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“It was crazy! We had no idea what to do. How would we? We thought that this was going to be a simple request of taking out some pesky varmint for a skittish little town but nope right in front of us an actual full on dragon!” The blond man took a sip of his alcohol to let the revelation settle with the enraptured audience around the campfire.
One of the older men who was significantly inebriated by this point was completely enthralled by the story. “A dragon!? In northern Bemean?”
The blond man pointed at the drunkard as he called out in excitement. “Exactly what I thought! They’re not suppose to be this far away from the Serpentine Mountains but here it was. Its eerily long serpentine body leading to two hulking forelimbs bigger than trees. The books can’t do this thing justice, it had an uncountable number of wings each buzzing away so fast it was practically a blur.”
Errant rolled his eyes as his leader regaled their audience with a practiced elegance more attuned to a bard than an archer. The blond man didn’t miss a beat in his story oblivious to his judging teammate “It was flying just above us, its tail tip still hanging within arms reach and let me tell you, it was seeing a mighty fine meal in us. Fetter was first to act, she didn’t need to wait for it to make the first move, no way. She launched a volley of her crossbow straight at the dragon’s eye. Her aim was true, but the dragon was having none of it. The dragon snorted at the attack and the burst of wind created from that breath was enough to blow the bolt away!”
It was amazing how the blond man could transform a rash misjudgment into a decisive assault.
“When we saw that, we knew it was time to get serious. Mortise was off at the edge of the clearing trying to cast every boon she knew on us and every bane she could on the dragon!”
Something that if she kept her head about her would know was useless as a dragon could easily counter cast anything a human did.
“Infirm right next to Mortise was attempting to interfere with the dragon’s magic sense so it couldn’t locate the source of the spells.”
Errant remembered this story about a devadoot that tried to block a dragon’s aetheric senses and the battle was so brutal that the two souls had locked together indefinitely.
“Way the absolute madman, bolstered his legs with his magic and actually jumped onto the dragon so he could get some clear stabs in with his rapier!”
The mad part was accurate.
The soldiers sat around the campfire were absolutely absorbed in the story. A few of them amazed by his bravery shot Way a few looks of disbelief and surprise. Way added to the story. “I didn’t last long on the dragon. It was easy to keep hold with all the wings around acting like grips but just touching the thing kept giving me these tiny shocks that made my muscles seize up. Hurt a ton so I had to drop off.”
The blond man ruptured into laughter and took another gulp of his drink. “Of course, you couldn’t. Who thinks they can mount a dragon and get away with it? Anyways we were running around throwing everything we had at it, which to say, wasn’t much since it was flying all around the air. I tell you if we had wings like that It wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
This is why Errant was implicitly forbidden from recounting their journeys because the way he would have described this part of the fight was that they all ran around aimlessly wreaking havoc and blocking his ability to actually ground the thing.
“You hear in books and stuff that dragons are these noble and honorable creatures, f that, the thing stook to the air and launched just an insane amount of magic at us. It was sucking so much magic out of the atmosphere that the plants around us were starting to dry up.
“Mortise and Infirm had to give up on their tasks to just keep up a barrier that could barely hold back its onslaught. Lucky for us we got Errant and his abominable slab of iron.”
“It’s a sword.” Errant retorted back to the storyteller. The blond man shook his head, Errant looked around the campfire for support but no one came to his aid.
Fetter spoke up “Sorry Errant, but you couldn’t even convince a giant that slab of yours was a sword.”
His entire team was a mess of hyperbolic comedians. Though making fun of his sword was too far, Errant looked out to the crowd of drunken soldiers. “I made that sword myself you know?”
That gave the crowd a chuckle, one of the older men responded between his fits of laughter. “Now that I can believe.” He worked hard on that sword.
The blond man jumped back in to continue with his story. “So Errant actually throws, I kid you not, the whole ‘sword’ like its some kind of javelin or something!” The soldiers stopped laughing and looked over the well-toned Errant with near terror.
The blond coughed into his fist to return the crowds attention. “The weapon pierces right through the dragon’s tail and then lodges into the ground landlocking the thing like some kind of one-man artillery. You’d think that would be it right? Take down the dragon’s greatest strength and it would be easy pickings but man that thing kept up a serious fight.”
No reasonable person would think the fight was done just because they grounded a dragon. It was a dragon for goodness sakes.
“It never relented its magical barrage and even managed to bite Way’s entire leg off. Oh man, when that happened, we thought he was going to die. He went so pale and the blood WOULD.NOT.STOP.”
Errant sometimes wondered if he had become an enabler for their team. He really should have stopped Way. Way had thought since the group couldn’t puncture the creature’s skin they should attack from within. Madman indeed. If anything, he was lucky that he only lost a leg from that stunt.
The crowd looked to Way in all of his healthy two-legged splendor. The blond man explained. “It was not cheap to have that healed. Combined with both Mortise and Infirm getting Essential sickness from depleting their magic reserves we barely broke even with defeating the dragon.”
‘Magic reserves’, Errant saw Fetter place an arm to stop Mortise and Infirm from interjecting on what was really just a fun campfire tale. Let the man be confidently incorrect.
The blond adjusted his seating a little and eagerly pushed forward with the tale. “So here we are, the dragon is grounded which is good but we have one party member in the process of bleeding out, Infirm couldn’t cast anymore and Mortise had to dedicate her full attention on keeping Way alive. A tricky situation for sure. We weren’t sure if we should keep fighting or retreat and heal our wounded; leave it to Errant always trying to push himself to the limit to run in and do the most insane thing ever, he removed his weapon so that the dragon could fly again!”
The faces in the crowd contorted full of confusion. The blond man smiled at receiving his desired response. “That was exactly the look I had… maybe a little more panic, you know given the freed dragon right in front of my face. Using the same swing to pull out his weapon from the tail, he adeptly turned around and let it fall back down decapitating the dragon on the spot.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. The dragon was dead.”
Of course, there was an unending stream of details that the blond man exempted from the story, not least of which was the second dragon they met that day. The blond man probably thought that bookending their story on such an absolutely one-sided scolding wouldn’t have been ‘fun’.
It was understandable, the story had a lot less punch once the fact that the dragon was just a child was revealed. That second dragon they met was not so young and not even Errant would have acted frivolously with it, though it was never in his nature to act frivolously. The second dragon had come to collect the blood of its fallen brethren; it was an exceptionally strange circumstance for the group. The dragon had been very cordial and diplomatic speaking perfectly and even compensating them with the funds required to heal their injured members. Though Errant was very much aware that it was all a front, it was never an offer to take the blood, it was a command.
Errant’s attention was brought back to the camp when one of the soldiers filled his cup back up with some more ale and questioned the group across from him. “So, what made the Banausic Cardinals: dragon slayers join us against the Pleurothallidinae? You lot don’t look like you’re from the Sodality of Rain.” He emphasized their title with a mocking admiration and dramatized hand motions.
Fetter was the first to respond on that front. “It’s the Pleurothallidinae that’s what! You don’t have to be from the Sodality of Rain to want them dead. We may have missed out on the mokoi khan to The Saviors but the Pleurothallidinae will be our kill.”
“You make it sound like if it wasn’t for The Saviors you would have killed the mokoi khan. You were four when they killed it.” Errant added in, to the humor of the audience and embarrassment of Fetter.
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Fetter continued trying to ignore Errant’s comment. Errant took every opportunity to remind her that she was the youngest member of their group. She assumed he was just happy that he didn’t have to fit that role anymore. She continued “…but the Pleurothallidinae are just as bad if not worse than the Mokoi khan really, since they already forced themselves in this land.
The blond man took in the calming sight before him. His whole team sat around a peaceful fire drinking and laughing of stories once gone. Well most of his party was, Errant did not join in on the conversations often but that was just the type of person he was. The blond man could just imagine all of the corrections and interjections he was self-inserting during the retelling of that dragon story. Errant just didn’t understand branding.
Fetter may have imprinted her own reason for joining the Sodality of Rain’s counter force against the Pleurothallidinae but the real reason he accepted was because as their leader he needs to manage team moral and they needed a break. Any military effort, even one against the mokoi would take time and patience to accomplish so this was the perfect way to basically force the group into a vacation.
The blond man was aware that he wasn’t the most skilled or intelligent member of the team but one thing that no one could doubt was that he could lead. Well except for when they fought that dragon, that was a disaster, but it was also too good of a story to not tell.
While the blond man was leaning back and taking in the group before him, he noticed another soldier walking towards them in a hurried pace from the forest. Her name was Weltschmerz, she was one of the citizen volunteers from the Sodality of Rain and was quite the intense type. It also seemed like she had just been crying. She was clearly trying to hide that fact, so he tried to ease her into the group with a purposefully comical introduction. “Hey Weltschmerz, you were out for a while. Take a big dump?”
The blond man’s words directed the groups attention to him and Weltschmerz. Fetter slapped him across the shoulder and began scolding him about how indecent and rude his behavior was. Mortise became mortified by Weltschmerz red eyes and mistook them as offense towards the blond man’s comment and profusely apologized on his behalf.
Errant silently watched the comical chaos unfold but his attention was stolen by Weltschmerz. There was something seriously wrong. Weltschmerz ignored the lively clamor of the Banausic Cardinals interrupting both Mortise and Fetter as if she hadn’t even clued in that they were speaking to begin with. “I think there were mokoi scouts around here. We need to scan the forest.”
The soldiers laughed at the girl, they clearly thought she was being paranoid, which she usually was. One of the soldiers spilling some of his drink in his drunkenness laughed out to Weltschmerz. “You’re probably just psyching yourself out, feeling vulnerable with your pants down. Nearly all the mokoi are out on a hunt somewhere.”
Weltschmerz did not take the comment well. She seethed with an intense rage that flowed through her muscular body. “The latest report said that they had lost track of the hunting unit. Perhaps they know a route that we aren’t aware of and slipped by.”
The soldier shook his head dismissively. “This is our territory; we know of all the routes.”
Errant could practically see the explosion ignite within her. All of that anger and spite pouring out of her lungs and into her words as she shouted out. “It hasn’t been our territory for nearly a millennium now, we can’t know!”
The cardinals liked Weltschmerz, she was kind, respectful, and reliable, but it was clear that she came with a lot of baggage. Part of that baggage was evident in her zealous disdain for mokoi; the Pleurothallidinae were her number one targets in that regard and she would jump at any opportunity to make them suffer even if it wasn’t a sane thing to do.
She was still a smart person, even if her lividity seeped through her every thoughts and actions she wouldn’t come out and say what she did pointlessly. Regardless, this was a proper military operation and keeping everyone calm and orderly was equally important; something that the waking camp behind him indicated was in jeopardy. The blond man stood up from the wooden log he previously sat at and spoke. “Alright, we still need some soldiers stationed at this checkpoint to make sure they don’t waltz by while we’re gone, so how about we’ll look around instead, just in case. Will that make you feel better?”
He looked at his half-finished cup of liqueur, he thought briefly but he probably wouldn’t be fighting anything tonight, so he chugged down the rest of the drink and placed the empty mug on the log next to him.
Weltschmerz did not falter in her position. “We have to tell the main garrison to strike now. If the hunting unit gets back to the valley before the invasion tomorrow, then there’s no way we’ll win!” her breathing was becoming erratic and she clearly was working herself up into a frenzy.
The blond man tried to calm Weltschmerz back to a more reasonable level. “Let’s not say anything to the garrison yet. If you were mistaken, we don’t want to cause an unnecessary fuss, and if you’re right then they could have already made it back to the valley and it’ll be too late.”
The blond man gave his team a wave and they all put down their drinks and food and started equipping themselves. Each of the Cardinals went into their respective tents while the blond man stayed behind to make sure Weltschmerz didn’t do anything else to rouse up the camp.
Instead, Weltschmerz seemed on the verge of tears. She was clenching her fists so tightly that her nails were drawing blood from her palms. She managed to grit out a few words through choked breaths. “But they can’t come back yet. We were so close.”
The poor woman, she must have gone through a lot to get to this point. But then again so did everyone he supposed, wasn’t that why the Banausic Cardinals were taking this break? The blond man reassured Weltschmerz “If they really did make it back to the valley, and that’s a big if, then we’ll just wait for the next hunt. There will always be another chance. Now let’s go do our job and actually figure out IF they are back.” Then he went into his tent and got equipped.
Soon the entire group was ready to depart. The blond man had his intricately beautiful bow, Way his thin rapier, Mortise and Infirm their staffs, Fetter her bulky crossbow, and Errant his ludicrous slab of metal he called a sword which was as wide as he was and twice as tall.
Weltschmerz brought the cardinals to the location which had caused her to blow up in such a way. It just seemed to be a random patch of forest next to a small pond barely more than a puddle.
Mortise stared confused at a random human shaped groove that indented into the mud next to the pond. “Uhm… what exactly were you doing out here?”
Weltschmerz averted her gaze from Mortise clearly embarrassed by the question. “I was… powdering my nose.” She clearly lied. The rest of the cardinals didn’t pay much heed to Mortise’s interaction with Weltschmerz as they were much more interested in something else. The cardinals were all investigating the strange break in the forest canopy but Errant instead was distracted by something he saw in the pond.
Errant separated himself from the group slightly and stared down to the strange discoloration he saw below. There was vomit awkwardly sloshing with the ever-slight shifting waters of the puddle. The blond man noticed that Errant was distracted by something other than the rest and so asked out. “Errant, do you see something?”
Errant didn’t respond right away. He was trying to piece together not what the potential mokoi were doing here but rather what Weltschmerz was doing. He wasn’t quite sure what his conclusion was, but he at least knew that Weltschmerz would save a little face if the rest of the cardinals went unaware that she puked into the pond.
Errant’s meandering mind was broken when the blond man shook his shoulder. Errant quickly spoke up and directed the flow back towards the canopy so that the blond man wouldn’t see the vomit. “No, it was nothing.”
While Errant was distracted by the pond, Fetter had climbed up a nearby tree to get a closer look at the broken branches above. Getting a better inspection, it was obvious to tell that something had accidentally slipped up and caused a much bigger mess than they intended. Fetter called down to inform the rest of the group of her discovery. “Bad news. It definitely looks like something big that didn’t want to leave a mark was here. But there’s no trail or anything. I’m looking all around, and I don’t see any signs of where they came from or went. Like it just flew in and out.”
The blond man was alleviated by these results. “That’s a good sign at least. If it was some sort of bird, then it couldn’t be the Mokoi.”
Errant wasn’t going to correct the blond man and send Weltschmerz into another, what he assumed, panic attack, but that wasn’t quite right. Although quite rare there definitely were a subset of flying mokoi. Though, the Pleurothallidinae was a relatively small army so chances were low that they had any avian-like mokoi in their midst.
Fetter being the only one that could properly see the mess caused in the forest canopy also doubted the blond man’s naïve optimism. “That’s one big bird.”
The blond man was ready to congratulate a job well done and head back to camp but decided against it when he saw how both Weltschmerz and most of his team seemed even more suspicious now than they were before. He clapped his hands to gather everyone’s attention and cobbled together a basic outline for a plan. “Well whatever it was, it clearly didn’t want to be found. So maybe it just got better at hiding itself and the twigs here were just a slip up.” He didn’t actually agree with his own statement, but this seemed to be the conclusion that the rest of the group had come up with.
“We should go ahead and do a perimeter check just in case and see if we can find anymore spots like this. Mortise and Way, you two go with Weltschmerz up north. Infirm and Fetter will go south with me. West is camp so fingers crossed there’s nothing that way. Errant, you’ll be fine searching east on your own?”
Errant simply gave an approving nod to their leader.
“Alright, let’s just do a quick search. Lucky for us, the morning star has come out to say hi so it should get easier to look. Chances are it’s just a bird but If you do find something don’t initiate a fight, just head back and alert camp.”
All three groups then split off in their respective directions. Despite the incredibly heavy slab of metal slumped over his back, Errant moved out at a similar pace than the rest of the group. He wasn’t confident that any of the groups would manage to find anything. From what little he knew of avian-like mokoi the fact that it had left a trace at all of its presence would have been an exceptionally lucky catch on their part. If the mokoi had gone by this area then it was too late, the Pleurothallidinae would have already arrived back at their base.
Errant wasn’t going to complain, he was fine scanning the forest for nothing since he had long ago declined leadership of the Banausic Cardinals. He had long sense surpassed the capabilities of his group and no longer remained with them for strategic benefit but rather companionship. They were his friends and he enjoyed hanging around with them. So if going on a pointless stroll through the woods was the cost of his decision so be it.
Apparently, this mission was not a waste as Errant was alerted of an attacker when he heard the chime of two bells. One of the bell chimes came far off in the distance up north but the other came from directly in front of him. Errant gripped the hilt of his weapon with one hand preparing himself just in case.
Where the bell had chimed a small pink rhombus suddenly grew out of thin air. Or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other shapes. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The arm was outstretched towards Errant holding a glowing parchment: It read.
You have been invited to The Tournament You are The Umbra