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In the end, the escort party delivered Yu to the guild — if one could stretch the definition of “delivered” to include a half-starved, three-quarters-frozen wretch who had suffered through days of misery, and “safely” to mean merely alive.
From the outset, fear and exhaustion were Yu’s constant companions. Beneath T̰́̇ͦ̀è̸̷̸̬̤̗̊_̸̵̰̦̗̒͜ȟ̗̍ͤa̶͉͉͍̭̰̅̀̈͜ͅȓ̶̶̛̦͇͙̟̈̿͒ͮ͑̋̚͡u̟͖͔̖̙͙͆̄̿ͩͧ̃̽̓̈̌̀͟͞n’s black nights, terror clung to him like a second set of feathering. He had known darkness before, of course, but not like this. The shadowed halls of Tria’s estate held a comforting stillness, their gloom broken by familiar outlines and the quiet promise of shelter. There was a vast difference between sleeping through T̰́̇ͦ̀è̸̷̸̬̤̗̊_̸̵̰̦̗̒͜ȟ̗̍ͤa̶͉͉͍̭̰̅̀̈͜ͅȓ̶̶̛̦͇͙̟̈̿͒ͮ͑̋̚͡u̟͖͔̖̙͙͆̄̿ͩͧ̃̽̓̈̌̀͟͞n in the comfort of his own bed and enduring the Witching Hour in the domain of the most powerful coven of witches. In the Albweiss Mountains, the darkness was a void filled with howling storms that erased any semblance of safety. Under T̰́̇ͦ̀è̸̷̸̬̤̗̊_̸̵̰̦̗̒͜ȟ̗̍ͤa̶͉͉͍̭̰̅̀̈͜ͅȓ̶̶̛̦͇͙̟̈̿͒ͮ͑̋̚͡u̟͖͔̖̙͙͆̄̿ͩͧ̃̽̓̈̌̀͟͞n, seconds became hours as each crack of a loose rock, each whisper of wind, seemed to promise death. Hunger hollowed him, sleeplessness frayed his thoughts, and the cold … the cold was a parasite. It had crept into Yu’s very marrow, making a home of his suffering, wrapping his lungs in ice with every agonising breath. His clothing, apart from the cloak that Harrow had given him, was sodden, frayed, and utterly useless against the biting winds. His feathers, too, could not keep the sheer masses of wet at bay.
By the second week, Yu could no longer keep track of the guttural cries of the seen and unseen beasts that echoed through the jagged peaks. They came too often and far too close. Harrow’s answering howls were no less unnerving, feral and unhinged, as though she relished every chance to challenge the wilderness. There had been several attacks; ravenous and relentless beasts driven by a hunger that mirrored Yu’s own. Whatever mush they gave him at the end of the day, there was never a moment where he was not starving.
By the third week, Yu’s existence had narrowed to silent endurance, his mind dull with fatigue yet crackling with the static of fear. The indistinct paths claimed his footing time and again, each near-miss dragging him closer to the edge where the madness of desperation dissolved into the cold clarity of indifference — the kind that comes when there is no lack for alternatives. Survival no longer felt like a conscious act; it was merely momentum, a grim inertia that carried him forward because there was simply no choice but to keep going.
In the fourth week, they. Fought. Orks. There were five of them, hunched around a wapa wedged deep in a rocky crevice, its mottled hide torn and slick with blood. Whether the beasts sought to drag it free or simply lingered to watch it die, Yu could not tell. What he did know was that neither the orks nor the travellers had expected the other. The moment Harrow spotted them across the fog-choked pass, the battle began.
Yu had never seen orks before. He had heard the tales, of course — boasts from mercenaries over cheap ale, macabre sketches etched into weathered books, and the shrivelled, mummified head displayed as a grim trophy in the Barnstream Harbour Guild. None of it prepared him for the sheer presence of them. The orks were immense, their hulking forms cloaked in patched leather and rough wapa furs that barely concealed the rippling, brutal muscle beneath. Their skin was muted, as if the colour had been drained by the frozen peaks they called home; pallid blues, ashen whites, and the earthen browns of dead soil.
The moment Yu spotted them, he froze. From one instance to the next, he was paralysed by raw, primal terror. To know of orks was one thing, to face them was another entirely.
He had dealt with bormen before — brutish giants capable of shattering a fina skull with one blow. Yet, for all their violence, bormen were familiar. In settlements, they could be tempered by grudging civility, their brutish nature held in check by the need to coexist. Orks, in contrast, were the stuff of nightmares, tales of unrestrained brutality: slaughter without reason, torture and disfigurement purely for its own sake, rape of the old and young, and other atrocities that defied comprehension. It was said they spared no one, not women, not children, and consumed the flesh of those they killed.
As Yu stared at the orks now, they looked every bit the monsters the stories claimed. Three of them were hulking brutes, their corded muscles straining beneath their rough-hewn garments, while the other two were taller and wiry, their sinewy frames exuding a precision and agility no less deadly. They radiated a primal savagery that went beyond physicality, as though violence itself was etched into their nature.
Yu had no idea how his party survived.
The fight was chaos, its brutality amplified by the hailstorm that turned the clash into a battle against both the orks and the elements. Yu spent the battle cowering in a hollow of stone. Imbiad, the Worldbender of their group – not the other wizard traveller – had conjured the barrier, sealing Yu between the cliff face and a wall of hastily shaped rock. The barricade held, shielding him from the fray and muffling the sounds of the slaughter beyond. Within the dim, stifling confines, Yu clutched the discarded supplies. His talons scraped jagged grooves into the rock as he trembled, his breaths shallow and ragged.
The echoes from outside pierced the barrier: the wet thunk of blades rending flesh, the furious roars of the orks clashing with Harrow’s guttural howls of defiance. Through the cracks in his rocky prison, Yu caught fleeting glimpses of the carnage. There was steel glinting in the stormlight, limbs twisting in impossible angles, bodies hurled through the blinding snow. Each image seared into his mind, visceral and raw.
When the stone wall finally lowered, Yu hesitated, his feet rooted in fear. The sight before him was horrendous. The orks lay strewn across the pass like ripped puppets, their immense forms twisted and torn into grotesque shapes. Some had been crushed beneath enormous slabs of conjured rock, their bones splintering through flesh. Others were torn apart, their bodies bearing deep gashes from fangs and blades alike. Severed heads dotted the blood-soaked snow, their features locked in expressions of rage, pain, and disbelief. Their lifeless eyes stared blankly into the storm-ravaged sky, as if the violence of their end lingered still. It was only when Yu’s gaze settled, when his trembling legs carried him closer to the wreckage, that he noticed that the bodies were female.
The dynamics within the group shifted profoundly after the fight. Fallem, the Worldbender shapeshifter who had fought like an unleashed beast, literally, earned a level of respect that bordered on reverence. It was only then that Yu learned the truth about Fallem’s journey. The wizard had not merely hired the escort to accompany him to the Albweiss Mountain Guild. His path stretched far beyond. Fallem sought to retrieve his brother, taken by the Shaira, and had contracted the party for the long haul.
The battle against the orks had forged a bond among the group that transcended the brittle camaraderie of such contracted purpose. Somehow, the bloodshed had erased layers of conventional formalities, binding them in a way that Yu could neither understand nor share. That evening, as they feasted on wapa flesh roasted over crackling flames, Yu felt more like an intruder than ever. As the party helped each other with their injuries, they exchanged glances and murmurs laden with unspoken understanding, gestures Yu could only observe from the periphery. He was an outsider, a random stray tributary of wasted water in a deeply woven river network — an observer, swept along in a story that was not his own.
As the night deepened, Yu withdrew further into himself. He watched them and studied the ebb and flow of their new dynamic with a dispassionate curiosity. Eventually, he saw it. Their behaviour after the ork attack reminded him, strangely, of the humans in Tria’s habitat.
-
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
At one point, Tria’s humans had fractured into three factions, carving the settlement into hostile territories. If Tria intervened in their affairs, she generally did so without ever revealing herself. She had explained to Yu once that every director handled their humans differently, each imposing their own rules and methods. There were restrictions, of course. You could not punish the humans to the point of collapse, not repeatedly, or permit them to escape. Beyond that, you were free to use them to your liking and handle them as you pleased.
Some allowed the humans to live with a degree of autonomy, while others interfered heavily. Some directors, like Tria, granted their humans a productive purpose. Her fishing communities, for instance, sustained her domain with a grim efficiency. Others used them in less self-fulfilling ways. Wizards, Tria said, were particularly notorious for experimenting with their humans. They sought ways to suppress or recondition humanity’s destructive nature, bending it to their will. Some, for example, employed Lightshifters to weave illusions; entire pantheons of false gods and horrifying phantoms, conjured to distort reality and thus fracture, restructure and control the human mind.
“You have the most control when no one recognises your wing in it,” Tria had said.
So when the humans’ quarrels began to disrupt their productivity, she did not intervene directly. She neither divided them nor implemented regulations to resolve their disputes fairly. Instead, she hired four bormen and that wizard paigen-hunter from up north to venture into the mountains and capture two funners. They came back with three. Tria released all of them into the habitat. The creatures wreaked havoc, their brutal attacks indiscriminate. They slaughtered adults and children alike. The devastation forced the human fractions to unite, their anger and fear redirected toward the creatures instead of each other. The losses were catastrophic, yet by the year’s end, the survivors had become more productive and docile than in any of the preceding months.
“They need a release,” Tria had explained to Yu, her voice clinical and distant. “A common enemy to bind them, to channel their brutish impulses. The greater the losses they suffer, the more grateful they become for what remains. Pain has a way of making the intolerable seem preferable. It will make their previous living conditions and struggles, harsh as they may have been, seem safe and even desirable by comparison.”
Yu had listened in silence as she expanded on her philosophy. Humans, she believed, were creatures incapable of thriving in idleness. They required constant threat — a persistent edge of danger to tether their chaos, be it an actual physical threat or an imagined one.
“It must not overwhelm them,” Tria had continued, her gaze faraway. “But it must linger, just at the periphery of their awareness. There, where perception blurs with fear, where the mind merges imagination and undeniable truth into one. That fear will drive them. Keep it alive, and they will produce, they will obey, they will survive …”
In core, humans were primitive beasts dressed in the guise of people. They mimicked tairan behaviours and, on occasion, even appeared sensible. Almost reasonable. But those fleeting moments of imitation had been the downfall of many tairan settlements before the Human Restrict Act. Tria’s pragmatism, cold as it was, had preserved her habitat from such ruin.
Yu knew all this. Well, it was more that he had no opinion on such things, and Tria had strong opinions on everything. Thus, with many things, he just took and very much internalised whatever perspective she gave him. Except for her opinions on him, of course. She was always dead wrong on him. With the humans, though, he had seen the effectiveness of her methods and had accepted their logic.
Yet, as Yu watched Fallem and the escorting party that night, he could not help but draw comparisons between Tria’s humans and these companions of disparate races, who had so suddenly and readily bonded over shared peril and victorious bloodshed. They tore into the wapa’s flesh with the exuberance of champions, their delight and camaraderie swelling with what Yu could only describe as delusional satisfaction. One might think they had stormed the Albweiss itself and slaughtered every last Shaira that walked the earth.
And the very reason that Yu felt so profoundly excluded, not that he minded, at all, but still, was not just that they had so disturbingly bonded through their struggle like a tribe of dumb humans, and again, he did not mind that at all — it was because Yu had been excluded from the fight entirely.
-
“So you want to search for him within the mountain?” Yu asked Fallem that night as they worked on his tent together. Yu had never heard of anyone attempting such a thing. As far as he knew, a wizard taken by the Shaira was a wizard lost to the world.
“Yes.”
The tent was a flat construction, hardly more than an extension of his sleeping sack. Yu held one corner pole steady with his arms while pulling the fabric taut with one claw. Meanwhile, Fallem busied himself with the hooks, ropes, and all the other whatnots Yu had neither the patience nor the skill to handle.
“Only … you nine?” Yu’s tone was flat. The sheer audacity – or perhaps the insanity – of the idea staggered him. Fallem was straight up delusional after winning against those orks.
The Shaira’s stronghold had loomed for decades, unyielding against orks, wizards, armies, and named fighters alike. Their numbers were unknown, but the reports agreed on this: they were many, and they were powerful. Witches, shadow-warpers, beings twisted by the mountains and the ancient magics that seeped through them. Was Fallem’s party far stronger than he had realised, or simply much, much stupider?
Fallem did not look up from his work, his fingers methodically tying off one rope after the other. “We’ll be ten.”
“Ten?” Yu repeated, the word dripping with scepticism. As if the number somehow made the plan less absurd.
“There’s one more person I intend to recruit,” Fallem explained, hammering hooks into place along the tent’s outer frame with quick, practiced motions. “Lorien Warshaper. I heard she’s currently residing at the guild.”
“Who’s that?”
“She’s —” Fallem paused, his head snapping up sharply, his gaze locking onto Yu with a mixture of incredulity and something bordering on offense. “Wait. What? You don’t know — How old are you?”
“What does that matter?” Yu snapped, his voice edged with irritation. He hated that question. It always came wrapped in the same thin veneer — condescension masquerading as curiosity, as if his age, or the lack of it, was an indictment of his worth. He knew exactly what the question implied: It was meant to say that he was not living up to some arbitrary expectation.
“It just seems odd,” Fallem continued, undeterred. “I never met anyone unfamiliar with Warshaper or her role in the Rivermine Heritage War.”
“Well, here I am,” Yu shot back. This was exactly why he hated engaging, why he loathed pretending to care. Why the fuck should he know every random person, just because others believed they mattered?
Politics. War. These things had never meant anything to Yu. Nothing beyond the estate walls ever had, really. How could you not get tired of all that fighting? Was there not always some war happening somewhere? The dwarves alone seemed to spark a new Heritage War every century. Really, just how many mountains and mines could they claim heritage to before the world ran out of places for them to be expelled from? After centuries upon centuries of getting their asses beaten by wizards, it was about time they gave it a rest. Sorry, not sorry.
-
Even in the deepening darkness foretelling the Witching Hour, Yu could feel Fallem’s gaze boring into him. He met it with defiance, as though sheer force of will might push the wizard’s scrutiny away. Whatever Fallem wanted to imply, Yu owed nothing to the world. Why should he be a wandering lexicon of everyone who one time or another shaped places he would never see and would never ever want to see?
Yu simply did not want to be bothered with shit like this. That was supposed to be the whole damn point of the Barnstream settlements: find a shitty place in the shittiest part of the shittiest country and accept all its shitty living conditions. If you lived in the most unremarkably awful place, with conditions so abysmal they served as their own defence, no one would bother to fight you over it. The Barnstream settlements had been a haven for cowards, deserters, and peace-seekers too beaten down to ask for more. For decades, there had been no ambition beyond survival, no expectation of comfort. And yet, or rather, exactly because of that, it worked — or it had, once.
According to Tria, it had worked well, for all the time between the implementation of the Human Restrict Act until two decades ago, when the bormen had appeared. Because even loser peoples, when working together for generations, eventually turn a shitty place into a less shitty place.
“Give them generations,” she had said, “and even a cesspit becomes tolerable. And once that happens, the vermin come crawling in. Cadgers, opportunists, parasites.
First, the place makes the people. Then the people make the place. And eventually, you witness those arriving that want the place but not the people. That is when the inviting become the invaded.”
Something like that.
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