“Not your responsibility?” Vershik asked incredulously.
Captain Ganis regarded Vershik calmly from behind his sprawling desk, chewing on a paunthum stem. He looked like a young man, but was slightly older than Vershik himself. Long messy hair draped carelessly past his shoulders, and his clothes looked like he’d scavenged them out of a compost pile. The only concession to his station was the epaulet he wore over his left shoulder. Unlike his guards who were perpetually in battleform, Vershik didn’t think he’d ever seen the man in his own battleform. “He didn’t kill anyone or steal anything. The ministry’s business is its own. If you want to rent out our services, you’re as free to do that as anyone else. I’m not sending my guards all the way to Arkalis to chase down a personal vendetta.”
“He disrupted the Ritual of Return! It’s not a personal vendetta.”
“No one was killed, no city property was damaged. I have more important things to deal with of late than some outsider who’s unlikely to return.”
It was true that the arnaphen attack had disrupted things and caused chaos. The mayor was convinced they’d started breeding again, and the guard was weakened as a result of the attack. Basorik was still in the infirmary recovering from the delirium, and the city gate had yet to be repaired from the Ripper’s collision with it.
But that was all the more reason for Ganis to send a contingent of guards with Vershik’s priests to Arkalis. “His familiar used an arnaphen barb. For all you know, he’s responsible for the attack.”
“Unlikely. They entered on their own, chasing an unfortunate young drakken.”
“And maybe the shade led them to the whelp, knowing he’d run to the guards.”
Ganis spit out his old stem and put in a new one. “If you’re so worried for your priests’ safety, go yourself.”
Vershik wasn’t worried about the shade overpowering his priests, he was worried about him getting away. He could only afford to send so many, and Arkalis was a large city, even if their population was currently small. There was no guarantee the shade wouldn’t escape before they found him.
“It’s not their safety that concerns me!” Vershik snapped. “He’s only a Defender. What concerns me is him getting away before we can locate him.”
Ganis gave the slightest of shrugs. “Still not the responsibility of the guard. If you want to rent out our services, you know our prices.”
It took Ashinaro two more days running nonstop to reach Arkalis, his storm sash proving its worth over long distances. Without it, it would have taken four or five days, and he likely would have had to stop to rest.
He stood at the shore, looking out over a long bridge stretching from the mainland to the city, wide enough for ten men to stride abreast.
Arkalis was a massive island city of stone and metal, its walls taller and thicker than those surrounding Argalis, and yet somehow it floated on the water’s surface.
It had been built long, long ago by the fay, using techniques lost to time.
Ocean water flowed through canals in much of the city, yet no sea monsters gained access. Arkalis was protected by the fay’s ancient empowerments, even stronger than those protecting the roads. There’d once been a Hero who’d escaped a Demon by running into the city. So the story went.
The last time he’d seen it had been as a whelp, and it had been abandoned. Now it looked full of life. Even from the shore, he could hear the sounds of the city alive inside.
At the end of the bridge, the massive city gates stood open and unguarded, people moving within.
All looked to be in their humanform, and he wondered how many might be drakken.
On the run over, he’d mostly stayed as himself, but had experimented with the mask and discovered he could look like his own or someone else’s humanform while in battleform. He could even shift between his own human and battleform without affecting the illusion.
Appearing in battleform while actually being in humanform didn’t have a use he could think of, but appearing as though he were in humanform while in battleform did, as people wouldn’t be expecting him to be able to use his relics in humanform.
Of course, he also appeared veiled, and wasn’t sure how to change that.
In humanform the races mostly looked the same. Trolls and Beastkin were generally taller than drakken even in their humanforms, but he hadn’t seen any taller than himself. Another difference was hair color. Drakken when they were younger had mostly green or blue hair that faded to brown as they aged. From the outsiders he’d seen in Argalis and what he could see now through the gates, most everyone had black, white, or blonde hair. He wasn’t sure if there were more colors. The other races hair colors was never a detail he’d learned, or at least not one he’d retained.
He wasn’t going to make it easy on the priests if they came looking for him, so shifted to his humanform and used Zanas’s mask to take on the appearance of Kratis, one of the guards from Argalis. He was of normal height, and also bald. He didn’t know how many drakken visitors Arkalis had, but wanted to do his best to blend in.
Disguise in place, he set out over the bridge.
Halfway across, a group of trolls in battleform exited the gates, coming toward him at a jog.
Ashinaro prepared to launch himself off the bridge.
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But the trolls passed without incident, not even glancing his way.
Ten breaths later, he himself crossed through the gates and got his first look at the city since he was a whelp.
The trolls had set up a reasonable facsimile of a functioning city, with many merchants taking over the abandoned buildings left behind by the fay.
Seeing it bustling and alive was a strange sight. It resembled Argalis only superficially in the design of its buildings, though on a much grander scale. It was rare to see a building more than one or two floors in Argalis; here the shortest he saw was at least four.
Unlike Argalis, the city wasn’t split into districts; shops and restaurants mixed with housing.
Here was a fancy restaurant where guests sat inside eating, while next door two men argued as they worked Beast parts into a set of armor, while on the balcony above a woman sunned herself while reading a scroll.
He was starving after his journey, so his first destination was food.
He just hoped they accepted his currency.
The trolls had been exchanging their copper at the bank in Argalis, so that suggested that they did use the same type of coinage, even if the images stamped on them happened to be different.
Metal was metal, after all.
The food at the fancy restaurant looked delicious and familiar—perhaps why it was named Humblewise’s Native Cuisine—but, mindful of his limited wealth, he moved away from the restaurant, looking for establishments less extravagant.
In something like a town square, he came across an odd construction he only vaguely remembered from his last visit here as a whelp. It was a large staircase which twisted around on itself, reaching a height of around two floors. At the top was a red door leading to nowhere.
It looked out of place for more than just being a stairway in the middle of the plaza that went nowhere. Its construction didn't match the rest of Arkalis at all. It was made of metal, with a strange material coating the steps. Ashinaro wondered what its purpose had been and what it had once connected to. No buildings were close to it. A bridge to another structure, maybe? Or perhaps all that remained of some building.
No one else was stopping to take notice, so he continued on in search of an affordable meal.
He walked along one of the canals, people riding small boats through them, until he came upon a ramshackle stall from which pleasant smells emanated, a large man with plated hair grilling skewers over an open flame behind a counter that looked made from salvaged planks of wood.
Several people waited in line, and Ashinaro joined them.
The line wasn’t long, but long enough that he reasoned the food couldn’t be too bad.
“What’ll it be?” the man asked gruffly when Ashinaro reached the front. Ashinaro’s beyondsight revealed him as a Lesser Defender and an elf.
So far, Ashinaro hadn’t seen anyone who was veiled, and hoped appearing veiled himself wouldn’t cause trouble.
There was no menu, and Ashinaro didn’t see anything besides the skewers on offer, which was what everyone else had ordered, so he simply pointed at one of them.
“Two copper.”
Ashinaro went to withdraw two copper, only to have his hand hit air. Right, he’d left his money back in his room in Argalis.
“Seems I forgot my coin.”
The man glared at him, then shook his head.
He looked over the skewers, selecting one that seemed larger than the rest, and handed it over. “If you need coin, check the jobs hall. And if you survive, you can pay me double next time.”
Ashinaro thanked him and took the skewer.
He explored the city, eating his skewer—which was delicious—and making plans.
He needed to find out when the ship to Fairwind would arrive, and how much passage would cost.
The priests may not immediately check Arkalis, but they would eventually, and he preferred to be gone before then, mask or not.
He wondered where the shade was. If he went back to Argalis, would they even recognize him?
The priests had only gotten a brief glance of Ashinaro posing as him.
If they captured him—and if Ashinaro’s ruse had worked—they wouldn’t believe that he hadn’t interrupted the ritual.
Then again, he might not even be alive. He’d slammed right into the arnaphen, and while his Champion’s body had exploded the Beast apart, if a single one of those barbs on its tentacles had pierced his flesh and injected poison into him, he would die, as surely as Ashinaro would.
Even a Myth couldn’t stand to the arnaphen’s poison.
Hornblade walked slowly along the road to Arkalis, his head throbbing, his limbs aching and bloody, his battleform feeling like it’d been thrashed by a Demon.
When he’d come back to himself after whatever it had been that had come over him after breathing in that red gas, he’d found himself already most of the way to Arkalis.
He had no clue how a Beast could have poison so powerful as to affect a Champion, but couldn’t deny the results.
He hadn’t been this exhausted… Well, ever.
He couldn’t even be bothered to fly.
He was so exhausted that he wasn’t even upset at the drakken who had caused all this.
That wasn’t true. He was, he simply couldn’t dredge up any rage for it. For which he was sure his goddess would be displeased. It was her namesake, after all.
He was going to go back to Arkalis, get on the Divide Crosser to Fairwind, then return home to Fayreion and forget this all had ever happened.
The mystery of the disappearing staff and the strange living weapon or whatever it was that the drakken had could go and rot.
He didn’t care anymore.
And the same went for his quest. There was no way he was bringing himself all the way back to that tower. With his Wind Stride relic, it would take only perhaps a day to reach, but he was disinclined to waste time fruitlessly searching for whatever record was supposed to be there. He hadn’t found it the first time, and he’d been quite thorough. Maybe someone else had taken it. Rage had no messenger and few adherents on Fayteraus, so her sight wouldn’t be as infallible as it was on Fayreion.
And if he had to lose favor with her, so be it. He was not staying in this accursed land any longer than he needed to. There were other gods, and she couldn’t stop him from patronizing one of them. His father patronized Apathy and had much favor with him—it shouldn’t be hard to switch. While Apathy was strange among the gods, he was still an Exalted.
Hornblade called out his divine scroll from within himself as he trudged toward Arkalis, which he could see in the distance now.
Time to see how displeased with him she was. That would determine whether he chose to patronize a different god or not.
A land long isolated from the civilized world has once more been opened to you. Make your way to the city of Crystal Rest on Fairwind, gain passage on the Divide Crosser, and embark to Fayteraus. From there, seek out Unar’s Tower to the south of the drakken city of Argalis. Hidden within this tower resides a record of a false god. Find this record, and bring it to one of my temples.
That was the same as what it had said before, but now there were new lines at the bottom, and the words there made him stop in his tracks.
They answered what the drakken’s skeleton was, and explained why Hornblade had been able to see so little of it with his beyondsight.
For the first time in ages, the false god has awoken, and escaped the chamber within which he was imprisoned.
Your paths have crossed, and he goes by the name Zanas, having attached himself to a mortal.
He is a devious trickster, and has fashioned his scepter after our relics, binding it to the mortal. This is a weakness you can exploit.
Locate the mortal he’s attached to, kill him, and use your trait to steal the scepter from his corpse.
Save me face from having to go to Joy to locate him, and do this task yourself for me, and I will grant you a Divine Gift.
