Slowly testing and repeating words I watched a group of three cloaked figures walk in. They passed a carved wooden emblem to Fe-La-Fo in exchange for some clinking coins, after which they went to the carved wall and found a listing they liked. Fe-La-Fo’s magic removed the carving from the wall, and the three made their way to the two tables. I hadn’t thought to look more closely at them earlier, but they’re not tables, not really, more like elevated maps, I wonder if everything is carved wood just because Fe-La-Fo has wood shaping magic, or if this is some kind of international norm, or maybe it’s because of all the forest?
The first table depicts the local area, the contours of the hills are carved into it up to twenty hills outward of the settlement. Apart from five villages and a city in the surrounding hills, Johnathon notes that father’s location is marked. Not for the first time today I’m grateful that the cloak hides the shock on my face. The three cloaked figures request a copy of a portion of the map be made for them before they depart, but now I’m too busy studying the maps to pay them any mind. Looking again I notice the symbol marking the dungeon is repeated another thirteen times throughout the surrounding hills. A bed with three sleeping skulls on it. I run my hand over one of them experimentally and jump in fright as Fe-La-Fo speaks up from behind me. “Oh, those, I wouldn’t worry too much, just avoid them where you can, ya know?”
“Avoid them?” I ask with some confusion. “What are they?”
“Well, they’re suspected monster dens I suppose. Generally mages find them but sometimes it’s wandering hunters. Something happens which draws attention and makes folks worry, but then time passes and nobody gets attacked or dies mysteriously so we mostly leave them be. We’ve got more than enough threats and trouble out here without trying to pick a fight with everything we see. This one for example” he says, tapping one to the north of the village. A hunter spotted a bicorn ridden by an old toad person of some kind setting skulls onto posts around a cave. Mostly animal skulls, but a few human too. Whatever he is nobody’s heard much of him since, so we tell people to avoid the area. Doubtless some come near it every so often since people will always want a shorter path, so we’ll probably hear when the skulls are gone, but for now it’s easier to ignore him. On the other hand we have ones like this one.” He taps father’s location. “There was a surge of death manna here about a decade back, but no movement since. We reckon it’s some kind of monster that relies on attributed manna to lure prey, like a devourer dragon, or perhaps something like a deathbearer troll’s den and that was the spawning cycle.”
“Attributed manna? Devourer dragon?” I ask, perplexed.
“Ah, right, you’re not a mage. Attributed manna is like manna that’s attuned to some attribute, like water manna or fire manna, it’s allot rarer than unattributed manna and has various specialized uses. Some seek it out since it’s said that if you breath in enough attributed manna it will change and empower you, others seek to use it in niche rituals with specific effects. Take the deathbearer troll for example, it’s just a troll that got changed by death attuned manna, it makes them stronger and somehow even harder to kill, nasty business. It’s said that they can produce small amounts of death attribute manna and release it in a bust when they’re near death or mating, but with as much as was present it would need to be an unusually strong troll. Devourer dragons on the other hand are wyrms that sleep beneath the earth who sleep for hundreds or even thousands of years, only raising their heads to breath out some attributed manna to lure the local forest life directly into their mouths. I suppose it’s similar enough to a dungeon that they just run headfirst into its stomach. Then they sleep and digest. Probably the most common kind of dragon, but the least dangerous so log as you’re not an idiot.”
I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help but ask “If devourer dragons imitate dungeons, why is this more like a devourer dragon than a dungeon?”
Fe-La-Fo however just laughs, as if he half expected that question. "Well, there’s a few reasons for that. The main one however is that it just doesn’t act like a dungeon. A devourer dragon will imitate a dungeon when it’s hungry, but a dungeon will continue to attract monsters all the time, and release regular hoards of hungry monsters to terrorize the locality.” He raises his hand as if to forestall questions. This is in reference to dungeon as a technical term. Among the cloaks you can often hear people referring to anything that can be termed as a murder pit or death box or the like and everyone will know they mean a dungeon, but they might mean a fortified tomb, a literal trap remaining from some forgotten war, or a fortified stronghold held by some subterranean race nobody knows. When a mage refers to a dungeon they refer to a dungeon core, a crystal that endlessly releases attributed manna. Most dungeons are bound and controlled by mages, and are a common element incorporated into tower design. While rare it’s possible for dungeons to grow on their own, but without exception they’re plagued by madness and will grow and slaughter everything around them. With a tower this attributed manna is harvested and controlled, but enough would be released in experiments that we can rule this out too, so it’s probably just a monster lair.”
“What ya talking about?” A veritable bear of a man in the same black cloak asks, apparently more to announce his joining to the conversation than for anything else since he immediately answers his own question. “Dungeons ay?” Fe-La-Fo visibly deflates a bit and starts walking back towards his counter, but the big man ignores him. “You know, it was only twenty some odd years ago when it happened.”
He lets the smug silence hang in the air until I can’t help but ask “When what happened?” That seemed to be the right answer since the man stands a little taller while Fe-La-Fo facepalms.
“Why the great battle of flames of course! Ma-Kh was one of Ra-Lo’s boys, the best of them if rumor's to be believed, but I doubt it considering what came next. Well anyways, kid’s got his own tower and has the dungeon of embers, they were looking to make one of those fancy mage summoning station thingies with it to create more secure boarder stations, further out, you know by the sands. Anyways, whole thing goes upside down. Before you know it Ma-Kh is fighting us to the death, saying he’s going to take over and rule, and Ra-Lo’s blindsided by all this, but in that tired old mage kind of way where he’s just muttering laments angrily to himself. Anyways, there I was with me ax, the sky’s full of fire just raining down everywhere like some kinda freak weather, and I’m fighting this giant tiger, except the tiger is made of fire, and I swing hard and chop it’s head off! You wouldn’t believe it right? I certainly didn’t believe it at the time, I said to myself, I said, if the tiger is made of fire, how do you cut it? How can its head come off like that, but I did it you know?” The man seems genuinely mystified and enthralled by his own story. Getting pumped up about the retelling he begins making bigger movements, and I step back so he won't hit me by mistake, but he pays no mind and continues telling a story he’s likely told a hundred times.
“So there I go with my boys, charging through the army of fire people with their fire tigers and their fire snakes who are all trying to impose some kind of martial law, and Ra-Lo’s hanging back doing something boring, so we charge in alone into this giant cave, hot as hell with fire people everywhere, but they’re falling like sissies you know, but old Ma-Kh hadn’t left it at that, he’d put all sorts of magical rune doohickeys all over the walls which made streams of fire shoot out, they shoot out like fwoo fwoo left and right! Well, you know me and the boys ain’t having none of that, so we go running through all the hallways, hacking any flame person or magical scribble we can get, aw man, that was a wild day, you know! Well we hit a few dead ends, but pretty soon we were in this big room full of scribbles where Ma-Kh stood in front of one of those weird glass magic doohickeys, you know, the dungeon thing. Anyways, so Ma-Kh is raving mad now, he starts screaming at us about all sorts of pointless things, but also just saying ‘you did not do that bro, bro, you did not just do that!’, and I was there with my best smile, and I dust the ash off my ax and say ‘you fucking bet I just did!’ So we all know that this room is trapped with all sorts of magicey scribbles and nonsense and there’s probably a hundred deaths waiting for us in there, and my boys and me, we say to ourselves, we say there’s no way we’re going in there. I mean we would if we had to, but we’d lost enough that night, so I raise my ax, and I say it again, I say ‘you fucking bet I did!’ and I throw my ax as hard as I can, and everything’s on fire, the air is even on fire, but my ax she flew true and caught Ma-Kh right in the face, well the face and the chest both really! Ha-ha-ah!” I try to interrupt, but the man just talks right over me as if he doesn’t even notice.
“Then of course the whole place starts shaking! Turns out when I hit him Ma-Kh he went flying back real hard and smashed the dungeon doohickey into the wall, and when one of those goes the whole place goes, so there we all with a whole mountain overhead, and we’re all starting to freak the fuck out, you know? I mean most of us hadn’t even known that would happen, but there we were and so we all got together, and we were cutting rocks, and some of the guys were screaming and shouting. Some of them were moving rocks with their shouts, others were just being literal badasses, you know how it is in a fight; so anyways there we go and we decide, you know what? Lets just attack this mountain, I mean what's a giant rock before our brotherly bonds and mighty fury and all that. Well you know how it is when you’re all caught up in the moment, so we try a few hits and it’s only making it come down faster and faster on us, so then we all form up and attack it together in one of those formation we’d tried training in once. Well anyways, we start out slow but start gaining speed, and we’re here chopping at rocks as fast as we’re climbing over them, and all this stuff’s falling behind us, but when we got free you would not believe it! Whole sky is orange and red, the trees are like rows of torches, and we’re there covered in sweat grinning like fools amazed we even got out of there. So we’re all breathing heavy and look like someone just beat us up, all bruises and cuts and ash everywhere, and Ka-Ha-Fa’s the first, he’s panting his ass off and says ‘Want-do you.’ and he’s struggling here, but he takes a breath and says ‘Lets drink.’, damn lad sayin it like it is you know? Well turns out the bar was closed on account of the burning sky and all that, but barkeep’s good folks, so we help him toss some water on it and he grabs us some drinks and no we got a story that everyone and their mother’s wishing they were a part of ya know? HA-ha-ha!”
“Wow, that’s” I didn’t really know what to say but I could tell he was looking at me expecting me to say something, so I lamely finished “just wow.”
“I know, right kid! Damn, that story’s got me all pumped up, now I gotta go kill something!” With all the excitement of a child he reads off six of the hunting tasks, which Fe-La-Fo erases from the board, before calling out “I gotta gather the boys!” but when he reached the door there was a teen dressed in gold threaded velvet standing in his way. Without much care the big man touched the kid’s shoulder, pushing him to the side. The teen tried firming his stance and leaning against the shove in order to keep his ground, but it did nothing as his shoes scraped against the floorboards kicking up wisps of dust behind him.
Angrily the teen tried to get his attention “Hey!”
“You think you’re hot shit?” the big man asked mirthfully.
“Well, um, yeah.” The teen replied with pride.
“Hot vaporous shit that escapes with all the splatter of diarrhea and all the vaporous potency of a rich fart, leaving the bowl filled with splattered flecks of shit so spicy that few have the stomach to bear it? Shit so hot that even flies won’t touch it because the peppers serve as repellent? Shit so slick you can’t even scrape it clean after it’s dropped?” The big man asked with feigned curiosity.
“No, um, I don’t think I want to be that.” the teen admitted
“Damned straight you don’t, now get out of here before you make me lose my appetite.”
Bunching his face up in indignation the teen angrily asked “Do you know who my father is?”
The big man, still in a good mood and seemingly amused feigned shock and asked “Your mother didn’t tell you?” Than with false seriousness he continues. “Okay, I admit it, it’s me, I’m your daddy, now how about you go get daddy a beer, daddy’s pretty thirsty.”
“You! You are not my father!” The teen indignantly sputters, but that only seems to spur the big man on.
“Alright, alright, you caught me kid!” Placing a hand on the teen’s head he ruffles his hair back and forth causing the teen to lean back and forth and spin in place. “I’m sorry, truth is yer just a nameless bastard, one who’s just lost a chance to drink with the greats, but don’t worry too much, I got some hunting to do anyways.” With that, he walked out, ignoring the cascade of insults that followed him from the guildhall.
The teen punctuates his insults with a loud declaration “...and I am not a kid!” as he storms out.
“So what was that?” I ask Fe-La-Fo, who looked nunplussed and content to have no part of it.
“Probably another noble from the empire sent to stir conflict. Can’t say if he lucked out or was unfortunate to run into Ha-Na-Na. It’ll certainly give him something to complain about, but it’ll be rotten luck for him if he picks a fight. Ha-Na-Na’s probably the strongest in Freehaven.”
“You mean Ra-Lo isn’t stronger?” I ask, curious. Father always assumed mages would be the strongest, something about poor game balance and the endless versatility of magic. “Can’t magic do anything?”
“I mean, yes, kind of. Magic is vary convenient and lets you do most things as long as you have enough, but, well, there’s more to strength than being able to do more things. You see, you can gain levels as a mage as long as you have money to buy more manna to train with. That’s why most mages are nobles, they can afford the costs and climb to great heights of power. Physical combatants however have a much higher chance of dying as they climb to power, and tend to be the most truly powerful combatants at the end. That’s why while it’s easy to turn your nose up at Ha-Na-Na, nobody wants to fight him, not really. Likewise most powerful fighters end up sending their kids off to be mages after they retire for an easy life as nobility or as a safe way to give them enough power to safeguard their futures. Guys like him, they don’t look at the ground like the rest of us, they look to the skies. It’s said that when a dungeon’s core get powerful enough it breaks free of the ground and raises into the skies to find worthy prey. There’s a whole army of muscle heads out there who run around sailing from one to the next looking for a challenge. Some will keep a guardian out front and when there isn’t one people will hang around to fight each other, others are halls of slaughter, but if you get one of those cores up there you can really be someone, so brave fools go en mass. Ha-Na-Na’s group is similar, wild game hunters, they trounce through the woods hunting anything big and aggressive enough to pose a threat to the villages of Freehaven, he’s the main reason we can all even survive out here.”
The rest of the day wasn’t half as eventful with perhaps ten groups passing through, mostly taking busywork tasks. I got a chance to study the other map, from what Fe-La-Fo said it sounds like this is the whole world or at least as much of it as he knows of. At the center is a giant ocean, about two hundred square kilometers as far as I can figure, with a vaguely diamond shape, slightly elongated like a cross. Around it are fetal plains, and out along the edge of the map without err is wasteland, tundra, desert, sometimes even just barren stone peaks. The Empire on this map just looks like one small nation among many, but by comparison Freehaven is just a little dot. The sand people don’t seem to be marked on the map and when I ask, Fe-La-Fo informs me that they’re not really a unified peoples so much as a catchall name for families and tribes living in he wilderness out there.
I feel like I’m getting the hand of the language. I’m still butchering words and misspeaking, but it’s enough that with gestures people can piece together what I’m saying, with no reason to further delay I decide to try my farming job. Looking outside I note the sun has set, so Fe-La-Fo allows me to pour over the maps while he naps at the counter.
Okay, now there is no reason. I walk out through the early morning sun beams with the breeze plucking at my cloak to find Ha-Fa-Ma-Ka-Yo, the farmer. His field is easy enough to locate, another long strip of cropland, far to the edge of the village. To the one side of it a humble tool shed, to the other a cozy looking house, but when I knocked at the house I was embarrassingly informed that he lived in the shack instead. When I knocked on the shack however a voice called out from one of the trees along the side of the field. “What do you want?”
“I’ve come to work!” I reply enthusiastically, father always said employers like when you feign enthusiasm.
An annoyed old man with thin withered limbs and an ill kept splattering of gray beard hairs on his face eyes me with beady eyes before snorting. “Do you see that big light in the sky? That means you’re late! It’s your first day so I won’t dock your pay, but you should know I don’t take slackers here. You look cheerful, why do you look happy? You probably think you can do some farming for old Ha-Fa-Ma-Ka-Yo and get rich, that you can buy some magics and learn to be a mage, live a rich and noble life right? Right? Well forget it! Those are just false hopes those rich bastards sell you to get you working for them. Do you know what a mage is? What a real mage is? A real mage is a rich greedy prick who drinks in his parents money and doesn’t even fart for anyone unless he wants to! You know what a mage is without money? You want to see how far you can go?”
“Well I don’t” I begin to say, but he cuts me off like a man who wants to drive a point home.
“I’ll show you how far you can get, you can get to be like me with a run down hut in the middle of godsforsaken nowhere with allot of work to do and no coins to pay anyone to do it! You hear me kid, you can play around in your long black robe with your mysterious mysterious friends and pick each others noses for all I care on your own time, but if you come to my house to take my coin, you better work hard and earn it, I won’t have any goofing around or slacking off, do I make myself clear?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good, then follow me.” The old man, for all his apparent bitterness about the past was serious about his work and carefully showed me how to identify weeds, remove them from the root, and how to harvest some young sprouting onions. He showed that these seeds get planted every other one with those seeds, by the end of the day he seemed begrudgingly satisfied with my tireless pace. “If only there were a thousand more like you we might be able to make something good of this blasted settlement, but these knuckleheads only think of punching each others brains out or drinking each others brains out. Nobody’s got the spirit for real work, you know? Well I’ll tell you what, if you have any friends who you think can do it I’ll give them a try same as you, but don’t get lazy now, we’ve got work to do!”
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I learned allot slowly working with the old man. Over the following month my speech grew more refined to the point where I was able to ask why he has trees growing over his fields. “Well, you only get about sixty percent the yield if you grow them under tree cover, but without tree cover you attract some kind of predatory bird in these parts, it’ll scoop a man right off his feet into the air and eat him for breakfast. That’s not even the worst of it, you know the world is ending here.”
“The world is ending?”
“Our world, Freehaven, its days are numbered. By the way, you sure you wanna be wearing that heavy robe all day? I mean you can but most boys take it off by now with the work keeping you warm as it does.”
I ignore the comments about the robe as ever I do, I hope to bring my siblings over in the future, and it’d do them well for me to establish it as a norm for us as an excuse not to show bare bones. It sounds like people would be open to accepting friendly undeads, but it also sounds like there’s none nearby so it would probably keep them off balance at the least, and having a bunch of skeletons take all the best jobs would probably foster the wrong kind of sentiments about it. Better to start with hard work that nobody wants to do. ”Freehaven’s days are numbered?” I ask instead.
“Yeah, you see that?” He asks, pointing through the trees towards the giant spider egg I’d seen many days past.
“The giant egg?”
“Ha. Yeah we could wish that were just an egg, people would like that, no that’s a giant centipede made of clouds and morning mist. People call it the cloud caterpillar, say it might still be growing, but whatever it is it’s heading this way. That’s why it looks round, since you only see the head and some legs. Giant monster big enough to eat real cities with real walls, let alone whatever we’ve got.”
“If it’s such a threat, what can we do about it? Why are we just chatting calmly about it?” I ask, perplexed.
Ha-Fa-Ma-Ka-Yo pauses, working quietly for a span before he replies. “Yeah, not much to be done about it. Doubtful we could kill it even with Ha-Na-Na and Ra-Lo, we’ll probably have to move, flee to some other corner of the world, but there’s no rush, it’s a slow moving apocalypse, it’s still several decades out. I may not still be living when it reaches us.”
I marveled at that, that I live in a world where slow moving monsters can lay waste to everything in their path, and where the world is big enough for cities to resettle out of their way and just give up that land. I can’t say I have a good grasp of populations here, it sounds like each of the five villages of Freehaven have about two hundred people each with another thousand in the city which looks more like a town with a single five story tower in the center, and each had their own valley.
The guild charges one silver per additional cloak, a subsidized price since Ha-Na-Na doesn’t believe there can ever be enough members. That would be almost two weeks of farm work, but if there were a dozen of us it’d only take a day to make that much, so I empty our purse getting cloaks for my siblings. We swiftly found the other constraint, the soul tethers. While there was enough for a few of us to make it, into town, father simply didn’t have enough manna for us all to go. That problem solved itself in time, but meant that we had to take turns going out to experience the village life. Oddly it seems not all my siblings were willing to accept farm work. Vance led many of them in opting to learn to make bone coins and began buying bones to work into coins at father’s side. I admit, I could see the appeal. One was even enterprising enough that he apprenticed himself to the local blacksmith, hoping to set up a forge in our home in time. No, what worried me was Brice.
Brice is my youngest brother, he was the first to return from death from a soul tether, and as such he was more impressionable. When he met Ha-Na-Na, he immediately took the man as his personal hero and joined his hunting party. After joining the hunting party Brice has died over ten times, but is growing faster than any of us. His level is set to soon reach my own, but it’s all power, it has none of the measured knowledge I’ve made sure to instill in the others. Brice is a reckless and naive, perhaps even violent, shaped by many bloody hunts.
If that was all I might not be concerned, but the others are being influenced by him, they see an easy path to rapid advancement, and before I knew it they began going on hunts, ten or twenty at a time, with Brice guiding them in the ways of reckless abandonment and suicidal death charges. I tried cautioning father of his recklessness, but father seems content to let him be. He says sometimes a man needs to grow into his own in his own way, and that overall the boy’s recklessness is not a bad thing for us. My heart stopped beating in my chest one day when I saw him take his hood off with Ha-Na-Na, fearing the imminent massacre, but Ha-Na-Na just slapped him on the back and laughed. Perhaps father is right after all, since it did work out well for us. It’s not how I would have introduced our undying nature, but Brice had long told me that going my way we’d never have revealed it, even though I had given him an estimated timetable. I suppose it’s just the spontaneity of it that gets under my skin, it makes it impossible for me to plan when any day he can upend any plans I made.
Perhaps I’m being narrow minded. Am I insecure; is this about levels? No, I don’t think it is, even with the same levels we’ve specialized in different directions, I have studied management, logistics, academia, whereas he’s studied how best to club an animal in the skull with his sword. He’s evolved into a skeletal warrior, which mostly just increased his coordination and proficiency with various weapons, but also brought his physique up to be more in line with a human's. That's not to say the skeletons were born weaker than a human per say, but their strength was more in line with a sickly malnourished human's. Ha-Na-Na says he’s a promising youth even though he’s still at junior huntsman rank in that friend group. The hunters aren’t quite the same as the mysterious cloaks, they’re a sort of subgroup, perhaps more like drinking buddies or a group of friends than an official organization, so their ranks are less rigid than in a true organization, but they say it vaguely matches with an assessment of combat strength.
Brice complains with a smile on his fleshless jaw that leveling up is so much easier than actual combat drills, but it sounds like he’s expected to improve in both individually, and only through the application of the former through the latter can one truly be strong. I can tell he’s loving it, he has friends, living friends who lament alongside him that he cannot truly get drunk. Friends with whom he’d rather spend his days than with us, his family. I’m torn, it feels wrong somehow, but father insists that that’s normal, not everyone is the same, and it would be a terribly boring world were we to be. He says I should give him more room to grow. Father is superstitious, thinking he’d build up too many big bad evil guy or religious nut vibes as an autocratic master of all he can see, I can’t help but wonder if that’s why he lets Brice run so free.
Vance for his part sees nothing wrong with the way things are going. I worry that I’m going out more too. I find myself staring into the darkened canopy wondering these thoughts as Ha-Fa-Ma-Ka-Yo explains companion planting to me, how some plants excel at warding off pests that would devour others or how some will facilitate better nutrient collection for others allowing mutual benefit and growth. Are we companion plants, so vastly different, but better for the differences? Is this better for us, letting us grow and develop so differently so that we can help each other where we’re weak? Wouldn’t they need to cooperate for that more? Aren’t I best at long term planning, or does that come at the expense of the short term? Father always said that’s the disadvantage of autocracies. They’re too top heavy and people make better decisions for themselves when they are allowed the freedom to do so. Nevertheless our fates are tethered and tied together. If any of us fail and father dies we will all be mortal, like the connected limbs of one giant being all acting individually and moving against each other. Would coordination be better? Perhaps, it would allow more efficient action towards any given plan, but that plan would perhaps be worse.
Ha-Fa-Ma-Ka-Yo taught me about crop rotation, a premise that father only knew in vague terms. As it happens the notion is to plant species with different anatomy after each other. For example a field used for onions might later be used for beans than leafy greens, than hot peppers and fruits, with each so different from the last that the waste products and diseases cannot harm them. Ha-Fa-Ma-Ka-Yo says this same principle applies to animals. A field that is used to graze cows who eat lush grasses can then be used to graze goats who will prefer tangled weeds, and lastly by chickens who prefer to eat the bugs that gather to digest the former’s droppings, spreading them through the soil as they hunt to better fertilize the grasses. The diseases specific to each species rarely effect the others and as they poop as they walk around eating. Locking them in a single enclosure will cause some small increase in the likelihood of disease while having them eat that which has already been picked through and through which muddied hoof has already passed through. Perhaps this is a more apt decryption of how we interact, each individually doing our own things, cleaning up after each other’s failings, gathering as many opportunities between us as we can as we pass.
I certainly hope so.
Father has asked me to make contact with one last group. The cultists.
The story goes like this. Father had given Vance some busy work to practice with One and Two. Vance was collecting bugs in a bucket with them. This would give him practice coordinating their fine mortar movements while collecting living beings who can be digested via death attributed manna to generate unattributed manna without carving out a whole mountain. It’s astounding how much matter it would take to feed his exponentially increasing appetite. After a week of collecting bugs Vance comes back with a full barrel of writhing maggots instead of a bucket of worms. I frown slightly but we both wait to hear him out. Just in case I place the barrel outside father’s field.
So apparently it went something like this. While Vance was collecting his bugs with number one and number two, he was approached by suspiciously culty looking figures, and lo and behold they were our friendly neighborhood tribal choir! Who would have guessed it?
Well, at first there was a communication problem on account of Vance having no tongue or lungs. They asked Vance what he was doing and he gestured to say he was collecting bugs. They asked about his skeletal minions and he said disposable. The psychopathic cultists then, without the slightest hesitation, murdered number one and number two in cold blood right in front of poor Vance, but they did promise they’d get him some bugs in return. Now what kind of cult stocks an entire barrel of pale white wriggling maggots? Possibly this one, it’s hard to say that they didn’t gather them somehow, but they were sure able to get them pretty quickly, or at least the same night.
Father instructed Vance to recollect the bones of number one and number two, it’s not good to waste useful resources. It also sounds like our isolationist policy of foreign non-intervention with our closer neightbors may soon be at it’s end. So father asked that I go out and meet these psychos.
“Oh, and Johnathon, please please please, you have to find out what kind of system of governance organizational structure and distribution of benefits the cult uses. This is vary vary important, it’s been ages and ages since I’ve had any pointless arguments with strangers over irrelevant minutia and I need this Johnathon, I need to hear the stupid thoughtlessly inane beliefs of others so that I can complain about them and criticize their inefficiencies. Look, we can’t afford a conflict or anything, but if anyone there has such a hobby of verbal jousting can you ask if they’d be open to a long term back and forth such as occurs between pen pals? I mean if we’re opening communications with them we really should do this for their own sakes, right? RIGHT? Dead rodents below, it’s been YEARS.”
“Master, are you sure?” I ask my father unwillingly one last time. “They’re a cult, there’s an incredibly high likelihood that they are an autocracy with pseudo-religious symbolism and a strong attachment to physical pleasures and novelties playing off tribal urges and leading to a zealous devotion to nothing of particular import whilst allowing their leader to throw their weight around about petty things. You always get depressed thinking about autocratic rulership, I’m not sure this is a healthy path for you to be going down.”
Of course he still wants to know, sometimes I wonder which of us is really the child, but I’ve seen how much he sacrifices for us and how hard he tries to keep us safe, so I find it hard to deny him this one whimsy. Particularly when he’s explicitly agreed that we don’t need to unduly stir tensions over this minor albeit frivolous entertainment.
Quietly I stand as Vance carefully retrieves all the various component bones which would together serve to constitute number one and number two again, alas for the moment such revival is still dependent on the doting help of master, but perhaps in time Vance will grow, unshackled by his limitations, and will truly bring the prosperity and benefit he always dreamed of to this world. Our dependency on our father is but one of the many concerns he faces, but standing there, the bones of his creations lovingly held in his arms, pure and loving dreams filling his hollow eyes, I truly do believe in him. If there is one thing father has taught me in my earliest years, back when he devoted himself fully to parentage without worry or concern, it is that the human spirit, the will and dedication to strive towards our desires, is perhaps the strongest force imaginable in this cruel yet peaceful unlife.
It seems we have caught the attention of the cult. There is no sudden movement or shout, but notes fall slightly offbeat, chanted sorrows carry a hint of distraction, and like a ripple, heads begin to turn and notice us. They give a halfhearted attempt to finish the verse before the circle dissolves. I dismiss Vance with a wave of my hand conveying my authority to our hosts whilst freeing him from what he’s like to find as a tedious waste of time in which he could be working to hone his abilities instead.
Soon a girl emerges, moderately pleasing to the eye with a rich tan and more than tasteful application of cosmetics. While I say more than tasteful I’ll admit that there are likely many who prefer a heavier mask upon the person, to tease them with pleasant imaginings rather than the starkness of truth. How fitting a complement to how I would present ourselves. Truly politics is such a beast, filled with petty displays and nuances even when working towards productive compromises that benefit both parties. The first question however is, what do they want? As master so aptly put it they seek to psychopathically murder helpless skeletal puppets, they seek this end to such an extent that they would gather an entire barrel of live maggots and even go so far as to treat it as a kindness given in turn. It is simply fascinating, but not something that I could so rashly ask.
“Hello, I’m Fra-La, I represent the local chapter of the Seekers of the Ancient Dungeon of Death. It seems your associate brought you to speak with us? Can I assume you have the authority to speak on the behalf of your, um, group?” It was obvious she was fishing for information, but establishing a common mutual understanding was important in any negotiation, but how could I best set us up to negotiate on even terms without giving them the means to threaten us?
They already know Vance is a mage who can use death attribute manna to animate corpses, considering how quick they were to kill number one and two I’d hate for them to start thinking they can kill my brothers and sisters without repercussion, they did at least ask before killing number one and two, perhaps they see undeads as property? If so it might be best to give ourselves a mysterious backer, there’s no way to keep father entirely out of this forever after all, but we can give him a role that will make him less likely to be disturbed. “Yes, I am Jo-Ha-Na-Ah-Th-On, the head servant of my master, and am in charge of managing his estates and holdings. He is, what’s the word in this tongue for one who uses and manipulates manna?”
“You mean a mage?” one of the others asks “I doubt there’s any powerful one, I don’t see no tower around here.”
“My master and I bear foreign customs and ideals from beyond the wastes. Over there mages do not use towers but rather the internet, you are familiar with it?”
They shared a confused glance before a third cultist tentatively asked “A net which catches inters?”
I shake my head slowly, but smile with the genuine joy of teaching others and sharing knowledge. It is an innocent joy that seems to catch them off guard. “The internet is a great working centered around communication, its name is somewhat of a shorthand for a longer name but the colloquialism stuck. It connects the thoughts and knowledge of billions of individuals allowing communication and an exchange of experiences. Under its influences countless mages and archmages were brought into being who would regularly pour through this knowledge and engage in scholarly banter and heated debate to better parse through the collected experiences of so many.”
Still looking to sound him, or potentially intrigued, the girl, and the only one in the gathering who did not wear her hood or hide her face, asked “and I suppose your master is one of these archmages?”
“Unfortunately he is not.” I confess readily. “You see, there are various esoteric customs involved which exclude my master from eligibility among their ranks. For example my master has slept with a woman before; that alone would revoke any mage’s status. Perhaps it is superstition or perhaps there is some grounds to it, I am not fit to be the judge of these things. Additionally my master has touched grass; walking among the trees and seeing the outside sun are great taboos in retaining a certain purity of thought. As such I must confess my master is not qualified for such titles as these. Still he has made his peace with this and periodically joins such figures in their debates.”
“Well, that is certainly a sufficiently nuanced and foreign culture, meaning you hale from beyond the wastes, or perhaps another world;” the smile tugging at her lips tells me something in my posture gave it away “another world then, fascinating. I hear it happens, but still, fascinating.”
I accept it in stride, “You say you seek an ancient dungeon of death?”
“You have dungeons in another world?” She asks, almost teasingly.
“Not to my knowledge, though I have heard of them here.” I confess, uncertain what to think of this. Master is clearly the Dungeon of Death, and he is older than he himself knows having admitted to losing track of time, but he would likely remember leaving such an impression no?
“Yes, well that’ll be a whole discussion in itself, probably bundled with mage towers, both tools to power. The Ancient Dungeon of Death was one of the greats that stood above all others, but the other greats, or at least one of them must have raided it intent on its destruction. Nobody knows if they succeeded or if it is in hiding, but there was recently an outpouring of death attributed manna here so we came to observe and gather it. A senior seeker has already determined that while the purity is praiseworthy the sheer density is far too low to be that which we seek. Still we gather on the night of the third moon to gather the death manna from these lands for our use.”
“Ah” I reply in enlightenment. “Than what you sought from Vance’s helpers was also…?”
“Yes, death aspect manna. The inheritance of the Ancient Dungeon of Death is quite comprehensive, so while necromancy is not the most popular field, death practitioners tend to be rather competent even when compared against undeath mages, which is more than impressive considering the Dungeon of Undeath is far from irrelevant.” Probably foreseeing the questions such an explanation would pose, she forestalled me “how about an exchange?”
“Common information for the very energies of death?” I asked rhetorically.
“Indeed, much better than trading the very energies of death for mere grubs is it not?” she replied with a devious grin.
I allowed my dismay to carry into my voice. “How much for how much?”
“Three a day for a day’s lessons!” She suggested confidently.
“Three what, who determines a day, please be precise.” I, suspect I already know but want to clarify first.
“Three of those animus skeletons for me answering our questions and adding details where I can from sunrise to sunset.”
“No, that’s far too much, Vince sees those as disposable because master spoils him, not because we have a limitless supply, I can offer one per week up until your next ritual than one per ritual. Cooperation is said to be more harmonious when both parties can receive benefits over a longer term.”
The girl frowns clearly having hoped to quickly fleece a fat sheep, but reluctantly nods. “Okay, I will spend the first third of tomorrow’s daylight hours teaching you, and next week I will send someone more idle.”
I hesitate but in the end agree. It is better to have a working relationship than to leave them cause to reap the energies of death from our own unliving forms.