We left the temples and shrines behind, me hefting around a bucket, hanging on to a shovel to wipe my face, and the rest of the men grousing that they couldn’t have more food to fill their bellies. We marched out and down toward the high wall in the city's center, its form cast in light and shadow.
It would have been well off if the city had a wall, but they had never made a new one.
Anna walked over after I got the worst of the gristle out of my mouth and had gotten some of the blood off my face.
“Saphine, what was that all about? The whole holy ground bit?” She asked.
I looked at her and gave a simple shrug.
“I don’t think it will do anything if that’s what you're thinking. But the whole thing was more of a can I put this somewhere less likely to be taken kind of deal. The soul was screamy, like the one I brought home accidentally. I couldn’t deal with that one,” I told her.
Anna got it almost immediately. It had been days before I had gotten used to the screaming soul back home, and even after I had started acclimatizing, it had lurked over me for quite some time. She gave a little acknowledgement of the torturous noise I endured, and she had no clue of a little silent ‘ah’ movement of her mouth.
We continued our walk in silence, taking in the terrible night as the guards, more lively, lifted their spirits. We walked in silence until we talked at the same time, unanimously.
“So what was the [Priest]-” “Do you have any idea what the [Priest]-”
We asked it in unison, our words starting at the same time and ending close to it, me accidentally talking over her for longer, a sorry breach of good manners that Anna cared nothing for, but that mattered to me. Just another sorry showing.
“So you don’t know what he was talking about either?” Anna asked.
“Not particularly,” I told her, “I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it before… but the temple district freaks me out something fierce; the gods, or some of them, are… Weird,” I told her, considering the priest's wishes.
“I can’t recall. I’m not going to lie; gods are something I pay little attention to… By the trees, that sounds terrible; I’m not saying I ignore you, but I’ve never been one for gods… It just feels like deferring something important to an external force…”
I nodded, “Don’t worry, I don’t talk about it much because it's weird. Also, that’s both eye-nomic-”
“Ironic,” she corrected softly.
“Ironic, thank you. It’s Ironic for a druid, but I suppose it’s more like you can guide a greater whole for a noble, like a king at court,” I told her.
“What do you mean for a noble? Anyone can guide their community, which guides a noble, which guides the empire,” she said, reminding me that I kept using the wrong form of hereditary leader, “Everyone is part of a nation; that’s what keeps us united. And for lay nobility, those just landed, there’s not much difference in what a person can and can’t control.”
“A commoner doesn’t own their farm or crops; they can’t even control if they put food on their table. For a commoner, putting their faith in the divine is simple: they need their crops not to fail, they need roads to bring them to market, they need to fish or hunt to put meat on the table, they struggle and want reassurance that when they trip life won’t leave them to die. And you can become a [Priest] and join the clergy. You can’t just become a noble,” I told her.
She looked at me and rolled it around in her head but didn’t seem fully convinced, not that she didn’t trust me on it, but that she couldn’t see it that way.
It was very human of her, very un-Kobold. We just accepted things as they were, as I did with her explanation. It was simple: if something didn’t make sense, that was a me issue. Everything always made sense; if it was, it was. I didn’t get it.
“I can’t see it; there is always a way, as dreadfully optimistic as that is,” she told me.
“There is, usually, and that way for most is religion. A church holds more sway than a [Dirt Farmer]. Anyway, the point is that religion played a big part in my life; I could spot dozens of gods' symbols and pick up on plenty of quotes… And the gods I worshiped were very different than those I had seen… The epithets, too.” I told her.
She seemed to remember something then, snapping her fingers and saying, “The fertility thing. Now I remember… That is a very different thing… I see… I wonder why that matters… Maybe I should have paid more attention to my teacher; he might have known,” she said, drawing off to watch the staff in her hand. Its old wood and meaning seemed to weigh on her.
We both rolled it over in our heads, her and me, trying to reconfigure what tiny things we knew about the world and finding where the blanks we knew connected. How much of what we knew was a heat haze we took for water, and where was the unseen dip in the road?
I knew not what Anna thought, but my mind was drawn to the dark altar. Horrifying runes were carved into the once-temple, buried in time. I saw the fallen gremlins and their reverence for a dark figure and felt a chill creep over my shoulders like a cowl.
If fallen people, why not fallen gods? If buried, things were better left where they were, trapped in the forever tomb of the earth like graves of what was.
I got a nagging feeling, a grind against the axel of my ever-rolling mind. If people didn’t like a god… Would they worship what once was? Would they turn to dark idols?
If gods fell, like gremlins fell, what would they cause with their followers? Out with the new and back to the old? A return to a tradition that is far more brutal? My existential knowledge… What could it bring? What if the fertility of yesteryear was changed? Something far, far darker now than what she had been. What if mortals, who lived like mayflies and saw gods as implacable, unchanging things, didn’t have enough time to see the shift? Like the slow erosion of the valley, weathered by forces that held no understanding of time and measured life in spectrums of eternal life.
If the crops failed, if the church of Fertility could not aid in the needed bounty, and the valley learned of something older that watched over people in a time of plenty… If people began to worship them, gave their souls to them, gave their lives, sweat, and faith to them, and they had become something far darker… What would come of that?
“I just can’t quite see it,” Anna said, unaware of my existential nightmare.
“I think I might, but I think I need to talk to a [Priest] about it… A good one,” I told her.
She looked at me and saw something in my candleflame eyes.
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“I won’t mention it with company then,” she said softly, like I was a scruffy, jumpy animal, “if it's bad enough to make your hair stand on end, it’s something better left alone, as sad as that makes me.”
We fell into silence, and I continued to wipe myself down. The only noise was the guards complaining and berating one another. Thanks to my newest skill, the bucket stayed firmly on the end of my shovel despite my movement.
The guards were murmuring about the raid when the old man spoke up, cutting them off and drawing my attention from the crustiness of my hair.
“This is the only raid you’ve seen,” he griped at the mouthy guard.
It was a short statement that caught my attention, but it did. His skill-backed words brought a natural lull in the talk that turned our eye to him.
“This isn’t my first raid, old man. Goblins tried to raid the granary what? Two years ago? There were those [Bandits] five years ago, too; they tried to hit the [Merchants],” he mockingly reminded, “You losing your memory?”
“Ten low-level [Bandits] and twenty-five Goblins isn’t a raid. It’s a scuffle. It’s not even a riot—a public nuisance. Look around you, boy. Do you feel the heat on your skin? Do you smell the cooking meat? Those are the people and the lives of those people, turning to cinder. We'll be lucky if a quarter of the guard isn’t gone in smoke when this ends. Even luckier if the granary isn’t ash and we're already lucky, this isn’t rising, or we would be deadmen walking.”
He said it with finality and authority. He was a resident old man, well trained by age in the art of knowing more than the rest.
“What are they like?” I asked him, “A rising, that is. I haven’t seen one.”
“It’s like a living nightmare where the dead don’t stay dead. The last big one, the proper city killing one, was in Sootburg 50 years ago. When it kicked off, every corpse tore its way out of the ground, they don’t even die; they keep going. Two months swallowed twenty thousand, and half the city was deserted,” he told me.
“I’ve never heard of Sootburg,” I told him, “Where is that?”
“The place is an unpaved, fallow, unused layover, the only thing that makes it better than living in the woods is its wall because, unlike our city, it had enough money and forethought to put one up. Used to be the best place to get goods from the guild, and merchants would empty their wagons there.”
His words had an edge of saddened pain, a sense that there were things he hadn’t and wouldn’t mention. His gruffness was a scar of experience that he would not pick at, worn on his chest.
“Sounds like a nightmare,” I told him.
“Sounds bad, but they aren’t so strong,” One of the guards said.
“Not so bad if they’re aimless, were they? The ones from Sootburg, I mean,” another one said.
I ignored the scoffing of the boisterous dickhead, and paid attention, whipping myself clean before I found Selly in my hair and started on my ears instead.
“They aren’t guided; there were no [Cultists] like here. But that’s what makes them dangerous. That’s to her,” he said, gesturing back toward me, “Who has done more for the city than any of you, b’sides the Lady Mage. Give undead numbers or guidance and they become deadly. She took out the head, and the numbers weren’t there to be a threat. Give them enough and the bones start to pile up… Oh, and when it gets like that, they poison you too, like the zombies that got your friends. Everything that dies comes back; everything that’s dead doesn’t stop. A starving dog or rat could cause the city to fall, and the world becomes a paranoid mess while everyone starves inside their walls, or is drowned in bones and rotting meat. Then comes the aftermath… Famine, plague, and civil war. It makes everyone's lives suck. Everything rots, rats start to eat cats… Take my word on it, or don’t. If the city gets hit, do yourself a favor, and flee.”
Several of the guards seemed to stop, and several seemed to think on it, take it in. Some dismissed him. But there was always one person who thought they were invisible. The guards were young, not teens, but not much older than I was.
“A few or a few hundred makes no difference to me,” the problem child said boisterously, “Give me some armor, and they can't fight; they would just slam themselves on good old steel.”
“What makes them want to fight like that anyway? Seems stupid to me; why wouldn’t they use a weapon?” Another asked, spurred on by the mouthy guard.
“They’re not intelligent… Well, the ones without souls aren’t, but the other ones are a little smarter. I think they’re spreading black magic in them or something,” I told him.
I must have come across as confused or lacking insight because he decided to speak up again.
“Oh yeah? You sound real knowledgeable. Old man, why do they attack people, you know, the biting and clawing and stuff?” He called over to the old man.
“No clue,” the old man groused, “The old codger died before he could figure it out. Maybe they’re angry, restless. Maybe you should focus on the fighting up ahead instead of pondering why an animate corpse would want to kill you.”
“Which old codger?” He asked, “Is there like an older you out there? Or are you talking in the third person all of a sudden?”
“Ask the lady mage; he was her teacher… Or the Saint that gave you the closest answer he ever came up with,” He huffed out, an edge of finality in his voice.
They turned to us and stared a little before they decided that they didn’t want to pry. I turned to her and caught her confused by his words.
I didn’t need to ask her what she was thinking because I could see her face or enough of it. Anna wore a look of confusion, one of not knowing what he was talking about.
I guess sometimes, you find out more about some people after they passed away than when you knew them.
She didn’t look torn up about it, so I decided to leave it. I wouldn’t get Anna to spill her guts in front of anyone; it would make her less noble and more girl and undermine her image.
“Hey, Selly, how are you doing?” I asked her.
She scuttled from my hair, crawling up to my ear, “I’m Fine… The smoke is clearer, but it's getting a bit too hot for me. I wouldn’t want to fly right now, too much updraft… So I’m just going to stay in your hair… It’s cooler in here.”
“Seems like it shouldn’t be that way,” I told her, “It’s like a blanket. If anything, it should be warmer. Also I’m trying to clean there, move over.”
“Is’not, only as warm as you in here. Top hairs are warmer,” she murmured shuffling over to the wet patch of short hair I had gotten to.
I suppose it was getting rather warm, and I could feel the air moving up, pulling in the heat before exiting the top. It was like the whole city was a campfire.
I resumed getting the gore off my face and out of my hair without bugging Selly.
I got most of it out by the time the water was stained red, and I ditched the bucket and cloth. The water was soothing and cool, but it was getting rather icky. I did my best to not dry my face on my clothes, not that it would do much.
I had ruined two sets of my limited clothes. I needed to get a few more of them; thank god I was getting some tomorrow… Or the next day, I couldn’t quite remember.
“Selly, you were there; when was Gunther getting me my new clothes?”
“The ones you are supposed to wear on top of underclothes?” She asked.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Tomorrow, but considering you need new underclothes… Maybe you should focus on that, you silly Hussy…” Selly said tiredly, the joke ringing flat.
Wasn’t that the truth? You always needed something more?
I got my shovel ready as the noises picked up, a howling noise of fighting and shouting. That came closer as we walked but stopped getting closer, and then as we walked tensely, it remained distant. We were walking away, but the noise was less muffled.
It remained that way until
We came out at the next checkpoint, which had nearly thirty guards and looked like it was one set of stone walls away from a garrisoned fort.
The man in charge of the checkpoint, a stone's throw away from the gate, was a man I had seen only once; his face glanced through a window, talking to Anna.
Here he stood, a bit of soot on his face, like tasteful makeup, short brown hair and green eyes, a nose and jaw that looked like they would suit a marble bust, with a light, tasteful stubble layer of stubble. He looked like Prince Charming, standing there in his light metal armour and longsword, composed and unruffled, as if this whole thing was just another day’s chores.
His choice of colour under it was a bit odd, but it carried a notable emblem that had remained unchanged for longer than I had lived and slept: a tangle of grape vines and a depiction of mines. Woven along with it were little figures, Kobold's plucking berries stitched in bright yellow thread.
They spotted us coming and let us through quickly; Anna moved up toward the front of our column, and we moved to meet her distant older brother.
“Anna, why does your brother look like he’s about to hold the line against the undead?” I whispered to her.
“I don’t rightly know why, he knows how to hold a sword but he shouldn’t be out here,” she hissed back.
We looked at him as he spotted us and strode over every spot the noble lord, a [Baron]’s son.
“Fantastic, Annabeth, it's good to see you in this most troublesome hour,” he told her before taking me in, his mouth holding open maybe a second too long, his gaze scrutinizing.
Anna, uncaring, snapped her fingers to draw his attention back to her.
“Clause, what are you doing gallivanting about like you’re a [Knight]?”
“I thought that would be obvious; I’m planning to halt the monster here.”