Ch: 187 Dirty Laundry
Shai was sleepy and cranky so Gary left her home for a Shai day, she deserved it. He herded the whole group out to the Adventure compound for a day of noisy fun, leaving a quiet house for the ladies.
“This is a genealogy… not a complete one, more like a brag book for the family in question, showing its links to various notables… it’s all lords, chieftains, priests and heroes.” Gary carefully handed the stone tablet to Becky for her examination. She nodded and placed it on a cloth covered table, while Gary picked up the pottery jug beside it.
“These are relatively common, but no one can read the script anymore. Liam has a couple of these at his house.” Becky added.
“Liam has a house?” Gary asked, while still going over the tall earthenware jar. Its glaze of blue green and red was cracked and faded, making it tough to read the inscription incised into the clay before firing.
“He was born a minor landless noble. His mother died in childbirth, his father died fighting monsters a few years later. He will get what little inheritance he has when his indenture ends.” Becky said offhandedly.
“It’s pretty much a small house in the upland quarter and a title with no lands. I help him air the place out every few months.” She was still tracing her fingers over the lines of dense script carved into the stone slab.
“It makes sense that these are genealogies. I should go translate Liam’s. He’d like that.” Becky got up and trotted off on her errand, while Gary nodded abstractedly, still lost in his earthenware jar.
“Now this is interesting…” He held up a magnifying glass, to get a better look at the faded ceramic vessel.
“Valuable?” Chertoff, the expedition director asked, leaning forward eagerly.
“Highly…” The young wizard muttered around his pipestem. They were on a sunny patio, under an awning. Children and pets were scampering all around, in utter chaos, as he examined the most interesting of their finds. The waxen faced, skeletal expedition director frowned as a wet dripping child ran by laughing.
“Sorry scribe Chertoff, my kids needed a day to play and run around. So the Adventure compound it is.” He murmured happily, sounding not at all apologetic.
“So what is the vessel? What secrets does it hold?” Tybalt the scholar asked eagerly.
“It’s a recipe for honeydew wine… it sounds delicious.” Gary slipped the transcriptions to the scholar with a grin. “That will be one bronze mark.”
“A bronze mark for a list of semi-mythical names and a recipe for wine? I’ll not pay it.” Tybalt sniffed irritably. “How do I know this nameless oaf is even translating it?”
“Tybalt…” Chertoff grumbled at his troublesome antiquarian.
“I won’t pay it! Look at him, what kind of wizard works barefoot in short pants?” The lanky, balding, middle aged scholar griped. He had a point, if Gary had been asked to pick the ‘antiquarian’ out of a lineup, he would pick this dude. He even had ink stains under his fingernails, a splotch of ink on his shirt and a roll of handwritten notes stuffed in his coat.
“All right, tradesies. You tell me everything you can about this doodad.” He grumbled around his pipe stem. He placed the bronze gold and silver torc on the table beside the antiquites.
“Ahh, these were quite popular until about eight or nine hundred years ago… we still see them pop up from time to time.” Tybalt muttered happily, picking the object up and examining it closely.
“Replicas of the torc of Kine Innis, legendary lord of the lost borderland, were a very popular betrothal gift for a few centuries. This is a very fine example… Though I suspect it to be of new manufacture, it seems too cleanly wrought and unblemished to be more than a few weeks out of the forge… Oh.”
The scholar wound to a halt and glared at the fool in the silly attire. “You are that new maker of… things. I’ll not be hoodwinked twice.” He glared at his boss too. “Your expert is a confidence man, Chertoff. He forged this trinket and seeks to parlay it into some advantage.”
“I’m a maker of new things, lord Tybalt, this is quite old. Older than your tablet and jug, older than your lost city, I think.” The fool answered calmly, just as a huckster would. Chertoff was staring at the trinket on the table, beside the actual antiquities, he had a strange look in his eye.
Tybalt waved his hands in Chertoff’s face rudely as though to break some spell. “That’s why they call them Confidence men, they always sound certain and factual, until you find yourself following a bogus treasure map that leads into a local tavern.” He complained bitterly.
“That’s it! Treasure maps! Old and funky looking, with checkpoints to get stamped at local shops and points of interest, finally leading to the inn, with a coupon on the back!” He started scribbling notes of his own in an unfamiliar script. “We’re planning a fun activity for the kids for midsummer feast…” He chattered happily.
“I have the perfect idea!” He called to the two teenage girls lounging on a chaise, sharing a cold beverage from a coconut. One of them waved indolently at his cry, and went back to lounging.
“I guess Ivy and Angie finally cracked the code on the virgin pina colada…” He muttered with satisfaction, turning back to his guests.
Chertoff had a look on his face that said he was either angry, confused or constipated, while Tybalt’s hands drifted back to the torc. “Very well, I’ll buy it. I’ll pay a gold mark, but only because the craftsmanship is superb.” Tybalt the balding lord, said tiredly.
“It’s not for sale. I want info, not money. Besides, you already owe me a bronze mark.” Gary answered, still grinning happily.
“Though… that treasure map idea squares us on that, totally worth it. So how much do you want, for everything you know about my jewelry?”
“You know the tale, or you would not have been able to forge so convincing a… forgery…” The lord smiled at his little accidental funny Gary only smiled weakly in reply.
With a long suffering sigh, lord Tybalt began the story.
“Long ago, in the age of legends, when men flew in the sky and sailed the open seas, when the wizards of man crafted mighty weapons to strike down the forces of chaos, many heroes rose, fell and became legends themselves.” He muttered in the tones of a man repeating a childhood memory.
“One such was Kine Innis, lord of the border, last of the great Forest Lords. They say he walked with dryads and ents, that any horse would allow him to ride, even the wild horses of the steppes. So many are the tales of Innis, forest Lord of the north, that many families, noble and common, still try to trace their lineage back to him: House Kine, House Kinneman, any number of common households…” Tybalt said softly, still turning the torc over and over in his hands
“In fact, the place we just left holds a position in this very folklore.” Chertoff supplied. “The city we were exploring is the former seat of a lord who claimed direct descent from Kine Innis. The domain was lost eight hundred years ago… or so. Quite a romantic and tragic tale of love, tragedy and even a prophecy…” Chertoff grinned at his scholar and winked. “This is pure local lore!”
The sharp featured, skeletal man was pale and waxy in complexion, but his eyes shone with a scholar’s knowledge boner from a mile away. Chertoff was as much a nerd as any convention geek. He started to relate the tale, in a strange cadence that said this was memorized oral tradition.
Long and deadly was the last battle of Kine Innis, last Forest Lord of the lands of men. He felled the awful creature, none yet live that can describe what it was, beyond its venomed barb, with which it slew the last lord of the wild men.
The people wept, as young Jajir Innis was taken with his fallen father’s panoply, into the orphanage of the Adventure Guild of Man, never to be seen again.
Two hundred long years later, a man calling himself Galis Innis rode victorious into those once beautiful lands, felling the last of the beasts at a terrible cost. In its final spasm, the beak of an unnamed, tentacled horror sheared off the young lord’s right arm, Seeing the devastation of the country, and knowing himself too maimed to rebuild its glory, he wept and fled, vanishing into the wilds, never to be seen again.
Thirty years or so later, as old men and women tell the tale, a lad came riding in on a wild horse, wearing the armor of the fallen lord save for the right arm, his magical cloak flying behind him.
Kai’ Innis rode to war, taking back his forefather’s lands at the point of that legendary spear, sailing on a tide of blood. With him came the mad wizard. Last of the magesmiths, who would whistle the birds from the trees, to his castle of shadows.
With devastating magics and mage crafted steel, they bled the monsters and beasts from the land, building the county that would bear his name for half a thousand years.
His panoply was handed down from one lord to another for untold generations, the spear was lost first, none know where or how. The armor eventually shattered, with none remaining who could reforge it, until only the torc remained.
Finally the cycle repeated itself, brave lord Rachlan died in battle with bandits, leaving only his five year old son and his great grandfather’s father’s torc.
The lad went to the Adventure guild, as all orphans must, from which he never emerged. Just one more lost soul… none know the fate of Andon Kinnis, last of the forgotten line of Forest Lords…
Some say those two, the warrior lord and the ancient mad mage, died together, swearing to return and reclaim their heritage… in another time in new made flesh.
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Chertoff sipped his tea long and deep after that.
Tybalt scoffed in amusement at the local yokel’s story. “Nice try boy, but you’ve overplayed your hand… You could as easily have forged, Graham the unsullied, or Excalibur the blade of kings, or Heaven’s Lash.’ He chortled happily at the idea.
“Why not recreate Kine Innis’ entire legendary panoply? His fearsome lion armor, terrifying to his foes, his spear that could fell a single deer and feed a small army, or his cloak of falling silver leaves?” The scholar scoffed, while the madman started shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
“I knew it!” The lunatic grumbled happily. “I’m free!”
#
Mortis could taste it as soon as he got within a mile… there was a revenant here… A new lich lord was forming quietly in the bowels of this peaceful seeming town of the living. He cackled with dark glee, if he could feed on such a half living wretch, he might break freee… The very thought vibrated in his shadow essence. It had been so long he couldn’t even remember why he wanted to be freeeeeeee…
He sensed two places of power, belonging to the being, both protected by sanctified ground somehow… The living moved in and out of those places freeeeely, despite how effectively they barred him. Many of the living carried some touch of his prey… but only a few were steeped in the essence, touched by the void enough to be useful.
No matter, he must simply bait it out. Preying on the living was forbidden, slaying the pets of the deadling would break no strictures. He settled into a sewer drain to wait for darkness.
#
They strolled through the quiet, darkened streets together, heading for home after spending a quiet afternoon translating the cramped text on the tablets. Becky was lost in thought, contemplating what she had just read, in a language she had never been able to read before.
The last time she had seen those tablets was before Gary arrived, they had been incomprehensible lines and squiggles then. Now they read clear and plain… that was pretty freaky.
“Liam is going to freak out… I mean, it was so long ago it’s probably all just folklore anyway, but to be related to a great hero… he’ll be tickled.” Becky had the two stone tablets tucked into her storage gift, safe and secure.
Dannyl shook his ginger head at his enthusiastic sister. “Kine Innis was a seven foot tall redhead…” He said with a smile. “I don’t think Liam’s related. Tallum maybe…”
Becky sighed and patted Dannyl on the shoulder. “Sure buddy. And all those stories about how he could ride any horse or pony? And how he fought a hillman warrior ‘twice his height’ with staves on a log bridge in the woods, becoming boon companions after defeating the… What was that? Fourteen foot tall man?” She sighed at her brother.
“Folklore is a faded sign post on a winding trail, not a wide paved road to the city of easy answers.”
“Becks… we have company again.” Dannyl whispered, his soft voice accompanied by the sound of his wooden training whip limbering up on the cobblestones, thrashing restively like an angry serpent. “Come out spirit, these are the lands of men.” Dannyl called into the dark.
‘Lands of men, lands of flesh… flesssh is temporary… All the living, joining my army someday will be…’ It cackled madly, in their minds. ‘All flesh will be taken, all life will spill into my shadow… You will do, to bait him out…’ That wheezing mental laughter rang out again in the silent streets.
A tall shadowy form drifted out of the alley, draped in rags that waved in unfelt breezes, flying away in shreds at the edges.
“Ooo, spooky…” Becky catcalled the being. “My big brother does that shit all the time…” Her baton began wailing its sweet, droning song of violence, while the rattling clatter of Dannyl’s whip sounded to her right.
‘Fools… Mortis, taker of lives, shadow thief of souls, comes for you… I could strip your living essence from your flesh, while powerless to touch me, you are!’ It cackled silently, as it drifted closer, extending its shadowy arms, as if to embrace them.
‘Weapons of mortal craft cannot touch my form, as I…’
Becky revved up her spinning mace and shoved the ball end right up its reaching sleeve, eliciting an actual vocal scream of agony, surprise and terrified indignation from the thing. In mere seconds it twirled up into the spinning, chiming rings of her weapon.
The strange being vanished into the construct, like a rag sucked into the gears of a mighty machine. It was chewed and mixed around mercilessly, until only a single drifting rag fluttered to the ground, where it evaporated away.
“Well, that was…”
Becky was only halfway through her death flag, when Dannyl’s whip crashed into the lurking shadow that had arisen from the alley behind his sister.
The uncoiling lash of enchanted olivewood links raked the entity, sending shadow stuff flying through the night. It leapt back with another awful cry of rage and pain.
“What are you horrible children?” It shrieked at them in a towering fury. “I did not even finish my…” One of Dannyl’s hatchets passed through the creature’s hood, doing no harm at all, but infuriating it even more.
“That’s my exact point! You just keep…” Becky leapt forward, sweeping her baton low at its… knees? While Dannyl came in high, lashing at its torso with his whip.
It slid backwards out of range and stepped to the side, creating three more shadowed bodies.
One continued after the young man, while the new three turned on Becky. She hewed and ground the things when they reached out, so they encircled her instead, trying to menace her from all sides and wear her down with constant feints and lunges.
Dannyl lashed the creature again and again, doing damage and making it back off, those cruel wooden links battered and tore at the being, but couldn’t bite in. It struck out at Dannyl, hitting him in the right shoulder with a shadowy backhand as it scampered closer.
The young man felt a wave of exhaustion and cold weariness crash down on his already weakened body, knocking him away from the creature. He stumbled, grabbing at his belt for a weapon as his whip fell from nerveless fingers.
“Dannyl!” Becky shouted, as something spun through the night, landing at his feet with a clatter. A savage grin spread across his face as he scooped up Gary’s silly wooden rapier in his left hand.
#
Dinner was a quiet affair, Tawny and Liam were still at the palace, Gary and Ivy cooked for the guests and family, while Angie amused herself with the kids in the showroom. The shades of Moon and Bonham were having a drum circle, it was pretty noisy in there.
Dannyl and Becky were on an errand of their own, he felt them pass into the craft ward’s residential district and suddenly vanish.
#
They hurtled through the streets, Gary in the lead, with Shai, Khan and Luna struggling to keep up. Somehow, wherever the sprinting, heavily armored lobster ran, the shoppers parted. Evening strollers slipped out of the way, before they even knew that he was stampeding by. Like bad news, he flew through the crowd, somehow faster among them. His screaming baton laying down wild music, he ran faster than he had ever before.
As he hurtled through the craft ward and into the residential district, he hit a dead spot with no people, just too quiet, entirely empty streets. He could feel a slow, creeping aura, not unlike his own, slithering through the shadows. Somehow it deadened sound and repelled attention, creating an almost sepulchral atmosphere in the district.
In the midst of that shadowed sensation, a bright spark of chaos was battling the stillness. His family was a few steps behind, so he poured more juice into his baton, wailing an alarm into the night as the town bells began to crash in warning.
#
The feeling slowly returned to Dannyl’s right arm, too slowly by far. Healing backlash still made his bones feel fragile; he was flagging already and trying to fight left handed, to boot. He ran a ghostly shadow through and ripped his wooden blade up and out through it, into a slash that took the hooded cowl from the shoulders of another.
Even though this sword reaped them like wheat, there seemed to be a never ending field of them, swarming in at the duo. Becky’s mace terrified the darkling creatures; even so, they clustered all around, just out of her reach, pressing in on her constantly. She twirled and danced her way towards Dannyl, bringing her cleared space with her, as the strange entities kept popping out of shadows.
“I hear him, help’s incoming!” Becky snapped at her beleaguered brother. He slashed down another, as his whip slowly began to wind up.
“Where are the gate guards?” Dannyl gasped, as they went back to back, with the priestess covering the majority of their zone.
Dannyl was too busy wrapping his whip around one and squeezing it in half to listen to her answer. Particularly since he was distracted by a distant, heavily muffled madly, atonal, arrhythmic, chiming sound.
Gary came flying around a corner, with his terrifying baton already spinning wildly, dashing through and over the reaching shadow army of silent shades.
“Ohh Yeahhhh!” He bellowed with savage glee, diving straight into the scrum, whirling his mace like a broken windmill in a hurricane.
Shai, Khan and Luna skidded around the corner into a scene of madness.
An army of shadows swarmed the silent streets, just a few feet away yet hardly a sound could be heard, despite two of those mad screaming weapons being in play.
Shai, Luna and Khan dashed into the fray, swords and spear flashing in the moonlight. The shadows flinched and fled from them but their weapons couldn’t bite the indistinct creatures. On instinct, Khan flicked the lightstone mounted to his breastplate into life. The gentle, warm illumination pushed the entities back at least as well as his sword did.
“Light ‘em up!” He barked the command and illumination obediently sprang from everyone… except Gary, whose usual noisy combat style was weirdly… quiet.
“Light, Boy!” He shouted again… no reply, no lights.
Becky and Dannyl joined the group, shaken and tired. They fell into the circle of lightstones gasping for breath. “Where’s the music… I was expecting him to… I can’t hear anything…” Becky wheezed, her mana nearly exhausted.
“Some sound deadening witchery is confounding his usual madness… This foe may be his match. Where is he?” Luna asked after a moment. The strange, silent battle had carried itself off down the empty craft ward and into the outskirts of town.
#
Shai pursued her whirling boy down the darkened lanes. The swarm of things was fast, elusive and nearly endless. It drove him away from his comrades, even as it fled from his weapon.
Every successful strike erased one of the dwindling number of shadows, with a mortal scream of pain. The two were playing a dangerous game, on a number of levels, not all physical or magical. Shai felt her boy’s dark and moody aura of hunger and suspicion lashing and thrashing like a furious beast, in the oppressive, graveyard aura of the being.
#
Mortis was having trouble dominating this odd deadling… They were too compatible and similar to clash openly, instead it was a duel of deadly sneaks. Creeping, silent death unobserved, contesting with the rabid hunger of a starving beast, tempered by the sly, elusive, wild, demonstrative nature of the disturbing, half living thing.
The strange whirling weapon he used screamed at Mortis’ Quietus Aura, disrupting his ability to produce new shadows when one was lost. Even worse, the touch of that tool brought back the memory of pain, of mortal death… something he should never have felt again… again? He didn’t remember being alive…
His maunderings ended with the shattering scream of another shadow, whirling into nothing in those white hot, spinning gears.
#
Even Shai couldn’t keep up with his mad whirling flight, the music faltered and faded mere steps from the boy, snuffing his most potent gifts. The sense that the contest could go either way had passed, however… Those darkling shadows were dwindling in number even as she pursued them through the town towards the croplands. The creature was no longer leading her boy away, it was fleeing, for all it was worth.
He caught it in a moonlit pasture, facing the faintly humanoid thing in absolute silence, even though he was pouring a terrible rush of energy into his spinning tool. Even more distressing, that hungry, creeping aura had solidified into an invisible briar hedge of thorny repulsion, allowing nothing in or out, without a living Animus. She felt it pass over her soul’s skin, as she passed through the barrier, invisible vines and thorns slid harmlessly around her own essence.
Brazen ringblades spun through and around the head of his mace, suspended in a magical impulsion and propulsion field, some madly complex ‘fuckery’ allowed the assorted orbiting gears and sharpened rings to hover and spin, creating their unique wailing song, as they sheared the air in a dozen ways and directions at once.
The noise should have been deafening, yet just a few steps away, all was silence.
Only the being’s scream could be heard, shrill and terrible as one shadow after another found itself not quick enough. Shai was also not quick enough. The head of his mace was shimmering with heat, as he slashed, poked and hammered the things into non-existence.
With a final lunge, her boy reached out and snatched the last fleet, darting shadow by its… shoulder? A moment later, sound returned to the world.
“...ther fucker! Now I’m going to sift everything you know out of your dead ass and feed you through the devourer… twice! I’ll have them give you back so I can shove you back through! Ok, they probably won’t go for that…” He looked up from berating the bundle of sodden rags in his fist and smiled shyly.
“Hey babe. He’s a lifestealer, I had to get the fight out of town… he was making me… hungry, in some really uncomfortable ways.” He gave the sorry clump in his fist a shake, to remind it who was in whose power.
“You were smart to not try to sneak into my house… you were dumb to go after one of mine. Your master already cut ties and fled, didn’t he…” Gary smiled at Shai, while shaking his ragdoll. “That’s for getting ectoplasm on my shoes.”
“Boy, what be that thing? It spoke?” Shai demanded, eying the wretched knot of cruddy laundry in his fist.
“Shadow revenant, a strong one too. He’s smart and now his boss knows there’s a new death cult in town…. I hope he shit his ghostpants.” He shook it once more, with a distasteful grimace on his face. “This guy did.”
#