Village at the Edge of the World

Bye, losers and wimps! Thanks for the money and have a nice weekend! - Tip. - The note to the losers and wimps.

"Cursed tri-curse! It were elf! Swear by Babyboy!" Mom exclaimed, pulling the baby out of his breast carrier and tossing him in the palm.

Mom is former Mountain, a big man in length and width. Some might call him fat, but first of all, there are iron mines hidden under his slopes, and secondly, don't! What if he finds out, what then? Got an escape plan, daredemon? Some settlers continue to call him Mountain, but that won't last long, given that he constantly carries a baby. Characterizing names should characterize, at least in this community.

"That's enough, Mo... Mom," asked to stop Firster, the village guard (and you can only ask Mom politely).

"What's enough?" don’t get it Mom.

"Everything you do," Firster began, leaning on his spear (or rather a sharpened stick, but he called it a spear), "stop playing with the child, stop swearing at..." The gatekeeper looked at Gloomeye, trying to gauge his age. "...young people. And you don't need to make up stories. Storyteller also said that after the Break there were no more elves, dragons, cows or other mythical creatures.

Firster himself was pre-Break, but lived in the Old World in an unconscious age.

"That there they're gone is their problem, and ay've saw one!" Mom shoved the laughing baby back. "At the edge of the Pinching Forest. Elf's so white, ears are sharp. Gloomeye, why don't ya say something? Judge who is a-lyin' here, ayn' who has darn good eyesight here, ayn' ken be trusted. You're Wolves' son, after all."

"How does being the son of Wolves affect anything?" Gloomeye, who had stopped to listen and scratched Meat under his chin, caught himself and continued on his way out of the village. "Actually, we have to go, because Titus is already looking in our direction. So this will be a good way.

"But Wolves...” said the guard to the retreating humans and a boarler, but they had already passed the village gate and didn't listen.

Gloomeye has two jobs: to keep an eye on a boarder called Meat and to keep an eye on the neighbour's boy Giggler. In fact, he has one job: to keep an eye on two mischief-makers.

The shepherd led his flock from the village to a new pasture. The village (small, with 27 human heads and 1 boarler) was called Worldedge because it was at the Edge of the World. At the very least, there wasn't anyone far-sighted enough to see the other side or the bottom of the nearest chasm. Storyteller had assumed that they did exist, and that the Edge of the World was just a very large scar, but the village didn't stand on ceremony with names - they were created by their essence, not by assumptions.

The weather was excellent (it was summer, after all): there were no clouds in the slightly greenish sky, the air seemed to stand still, not doing anything silly to living things. Only the cacophony of alms in the distance disturbed the idyll. Dayorb was doing its job, illuminating everything beneath it. Its arcs were visible and almost straight, which meant they were not obscured by the lunar debris. Titus looked straight at the group. He was a giant (a titan, even) who had sat near the distant mountains for many winters, towering over them and perceived as part of the landscape.

"Mom couldn't have seen an elf, I'm telling you," Giggler said, leaping over the earthen curves and dodging footgrabs, tenacious shrubs. "Pa says that everything inhuman didn't disappear after the Break, but just became different. And the changed elves are orcs. Like spriggans for fairies. So it was a ghost, I'm telling you."

Giggler is Storyteller's adopted son, so he knows what he's talking about. Or rather, he knows what to say and how to say it. But knowing and doing are two different things. If he only said what he was sure of, he would have stopped talking a few years ago. Gloomeye was unable to imagine him being silent for a long time. Or sad, if to give a full description of the boy.

Giggler is blond, with the tip of his nose pointing upwards. He is the only one apart from the boarler who can walk, but still needs the supervision of his elders.

"Maybe," Gloomy didn't argue with the childish fantasy. He walked calmly, occasionally pointing Meat the way. "But Mom's dustbag exploded recently, and its spores make you see things that aren't there."

"So, on the adventure side..." Giggler immediately changed the subject. "You have to have a princess, can't have an adventure without her, I'm telling you."

"Yes, girls who don't beat you up if you win a burping contest against them must be beautiful," Gloomeye thought of Crushy as one of the princesses in Giggler's father's stories and snorted at his own fantasy. Though he wasn't sure if the kingdoms still existed. He could hardly imagine a hierarchy more complex than 'leader - subordinate'.

"Let her be a villainess. Pa says that cheating expectations is what makes a good story, I'll tell you that," Giggler climbed another frozen in time earth wave.

"Your pa said a lot of things," Gloomeye pulled the boarler away from something wriggling out of the ground. "And that you should always keep your hero's face in the mud."

"That's so these heroes don't get too proud. And then they get up, wipe themselves, and give everyone a hard time. So that their inevitable triumph will be all the more triumphant, I tell you," the Giggler assured his friend.

Walking to the newly formed scar, the shepherd looked expectantly at the others.

"Are we going there again? We were told to stay away from big scars," Giggler removed the smile from his face. A rare sight.

"Your father used to say that by defying authority we forge our own identities," Gloomy said. It was his turn to reassure Giggler.

"And your ma made him climb a middleshroom after that. He didn't manage to forge an identity that time," Giggler said, still following Gloomeye, and lifting the corners of his mouth again.

They went under the ground, which had recently been swollen by a new scar, and opened the way to a new pasture. It wasn't difficult, if a boarler could get through here, then anyone could (even Mom). The only challenge was the unbelievable stench coming from the ground, along with little bubbles flying in the air. It was not a very exciting mystery what was going on underground.

The boarler didn't want to walk on soft ground, so the guy had to push him. Meat moved heavily, he had already grown rounded sides filled with juicy meat, and more than the villagers wanted to throw them off. Then he would be able to frolic as before, lean and contented, and the village would have a feast.

When Meat came to a meadow of harmless plants and ancient ruins, he began to hunt for underground myceliums, and Giggler looked for flexible stems to make a wreath. One job, really. Wreaths were not a man's business, Gloomeye thought, but he walked the boy, not raised him.

It was the ruins that attracted Gloomy here. They were made of grey stone with gold, blue and red inlays, already broken and shattered to understand the idea of the builders. They formed a sort of circle around a small hill. In the centre was a massive pillar, covered with obscure signs.

The style of architecture was unfamiliar to Gloomy, but that didn't mean anything as he only saw the architecture of his village, if you could call it that (but there definitely shouldn't be any architects around). The ruins were elegant, long, but broken by time or enemies.

Gloomeye found his familiar archway and lay down on the ground, resting his head in the opening. Unlike the wasteland surrounding the village, with its bare, twisted earth, there was grass growing, soft and non-aggressive, looking like blue hands held up in the air.

The arch was no different from the rest of the ruins: it was also tilted out of the ground and covered in eyemoss, except...

"Hiya," the arch intruded in Gloomy's thoughts.

"Hey. I questioned Storyteller as you requested, but I didn't learn anything new. There was the world, then CRACK! It's broken. Everything's changed, sort of. I didn't catch the Old World to judge. Did you remember anything?" Gloomeye thought back.

"I am the Passageway. My memory is not like yours, organics: constantly sparkling soup in a meat plate. If I don't remember something, then I can't remember it by accident, like you, if your brain soup ingredient gets into a new place and position. I have even simplified this for you, there is also a lightning bolt that has to constantly strike the plate. I don't remember the Old World either.”

"The passageways usually lead somewhere. And you're in the middle of the ruins. I'd understand if you were on the edge of these ruins, or if there were ruins of corridors all around you," Gloomeye remarked cautiously.

"And your bone pot is cooking. It really cooks, I guarantee it. I seem to be able to read the cognitive functions of organics. Hmm, I can find old information about myself... So, I can also be wrong, like some organic? How embarrassing."

"Cogtive what?" the guy even before only understood a third of what the arch was thinking, but 'cogtive functions' is too much. Everything has a limit, especially sets of sounds. Mental sets of sounds.

"Cognitive," the arch corrected him. "The words in your head. ‘I want to eat’, ‘my imperfect organic matter requires constant attention’, ‘I need to find a mate’ – that sort of organic stuff. You know better than I do, I'm sure."

Gloomy didn't know what a ‘mate’ was, but he guessed intuitively and was a little angry. And "organic" sounded kind of condescending. ‘Oh, these organics, but what else could you expect from these organics? You're an organic, ha-ha-ha!’ Gloomeye is usually more calm and thoughtful. He often asks himself if he needs the current emotion, and often the answer is “no”, but he wasn't ready for insults, not even from a living being, but from a piece of old rubbish.

"And why would a door read minds?" the guy asked, just to call the archway a door. He had never seen a door, only heard of them in stories, but it must be humiliating for anyone to call them anything other than what they are. Isn't that how insults work?

"If... if there are no thoughts... then I need to raise the alarm," the arch thought, surprised that it was coming back to it. It ignored the door insult. "You're all right. All sorts of thoughts are swarming in your meat top. So much energy of your body is wasted, you could have come to this Crushy long ago..."

"Hey! I didn't let you into my head to read my thoughts!" Gloomeye angrily adjusted a wreath that Giggler had put on him some time ago.

"But what else is there to do?"

"Smoke. They're cooking without us, Gloomy!" Giggler furiously shook his guardian awake.

"Calm down, Giggle. Meat is with us, what can they cook there? Besides, the smoke is black, clearly the cooking is spoiled. Hmm, you know what? Let's go and see what's causing so much smoke in our home..."

"Hey, find out more about el..." the arch didn't have time to think, as its interlocutor pulled his head out from under her.

What is it, if not cooking? Fire? And why does the arch want to know about "el"? What is it anyway? Indeed, his thoughts were like swarmers. They walked home much faster, not being distracted by talking and jumping on bumps. Even Meat was in a hurry, as if he could sense the mood of the humans.

At the entrance, they were met by Earlier, who had replaced Firster, his twin. The troubled guard sat on the ground, covering his injured arm:

"These sons of witches have come to the village. If I were you, I would..."

Gloomeye left his wards with him and walked briskly towards the source of the smoke. The mushroom storage was on fire, and eight new people were arguing with Merchant. The crowd looked like a dirty rabble who chose their leader by the amount of dirt on their body. Their chieftain, a dirty-faced man with thinning hair matted with sweat, was shouting something.

Suddenly, the three outsiders standing beside him drew their weapons and began to wave them violently in the air. A broken wooden dagger fell to the ground next to them.

"That's our phrase," Wolves said, pulling another dagger from under his shirt. "'Values or life' was what my great-grandfather used to say when he robbed your great-grandmothers."

The villagers, who had gone to get their weapons, began to gather around him.

"It looks like we're no longer farmers," Wolves looked at the burning storage, "but a bandit clan again," he had unkempt black hair and a week's growth of stubble. He looked formidable at the moment.

Gloomeye took out his sling and was taking aim at the invader leader when his fighting arm was intercepted by Mom.

"Your first should be special," Mom looked at Babyboy fondly. "Leave the killing to the grown-ups.”

He really is Mom. Gloomy lowered his weapon.

During the battle, arcs of light emerged from the mud-faced chief's hand and pierced the heads of his men, causing their eyes to glow red.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The invaders stood in a group, fending off all attacks, and each could fend off an attack directed at another. One of them, without looking, threw back his sword and parried a blow directed to his companion, who evaded both blows with his torso.

"Magic! Magic!" shouted Shroomer, who was on the verge of a nervous breakdown after the destruction of the entire harvest.

"Everyone can see it! Stop swearing!" Wolves shouted at him.

The villagers surrounded the enemies and, though outnumbered, attacked hesitantly, not really knowing what to do. The invaders had real, rusty, and therefore even more dangerous weapons, and the villagers had wooden, planed "doohickey", as Mom put it.

The only ones who really tried were Northman and Divider, but even they couldn't hurt anyone. And those with slings and spear throwers had already spent their supply of projectiles on useless attacks. Merchant spun her stone on a rope, but as this rope was pre-Break, it snapped with her words "Witch's crap!", hurling the stone at the enemies, who dodged in unison. It would be fun to watch if the groups weren't fighting to the death. Once the attackers have recovered from the unexpected resistance, they will easily slaughter the entire village.

Despite the advice, Gloomy put a stone in his sling and was about to hit the dirty wizard when there was a terrible roar and the boarler appeared. The enemies began to reorganise, but they didn't seem to know much about boarlers.

Meat turned sideways as he moved, separating his meat mass from his body, which flew by inertia into the invaders. Even with supernatural reflexes, you can't dodge if there's nowhere to dodge. Almost all of them crumpled. Only the puppeteer was lucky enough to duck into the place where the fleshy shaft had jumped over. But the side decided not to stop there and rolled on, destroying few aboveground buildings and collapsing village's underground dugouts.

Boarlers are huge alms, usually brown with white spots, taller than any human, regardless of which side they are placed on the ground. They gain weight on meat stalks on the sides of the carcass, digging out and eating middle- and megamyceliums. They need this body mass for protection during the Wild Hunt season. Then the meat is separated out as payment to the people who take care of the boarler, and the alms are straightened out. Their necks become very long, as do their legs, and they can reach the caps of megashrooms.

Worldedge's boarler, Meat, who had saved the village from starvation for many winters, and also just saved it now. They used him to dig up canals and dugouts. He found megamyceliums and helped collect megamushroom caps. Meat was also the only way to get into the general cache on the smooth rock.

Now the boarler stood with his chest exposed for his attack, and which was speared by Earlier. The guard’s eyes glowed, and an arc radiated from his head to the mage's hand. Meat staggered and fell on his unbroken side. Gloomy walked slowly over to him. He didn't see Earlier's eyes stop glowing, and he looked around in a daze. And who had stopped the mage. And that the whole village was watching him in silence.

Gloomeye wasn't used to expressing emotion, let alone screaming. He just sat on his knees and watched his friend die. Such a human eye followed its shepherd until stop being alive.

Wolves walked over to his son and squeezed his shoulder. He said nothing, and after standing there for a while, he went back to his business. He had a lot of it.

"Is everyone else safe?" he shouted.

"My arm is wounded," "I'll have a new scar," "I'm all right!" a discordant chorus of voices answered him.

"And why did I ask? We don't have a healer," Wolves rubbed his neck in exasperation. "Then wrap the wounds in rags. And divide the meat, we must eat as much as possible before it goes bad. Separate the meat of the boarler from that of the attackers, don't you guess?

"My husband. We've lost everything," Merchant approached him. She wore her brown hair in a ponytail at the back of her head, her temples shaved and covered with small braids. An indelible painted pattern encircled her right arms, slightly visiting her torso. Gloomeye had asked her once what it was, but he hadn't understood the explanation or the purpose.

"It's not much," Wolves said jokingly.

"The words of a true leader," Merchant did not appreciate the joke.

Wolves looked at his wife grimly. Now it was his turn not to appreciate the joke:

"We don't have a leader. After that incident."

"Ah, if crowns had been given for stubbornness, you'd be an emperor by now. You and all the men of the world. But the false gods saved us from that," Merchant wrapped her arms around herself and began to sway. "But who am I to argue?" Just a damsel in distress at the hands of brazen brigands.

The words made Gloomeye's father's face fall and his eyes bulge. When his wife began to remember that she didn't belong to a gang, but to the merchant's family that the same gang had tried to rob during the Break, it meant that the matter was serious.

Everyone began to disperse, assessing the damage to the village. And there was something to assess: the entire mushroom crop that had just been harvested was burned to the ground, the only source of meat and access to the cache was dead, and almost all the buildings had been razed to the ground, both above and below ground. No one wanted to search the attackers, they didn't look very nice, and they were touched by magic. Their weapons and trinkets were taken from them, but they didn't have anything particularly valuable. Apart from the ring with the symbols on the mage's hand, but no one wanted to touch that piece of jewellery (for obvious reasons).

Storyteller came to the rescue. He always wanted to look mystical, but that was hard to do in Worldedge, where clothes were made from wild plants and alm skins. So he took it out on his grey hair. Giggler's father was still searching for his own style, so half of his beard was down and the other half was twisted into intricate plaits that intertwined with the hair on his head.

He examined the ring carefully, moving the dead man's hand:

"No, I don't understand. I don't understand any language. I'm Storyteller, not Reader. And even less Writer, I tell you.

"Ugh!" Wolves spat in frustration.

"Maybe it's not him, but this ring has that power," Storyteller was superstitious and did not like to use words from the word 'magic'. This made his stories about the pre-Break world even more confusing. He also decided that since his clan was now peasants and not bandits, he shouldn't swear. But it seems that from this day on he will have to.

"We need to get rid of this stuff," Gloomeye's father said, taking a few steps back.

"I'm ready!" Gloomy volunteered, coming up to them unnoticed. "I still need a distraction, preferably somewhere other than here."

Wolves carefully tore off the ring with a stick and wrapped it in several layers of the attackers' clothing. Then he gave this lump of evil to his son. Gloomeye carried the magic ring to the Edge of the World. It wasn't a very long walk across the waste-ground.

Gloomy got his name because as a shepherd he had a lot of time to think, and his face reflected that. So now he was training his forehead muscles again. The ability to discard emotions was very useful for him, but the current emotion was not so easy to discard, and Gloomy knew less how to suppress emotions, and he did not want to suppress anything. It's better to let go. "Live and let others live," Storyteller's hero had once said, and Gloomeye remembered.

The Edge of the World had the power to attract people, so, with a few respectful steps, Gloomy threw the ring into the abyss. He stared into the misty void for a moment, until he thought it was looking back at him, then turned and walked back.

He returned in the evening. The villagers sat around the campfire and ate the cooked meat. Storyteller seemed to begin to tell a story about a knight and a princess, but was interrupted by Mom:

"You a-talkin' 'bout your rich folk again. They'll all die in the end, jus' like they always do, huh? We can't chew Meat as it is, ayn' here's y'all with y'all's deaths."

"Are you suggesting that I add happy endings to my stories? What exactly is that, I don't understand! They live happily ever after?" Storyteller was outraged. "Where did you see that? I'm telling you, Mommy!"

"Ay suggest y'all shut up. If ya still can't live without y'all's made-up fantasies, then tell yourself when no one is aroun'," Mom replied in his manner.

Seeing his son, Wolves nodded and stood up, interrupting the heated argument:

"The chief should do it, but we don't have one, so I'll do it." He looked around at the villagers, who watched him in silence and made no objections. "You have all seen what happened today. Nothing glorious or good. And then it will only get worse. I understand if you want to leave, but I won't let you. Now, in these bad times, we need everyone especially badly. Let's cry, let's howl, let's feel sorry for ourselves, you can even lie down on the ground, sprinkle ashes on your head, just wait for the fire to burn out. I'll give you tonight. But after that, get up, wipe away your tears and snots, and don't let me hear any more complaints from you about today. We need strong people to start again. We will learn from our mistakes and restore Worldedge, even better than before. Here's I've said it all." Wolves sat down beside Gloomeye. "How was my inspiring speech? Not too much..."

"Very chief-like," his son took a piece of his friend.

"You know, Gloomy, jokes aren't like wine, they don't get any better with time. They're like this... this..." his father stared at his potsherd, which was filled with the extract of the milkmilk plant that Babyboy adored and everyone else hated.

"What is wine?" Gloomy rubbed a taste crystal on his food.

Wolves looked sadly at his son with a look "I created a life in a cursed world":

"Drink from stale fruits. Certainly not mushrooms," he decided to change the dreadful subject. "You know your mother is old-fashioned, and she wants me to talk to you about death. In my opinion, you will come to everything on your own, of course, like everyone else.

Gloomeye looked down at the dripping meat in his hands:

"I've eaten his meat before, and I'm not doing anything different now. But for some reason, it doesn't feel right."

"This is what he wanted, to give us food in exchange for care, mostly yours. It is a contract. Like with plants. There used to be apple trees and wheat and flowers. They also paid us with food for our care. To us and to the bees. And they, in turn, paid us in honey. Which, by the way, could also ferment. This is what I call the harmony of the world!"

"Thank you," the mood of Gloomy improved. Either from his father's words, or from the atmosphere around him. Many began to shout something that sounded like a song in which an ancestor was called, and then always added "... dance with us now". Everyone (apparently) in all the families loved to dance and have fun.

"Oh, so can we talk about women as well? Speaking of bees and flowers..." suggested the father, elated with his success, but his son choked on the food.

With Wolves gone, Gloomeye was approached by Earlier, who held out a woodcarving that fit into his fist. It depicted an alm standing on all fours with a long snout. Very similar to the body part of the local alms. Looking closer, Gloomy noticed that the alm, like a normal alm, was made up of parts of her own kind: snouts, paws and tails.

"It's a wolf, or rather, wolves, or rather, my artistic vision," Earlier said. "This is what some amalgams looked like before the Break. But I was still a child then, and my memories are not very reliable. Wolves are pack animals, and your father was named after them.”

"Apology is accepted," Gloomy turned the figurine around in his hands. "I didn't think it was your fault, though. But the Planer can accuse you of trying to steal his name. And Mom could accuse you of planing something like that instead of guarding the gate.”

Earlier grabbed Gloomeye's hand, squeezed his gift into it, and whispered desperately:

"It's all magic. I didn't want to do it, but I did. Why did people put up with this for so long? They should have hunted down the mages as soon as they knew who they were dealing with. We wouldn't even have had the Break. Do you think these people," he glanced nervously at the place where the corpses had been dumped. "They didn't want to either, but they were under control?"

Then Giggler would come to him and entertain him with riddles. The riddles were simple, just descriptions of the surrounding objects and the question "What am I?", but Gloomeye was pleased with them. Then Merchant came to check on him and bring him more food. Then Storyteller still began a story, this time about an immortal man who drank the blood of humans and wanted to extinguish Dayorb, but accidentally helped others on his way. Gloomeye didn't hear the end of the story, because he fell asleep smiling, thinking that the day wasn't all that bad.