The Two Categories Of These Are Those Requiring Immediate Suppression And Those Allowing A Delay In Suppression
But when they reached the beach, all wondered what would save the townsfolk or the town itself, for monsters had conquered the shore. There scuttled the bone crabs, white crab-like things that appeared to be, and possibly were, wearing visored helmets. The four-legged horrors called caressers stood with their feelers pointing inland, those three terrible claws on each arm which searched endlessly for prey while the eyes located on the opposite side of their bodies looked and never found, according to countless scary stories. Phantom spouts whirled, the core within the column of water no more visible than ever for all that researchers begged for it to show itself at least once. Some needle nets had been flung on the beach, a fellow entrant of dais-cages in the category of possible non-monster monsters. Unlike the harmless and useless platforms, the purpose of the needle nets had no mystery about it: needles attached to the nets stabbed fishermen and attracted monsters by the blood.
Naturally every beach needed its sand scoopers, or the piksadarops as the Drastlifars muttered, to dig holes to hide their small bodies of four feet or so using scooping claws themselves a couple feet long. Sea giants too had made the trip from the palaces on the seabed which all fairy tales supposed them to possess, and for the occasion they covered their bedraggled blue hair and orange skin with sharkskin armor and helms. For weapons, a rare thing among monsters, they grasped in the right hand a spear tipped with magic coral and in the left a symmetreel trained to emit thunder or lightning when squeezed the right way.
To stumble upon so great and varied a monstrous host as that held the power to unnerve anyone. To observe them in an attitude of waiting, looking toward the sea and ignoring the humans landward, might be the last push someone wanted to throw up civilization and become a hermit retired among dais-cages and meatless fires. The unfortunate who acted thus missed another startling spectacle of monsters marching from the northeast including the fearsome marsh king, an unnatural beast of leonine features and mane formed of squirming green tendrils. As excited as Chisops Dogai-Brein must have been to see it, the bucketeers prepared themselves to surrender to despair.
Dirant, hoping to forestall that, said, “Perhaps it is best for us to shift the line to the west a tad.”
“What good is that?” Some grumbled in that fashion, but word spread that the Adaban gentleman there happened to be, well, an architect if you catch the meaning, and therefore a reliable man in regard to matters best left alone when possible. He may have already performed some esoteric ritual that transfixed the monsters and kept them looking seaward like lenders expecting a debtor who was scheduled to arrive any day now. Even if he had not, what else was there to do?
They sought and found an unmonstered stretch of shore. The mere existence of such a thing encouraged them, and eagerly they went to work in the light of lanterns some of them had thought to bring, filling buckets and passing them along. As tedious as the task was, the spectacle of monsters milling about like dinner guests unsure if the hour was sufficiently advanced for them to leave without affronting the host (it was, by the way) prevented actual boredom. Dirant and the Drastlifars near him entertained and educated themselves together by naming the monsters in all the languages they knew. They shared stories and, at times, stat gains.
> +1 bonus to Muscle gained.
Several of the participants received that message, Dirant included. They started shouting out every new occurrence, and the feeling of camaraderie created by the practice had significant power, enough that the line stayed cohesive when its members were subjected to a sight so novel and unexpected that the broadsheets would be desperate to interview every witness who managed to retain consciousness. Some would lie about that, naturally.
A ship sailed in, not one of the little oar-driven boats Poiskops maintained or a fisherman's biggest investment, but an ocean-going vessel such as had made Drastlif the capital of Egillen's navigation until recent years. What was more, the people on the deck appeared to be opposed to their ship's current course. They shouted, pulled ropes, yanked the wheel, and achieved nothing in the way of altering their direction or speed. The language of those shouts was Dvanj.
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At last, less than a ship's length from shore, the crew abandoned her. Desperate sailors lowered a couple boats quickly filled. The more swimming-capable among them dove straight in. Those were the correct actions, and yet the eerie behavior of monsters convinced the people who had undertaken them to reconsider as soon as they saw the assemblage on shore. Regret overcame them, and also terror, so that indecision paralyzed rowers and swimmers and threatened them with drowning. By instant assent, a number of the Drastlifars ran to assist while the rest reconfigured the line with more space between members, which made the work more strenuous. Only by staying conscious of the plight of those sailors could the bucketeers tolerate it.
And by watching the distracting spectacle of the crewless ship as she sailed toward the beach, on the beach, and over the beach. Everyone concocted his own theory in the seconds before the reason behind her behavior became obvious. The hull, as it left the water, rose up on the shoulders of mighty monsters, sea giants especially. More amazing even than that, their inhuman compatriots already on the beach moved to help. With a roar capable of inspiring new legends of gods, heroes, and monsters, the assembled bearers flipped the ship upside-down and dropped it on the beach. Whatever experts had to say about whether monsters knew contentment, those certainly looked ready to grab some stools and spend the rest of the day admiring the result of their exertions. Some crawled underneath to rest inside while others stroked the hull or simply stared at their new barracks.
On the human quarter of the beach, waterlogged Dvanjchtlivs supported by locals stumbled toward the bucketeers. The greatest harm done was to their mustaches owing to the quick reaction of Drastlifars. Knowing that, the sailors tried to thank them in whatever Drastlimez they knew or else in Dvanj they stuffed with earnestness in the hope of compensating for the gap in comprehension. One among them, a red-haired gentleman of middle height, middle age, and a moderately curled mustache along with a ponytail of respectable length, called out, “Who here speaks Dvanj? Does anyone know what's going on? So much the better if both are the same person, but we'll work with what we have.”
Hesitant as he was to put himself forward as some kind of authority on anything other than rituals, Dirant knew no one else around who met the description as well as he did. “Sir, I know a little Dvanj and a little of the circumstances.”
“You sound Adaban, which isn't so bad for getting somewhere.” The man followed his voice and found him. “And so you are. Well, young man?”
Dirant continued passing buckets along both ways as he spoke. He hoped that would impress people when he recounted the story later. “Sir, it appears that a certain person who is responsible for the development of onsio, an alternative to the drug sio, has been spreading it about as a prelude to his plan to murder a large number of people. The strange behavior of these monsters is likely related to onsio. Our own behavior is understandable when one knows that man has set Koshat Dreivis aflame.”
“Sio! Sio, you say!” The Dvanjchtliv's face and attitude reddened to match his hair and kept going afterward. “We have enough of that as it is, had we none at all. Where is this villain?”
“Previously he was in the north part of the town surrounded by his incendiary henchmen. Almost certainly he has run off by now, for the advent of a Hail Mistress and Sleet Mistress have quite . . . Or perhaps not.”
Over the Dvanjchtliv's shoulder, Dirant saw a massive Tand running straight through any person and, eventually, monster in his way. Behind him raced Helsodenk Nifkleskir, who vaulted over and tumbled under the bodies Essar shoved. No other conspirator appeared.
The hardships they had, deserved ones, diminished as they approached the ship itself. The monsters closest to it, or rather her, or maybe it given its current situation, ignored them altogether. There was admiring still to be done. The criminals emulated monsters as they too often did, in this case by crawling under the hull to conceal themselves from the sight of the just.
The Dvanjchtliv saw the whole thing after being alerted to it by Dirant, who elaborated, “Sir, I believe that shorter man is the person in question, though what decided him to run southward is unknown to me. Ah, it is fear of those people there no doubt.”
From the north came, illuminated by countless lanterns, lights, and perhaps goodness itself, not just Poiskops and Keiminops with all their Bodan-Tin guards, relatives, employees, and sycophants along with Chisops Dogai-Brein, Takki, Onerid, Ibir, and even Stansolt Gaomat, but also a contingent of Dvanjchtlivs in their natural habitat astride horses. That tribe could hardly help but look heroic in that position, and all the more when the modern hero Prince Ozovramblidaj of Noiswawau led.