Arthur pushed back his chair as the thrall walked in front of him, tail swinging and smiling softly. Her white dress and cute features gave her the appearance of an innocent girl but her usual demure demeanor had been replaced by an otherworldly temptress. A change that suited him fine.
His hands reached for her thin waist but were slapped aside her tail. “Too hasty. We have allll the time in the world. For now, hm. I rather not sully the home of my summoner. She can be rather petty. How about a change of scenery?”
“I don’t know how far I can walk, heh.” He could hold his drink with the best of them, but he wouldn’t take his chances running a marathon.
“Oh, don’t worry pet. You don’t have to lift a finger. I’ll take care of everything tonight.”
She snapped her fingers and the dining room disappeared. Arthur suddenly found himself seated at the edge of a familiar cliff, his chair having come with him on his unexpected journey. He recognized the drab scenery, the cloudy gray sky an almost perfect reflection of the murky waters of the sea, the beach less sand and more jagged rocks. In the distance, he could make out the docks he’d spent most his life on, the ships coming and going made small by the distance.
“What…is that Graywatch?”
“You seem uncomfortable being home.”
Arthur stood, jumping as his chair disintegrated, brown motes swept away by a sudden wind. “What’s going on?”
The thrall giggled as she looped their arms together. Rapidly sobering, he tried to pull away but the thin arm didn’t budge. On the contrary, he was helpless against her as she pulled him forward. “Relax, pet. You will get what you wanted so eagerly that you sold away the sanctity of your mind. But first, a walk through your memories. Tell me about this city.”
The gray surroundings did not lend themselves to romance. Neither did Arthur. He held his silence, battling to hold onto his rapidly diminishing confusion and apprehension as he failed to point out interesting sights.
Graywatch and its surroundings held little that an outsider, or even residents, could admire, but the difficulty was more challenging than usual as the surroundings weren’t quite right. He eventually noticed that the problem lied in the details. Driftwood had no grain. Stones were simple blobs of gray with no texture or shape. Weeds were dots of green rather than tall stalks.
Strangely, the moment he noticed the oddities, they disappeared, the objects fixing themselves so quickly he began to doubt he saw the mistakes in the first place.
“Tell me about the city,” the thrall whispered to him as they neared the docks, the city itself coming into view. Arthur found himself uncharacteristically chattering without a thought.
“Not much to tell.” A sudden wave of nostalgia overcame him as opposed to his normal disregard when it came to his home. His eyes swept over the empty docks and, in less than the time it took to blink, it was full of people, creating a familiar scene.
The previous silence was replaced by an explosion of noise as dockhands and fishermen scurried over the wooden planks loading and unloading ships. “Bunch of grizzled old men and rough women trying to make a living in a place where they aren’t welcome.”
“Not welcome? It is my understanding that Graywatch has been around for dozens of years. Who would dare say they are unwelcome?”
“Ha! The original inhabitants. The sea thirsts for the blood of men.” He guided her to the shore, walking into the water until it was up to his ankles. As he thought he would need a fish to make his point, several appeared in his hand. “Keep your eye where they land,” he said as he launched them into the sea.
A moment after they splashed into the water, the surface was disrupted with a frenzy as they were snapped up. He saw flashes of bright blue scales and spots of blood in the water before the sea stilled.
“And what is that delightful creature?”
“Water goblin. Don’t know if they look like actual goblins as I’ve never seen one but that’s what people have been calling them forever. Or tide rats. Some of the old women call them kiddie teeth because any kids stupid enough to go swimming before someone clears the water don’t make it back to shore.”
“I see why you would say you are not welcome.”
“Ha! You think I’m talking about the rats? They go after the kids because that’s all they can handle. The problem is the storms and what they bring with them. The rain pours so hard, things that should never leave the sea storm the beaches.”
Arthur sucked in a deep breath as the clear sky suddenly became menacing. Thunder rattled his bones as a fork of lightning flashed down from the black clouds.
The dockhands no longer carried boxes but weapons, joined by the pirates roused from their ships and favorite bars. They were armed with a range of weapons, from fine steel sabers commissioned from traveling merchants and paid for with pillaged gold to homemade weapons, the most common being planks of wood with nails hammered through an end.
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Men who would happily stab each other under normal circumstances stood as comrades, united against the hulking forms emerging from the churning sea. They were clumsy on land but so were the men, fighting amidst a howling storm. The monsters’ powerful limbs swept men off their feet with a careless swipe and their leathery hides deflected inaccurate blows.
The two forces clashed, the heavy downpour muting their battle cries and washing away the blood.
Normally, Arthur would already be in the thick of the action but he felt strangely detached from the scene, even as his acquaintances fell from grievous wounds. His brows furrowed as he noticed one of the slain men dissolve into black motes and reappear a moment later, fighting another sea monster.
“Is this a frequent occurrence?”
“Ah, the leatherbacks usually come in the winter as they move to shallower water. We think they like lying on the beach but we’re there now. It’s much worse in spring, when the storms are strongest. All kinds of things get washed to shore.”
“Why not leave?”
“Now? Spite, I think, but it was different in the past. The way the old folks tell it, after the first king claimed the continent, he sent people to every corner to establish villages and report back on the resources of the area. Used to be there were people all along the coast but it didn’t last long.
“Those things in the water don’t stay there and the original settlers weren’t prepared. Water gobs, leatherbacks, saints, even the crabs were dangerous. They were obliterated.
“They sent for help, of course, and the king sent his soldiers. The settlers came together to select the ideal place for a larger settlement, as it was too much to protect the whole coast, and the soldiers cleared the beach. Under their protection, the first iteration of Graywatch was built.
“It lasted a whole month, or moon cycle as the grannies put it. The soldiers had returned to the capital, leaving only a token force behind to train the locals and aid in protection. They weren’t prepared for the leviathan that had been pushed into shallow water by a storm.
“The king sent more soldiers, dozens of them. Each time, they fought back the fishies and each time, the sea threw more at them. Eventually, the capital got tired of throwing its resources into the sea and refused to send any more reinforcements. However, the settlers were forbidden from leaving.
“See, the sea may be dangerous but it also has a lot of valuable treasures. Pearls, manabeasts, the alchemists even want the seaweed we think is trash. The king provided the settlers with supplies and told them to make the best of it.
“Deserters were caught by soldiers camped in outposts further inland and imprisoned for going against the crown. When the settlers were inevitably slaughtered, their numbers were bolstered by criminals, orphans, and dishonored knights.
“With the unforgiving ocean at their fronts and a selfish king at their backs, the settlers grit their teeth and muddled through. They learned to weather the storms and fight off the sea monsters. When they verged on starvation because they got sick at the sight of fish and nothing can grow in the soil around the city, they boarded their ships and sailed down the shore, raiding the more prosperous settlements inland.
“As they grew stronger, the city grew rapidly. The crews would move further inland, razing villages and absconding back to sea with their stolen gold and boys to bolster their numbers. The struggling town of Graywatch became a city full of hardened bandits and pirates.
“With their activities taking them deeper inland, the king couldn’t ignore them anymore. But by then Graywatch had long grown too big to be easily corralled and they could care less about the crown’s royal decrees. Knights and soldiers tried to take the town by force. The crews gave up the city willingly and the soldiers were inevitably decimated by the storms.
“Eventually, the two powers came to an agreement. Graywatch would keep their activities to the shore and continue to harvest resources from the sea for the kingdom. In return, the crown keeps its fingers out of the city and doesn’t attempt to stop the crews from trading with the merchants brave enough to do business with them. Creating the shithole Graywatch is today, a city filled with the worst humanity has to offer.”
Arthur’s throat itched from his monologue. He wished he had a refreshing mug of beer and then it was in his hand. The chaotic scene of the storm disappeared, replaced with the previous peaceful scene of dock work.
The thrall pulled him toward the city. Arthur sipped his beer and indulged in a strange urge to ramble on about the things that caught his eye.
“That’s Graywatch’s market. Right by the docks so the old boys don’t have to walk too far from their boats. Everything’s fresh, not like the slop they call seafood at the Hall. But you have to be careful. They slap anything they catch in their nets on the stalls. Manabeast meat is usually good but the sea is strange. Take my advice, don’t eat anything with more than five eyes. Place always smells like the ass end of the Abyss.”
As he thought of it, the horrid smell of fish and sweaty men mixing with the smell of the sea and damp earth made him crinkle his nose.
“That’s Granny Gapmaw’s house. No one can work leatherback hide and bone like her but everything she makes is as ugly as Fuzzy’s hairy ass. As well as her half a dozen granddaughters she keeps trying to wed off.”
“Oh, that’s the Sunken Ship. Don’t know what that stupid bastard was thinking naming his bar that. Wouldn’t anyone with the balls to drink somewhere with that name be cursing himself? And that’s…”
He paused, grimacing. The thrall leaned into his side, following his gaze to a squat building made of gray stone with a square roof. The same drab box dwelling as its neighbor, but bigger, with a second floor and several holes to serve as windows. “What is this place that it gives you pause?”
“That’s Smokey’s place. The Black Smoke crew’s den. They keep ‘jewels’ but I don’t go there. The women smoke that crap they peddle. Some men like the way it makes the women docile but if I wanted to hump a dead fish, there’re easier and cheaper ways.”
“Oh? What is it they peddle?”
“Spotted saltweed. Nasty plant and one of the few things that can grow around here. The settlers used to gather it up and burn it but quickly realized the smoke made men delirious. Some disgraced alchemists found a way to process it to keep the high and get rid of the other nasty effects, like death. Black Smoke cornered the market, so to speak, and Smokey hasn’t relaxed their iron grip as the crew’s latest captain.”
“Interesting. You have grown up surrounded by death, gore, and heinous crimes. I can see over half a dozen of these captains in your memory that are arguably worse than this Smokey. Yet he is the one who gives you pause. What about him disturbs you?”
The world around him shook as his mind resisted the thrall’s efforts to delve his memories, though he didn’t realize what was happening. He was firmly within her power. It was only a matter of time before she broke down his natural defenses and despite his reluctance, he allowed her to pull him into the building.