The beds in the tavern were fairly standard, soft enough to fall asleep on, but poorly constructed enough to give you an ache in the spine that would last the rest of the day.

Though the storm had ended the sky overhead was still oblique with thick dark clouds, even as the sun bathed the lands beneath.

“So how are we getting there exactly?” I asked Maceon when I met him outside.

“I flew here on the Queen’s Royal Auk, we’ll just take it back.”

“You took an Auk?!”

“Yes, as I said the situation is dire.”

Auks were massive seafaring birds domesticated by a long forgotten zuaberlord, The High Imperiat sought to utilise them to revolutionise interdominion networks but their peculiar habit of preferring their human riders to members of their own species made them notoriously difficult to breed, and thus they have remained a rare luxury for the social elites. Occasionally commandeered by authorities in emergency situations where speed was of the utmost importance, such as cases like this.

I’ve never flown before…

Maceon went over to speak with the stable hand while I waited behind.

I lost myself looking at nothing in particular until I heard him shout which made me jump.

“What do you mean it was commandeered?! I commandeered it first!” There was a brief silence followed by “official documents?!”

He came back over to me looking especially disgruntled.

“Someone took the auk, looks like we’ll have to travel by cart.”

“horse cart?”

“centipede.”

“Urgh…”

The path leading to the capital from the village was opposite the one I had taken to arrive, it took us down through long sloping hills. The grass covering them was unusually thick, not in its density but in the blades themselves. Coupled with their darker than average shade of green it bore an uncanny likeness to seaweed. Even in the way it moved in the wind, as if rippled by gentle undersea currents.

The road itself had become some kind of miniature river from last night's storm, a several inch deep stream flowed endlessly down from above.

I can’t imagine how there could have been so much water, nor how it could be so clear…

The centipede we rode upon didn’t seem to mind either way, its myriad legs churning through the water like countless slender oars.

At this point I don’t know why we just didn’t take a canoe.

“How are you holding up? you’re looking a little…” asked Maceon.

“I’m fine… I just prefer horses.”

he just nodded, half sympathetically, half dismissively.

‘A horse can gallop, it can trot and it can even prance, but what does a centipede do? it scuttles.’ and ‘Horses are majestic, intelligent and beautiful animals and outsourcing them with these filthy monsters is a travesty against the human soul’. These are the reasons I give when I’m pressed about ‘What I have against centipedes’. They’re lies of course, horses are no less stupid or disgusting than any other mammalian beast. but that’s really all it takes to be better than one of those foul many legged abominations.

It is my firm belief that bugs were small for the purpose of being easily destroyed by superior beings. Unfortunately for me, some forgotten magier or alchemist disagreed, he thought there was no reason that spiders or centipedes shouldn’t be the same size as any other large beast and decided, damn everyone else, to make it so.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

If it had ended there this would merely be just another bizarre travesty from the mage kingdoms, bad, yes, but far enough away that one can comfortably put it out of mind. That’s just how it is in the mage kingdoms.

but it did not end there, the High Imperiat invaded the kingdom of this magier and one of his batshrike lackeys took one look at those abominations and said ‘let's replace horses with these things. They have superior carry mass, endurance, resilience and terrain handling, who cares if they’re utterly hideous.’

And they say a nation is built upon its aesthetics.

I waited impatiently for our destination to enter view,

“Look at that.”maceon pointed to something in the distance.

At the end of his finger I could see the vast skeleton of a fallen Geomoth, its titanic spine and ribs shaping the horizon like a mountain range. Titanic creatures that are believed to have shaped or reshaped the earth during the primordial age with their colossal hands and feet alone.

“That one’s old Rhukal, Reckon you could raise him?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Even if there was a necromant powerful enough, Geomoth remains create null zones where magic cannot function regardless.”

“Ah that's right. Then what is the biggest thing you can resurrect?”

“Hmmm, size isn’t really a bottleneck for raising a corpse, the condition of the body and the complexity of the original soul are the most significant factors.”

“complexity of the soul?”

“Yes, things like intelligence, cognition, memory quota, emotional capacity, magikal resonance. there's a lot that goes into it.”

“I had no idea it was so complex.”

“well, you can cut a lot of corners depending on how lazy and or suicidal you are. but that’s not recommended practice.”

Maceon seemed to consider my words, though I couldn’t tell if he was genuinely thinking about it or just feigning interest to be polite.

“ah, we need to make a stop in here, won't be long.” said Maceon as we came towards a minor outpost on the road up ahead.

He brought the centipede to a halt just outside.

“You just wait here.”

Maceon dismounted the centipede and entered the Relay roost, a building containing a large roost of messenger parrots, somewhat intelligent birds which were able to listen to spoken messages, fly to their intended recipient and then repeat the message to said recipient ad verbatim.

I watched as he spoke to the proprietor and then took a yellow parrot into a soundproofed listening booth. After a few minutes he came back out and released the parrot, which flew off in the direction we had been heading in.

“Just letting them know we’re on our way.”

Just as he was about to climb back on the centipede, we heard the sound of splashing coming down the road. A young man was running towards the outpost, his arms flailing wildly.

“H-help!” he half cried, half gasped as he finally reached us. out of breath he looked as if he was about to collapse.

“What is it? what happened?” Maceon caught the boy and held him firmly.

“F-fiend.” he gasped.

“what?!”

“th-there's a fiend, up in casswell –it –it killed everyone! I was walking past a-and I-It saw me!”

Oh dear.

Fiends were dangerous monsters with a penchant for hunting humans, they were thought to be creatures that crossed over from beyond the fog wall. Coming in all shapes and sizes; some swam, some could fly and most possessed some kind of rudimentary intelligence, in some cases enough to wield rudimentary tools. A rare few were even capable of using their own magik. What separated them from other savage beasts however was that no two fiends were ever the same kind. Though there were similarities between some, each individual appeared to be a unique species. Stranger still, though some of them possessed identifiable reproductive organs Experts assert them to be incapable of proper function.

The High Imperiat was supposed to have led a great campaign of Fiend extermination in his domain, but it would appear he had missed a few places.

“A fiend? Are you absolutely sure?” Maceon asked him.

“y-yes. it was huge.” the boy nearly collapsed.“It saw me, I didn’t know what to do, I just ran.”

Maceon nodded sympathetically

“You did the right thing coming here.” he sat the boy down on a bench outside the roost and rubbed his back. “Stay here and catch your breath. Once you’ve done that, let everyone at this outpost know that situation and that I’m going to take care of it.”

Wait what?!

“looks like we’ve got a detour to make.” Said Maceon, getting on the centipede beside me.

“Eh? you can’t be serious! What about the hundreds of people being slaughtered in the capital?”

“This is something we can deal with here and now, if there is a fiend it’s a threat to everyone in this vicinity.”

“Uh Yeah, and it’s a threat to us too, all the more reason to get the crux out of here”

“It's our job to deal with these problems.”

“our job? I think you mean your job. I only agreed to help because you blackmailed me!”

“You want to be a hero don’t you? maybe your first title can be Svisha the fiend slayer.”

“…if I don’t end up Svisha the fiend food.”