and steel robbed them of their mysticism and weakened their bodies.

Sea access to the Washanok was not the only reason the ottermay were hunted. Horribly, it was for their unbelievably valuable hides. Categorized as monsters to the mortal settlers, trapping the fey in their otter forms and skinning them was seen as no more unpleasant than killing wyverns and harvesting their hides. The thought turned Joe’s stomach.

Within a generation, the ottermay were no more. It is unknown if any even survived to cross the Veil. The last of the may elders cursed the invaders. The dwarves grumbled in their frothing mug and swore the curse festers there still to this day. No settlement has ever survived at the mouth of the river for more than a few years. This absence of order opened the way for the scaled tribes to claim the wetlands as their own. One grizzled bearded drinker was confident that Tarkik’s power originally stemmed from the centuries-old curse of the last of the ottermay.

By the time Joe left the dwarven galley-fairers, he felt sick. War was one thing, but butchering sentient creatures for their skin was just evil. For ten minutes, he stood outside the next tavern, the Crooked Mast, trying to work up the gumption to go in. While there may have been more sailor lore inside the drinking hole, Joe’s heart was no longer in it.

He was not sure he would look at harvest monsters the same way again. The sanitized version from the One Above didn’t bother him; magically getting teeth, hide, and scales teleported into your bag was not the same as massacring beings for pricey bits. He knew he didn’t have it in himself to actually chop them up the way Edror did. Especially now with the tale of the ottermay in his head.

He headed to the Abaaka House to spend one of his last nights with Kenda. Not wanting to spoil the evening, he pushed away the funk the dwarven stories had laid over him and helped her make dinner. The grim tales kept trying to worm their way into his thoughts, but he and Kay stood literally hip to hip as they cooked, each wanting as much contact as they could before Joe left. In the light of their feelings for each other, he could banish his dark ruminations. Kay filled his thoughts, leaving no room for anything else.

Both of them ate only a fraction of their meal before they deserted the dining area for the bedroom.

Hours later, in the deep of the night, he felt her slip out of bed. When she didn’t return after a few minutes, he rolled over to see her leaning on the window sill, looking out over the moonlit city. Joe spent a minute admiring her gorgeous body, the thin robe accentuating far more than it hid before he slid from the sheets and walked up behind her. Joe was already two inches taller than she was, but he felt himself subconsciously stretch his body a bit further, allowing him to drape himself across her back like a cloak. His arms encircled her waist while he laid his chin gently on her shoulder.

“I can’t believe you are going to be gone for at least a month,” she whispered, shifting and snuggling her back tighter into his chest. “And that’s just the sailing time alone. Who knows how long it will take to break the curse?”

“I don’t want to go yet either, but Finn …,” he began.

“I know. Everything is just so perfect now. I should have known it wouldn’t …”

Joe squeezed her tight. “Hey,” he whispered with a bit of force in his voice. “Don’t finish that. This is not the end of the good days. I know I won’t be here to share all your first successes as the new deputy chief, but I am coming back. As soon as I can. This is my home now. You are, too.”

She turned in his arms and kissed him, looping her arms over his. Again, Joe’s body shifted instinctively to meld up against her. “My head knows that,” she whispered, placing her cheek against his chest, “but I’m still afraid of what could happen out there. Sea journeys can be dangerous on their own, but Otter Slough has such a vicious reputation. You four are going to be hunting the leader of the tribes there. There is no way you can prevent something from going wrong.”

“True, but Yuk and I are damn hard to kill, and Hah’roo and RC are highly skilled rangers. I’m not discounting the danger,” he asserted, “but I think we have a good chance to know how far we can go and the level heads to turn us back if we can’t pull it off.”

“You are talking about the girls,” Kay said, looking up at his face with a small smile.

“Oh, damn straight. Yuk and I are just along for the brawn. The rangers are going to be the ones in charge for sure,” he joked back, squeezing her even tighter to display his might. Kenda let him get away with it, even though she was far stronger than he was.

“Alright. But they better bring you back in one piece,” the beautiful savant stated, pulling him back toward the bed.

Sleep could wait for another day.