A while ago I wrote Seven, which is set in Tamriel. Afterward I thought about adapting it to an original setting. I did a lot of world-building, remade the characters to fit the new world, and got started into translating the story over.

I ran out of steam when I started looking at my over-arching direction, and started seeing some problems. The biggest one was that I had in mind a big High Fantasy story - an ancient race rising to destroy the world, champions rising from the dead, the army of light banding together to fight off evil, and so forth. The twist I planned to this standard format was that the protagonists were trying to stop the war, rather than win it. With finding a peace between all involved being the end goal, rather than destruction.

But the story I was starting out with - Seven - is Low Fantasy (at least the way I define it). Farmers and mercenaries vs. bandits. Ordinary people, with ordinary problems. I like that, as it feels very accessible, and makes the characters, even the extraordinary ones, feel more relateable. So that made me want to continue in that vein, and do a series of stories about a pair of hired spells who are part mercenaries, part private detectives. Sort of like Spenser For Hire or Magnum P.I. with magic. That in turn meant scrapping the entire over-arching story. Or trying to bridge the gap between Low Fantasy and High Fantasy. It left me with a lot of questions, and I was not feeling excited about the answers. So I ended up setting it all aside.

Instead of leaving it all collecting dust, I decided to post what I did finish up here. Maybe it will fire me up to get back to working on it again. People who have read Seven will recognize most of the main characters. Names have been changed in many cases. Some because the originals were Bethesda creations, others to suit the new races/languages. Speaking of which races and the like are entirely new, as is the geography, flora and fauna, how magic works etc... I will put some of that here in this post, and start the actual story in a second post. Let me know if you want to see more of the background notes, and I will put them in this post.


This is a world map

This is the continent of Aulerci, where most of the action takes place



Aela

Loria



The Stone Forest (IRL The Shilin Stone Forest outside of Kunming)

Another example of karst landscape


An Oro (IRL Orodromeus)

A Crumhead (IRL Parasaurolophus)

RL Troodon (the inspiration for the Teodon race)

Troodon front

Troodon head

Ancient Rasen Armor (IRL Samnite bronze armor)

Bronze lamellar armor

Bronze lamellar armor again


Veia Map

Rasen street

Rasen city

Rasen apartment block

Rasen-style architecture





Phereinon

Phereinon again

Malediction

Owl Screeching

Owl Carving





Serves Camna



Wooden mug

Tamac (tomahawk)



Raven pendant

Hrafngoelir

Hrafn's shield

Hrafn's seax


Venca



Rasen bedroom

Rasen bedroom 2

Rasen bedroom 3



Lorcras armor

Hagalaz rune




Horse-Powered Ferryboat 1

Horse-Powered Ferryboat 2

Spirecrown - Saurolophus Angustirostris





Lambeosaurus

Parksosaurus

Ornitholestes

Hadrosaurs 01

Hadrosaurs 02

Orodromeus

Gasparinisaura

Ouranosaurus

Maiasaura

Tropical Milkweed Beetle




Teodon Coloration (this is just what their scale colors look like, not actual representations of the characters)
Alcheon's coloration

Daehyun (a very common peasant coloration)

Dark Eye (though his belly is not so brightly white

Sindeok



Banyan tree

Durian tree

Bromeliads

Bamboo forest

Solagea


Kye Rim Graves

Teodon Dok

Teodon village house

Teodon village house



Earthen rampart, wall, and ditch

cheavaux de frise


Shield Wall training




Fighting Moves
Dark Eye's finishing move against Daeso

Phereinon's belly to back suplex (German Suplex) that she used upon the Arvern Oathman of House Camna

Here is a link to Sindeok's killing move against Brown-Scales

Morte Strike and Half Sword Defense

Seven 2.0

Chapter 1.1

Aela rocked on her heels as a magical bolt crashed into her arcane shield. The raw mana flashed hot and brilliant, and she knew that to mundane eyes it would appear to be lightning. Her magical senses could see beyond the simple elemental force however, to the primal magical energy underneath.

It was the same energy that sang within all living beings, and flowed through the earth itself. Normally mana brought life and vitality, as water did to plants. But now it crashed into her like a flood. Just as tidal wave pulverized everything in its path, the magical assault sought to obliterate the threads of power that made up her aura. That would in turn carry the same terrible fate down to the flesh and bone of her body governed by those magical strands.

Her magical bulwark shivered under the assault. Aela reflexively poured more energy into her shield, so that even as the enemy magic ate away at one layer of defense, she wove a fresh lattice of force beneath. So in spite of the fury unleashed against her, Aela's ward held.

As the last remnants of the arcane bolt fizzled away into the aether, she found herself brushing aside a loose strand of hair from her eyes. She was thankful that she had tied it back before the battle. Otherwise she imagined that the brown strands would stand on end from the static, and create a frightful sight!

Staring down the megalithic passageway, Aela's eyes fixed upon the source of the attack. It was a man, given his shape and size. His race was anyone's guess however, given the mask of bones that covered his face. He wore a dark robe with long sleeves, overlain by a lamellar cuirass of black metal. Aela imagined that it might be lorcras, the black steel of the legendary Dark Elves. She hoped not, given that metal's well-known ability to absorb magic. In any case, Aela knew that this had to be the leader of the cultists they had come to stamp out.

The dark priest was surrounded by bodyguards. They were men and women of all the human races: dark-skinned Aymarans, olive-toned Rasenna, fair Arvernach such as herself, and pale Skanjr. All wore mail shirts and carried round wooden shields painted with images of voracious mouths. Most gripped swords or axes of mortal steel. But Aela noted several who brandished silvery-white aetherial blades. Swords conjured from pure mana, they looked like lightning hammered into solid form.

Aela felt Loria's warm breath on her shoulder, smelling faintly of mint. The Light Elf reached out beyond her with one hand - though still within the protection of her ward - and fire blossomed from his fingers. The bright red and orange flames sprayed down the passage before them. The blaze licked off the dry-stone walls, and rolled along the megalithic slabs of the ceiling. The tunnel between was transformed into an inferno of flame and smoke.

The dark priest lifted his staff however, and a bubble of energy rose up before him and his followers. Loria's flames crackled and snarled upon the protective wall of magic, but failed to pierce its glowing surface. It was a standoff then. As Aela had feared, this battle might have to be decided by force of arms rather than magic.

As if to give voice to the Arvern Witch's thoughts, a shout rose above the bedlam in the corridor.

"Frisverd!," the deep voice rang out, "forward!"

With a wordless chorus of bellows and cries, a tidal wave of humanity charged up from behind Aela and Loria, and swept past them down the hallway. Like the cultists, the Skanjr warriors were clad in good mail byrnies, steel helmets, and iron-rimmed shields. They raised swords and axes, and put them to use with ruthless effect.

For all their wild cries, the Skanjr mercenaries formed an even wall of steel before the Aela and Loria. They moved forward as one, axes and swords stabbing and hacking at the cultists. Aela could see little more than their armored backs at this point, as the Northerners stood far taller than an Arvern like herself. Even Loria's willowy elven frame was matched by their height, though he was certainly outstripped by their bulk.

Aela stretched her senses out through the aether, and the corridor leaped to brilliant life before her. She could not only see the magic around her, but smell, taste, hear, and even feel it as well. The brilliant energy ebbed and flowed like water, coursing around and through everything in the physical world. It might be invisible and intangible to the dull eyes of a mundane, but to her it was like standing within a living, breathing watercolor painting.

She immediately felt Loria standing beside her. His energy rose like a brilliant pillar of fire, spreading light and warmth out through the aether around him. Before the two of them she sensed the fainter auras of the Skanjr mercenaries. Not being magicians, their energy was cooler, dimmer, and less vibrant to her magical senses. They reminded Aela of the embers of a fire that had recently burned out.

The cultists beyond the hired swords were similar, in that their auras were dull and grey as well. Yet unlike the Northern mercenaries, their auras felt foul. Touching them reminded Aela of stepping upon slime under her bare feet. That feeling only worsened as she neared the dark priest. Unlike his bodyguards, his aura was brilliant and powerful, but far more sickening to behold.

Where Loria's energy was warm and clear as the noon-day sun, the dark priest's power reminded Aela of rotting flesh squirming with maggots. Aela felt herself momentarily recoil at the corruption that was so plainly etched upon the man's spirit, and could not prevent herself from curling a lip in disgust.

The stone walls and cold earth of the tunnel surrounding her felt nearly as bad. The barrow was darker in the aether than it was even in the mundane world. For that same sense of corruption which lurked within the leader of the cult seemed to permeate the entire barrow. This was clearly not a place where the dead found rest and peace. Rather it was an abattoir.

Clearly, horrific deeds had been done here. To have soaked so thoroughly into the aether, Aela knew they could not have been a rare occurrence. It was a legacy of long years of torment. Terror, torture, and worse things screamed out from the mana that surrounded Aela. It assaulted her senses like the effluvium of a midden heap. It made the Arvern want to retch, but seven years of training at the Ingenium had steeled her against such things.

She focused her thoughts, and rewove the threads of power that created the tapestry of her arcane shield. At the same time Aela poured yet more of her energy into the spell, causing those strands to grow and take new shape in the aether before her. Now her magical barrier extended out in all directions to fill the entire passage. Then she pushed the glowing bulwark forward, beyond the dim auras of the Skanjr mercenaries, until it slammed into the unyielding barrier of the dark priest's own ward.

Aela was just in time, as she felt a terrific wave of fire wash across the face of her shield but a moment later. The magical energy sizzled against her defenses, burning away the channels of power that defined the ward. It took all of Aela's years of experience and skill to continually reweave the strands that created the blanket of her defense. She worked feverishly, so that even as one thread was incinerated, a fresh one took its place.

All the while Aela continued to drain more of her mana into the shield. She wondered how long she could continue to channel such energy into it. This dark priest possessed a power the like of which she had rarely ever felt before, even among the sages of her old school. Aela had no doubt that without her shield to stop him, he would have literally just turned all of the mercenaries into dust.

Aela recalled the war between Alalia and Felathri years before. She had been part of the ritual team that had protected the Alalian army with a massive arcane shield. They had stripped away its physical layer of protection to conserve energy. Now Aela did the same. Her ward would only protect against spells, where moments before it had also warded off mundane blows from axe or sword. From now on the Skanjr would just have to trust to their armor and shields to defend them, as the Alalian army had done on the field years ago.

Those Skanjr appeared to be doing well. While she could not physically see what was happening on the front line of the battle, she could still discern that the mercenaries were steadily pushing forward. Her magical senses could easily place their auras, all neatly arranged in a solid wall that spanned the megalithic passageway from one side to the other.

The auras of the cultists were not so organized. Rather they spread out haphazardly across the passage. Sometimes one would push forward against the mercenaries, but rarely with any immediate support from the other cultists. The Skanjr however, met their foes together, never breaking their shield wall. Because of that the cultists never fought just the single mercenary in front of them, but were forced to contend with the warriors to either side as well.

One by one the auras of the cultists winked out under the crush of the massed Skanjr. While Aela was not trained as a warrior, she could clearly see that it was this teamwork on the part of the mercenaries that carried the day for them.

While the swords and axes of the Northerners steadily worked their way through the cultists, Aela felt Loria strike out once more. This time it was not elemental force which the elf wielded, but rather a more subtle magic. A counterspell that was neither visible to mundane sight nor able to be felt by non-magical blood, its power was nonetheless a brilliant flare before Aela's magical senses.

Loria's magic stabbed into the bone-masked cultist's ward like a chisel being driven underneath a great hammer. Aela felt the dark priest's defense shiver under the elf's magical strike. Loria followed with another blow, and another, and soon cracks formed in the opposing ward. The Arvern Witch felt the cult leader's attack upon her own ward falter, and flicker out. A moment later his own arcane shield likewise vanished. Wary of a trick, Aela maintained her focus and continued channeling power into her own defense.

Aela's caution was rewarded when she felt the cultist's ward flare to life once more. This time however, it did not span the hallway, but rather formed a smaller barrier that curved around the front of his body alone. A moment later she felt it buckle under a heavy, physical blow. She knew that had to have been from a Skanjr sword or axe. That meant that the mercenaries were upon the dark priest, and now he would be forced to split his energy between assaulting Aela's arcane shield, and protecting himself from her allies.

Aela stumbled forward, her body feeling numb and far away as her senses roamed the aether. She could not let the mercenaries get too far ahead of her, lest they advance beyond the range at which she could project her ward. Again, when she had been part of a ritual team, it had been possible to push the ward far from her body. But without a hundred other magicians in support, her abilities were limited.

Loria hammered with his counterspell once more. Again it smashed the priest's ward, and its mana scattered into the aether. A moment later Aela felt the hot pillar of the cult leader's energy snuff out like a candle being pinched under finger and thumb. She knew what that meant. One of the warriors had finished the priest off the old-fashioned way. As if to underscore Aela's ruminations, a great cheer rose from the Skanjr.

By Julianos' little teapot it is good to see you posting some fic again!

You did a nice job of setting things up in your first post. We know this is a foreign world of your own making and, therefore, we are open to absorb how things (like magic) work here. The geography you provide is a nice touch.

Wonderful to see Aela again - even though I know she is different here. You did indeed provide lots of info in the first episode but it was most welcome and you did a masterful job of weaving it into a very engaging battle.

I simply love how Aela lives and breathes magic - it permeates every strand of her being. The descriptions of how the magicks of Aela, Loria and the dark priest all worked were easily understood and totally fascinating.

So far, this is a wonderful story and I'm looking forward to learning more as we go!

Hey, it's Aela! It's great to see her again, in Tamriel or otherwise!

Re: telling rather than showing... I see what you mean? It's subtle - I've read way heavier exposition hammers, definitely - but it's there. I think the problem is that this is an action scene, and as a result any worldbuilding digressions end up eating away at the urgency and suspense - especially ones that are a little further away from what's happening, such as the line of thought about how different races or blind people might sense magic. This level of exposition would be much less noticeable if it were, say, Aela regathering her reserves after the battle, or watching her allies train, or anything else where it'd be more viable for her mind to wander.

That said, this critique is brought to you by someone who errs very strongly on the side of avoiding exposition in favour of forcing readers to piece things together themselves (and reads fanfic for fandoms where they don't know the canon for fun, too). I find that almost every fantasy novel I read has too much exposition for my taste, so the fact that I consider it just barely too much means it's probably the perfect amount. :-P And I do think dropping us straight into the action was a great narrative choice, even if it makes the exposition trickier to balance! It definitely grabbed me, and I'm curious to see what will happen next (never to mention eager to see more AELA!!)

(PS: If you'd prefer not to have this sort of critique, let me know! I don't usually offer concrit unless it's been specifically welcomed, but since you explicitly pointed these things out I thought I'd mention how it came across to me.)

I really like the part where it says she could see magics, beyond what ordinary people can see in everyday life. Not exact words, but ya know, that is my favorite part. The way she must focus to maintain that magical shield is also intense!

So this takes place on another continent in Tamriel, interesting. I know nothing about Aulerci, so that's interesting.

Acadian: It is good to work on writing again. Finding the time is never easy these days. I need to get back into the habit again, to make it a habit again.

One of the things that always struggled with when writing fiction set in Bethesda's game world is how limited it all was, especially concerning magicians. To Beth a mage is simply another class, and their abilities have to be balanced with everyone else's to make the game fair and even. A fighter gets a sword, a mage gets a spell, a thief gets a bow. In the end they are all the same (or should be).

I like to show that being a magician is not simply one more form of doing damage to an opponent. It is a different way of perceiving the world, of occupying the world. IRL magicians are people who step from the physical world to the spirit world, and back again at will. They live between worlds. I really want to show that here in how Aela perceives reality. Which can be good for her, and bad for her (as the next few segments will show).


Kazaera: Hey, its Kazaera!

That is exactly the sort of critique I hope for. In fact, that very paragraph you singled out is one I took out because I thought it was too much Telling. Then I put it back in, but still felt uncertain about it. I feel better taking it out completely now. It is not necessary for the reader to understanding what is currently happening. I think I am going to try to use that as a litmus test to decide what more to cut out, and what to leave in.

I also have done some more editing to other parts. I changed the comparison of an arcane bolt to a lightning bolt in the beginning. Instead I followed the comparison to water. There are also a few bits here and elsewhere, such as Aela ruminating about how in the war they took out the physical protection from their arcane shield, so she does the same. I pared that down so it flows better, but you can still see that she is acting from past experience. I also changed it so the dark priest's initial arcane shield protecting all of his followers instead of just himself. That makes the fight much more even until the end.


Renee: Writing about how Aela lives in the spirit world is one of my favorite parts of writing her. Her world is more than what she can see and touch.

I am glad the effort Aela put into using and maintaining her shield came across as being engaging. That is one of her major talents after all. She is defense while Loria (formerly Ungarion) is offense. I don't want her to come across as insanely overpowered. It should seem like a lot of work, even though she is good at it.

This is not set in another part of Tamriel. It is all created by me, and is entirely separate from Bethesda and anything they have ever done.

Infodump?? What info dump?

For the most part the exposition was minimal, I liked how you used Aela's memories as a means of providing information of herself and her world, which strikes me as being quite the far cry from Tamriel.

And yet, I felt at home here, in this world you've created for Aela. She was instantly recognizable, as was Loria as Ungarion 2.0. I loved how the two worked together and balanced different magics to form a cohesive whole.

Oh, and the way Aela perceives magic? That's exactly how I imagined witches, shamans and medicine men/women see their worlds. It feels like the Bosmer worldview taken up to notch eleven.

And starting in the middle of an action piece, ah, my favorite way to start a story off (or a chapter, for that matter . . .)

Hope you keep this up - I really want to see where Aela and Loria go after this!

I didn't notice this either, not that it makes any difference to me.

You missed most of the Telling. By the time you got to it I had already edited the worst offenders out. But I have still been making some edits. In fact I just changed the second paragraph a few minutes ago.

I am basing Aela's experience with magic on my own experience as a Witch. Also on several pen and paper RPGs like Shadowrun and Earthdawn (some of whose writers were also Witches, like Steve Kenson). One thing I find myself coming back to a lot is: "As above, so below", and how one world affects the other.




That is kind of you to say. It is much better now.

Chapter 1.2

Aela finally allowed her ward to drop, and pulled her senses back from the aether. She sighed as the drab reality of the barrow once again filled her vision. Her physical eyes - previously enhanced by a night seeing spell - could easily pierce the gloom. Yet for the moment there was little to see but the armored backs of northern mercenaries. The sounds of battle had ceased, as had their advance. Now the warriors milled about, and when they turned in Aela's direction the lightstones suspended from their necks created bright spots that hurt her enhanced eyesight.

With a command in the Skanjr tongue, most of the mercenaries spread out into the small chambers to either side of the main passage. One of them came back to Aela and Loria. He was a bear of a man, with a craggy face that looked as if it had been chiseled from the rocky mountains of his northern homeland. A beard of red bristles sprouted like trees from his rugged features. Sprinkled with gray in many places, his whiskers reminded Aela of a weathered old forest dusted with ash.

The newcomer held a giant Skanjr long axe in his meaty fists. Its single, crescent blade was fixed to a wooden haft over half as long as he was tall. She noted that not only was the steel edge stained with blood, but also bits of brain and hair. Aela felt power stir within the fearsome weapon, and it proudly announced its name to her as Skjoldbreki, which she imagined might mean 'Shield Breaker' in the Northerner's tongue.

"I expect that will be the end of it," the heavy-set man rumbled in the Rasen language. "But come, there may be more mages in the main chamber."

"Let's get cracking then Hrollaug," Loria said brightly in Elvish. The Light Elf emphasized his words by cracking his knuckles together, and he grinned with a zest that Aela had to admit she did not feel herself. There had already been a heavy battle outside of the barrow, against several mages and scores of armed warriors. Their bone-masked leader had been one of the most powerful magicians she had ever faced. So far it had been all Aela could do protect herself and the others with her shielding magic. She could not honestly say she was anxious for more.

The mercenary shook his head at the pair. Aela suspected that he did not understand Elvish. It was not a language many Northerners had a desire to learn, as elves were hardly well-loved by his folk. Aela had to admit that she felt much the same toward the Skanjr in turn.

She coughed as they made their way through the smoke-filled passageway. She noted Loria doing the same. The taller elf held up the long, flowing sleeve of his robe over his mouth and nose in an effort to filter out the smoke left behind from the incendiary magic that both sides had employed. Even Hrollaug and the pair of blond mercenaries who joined them labored to breathe.

At least there was something Aela could do about that. She let her senses shift to the aether once more. She pushed her awareness up through the great slabs of rock that made up the ceiling, into the turf that covered it, and finally out into the open sky above. Once she was clear of the noxious energy that suffused the barrow, she called out to the air itself with her mana, and it answered in the form of a sylph.

Aela entreated the air spirit for her assistance. She found that the elemental was more than willing to oblige. The spirit drew hold of her mana, and allowed Aela to pour the energy into her being. Using that power, the sylph was able to transcend the aether and take physical form in the passage below.

That form came in the manner of a strong breeze that whispered through the rough-hewn corridors of the barrow. Rather than simply stirring up the fumes, the wind pushed all of the smoke outside. In moments the air was clean and easy to breathe again, and a playful wind danced around the tips of Aela's bound hair.

The mercenaries looked around uneasily, and murmured to one another in their own tongue. That is when Aela noted that one of them was a woman. Not that it made much difference in the end. Professional warriors like those of the Frisverd company were fighters first, men or women second.

At the end of the corridor they came to a wide, semicircular chamber. They found a great, bubbling cauldron set up in the center of the room. Shackled to the ceiling above it was the corpse of a man. From his olive skin, Aela deduced he had been a Rasen. His body was missing from the waist down. Given the chunks Aela saw floating around within the pot, she imagined that his legs had not gone far. Entrails and organs dripped down from the poor man's torso to add spice to the unwholesome meal. If that was not enough, in several places along his arms the flesh had been filleted from his bones as well.

Aela could not help but to turn her head away for a moment. It was not the dissected corpse itself that made her feel sick. She had seen - and done - far more gruesome things during her years of training in the healing arts of Vitamancy. Bare muscle, bone, tendons, organs and the like were not the sort of thing to make her blanch. Rather it was the sadistic intent so clearly behind the act that disturbed her. That intent not only assaulted her physical senses, but violated her magical sensitivity as well. Just as the previous areas of the barrow had reeked of corruption in the aether, here the horror was at its worst in the spirit realm.

"What they said was true," Hrollaug rumbled, "damned cannibals!"

Another of the Skanjr mercenaries spat on the ground in disgust. Aela noted that even Loria's creamy features, usually so bright and cheerful, were now veiled in shadow.

"There's one still alive!" one of the Skanjr cried, pointing across the room with his bared sword.

Aela was instantly at the ready. Before even casting her gaze about, she focused her thoughts upon the symbol for her arcane shield, and prepared to flood her mana through the threads of its tapestry. When she did finally see what the mercenary was pointing at, she relaxed her guard, but only somewhat.

What had seemed to be only a bundle of rags at the far end of the chamber shook, like a pile of leaves in an autumn breeze. Hrollaug and the other two Skanjr warily moved toward it from both sides. Aela followed, just in case her shielding was necessary. At the same time she made sure to leave a clear field of fire for Loria, who waited near the doorway with arms raised.

"Help me, help me!" The bundle of rags exploded upward, and revealed itself to be a filthy man clad in shabby wool. Aela could see that his teeth were blackened from rot, and she could practically feel the lice squirming through his greasy hair. "They captured me, were going to eat me! Oh you have to save me!"

"Captured you did they?" the female mercenary asked slyly. Her hand darted down to his waist, and drew forth a long, single-edged knife belted there. "Then what are you doing with this?"

"And why are there no ropes or irons here to bind you?" the other mercenary demanded. He grabbed one of the man's hands, exposing his wrist. "And your skin bears no marks of them ever being there?"

"And a mail shirt at your feet?" With one boot, the female Skanjr poked the steel rings of a byrnie laying on the floor nearby.

"I can explain!" the dirty man cried. "I found that knife, I was going to-"

But Hrollaug and the other mercenaries were no longer listening. The war captain looked to his followers and nodded wordlessly. Before the dirty man could finish his sentence, the female Skanjr drew the cultist's own dagger across his throat in a crimson line.

Aela stood and watched as the life poured out of the man, her heart as cold as the glaciers of the mercenary's far-off homeland. She could feel the darkness that twisted and smothered the man's spirit, just as clearly as she could feel it choking the light from the barrow all around. She could muster no sympathy for the cannibal, not given the horror suspended above the cauldron, and floating within its depths. How many innocent people had he and his ilk kidnapped or lured to the barrow, only to meet such a terrible end?

"As I suspected, they are Manaha cultists." Aela followed Loria's voice, to find the Silaine mage standing before a shrine made of bones. They were not just any bones either, but entirely from the Manaborn races: those peoples with both sentience and the ability to recognize and manipulate magic, whether or not they actually used it. The bones were bound together in wire, forming the image of a creature taller than Loria, yet more slender, with limbs too long for the rest of its body.

"Bloody Fomorian filth," Hrollaug spat. Then he turned to the other mercenaries. "Take everything of value. Then let us be quit of this cursed place."

Loria moved away from the shrine, and the Skanjr went about their looting with a quickness that revealed their experience at such matters. Aela stepped over to her friend, and followed his gaze to the idol of bones.

Looking at the shrine set Aela's teeth on edge. For once she wished that she had not honed the magical ability that resided within her, that lay within all people. If she had not done so, she would be as blissfully unaware of the icon's terrible presence as the mercenaries were.

To the warriors it was naught but a grotesque curiosity. But even without consciously trying to aesense, Aela felt the deep and terrible hunger that rose up from the shrine. It twisted through her belly like a fiery snake. It clawed into her ears, like fingers across a chalkboard. It whispered of the power that could be hers. It gnawed and writhed, like a maggot in the flesh of her soul.

Aela felt as dark as the barrow. Darker still. Feeling the power of the idol, she realized that the worst victims of the cult had not been those they had murdered and eaten, but the cultists themselves. It was now clear to her that the dead were just the bait, like worms on a hook. It was the cultist's own spirits that were caught by that hook, rent and trapped by its corrupt promise. Their souls were the true victims of Manaha the Voracious.

Once the Skanjr were gone, and the two mages were alone in the chamber, Loria raised his hands. He loosed a torrent of violent mana across the room. Lightning arced and blasted the idol to pieces. The cauldron and the corpses followed as the elf turned his destructive power about the room. After shattering everything, he changed his assault to fire, and engulfed the chamber in an inferno of cleansing flame.

As far as Aela was concerned, it could not burn fast enough.

Another fascinating episode! I simply love how Aela perceives her world. You really bring meaning to the title 'mage'. The way the battleaxe whispered its name to her spirit, her ability to coax help from the air itself, her sensing of the malevolence in both the prisoner and that grisly totem.

It brought a smile of satisfaction as Loria used some Delphine Jend level magic to tear apart and burn that cursed barrow.

Skjoldbreki! Finally someone explains how we mysteriously know the name of enchanted weapons found as loot in the game - it’s not like someone hands it to you and tells you its name and enchantment. That little bit jumped out at me in an otherwise fascinating and immersive bit of storytelling.

More, please.

I would like to start by saying I appreciate the scope of this piece as we've witnessed thusfar; it has a high fantasy feel (e.g. magic being commonplace), but the scope is narrowed in on low-fantasy concerns (e.g. the aforementioned farmers vs. mercenaries).

I'd also like to note a certain appreciation for the following phrase:

It was not the dissected corpse itself that made her feel sick. She had seen - and done - far more gruesome things during her years of training in the healing arts of Vitamancy. Bare muscle, bone, tendons, organs and the like were not the sort of thing to make her blanch. Rather it was the sadistic intent so clearly behind the act that disturbed her.

It gives us a lot of insight into your protagonist as one who is by no means squeamish about bodily fluids, but more about the darker sides of human nature. I feel it takes a lot of the focus away from the physical aspect of the sight and puts it into a more mental/emotional sphere, thus diminishing the need to be overly detailed with the physical aspects. I think how you handled it was quite well and revealing about the character's personality, as well as their abilities.

That said, there was one thing I wasn't a fan of. The use of the word rumbled (and other placeholders for said). I feel they sort of detracted from the prose slightly, such as here:

"I expect that will be the end of it," the heavy-set man rumbled in the Rasen language. "But come, there may be more mages in the main chamber."

But then your usage of the word "Cried" here I feel was substantially more effective than just having used said.

"I can explain!" the dirty man cried. "I found that knife, I was going to-"

I feel like in the case of the former, you used rumbled as a way to paint this figure as being large and imposing with a deep, gravely voice, but I may be wrong. If I was correct however, I think it might have been accomplished by giving a brief mention of his stature and how his deep voice carried.

That said, I really do like this chapter. The depictions of magic have a bittersweet charm about them as one thinks about them on the grand scale of the theatrics of it all, but also on the smaller scale of what it's like to be on the other side. I really do like this piece though. I think it has a lot of potential and I look forward to seeing its developments over the coming months.

Acadian & haute ecole rider: My goal here is to show that magic is not an inert force that just sits around waiting for someone to use it. Rather it is an active element in the multiverse, like gravity or electro-magnetism, always acting upon its surroundings.


Zalphon: Hi Zalp! I do tend to get away from just using "said" often, in order to add more feeling. I used to give it a lot of careful thought back in the old days. But now that I am more comfortable with my writing it just naturally comes right out at times. So I leave placeholders in those places.

I think High and Low Fantasy are being redefined lately. I believe the classic rule of thumb was that if it was set in a wholly other world it was High Fantasy, and if it was set in the real world it was Low Fantasy. But as we are getting away from the 'standard' Tolkienesque stories of Dark Lords and the Army of Light uniting to defeat them, I think Low Fantasy is now being applied less toward the setting, and, more toward the plot. The Dark Lord and Army of Light is still High Fantasy, while the grey characters with mortal, everyday concerns like making a living, getting revenge, accumulating political and military power are Low Fantasy. I think the Game of Thrones tv series really illustrates this. I would call most of it Low Fantasy, as it is a dynastic struggle between ruthless warlords. But the Big Bad Ice Necromancer and his legion of undead are pure High Fantasy. I don't watch the show, but I think the most recent season had some issues because it was shifting away from the Low Fantasy stuff everyone can easily relate to, to the more romantic High Fantasy of Light vs. Darkness.


(This next chapter is a big one, but I don't think there is really enough going on to break it into two)

Chapter 1.3

Aela pulled the Light Elf away from the blaze, and entreated her sylph to continue to keep the air around them clear of the smoke and fumes from the blaze. She led the Silaine down the long corridor of the barrow as the heat from the flames bathed their backs. Finally they stepped from the darkness and out into the light of the sun. Aela lowered her night-seeing spell, but was still forced to raise a hand to shield her eyes from the sudden brightness.

A collection of wooden and stone buildings were clustered around the entrance of the barrow. All showed signs of the battle that had preceded the struggle beneath the earth. Doors were broken, windows and shutters were smashed, and roofs were burned out. In some cases entire structures had been completely flattened. The wooden stockade beyond had fared no better, and was charred to ashes or smashed down flat in numerous places.

Just outside of the broken walls, a spring bubbled up into a wide pond, whose runoff trailed away as a narrow stream. Beyond that rose the jagged pinnacles of the Stone Forest. The irregular spikes of limestone rose up hundreds of feet into the air, and spread out in all directions. It was as if someone had taken a forest, and replaced all the trees with towers made of rock. Here and there real brush and small catechu trees sprouted up between the pinnacles of stone, and in some places vines and creepers crawled up the rock faces. But for the most part the uneven fingers of stone were bare as they clawed at the sky overhead.

The mercenaries of the Frisverd company milled about the ruins of the small settlement. There were at least four dozen of them, if not more. Most were Skanjr, with pale flesh and fair hair. However, Aela also noted the olive skin and black hair of the Rasenna folk among nearly a third of their number. There were even a few brown-skinned Aymarans from across the sea, and pair of granite-hued Guzuk orcs from the eastern mountains.

The humans all wore shirts of mail belted around their waists, with skirts hanging down to at least their upper thighs. Spangenhelms protected their heads, and many wore bracers of hardened leather about their forearms. Their round shields were faced with leather or rawhide, and painted in a riot of colors and designs. There were spiral and checkerboard patterns, animals such as boars, wolves, or dragons, and even the elaborate knotwork patterns that her own people - the Arvernach - were known for. Most were armed with either straight, double-edged swords with rounded tips, or single-handed axes. However, a few carried great long axes like the one their leader Hrollaug brandished.

The two gray orcs were unarmored, as was typical of their folk. Chaotic designs were painted upon their bare skin with ochre, and the red body paint glowed warm to Aela's magical senses. She recognized the ochre as bearing a protective enchantment. The orcs had never been renowned for spellcasting, but their alchemy was second to none. The same was true of their fame with the falxes they carried. Pole-arms bearing a long, sickle-shaped blade, Aela had already seen that they could cut through shield and armor in one blow.

Aela felt the warm glow of mana beside her, and out of the corner of her eye she noted a shimmer fall down Loria's body from head to toe. A moment later it was gone, but the magic had left his skin and clothing impeccably clean. Even the wrinkles and creases had vanished from his black and silver robe. The ring of gold and amethyst that decorated one of his fingers glinted as if it had just been polished, and like his robes, resonated with the mana bound within.

Loria looked as if he has stepped off the cover of one of the copper disme romance novels that were so the rage in Alalia. Lavender eyes slanted gently across his delicate features, while a roseate waterfall of soft hair spilled down to nearly his waist. Now freed from grime, his skin was revealed to be as soft and pale as cream, and drew the light to it as a flower did butterflies.

Aela took a moment to concentrate upon her own Cleanse spell as well. Another brief shimmer of light carried away the grime and sweat from the battle, leaving her skin feeling as fresh and clean as if she had just risen from a warm bath. With the fingers of one hand, she loosened the band that tied back her hair. That allowed the light brown tresses to spill down across her long features, past her soft chin, and come to rest below her wide shoulders.

Her clothing was now cleaned and pressed as well, like Loria's. However, the white chemise, brown bodice, and leather pants she wore looked nowhere near as fine as his wizardly attire. Yet they too were suffused with protective magic, and Aela knew her clothing would defend her just as stoutly as the hauberks of steel that the mercenaries wore.

Aela saw that the warriors had built up a tall pile of the loot they had collected from the barrow. It seemed that nothing had escaped the eagle eyes of the sellswords. Aela saw not only the obvious valuables such as mail armor, weapons, and jewelry, but also drinking cups, candlesticks, boots, a wall hanging, and even a few books. Off to one side Aela also noted the bodies of the cultists, stripped bare and thrown into a much larger pile. Next to the grisly mound waited a cart drawn by a pair of mules.

Most of the warriors were clustered around the loot, examining the reward for their labors. Many doffed their helmets and ran fingers through sweaty hair, or quenched their thirst with skins of water or wine. Here and there Aela noted men and women with rent armor or dented helms, clearly wincing in pain. It was to these folk that she reflexively moved.

"Give me a few moments and I can heal that." Aela stepped up to a man whose arm trailed blood from wrist to elbow. She reached out for his wounded flesh, but the Skanjr jerked his hand away with a sneer.

"Don't touch me!" the red-haired man cursed in broken Rasen.

Aela recoiled from the stinging words. Looking from one mercenary to the next, she saw many gaping, fish-like stares greeting her. She knew that look well. They could see that she had not been born a woman, but was instead an ardhanari: a two-spirit who had transformed herself from male to female with magic.

"How are you going to earn with a hand like that Bruni?" One of the female mercenaries piped up. "You'll be worthless for a month at least."

"Then I'll be worthless!" the Skanjr spat back to his countrywoman. "Better that than some unnatural he-she's magic."

Bruni stalked off, to welcome pats and nods of approval by several of his comrades. Aela was about to turn away herself when a male voice stopped her.

"I'll not mind your seid-working." Another Skanjr stepped up. "Something happened to my head, though by Teiwaz I cannot remember what."

The warrior wore his blond hair in one of the fashions popular among the men of his people. Cut short in the front of his head, his straw-colored locks were shaved entirely bare behind the ears, from the crown of his head down to the nape of his neck. Aela saw that what hair he did possess was caked in dried blood, staining its bright color to dark brown.

The Skanjr held his spangenhelm with one hand, and Aela noted a long dent within one of its steel plates. She imagined that his skull would have been split in twain if not for the helmet. But even still, she knew that much of the force of such a blow would have been sent through the metal and into his head. She suspected that this one might have more to worry about than just some bloody hair and lost memory…

"Sit down and tell me your name," the Arvern Witch said. The mercenary weaved unsteadily for a moment, then sat down hard on the ground with legs crossed. One of the female Skanjr stepped over to steady him. Then before he could speak, he pitched forward and vomited all over his legs and the ground beneath him. The stench of it assaulted Aela's nostrils, and the other sellsword made a disgusted face. But Aela did not bat an eye. She had seen - and smelled - far worse working at the Ingenium's hospital.

Many of the other mercenaries laughed however. Aela shot them an angry look, before laying her hands upon the injured man's temples.

"That's not unusual with a head wound," she said softly, "just relax."

Easing the warrior's head back so that he sat straight upright once more, she let her mana sink down into his body. His aura filled her magical senses, a dizzyingly complex tapestry of energy that wove throughout his body and spirit. There were far too many individual strands of power for her to follow and study. That would take months. But her training in Vitamancy had taught her to distinguish which threads pertained to his physical health, and it was these that she traced to his injuries.

Just as clearly as she could see it with her flesh and blood eyes, her magical senses revealed where the skin of the warrior's head had been broken by the inward-dented helmet. His scalp bled profusely, as all such injuries did. But this did not concern Aela. She had expected as much after all. As she feared, the real danger lay below his skull. While the bone had endured most the shock of the blow, Aela found his brain had not. It was severely concussed, and now blood was pooling and seeping through the barrier between it and its normal fluids.

Aela closed her eyes and blocking out everything else around her. The Arvern Witch concentrated solely upon his aura, and the torn and smashed fibers of energy that mirrored his physical injuries. Using her mana as a seamstress would a needle and thread, she sewed the strands of his aura back together. As she did so, his body followed suit. Blood was drawn back into its vessels, and then the veins and arteries sealed shut. Cranial fluids returned to their normal space, bruises healed, pressure was relieved, and bone was restored to full health.

"As above, so below," Aela murmured.

Once she was finished working inside his head, she let her awareness slip out of the aether and back to the physical world. She stared at the superficial wound along his scalp. Healing that was child's play compared to her earlier work, practically as easy as snapping her fingers. She did not even need to read his aura to do it. She simply willed his flesh to heal, and her mana made it reality.

When she was finished, the Skanjr's hair was still matted with dried blood and sweat. But she found that the color had returned to his fair skin, and he smiled back up at her. Before he could speak, she passed a hand over him. A shimmer of purifying light fell down the mercenary's body as Aela cast her Cleanse spell upon him. In its wake his body and clothing were left clean and fresh, as if both had just emerged from the wash.

"Don't suppose you could do that for a hangover too?" he winked.

With that the female Skanjr clapped him on the shoulder. "Now we know he's fine!" she laughed.

"You may have lost some of your memory," Aela cautioned the man, "especially of receiving the wound. It may come back eventually, or never at all. Let me know if you have any other problems."

"Aye," the Skanjr nodded. "Ergi or not, you are right in my runes. Sondulfr of Hjartsfjord owes you a debt seidkona."

Sondulfr clambered to his feet, and offered Aela his hand. She took it gladly. At least he was being civil. Still, she noted that even he could not resist using the term ergi for her: weakling. While she knew little of the Skanjr tongue, that word she did know, given how often she found it leveled upon her. Still, at least he had also called her a seidkona, their word for a female mage. That was the best she could ever hope for, from anyone.

"Anyone else?" Aela asked, looking from one mercenary to another.

"I've got something right here you can lay your hands upon!" one of the men laughed, gesturing rudely to his privates.

"Aye, here too!" guffawed another.

Aela shook her head and turned away. Before she could leave however, another voice cut through the afternoon air.

"I wouldn't let some man pretending to be a woman touch mine," a third voice stung. "There's no telling what you'll get from it."

The Arvern Witch turned around, feeling her anger bubbling like hot water in a pot. The wind whipped up around her as the sylph she had previously summoned reacted to her feelings, blowing dust and clods of dirt in all directions. She fought down the rage with an effort of will, and the nature spirit calmed, albeit grudgingly.

Aela knew that she should say something witty in reply. Loria always had some clever riposte for such situations. But as usual, her mind was a blank slate, and her tongue a stone in her mouth. Yet she was certain that by the time she laid down to sleep that night, she would think of exactly the right thing to say. Of course by then it would no longer matter.

"From what I've seen, no one is going to be touching yours for a long time." Loria's voice came to the rescue. "That is assuming anyone can even find that little thing."

"You have a sharp tongue leaf-ear," growled a man with dirty blond hair and a long mustache. He gripped an axe in one hand, and the men around him did likewise. "But we know what to do with you high and mighty alfar in Skanlond."

"That's enough!" Hrollaug's bull roar silenced all. The red-bearded Skanjr stomped between the pair of mages and the unruly mercenaries. "You all have weapons and armor to clean and maintain. I want to see cloths and oil out now. We'll have inspection before the sun drops a hand-span, and any not fit for duty will regret it."

The mercenaries groused, and some shot dark glances at Aela and Loria. But they followed their leader's commands, and set to maintaining their steel. In the meantime Hrollaug turned to the mages, and gestured for them to walk with him.

"Let us split up the loot here and go our separate ways," he said. The mercenary captain's tone made it clear that this was not a suggestion, but a demand.

"And miss the pleasure of your company's hospitality?" Loria replied sardonically.

"Hospitality is one thing. But you two…" Hrollaug leveled a hard stare upon Aela. "An alfar is bad enough, but if I'd known you weren't a real woman, I'd have never agreed to this partnership."

"I was real enough for you when I was saving your skin back in that barrow!" Aela snarled.

The Skanjr opened his mouth to retort, but was cut off when a strong wind suddenly rose up and shoved him back by at least an inch. Loria stepped between the two, and the unseen sylph relented, for the moment at least. Aela did her best to rein in her feelings, while the Light Elf put a conciliatory hand around the mercenary captain's shoulder and led him a few steps away.

"Perhaps you have a point my friend," the Silaine mage said in an assuaging voice. "Let us indeed part ways here. You may have the heads to collect the bounty back in Veia. We'll take that lorcras cuirass from the high priest, and a few of those mail shirts and swords from his bodyguard."

The thing I notice initially is a lot of telling in the first few paragraphs. I think the most evident example is this passage:

"...The irregular spikes of limestone rose up hundreds of feet into the air, and spread out in all directions. It was as if someone had taken a forest, and replaced all the trees with towers made of rock..."

I feel that this may have been better shown had you had a brief snippet of dialogue about it, or perhaps made mention of one of the characters being awe-struck by it. It'd have the same effect, but I think it would feel more organic and integrated into the story instead of having painted a background image for the characters to act in front of.

A great way I can see of explaining what I'm trying to say is look at the animation style of the recent fad videogame, Cuphead. The animation style was largely inspired by 1930s-era cartoons in which the background was significantly more detailed than the characters, because it required less animation than the characters.

The characters, requiring a massive variety of poses, facial expressions, etc. were substantially less detailed to save manhours, as well as to help them contrast to the background.

Now I am not saying that these passages are bad, in fact, I find them to be beautifully written. They are evocative with rich imagery, but what I am saying is that I see this as having been an opportunity to integrate the character and setting and reduce the amount of contrast between them.

That said, I will say that I really appreciated the following line:

"Then I'll be worthless!" the Skanjr spat back to his countrywoman. "Better that than some unnatural he-she's magic."

This has exactly the effect I was talking about earlier in the post. It is incredibly telling of the character and the setting without coming off as long-winded exposition. I am very much a fan of it.

I also like this passage as well:

[i]"The Arvern Witch concentrated solely upon his aura, and the torn and smashed fibers of energy that mirrored his physical injuries. Using her mana as a seamstress would a needle and thread, she sewed the strands of his aura back together. As she did so, his body followed suit. Blood was drawn back into its vessels, and then the veins and arteries sealed shut. Cranial fluids returned to their normal space, bruises healed, pressure was relieved, and bone was restored to full health."[i]

I like it for different reasons, but I do like it. I like it because it illustrates how magic works and allows me to extrapolate the logical extreme of her power if it really like a seamstress with a needle and thread.

Ultimately, I appreciate this update. I felt it did a lot to show more of the setting and develop the character dynamics.

This was a wonderfully engrossing episode with lots of goodness woven in. More world building as the adventurers filtered out of the barrow into their stark, sunny surroundings.

How very mage-like to use cleansing spells to spiff up after a hard dungeon crawl.

You did a wonderful job with the whole healing scene – showing us the pain and rejection she was clearly well-familiar with. The actual healing she did was mesmerizing and seemed as natural for her as could be.

Finally, you show us some of her limitations - a good counterbalance to her considerable arcane support skills. Unlike her smooth-tongued elven pal, she gets tongue-tied when searching for a witty response. Also, the degree of control she has over her nature spirits is unwillingly quite influenced by her emotions. Aela is becoming quite an interesting and endearing character here.

Nicely done – more please.

I have to agree with everything Acadian said - he picked out the things I really liked about this segment.

I have to respectfully disagree with Zalphon on this:

Any such dialog would have occurred when the characters first entered the zone, prior to entering the barrow. Upon exiting it, they would have been more interested in dividing the loot and recovering from their injuries. The brief mention of the environment is, I feel, more appropriate to Aela's nature and her assessment of the exterior surroundings. It seems to me that you were going more for the contrast between the ruins of the settlement, which was damaged by the battle below, and the untouched splendor of the stone spires beyond, which Aela, being so attuned to above and below, would have automatically noted.

However, I do second the rest of Zalphon's assessment, especially the passage about healing with magicka!

Zalphon: I do like the idea of using dialogue to convey not only description, but also emotion. I have been listening to radio dramas lately, and naturally almost all of the description comes from dialogue between characters. So it is something I look to work into my writing when I see an opportunity.

I get a lot of how I visualize magic and it use from the old tabletop games Shadowrun and Earthdawn. One of their best writers - Steve Kenson - is a RL Witch in fact (I met his husband Chris Penczak at the local Pagan festival). One of the things I really loved about Earthdawn in particular was the idea of True Patterns, which governed everything in the world. If you rewove the threads of a pattern, you changed the object it governed, and vice-versa.


Acadian: One of the great perks of being a mage is being able to easily clean off the muck and ick of dungeon-delving!

Aela is in many ways a ridiculously over-powered character. So I try to consciously keep her down to earth and relatable. Her ordinary problems with everyday matters like bigotry, self-consciousness, social awkwardness, and just lack of being "one of the cool kids" are one of those ways.


haute ecole rider: You probably noticed that this time around I got away from using scientific terms and descriptions for Aela's healing. Instead I embraced the magic aspect more fully, and put most of it in the aether, relying upon the concept of "That which is above is the same as that which is below" from Hermes Trismegistus. Also how in core shamanism, a shaman heals the sick by journeying to the spirit world and doing battle with the spirit causing the illness. In this case Aela is not doing battle with anything. But she is shifting her consciousness to the spirit world to create change in the physical. Walking between worlds.



*Note, new pics have been added to the initial post*



Chapter 2.1

"We have found them," Sindeok warned.

The Teodon riding ahead of him raised one hand, and the young nangdo brought his oro to a halt. The ornithopod mount stood on a pair of powerful hind legs, while its smaller forelegs dangled freely in the air. A long, slender tail stretched out behind it, balancing out its thick, feathered torso. A rounded head rose from the saurian's short neck, fitted with a bridle leading back to Sindeok's hands.

"As I expected," Daeso said. The captain's scales were bright blue, announcing his pure bone ancestry to all, and faded to white along his lower jaw and chest. Buru sported the same color scales as their leader. But Sindeok's skin was black, except for irregular bands of white that ran up and down his arms and legs, and a row of orange spines that crested his head.

The hwarang of the Celestial Flight Company wore a cuirass of bronze scales, which glinted warmly even in the pale light of the moon. A similar helmet covered the captain's head, festooned with tassels of yellow and white silk. The long-sleeved tunic he wore for padding beneath the metal was decorated with dragons and serpents, also stitched from the finest silk. Leather bracers embossed with more dragons protected his forearms, and his feet were shod in leather boots, reinforced with bronze plates.

Sindeok wore the same himself, as did Buru, the other nangdo with them. Except that their silks were not quite so fine, nor adorned with gold stitching. Like their leader, they each carried the straight-bladed swords of their people. But again, theirs did not sport grips wrapped in silver wire, or crossguards set with pearls.

Daeso sat upon his oro and waited.

Sindeok tried not to bob his head or twitch his tail as adrenaline flooded his veins. These midnight meetings with bandits always set his scales upon edge. There was no telling if they would end quietly, or with bloodshed. It took all of his willpower, but the nangdo sat his own mount with the same stillness that his leader did.

As one of the flower knights of Kye Rim, Sindeok had trained all of his life in the arts of war. Death in battle was his only promise in life. But there was no glory in dying from a hidden bandit's arrow during a clandestine rendezvous. His bones would never be properly blessed, his kindred would never sing his praises, and his honor would never increase that of his family.

To one side of the muddy road, a shadow detached itself from one of the tall durian trees. It was revealed to be another Teodon when it stepped into the wan light of the moon and stars. Like all of their race, the interloper stood upright upon his hind legs. His bare, four-toed feet squished effortlessly through the mud. A slender tail waved gracefully through the air behind him, hovering just inches above the wet earth. His long, crocodilian head sat upon a tall, slender neck. Bright yellow eyes shone from the back of his skull, and when he smiled the Teodon revealed a mouth filled with serrated, sail-shaped teeth.

The newcomer gripped the durian wood of a staff in his three-fingered hands. The magical weapon was tipped with the rounded skull of an oro, whose eye sockets had been filled with red crystals. Those crystals now glowed, and Sindeok could smell the energy that coursed through them even from where he sat. He had never felt such power in a staff, and the nangdo briefly wondered if the bandit wizard had enchanted it himself, or if he had stolen it from an honest magician?

As the bandit mage stepped closer, Sindeok sensed the mana within the skull-shaped crystals that girded the wizard's waist and torso as well. Unlike the staff, this energy was not formed into an enchantment. Instead it was simply extra power stored for later use. It appeared that the magician was worried about running out of mana, given how much he was keeping for ready access. Rounding out the outlaw's frame were the real skulls of birds and small lizards, in the form of bracelets and a necklace.

It was Girim, the nangdo thought, the lieutenant of the bandits.

The wizard turned his head and hissed something in a low tone. More dark shapes rose from the rainforest to either side. Two of them turned and vanished deeper into the undergrowth. The rest stepped out onto the road, and flanked the wizard. All were Teodon, carrying short spears or bows. A few wore nothing but loincloths, but most were at least clad in simple rattan cuirasses. Some even wore ancient Rasen armor. Such was either a simple bronze disc strapped over the chest and back, or three such discs welded together into one larger, V-shaped-shaped cuirass. All of them went barefoot in the mud however.

Sindeok could not help but curl an aristocratic lip at the green and brown-scaled peasants, with their bare feet literally caked in mud. Not even the Rasenna wore such armor anymore, having eschewed it for the mail armor brought south by the Skanjr centuries ago. Yet he knew that for such common bone churls, even four hundred year old cast-offs were treasures. What could one expect from those who wallowed in the mud all of their lives?

"Daeso," the wizard practically spat the name out onto the mud, "you are late."

"I am here exactly when I needed to be Girim." Daeso took his time and dismounted, swinging one leg over the shoulders of his oro and sliding effortlessly to the ground. His boots squished into the moist surface of the dirt road, and the hwarang rested one hand casually upon the hilt of his sword. Sindeok followed suit, as did Buru, and the two nangdo flanked their leader.

Sindeok glanced back to the crumhead that followed behind their mounts. It was much larger than the slender oros. Covered in green scales. The hadrosaur's shoulders rose as tall as a Teodon. Including the thick tail that stretched out behind it, the beast of burden had to be nearly fifteen feet long. Unlike the smaller riding animals, the crumhead walked on both its massive hind legs and its shorter forelegs. Its name of course came from the long, hollow crest that curled back from its skull, much like a crumhorn.

"Where is Ugeo?" The captain of the Celestial Gallery cast his head this way and that, scanning the forest to either side.

"My name is Dark-Eye!" a voice roared like a leviathan. "Ugeo is long dead, thanks to your master."

All turned to witness the author of the voice step from the green undergrowth of the rainforest and into the open road. He was a thick, heavy-set Teodon. His scales were dull red along his back and upper head, and faded to grey along his lower jaw and chest. More striking were the black stripes that crossed his body from the tip of his nose to his tail. Such colors could only mean that he was one of aristocratic birth, as Sindeok, Buru and Daeso were.

A black patch covered one of the newcomer's eyes, but his other, dark red orb stared out of his skull like a festering wound. A cuirass of white leviathan scales covered his upper arms, torso, and hung down to mid-thigh. A helmet made of the long fangs of the same monster encased his head. Like the other bandits Dark-Eye walked through the mud with feet bared. He held a spear of durian wood in one hand, tipped with a leaf-shaped head of gleaming black lorcras.

"You have none but yourself to thank for that," Daeso replied evenly. "Once you were the best of us. But you went too far. Even the orcs would have cast you out."

"You were right there beside me," Dark-Eye growled. The older Teodon cast his lone eye from the hwarang to his two followers. "So too were my other loyal nangdo. Until you all turned on me."

"After what those mud-footed peasants did, none of us hesitated to take vengeance with you." The younger Teodon nodded to the black eye patch that the bandit leader wore, and the scars that trailed away through the scales above and below. "But when you ate their flesh and drank their blood, there was nothing any of us could do. The gyukon had no choice but to strip you of your rank and exile you. You are lucky he did not order your execution."

"Luck had no part of the Sublime Ancestor's decision," Dark-Eye spat. "You would not be here otherwise, would you? Gaesomun's greed for gold and silver is far greater than my hunger for flesh. So which of us is the true abomination? Whom do you serve?"

Well.

This section sounds very Korean to me. ;P

I liked how the relationships between the teodon - both bandits and Celestial Flight. And it was a bit of an unexpected surprise to realize the leader of the bandits was himself a former Flight leader. I'm intrigued in seeing where these go.

As someone who once wrote of a barefooted character who draws power from the ground, I was delighted to see these "peasants" also go barefoot! I wonder if they do so for the same reason . . .

Exotically fascinating!

Lots of world building going on here as we are exposed to new types of folk, mounts and beasts of burden.

Hmm, some sort of late night meeting with unsavories no doubt. Some interesting characters here – lots of nice details added to the bandit mage (and his staff), as well as Dark-Eye.

I look forward to finding out what comes of this meeting – nothing good I somehow suspect.

haute ecole rider: I am so grateful for you turning me on to The Great Queen Seondeok, so many years ago.

I worked on the history of Dark-Eye in this version, giving him more depth, and creating a stronger tie between him and the local ruler.

These bare feet are a little different. I wanted some obvious way to set the Teodon gentry aside from the peasants. So I decided that the peasants all went barefoot everywhere, while the upper classes wear shoes. I literally got the idea from the old term 'dusty feet' used for the Helots


Acadian: Much of the exotic nature of the new world I built is in Kye Rim. Or at least in the non-human lands. I tried to use the human-dominated lands of Aulerci as a more or less 'standard' environment that people could easily relate to. Then as we travel away into other lands, we see more and more exotic and unusual things.

Clandestine meetings with outlaws are bound to go bad sooner or later...



Chapter 2.2

"Just bring out the tribute," the hwarang turned to nod at Sindeok and Buru. The young nangdo and his comrade walked back to the crumhead and unstrapped several chests and sacks that had been slung over the hadrosaur's heavy frame. Returning with the containers, they revealed them to be empty when they set them at Daeso's feet and opened them.

Dark-Eye said nothing. He simply waved to the Teodon bandits lurking at the edge of the road. They came forward with bags and packs fairly bursting with coin and other loot and dumped them into the hwarang's chests and sacks. Yet when they were finished, there were still two chests left unfilled.

"Not enough." Daeso crossed his arms and stared back at Dark-Eye. "The Sublime Ancestor Gaesomun has increased the tribute."

Murmurs rose from the bandits, and Sindeok noted even darker stares than normal were cast at himself and the others. The bandit wizard lowered the oro-skull of his staff to point directly at the hwarang. Sindeok felt the mage call up his mana and channel it into the weapon, causing the ruby-red mana crystals set within the eye sockets to glow with fiery life. Girim looked to Dark-Eye, and Sindeok realized that the wizard was just waiting for leave to attack.

The bandit leader laughed instead. "Why, does Gaesomun not have enough golden chamber pots already? Perhaps we should give him something to fill those pots instead?" Dark-Eye turned sideways over one of the chests, and lifted his tail as if we were intending to do just that.

But before he could, Daeso drew the long, straight sword from his hip. The single-edged blade stretched out nearly three feet. Like all Teodon swords, its pommel was formed into a wide ring. Daeso's was embellished with the form of a curling dragon that filled the interior of the circle, while the grip was protected by a disc-shaped crossguard embossed with images of leviathans.

Dark-Eye stepped back, out of range of the weapon, and lifted his spear in response.

"Perhaps we shall just send him your head instead Daeso," Dark-Eye said.

"It will be your head, not mine Ugeo," the hwarang replied evenly.

"Let us see." The bandit leader cocked his arm back and hurled his spear forward. Daeso was too quick however, and the hwarang sidestepped to avoid the missile. Instead its gleaming black lorcras head buried itself in one of the oros behind him. The poor creature screamed and thrashed, biting at the wooden shaft that now sprouted from its long neck.

Sindeok did not spare another glance at the riding animal however. Instead he watched Daeso, as the flower knight sprang forward with sword held in the high guard known as The Roof. With both hands upon the hilt, the long blade of his sword rose up into the air behind his head. Dark-Eye stood unarmed before him, and appeared to be easy prey. Yet Sindeok smelled mana rising from the one-eyed renegade's fingers, and knew some trickery was about to be unveiled.

The bandit leader raised his hand, and what appeared to be lightning sprouted from his fingers, taking the shape of an elvish longsword. With a straight blade four feet in length, the aetherial weapon also bore the crossguard and two-handed grip of any mundane longsword. Sindeok even noted a smooth ricasso just above the guard, and a small set of lugs above that.

Like all nangdo, Sindeok had some magical experience. With his mage-trained nose, Sindeok could smell that the weapon was comprised of mana of course. It was an extension of Dark-Eye's will, bound into the shape of a deadly weapon. The nangdo had heard of such magically conjured arms of course, but had never seen one formed.

Daeso brought his shorter blade down at Dark-Eye's head in a great over-handed chop. The bandit leader raised his aetherial longsword, holding one hand on the grip, and the other near the point. Sparks flew as the hwarang's steel crashed against Dark-Eye's mageblade. Now that it was bared and in its full fury, Sindeok could feel the enchantment laid upon the hwarang's own weapon. It proudly announced itself as Mireuso, or Dragon's Bite. The nangdo knew from experience that it would have shattered most mortal weapons beneath it. But instead it merely bounced off Dark-Eye's aetherial sword, which snarled and hissed in reply.

Sindeok imagined that both men's hands and arms might be numbed by the force of impact. But he knew Daeso would not be slowed. He had seen that his leader had a heavy hand. No warrior struck with the strength and power that he did.

Yet Dark-Eye seemed unfazed by the attack. He countered, bringing the hilt of his aetherial longsword around like a hammer. Now it was Daeso’s turn to parry, barely preventing his skull from being caved in by the morte-strike.

The two swordsmen moved back and forth in the mud, attacking and countering in a flurry of blows. But neither enchanted steel nor manablade found purchase in the scales of either warrior. Daeso fought with speed and agility, and Sindeok was amazed at how the bandit lord was able to keep up with his longer weapon.

The nangdo thought it would be slow and clumsy. Yet the two-handed sword was anything but. Unlike the one-handed ring sword carried by the hwarang, Dark-Eye often used his longer blade much like a staff. The older Teodon would sometimes hold it with both hands on the blade, one near the point and the other toward the crossguard. This allowed him to both stab and cut with the point, and swing the opposite end like a club. At other times he would return to a normal grip with both hands on the hilt, or even choke up with one hand on the ricasso of the blade, just above the guard. Sindeok had never seen such a style before, and wondered if it might be an elvish method, for their people were known to use such great blades.

After another punishing overhead attack by the hwarang, Daeso lowered his weapon to a middle guard, that of The Plow. Holding his sword with the hilt near his waist, the point rose toward Dark-Eye's face. But Dark-Eye did not change his stance in response. Instead he still stood there with arms raised over his head, sword held between them like a staff in the position he had blocked the previous attack. Sindeok wondered if the older Teodon had tired, or if instead it was some manner of ruse? If Daeso had considered the latter, he did not show it. Instead he took advantage of the opening and darted forward with his sword.

Dark-Eye swung the point of his mageblade down across his chest, like a door swinging open. The conjured blade of his weapon met Daeso's enchanted steel and swept it to one side. Dark-Eye continued the motion, pushing his tip down toward the ground. Before Daeso could disengage, the bandit leader had hooked the point of his longer sword behind the hwarang's knee.

Jerking his aetherial longsword back, Dark-Eye pulled the flower knight's leg with him. The hwarang stretched out, completely off balance, and fell into the mud. Dark-Eye followed quickly now, stepping on Daeso's sword wrist with a bare foot, leaving him defenseless. The bandit lord reversed his grip on his manasword, so that he now held it pointed straight down like a spear. Then he thrust the sparking point down into the unarmored throat of the hwarang.

It did not take long for the pure bone aristocrat to die from the mortal wound. Dark-Eye stared at him as he did, as if watching for the last moment of life to leave the captain's body.

oooh, both magic and swordplay! Pretty tense fight there, though I felt Daeso was a bit overconfident from the start. Perhaps because of my memories of Daeso from the series Jumong . . . Or was it Kingdom of the Wind?

This all had me wondering about how a conjured weapon should behave. Does it have weight, and momentum, like a physical one? And if not, what difference does that make to combat?

In this, it's behaving like a physical one, and the fighting style is the same. But a weightless blade could be moved more easily, at the expense of having no momentum of its own, so that all force has to come from the muscles and leverage. That's much harder to imagine, as there's no real-world analogy possible.

The extreme case of that in fiction was a "sword" consisting of a single fibre reinforced with a statis field that made it unbreakable. There was a small ball at the tip, to let the user know where it was, or it would be essentially invisible. Effectively, it's all edge, and no blade. It will slice through any other weapon, but if you tried to block, the sliced-off section would keep going, and still cut you! The novel didn't describe what happened if two fighters used the same weapon.

Quite the sword fight! Loved your descriptions of the summoned mageblade as well as the touch of personality you injected into each weapon (as announcing themselves by name).

Dark Eye is quite the formidable opponent, displaying the rare ability to use magic, while brandishing the manablade as effectively as any master of melee combat.

haute ecole rider: Daeso was partly inspired by Kim Yushin from The Great Queen Seondeok, with his heavy-hitting blows. But he lacked Yushin's principles.


ghastley: I imagine that an aetherial sword has a similar weight to a normal one. Mana gives it form, which I also take to mean mass as well (the same with conjured spirits. Although in their case the form and mass depends upon their element. Air has almost no mass, while earth a great deal).


Acadian: Every magic item should be unique, with it own personality, based upon its creator, its history, and its function. I try to give a glimmer of that with their names, and how they make people feel when they perceive them.

Dark-Eye's finishing move is a real longswording technique. here is a link to it. I definitely stepped him up from the original version. We will learn where he got his training in magic and elvish longswording in this episode in fact.


Chapter 2.3

In the meantime Sindeok found the other bandits crowding around him and Buru. His hand rested upon the grip of his sword. But the nangdo knew the futility of the situation. He had no doubt that he was a far superior swordsman to any one of the outlaws. But with their numbers and position, he would die just the same.

For the moment the raiders waited, and all eyes turned to Dark-Eye. The renegade paid them no heed however. Instead he opened both of his hands, and his mageblade vanished into a sparkling haze. Drawing a knife of ordinary iron from his hip, the red and black scaled Teodon squatted down over Daeso's corpse. Sindeok could not see exactly what it was he did there, and from the sound of cracking bones that followed, he did not truly want to know.

Finally Dark-Eye rose, holding the hwarang's bloody heart in one gory hand, stained knife in the other. He strode to Sindeok and Buru, holding the organ before him.

"For the past five years, you have both lived in the shadow of Daeso and his lord Gaesomun," he said. "All of this time, they have used you like tools, and prevented you from realizing your true power. For they fear what you might become. They fear what you might do. Just as they fear me. I will show you why."

"Daeso was strong, and a skilled warrior" the bandit leader admitted. "But mere strength and skill are not enough. True power requires something more. It must be taken. It must be consumed. Feast upon the heart of your enemy, and you will take his power."

"Swear by me, and I will show you a power that you have never imagined," Dark-Eye continued. "You will stride across this earth like gods. The scales of men will quake at the sound of your names, and the tails of women will be yours for the taking."

"What say you?" the one-eyed bandit turned from one nangdo to the other, holding Daeso's heart before them. "Who will take this power I offer?"

Buru shook his head and backed away. The corners of his long mouth curled downward, revealing the nangdo's disgust. Girim bared his serrated teeth in a terrifying rictus. At Dark-Eye's nod, the bandit wizard leveled his staff at the recalcitrant Teodon. At the same time, the bandits near Buru all scampered away.

Once again Sindeok smelled the mana rise up from the wizard's bones and pour it into his staff. The enchanted weapon focused the energy into a brilliant projectile of fire, which leapt from the oro skull at its tip and blasted clear through Buru's armored chest. The nangdo did not even have time to cry out as the flames seared through his body and left a gaping hole in their wake. Buru simply fell dead as a stone into the muck.

Sindeok stared at the corpse of his comrade, and felt his tail twitch involuntarily at the sight of his charred scales. He looked back to Dark-Eye, and saw that he was aptly named, for there was nothing but darkness in the other Teodon's gaze.

With one shaking hand Sindeok reached out to take the severed heart. He raised the organ to his mouth, and bit down hard into the tough muscle. He had to twist his head this way and that so that his sail-shaped teeth - more suited to grinding up plants than ripping flesh - could tear out a bite. The resilient meat was no easier to chew, and it was as much a physical effort for the nangdo to finally swallow the mouthful as it was a moral one.

But finally he did gulp down the meat. As soon as he did, a sensation of heat rose from his belly. It surged up his throat, and spread through his entire frame. It felt like someone had poured flaming oil into his stomach, and it was burning him up from the inside out. He wanted to scream, but his training won out. He would never so openly reveal weakness. Instead he screwed his eyes shut, and ground his teeth together to bite down the pain.

The fire in him burned on and on. By the time it was finished, Sindeok felt lighter, as if he had been freed from invisible weights. When he opened his eyes once more, Sindeok realized that the flame had burned away the nangdo he once was. In the place of that man of duty and honor, he felt something new: a hunger.

It was a hunger for flesh, but not just for any flesh. Somehow he knew - as if by instinct - that only the flesh of the Manaborn would do. Bread, rice, or the meat of beasts were mere fodder. They might sustain the body, but not the soul. What his spirit demanded now was something more. More than even duty and honor could provide. He could not put a finger upon exactly what it might be. Perhaps it was the soul of an enemy, the force of his life, or some other ineffable thing. But Sindeok knew one thing for certain, it could only be taken from a sentient being.

A cheer rose up from the bandits, and Sindeok felt several clap approving hands upon his armored back. Sindeok paid them little mind. Instead he turned his attention back to the heart in his hand. Taking another bite, he found that this time it was easier to rip out a mouthful and gulp it down. Now that fire in his gullet warmed him like the afternoon sun, and everything was right in the world.

The other bandits now fell to the corpses of Daeso and Buru, and began carving them up. Sindeok stepped back out of their way, feeling satiated for the moment. He saw Dark-Eye standing beside the wizard Girim. The two were speaking in low tones, but Sindeok found that by drifting nearer, he could overhear their words.

"Daeso was right about one thing," Girim said. "His master will now come for us. From the Celestial Flight company to the most lowly spearmen, Gaesomun will send everything he has to kill us."

"Let him," Dark-Eye said calmly. "We both knew this day would come sooner or later. It may as well come now. "

"They will not fall as easily as the farmers and travelers we usually prey upon," the wizard cautioned. "They are trained warriors, many you once taught yourself. We must be prepared."

"Aye, and we shall be my friend," the one-eyed Teodon nodded. "We have allies of our own, and powers at our command. We shall journey to the west. In the forest of stone there is a place of darkness, the Dark Barrow where I learned the secrets of consuming flesh. We shall find strong warriors there, trained in the human and elven styles of longswording. There will also be skilled wizards, with the knowledge of elven magic. Then we shall return. The other outlaws of the forest will join us, whether they like it or not, and we shall march upon the Gyukon's fortress in Hansando."

"We shall meet them in the open then?" Sindeok noted that Girim's tail twitched as he spoke. Clearly the idea of fighting a set piece battle against trained warriors did not sit well with the bandit wizard. Sindeok could not help but agree with the feeling. He knew full well what his former comrades were capable of. Attacking them head on would be suicide.

"Of course not!" Dark-Eye laughed. "We shall flee, like the scum we are. We will melt away into the swamps and lead them upon a chase through the countryside. We know these lands, we know every fen, every river, every village. We know where to find food and shelter, and where the leviathans make their lairs. Those pampered pets know nothing, and will exhaust themselves in a fruitless and deadly pursuit. Finally, when they are spent, frustrated, and spread out across the rainforest, we will slip past them and take the city while it stands defenseless."

"But the walls…"

"Are of no concern," Dark-Eye waved off the wizard's unease and went on. "There is a secret way into the palace. One known to only a few. We will be within the very heart of the Sublime Ancestor's fortress before he can catch a whiff of us coming."

"And Gaesomun's heart will be yours," Girim smiled.

"His heart is filled with nothing but envy. The crows can have it," Dark-Eye spat. "But his riches, that will all be ours. You will not believe your eyes when you see it my friend. There will be fine silks and shining crios crystal from the Light Elves of Ainetir, and golden torcs from the Arvern in Aulertil. There are fine Rasenna wines, frost stones and amber from Skanlond, carpets and fire crystals from the Aymaran desert, pearls reaped from the ocean's depths by the Sea Elves, and more. He has a hoard the likes of which you have never dreamed of my friend, and it shall all be ours."

"Nothing can stop us now."

”The scales of men will quake at the sound of your names, and the tails of women will be yours for the taking." - - This is epic on so many levels!

Wow, Dark Eye and his wizard can be quite . . . convincing as they coax Sindeok into their ranks.

Ahah, we do indeed learn where Dark Eye gained some of his elven skills, as well as the fact that he has a hidden base of fellow flesh eaters.

Sounds like Dark Eye has a pretty good plan. One that optimizes his knowledge and resources.


I got confused here. Perhaps a nit or perhaps something I just didn’t get, as there are so many new characters we’ve seen so far. In the lead sentence below, you mention the corpse of Girim – but I thought he was the (living) wizard of Dark Eye. Did you perhaps mean the corpses of Daeso and Buru?

The other bandits now fell to the corpses of Girim and Buru, and began carving them up. Sindeok stepped back out of their way, feeling satiated for the moment. He saw Dark-Eye standing beside the wizard Girim. The two were speaking in low tones, but Sindeok found that by drifting nearer, he could overhear their words.

Acadian: I wanted to show some of Dark-Eye's charisma in the last episode, and demonstrate how he stays in command of his raider band. I also wanted to show how they get new members. I created Sindeok to have a pov character within the bandits ranks. Through his eyes we see how Dark-Eye leads, and what his goals are. We also see the inner workings of the cannibal raiders, and how they have been corrupted.

Thanks for finding that nit. I had indeed got my names mixed up!


Chapter 3.1

Aela fussed with her hair as she stared into the mirror. While she could use magic to make the long brown tresses clean, keeping them orderly was another matter entirely. Some days it seemed that every strand had a mind of its own, and that mind was keenly aware of its need to embarrass her. Aela was certain that spending days onboard a ship was not helping matters. Not with the damp air from the sea all around.

"I suggest shaving it all off." Loria crowded in the mirror behind her. Somehow his soft red locks managed to behave themselves. He was an elf after all, and their races were all known for leonine manes like the one Loria possessed. But perhaps most importantly, it was not her hair. The Arvern was certain that was the most important factor.

Aela made a face at him, eliciting a laugh from the willowy elf. "I'll shave your hair off when you're sleeping!" she threatened.

"Then I shall be the most handsome bald man in Veia," the Silaine preened.

"That you would be my friend," Aela could not help but crack a smile at the elf words. She wished that she had even half of his self assurance, not to mention good humor.

Loria stepped away, leaving the small mirror all to Aela once more. With a sigh she surrendered, and tied her brown hair back into a ponytail. At least it would be out of the way, and no one would mistake her for a giant ground sloth. She hoped…

She turned to find that Loria had already drawn their empty bags up onto his cot. He had long since put aside the elegant black and silver robes he used for adventuring, and instead wore a simple tunic, vest, and trousers of red and brown linen. She too, wore a simple skirt of linen, cut short in the elven style, along with a chemise and tightly cinched bodice. The two of them looked entirely ordinary, except that Loria still wore his enchanted amethyst ring of course, and Aela her crystal spiral necklace.

The tiny cabin that the two of them shared had a small writing desk situated against the outer hull. Directly opposite that was a door leading to the cargo hold. Flanking them were a pair of folding beds. Beneath each cot was a sea chest. In reality these were nothing but boxes nailed down to the hull, but at least they offered a place to store their belongings during the voyage.

Aela watched as the elf passed a glowing hand over first one, then the other chest. The latches to each popped open as he released the locking spells he had placed upon them. Neither mage was concerned with someone stealing their clothing, even enchanted as their adventuring gear was. Loria could always enchant something else to replace it. But their loot was another story. Mail shirts were not so easily conjured up. Rarer still was the cuirass of ancient Dark Elf steel. Aela knew that would fetch them a healthy purse of gold all on its own, and would go a long way to paying off their debts.

So after filling her traveling pack with her clothing and other things, the Arvern mage joined the elf in loading up their loot into a pair of sturdy canvas sacks. A trio of swords did not want to fit into the bags, and they were forced to leave their hilts protruding from the lip of one sack. Thankfully the armor folded down piece by piece, fitting much easier in the bags.

Aela was not so thankful when she hefted one. "It feels like there's a hadrosaur in here. Or at least a horse," she groused as she drew it up to her shoulder.

Loria grunted as he did the same, and led the way out of the cabin and into the hold beyond. The large chamber had once taken up the entire space from one side of the hull to the other. But at some point wooden walls had been installed to create the row of tiny cabins from which they had emerged, along with an identical string of berths lining the far side of the ship.

The remainder of the space had not gone to waste. The center of the hold was crammed with crates and barrels of cargo lashed down to the deck. More containers hung suspended from nets that swung from the ceiling beams. That left only a narrow passage free to either side, and the pair of mages found it to be bustling with the rest of the vessel's passengers, who all appeared to be just as eager as they were to make their leave.

"This would be much easier to carry if you would just summon up a gnome." Loria dropped his bag to the floor with a clanking of steel. "We did not graduate from the Ingenium just to drag heavy objects around."

"No, we graduated so you could learn to use weightless spells," Aela shot back as she set down her own bag of loot. "I thought your major field of study was materiality after all?"

She was thankful for her own knowledge of vitamancy, which among other things allowed her to increase her strength with magic. With that in mind, she gathered up her mana and channeled it through her body, using it to infuse her muscles with newfound might. She found her bag much easier to manage when she lifted it a second time.

"I found it more expedient to major in financial transactions," Loria winked. He filled his hands with light, and Aela recognized the Lighten Load spell he cast upon his own bag. She also noted that the Light Elf made no move to cast the same spell upon her own sack of loot. Instead the wizard raised his over-stuffed bag with ease and nodded down the passageway before them. "I thought you majored in spiritism though."

"I did," Aela said, "as well as vitamancy. But you know how summoning spirits gets the hayseeds excited. It's been four hundred years since the Sacerdotium was broken by the Skanjr. But in some places you would never know it. They'd be coming at us with pitchforks and torches before you could say Inquisitor."

"Aye," Loria smiled, "and then we'd have to kill them all. With nary a gold coin or gemstone to loot off their poor, wretched bodies. Best to let them live instead."

Loria led the way through the hold to the stairs leading up to the deck. It took some time, as they had to wait for over dozens of other people to go before them. Most of them appeared to be at least from the middle classes, given their linen clothing and moderate displays of jewelry. But some wore the velvet and upturned noses of the gentry. She was surprised to see a handful of what could only be peasants, given their rough-spun clothing. Even just a few days passage aboard a ship was not cheap. Aela wondered what would bring such a person with little coin to spare onboard, or send them on a journey hundreds of miles away?

Most of the others paid little mind to her and Loria, but once in a while someone stopped to stare at Aela. She knew that look all too well. She had been receiving it ever since she had transitioned to living female at the Ingenium. It was partly a gape of shock, partly a smirk of ridicule, and partly a sneer of disgust. She might as well have been something unnatural and revolting they had the misfortune of discovering upon the bottom of their shoe.

Aela sighed, and tried to ignore the people around her, and the disquieting feelings they conjured up. She wished they were back in the wilderness again. At least the animals and the trees saw her for who she really was, rather than simply as the body she had been born into. Even the Rasenna often said that animals were good judges of character. It was too bad they did not find a lesson in that…

She was glad when they finally made their way onto the deck. Not only was the fresh air a relief, but the chance to break away from the crowd of humanity was a balm. She made her way toward the prow of the ship, taking care to avoid the Rasen sailors who scrambled all about. That gave her a good view of the harbor ahead.

Tall cliffs of grey-white limestone rose up from the sea ahead and stretched off to the east and west. Cut into the barrier of rock was a strait of water roughly a mile wide. Into this channel their ship ventured. Aela saw the stone walls of a city rising high above the cliffs on the eastern bank, round towers flying pennants in the stiff sea breeze.

The Arvern Witch felt the stirrings of mana within the water below her. She did not even have to fully shift her senses to the aether to feel the undine taking physical form under the ship. By now she was so attuned to the energy of nature spirits that she could always feel their presence, especially one as powerful as this. The water spirit took hold of the ship's hull, and gently guided it into the strait.

Aela traced a thread of power from the spirit back onto the ship. She found it attached to a Rasen standing atop the sterncastle. He was a middle-aged man with a long curly beard, holding a staff in one hand. Aela almost laughed. He could not have looked more like a wizard if he tried. He might as well have been plucked from a bard's tale. Beside him stood the captain and several of the other officers and men of the crew, whom Aela noted were also all Rasen. In fact, Aela did not see a single Sea Elf in the ship's complement, in spite of that race's well-known mastery of the waves.

A glance upward showed that the crew still worked the sails high atop the ship's pair of masts. Even with the assistance of the water spirit, the vessel still had to make its own way into port. Aela had never heard of an undine being able to move a hundred foot ship all on its own. Not given the tons of cargo she had seen within the hold.

"Down the Spout we go," Loria murmured as they entered the strait.

The channel did indeed remind Aela of a spout as they entered it. In her mind's eye she imagined that Bronze Sea as a teapot. Then they would be entering the base of its spout, which she knew would eventually empty out into the Inner Sea far beyond the isthmus upon which Veia sat.

Aela noted that abutting the walls of the city on her left were also the turrets of a castle. Many of its battlements and towers overhang the cliff, to look directly down into the strait. Aela could even see embrasures cut into the very walls of the bluff, some so large that they must have been for stone-throwing artillery pieces rather than archers. A similar castle stood upon the far bank of the Spout.

Aela knew that catapults had a limited range. But given the height of the cliffs, she imagined that such weapons from the fortresses high above could reach any spot in the channel below. Here was the reason for the lack of Sea Elves and their vessels upon the Bronze Sea. Thanks to Veia's dominant position in the Spout, it was the only large body of water in the world that remained a human pond.

The city of Veia proper came into better view after they passed into the channel. The cliffs fell away in a vast goose-egg to the east, creating a wide harbor beyond the mouth of the strait. This left a long horn of land between the port and the Bronze Sea to the north-east, jutting out toward the mouth of the strait. The fortifications that Aela had seen before rested upon the tip of that horn, while the city itself stretched out to the base of the horn and out into the highlands beyond.

Down at sea level, stone docks stretched from left to right around the nearly circular harbor, brimming with ships. Most were human vessels with high curving prows and sterns like the two-masted hulk which Aela sailed upon, or smaller one-masted cogs. However, here and there the Arvern mage noted the graceful lines and characteristic triangular sails of a vessel belonging to the Silisce. She knew that this would be the last stop in the Sea Elves' journey. For the merchant princes of Veia would not allow them, and the competition they brought, any farther into the wide expanse of the Bronze Sea.

Beyond the docks, nestled at the base of the cliffs, Aela noted rows of square and rectangular buildings. They were constructed in the Rasen style, with walls of whitewashed stone, and red-glazed tiles covering their slanted roofs. The largest ones could only be warehouses, but even in the distance she could make out the colorful signs of smaller inns and aleshops.

Smoke from cooking fires rose into the skies, and Aela followed the fumes. They rose along the bluffs, where a road had been cut into the stone, crisscrossing its way up to the city high on the tableland above. The avenue ended in a massive gatehouse that protected the way into the metropolis, whose great bronze gates now stood open for traffic. Horse-drawn wagons and carts climbed the road to vanish with the gates, only to be replaced by others that issued forth to begin the descent to the sea below.

Veia Map

Rasen street

Rasen city

Rasen apartment block

Rasen-style architecture

"Do you smell that Aela?" Loria puffed up his chest with a deep breath of air. "That is the smell of money. By the time we sell all of this, we should be able to pay off Mamarce the Knee for half a year in advance."

Aela wrinkled her nose at the thought of the usurer in Alalia. She owed him more money than she cared to think about. But without his loans, she never could have paid for the Ingenium. Especially after all of her scholarship applications had been turned down. Somehow even though she had graduated at the top of her spiritism class, she was not academically gifted enough to earn a financial deferment from the school.

Aela shook off the memories. Instead she produced a small hand mirror and comb, and went to work straightening the strands of long, sandy brown hair that had broken loose to harry her face. Once she was finished she proceeded to check the light dusting of makeup around her eyes, and the soft shade of rouge on her lips.

As she had a thousand times before, she sighed at the plain features that stared back at her in the silvered glass. She looked convincingly female enough for most people to never give her a second glance. But there was always one person in every crowd who noticed her slight adam's apple. While her magic had given her an hourglass frame, her shoulders were still a bit too broad, and her hips too narrow, and her breasts too small. Never mind her man-hands. Some things even years of magic could not repair, at least not yet. If only she had been born a normal woman…

Aela put the mirror away and tried not to look at the other women around her. There was no point in reminding herself of how she did not look after all.

Another wonderful episode chock full of goodness and fun. We get to see a very girly side of Aela as she fiddles with her hair and appearance. But we are reminded again of the path she walks regarding her gender. I so want to unobtrusively whisper inside her head (the way Acadian does when Buffy suffers from self-doubts), "Remember, those who matter don't mind. . . and those who mind don't matter."

I was quite surprised when the pair of mages struggled to heft their loot bags and struggled out of their cabin. Surely, I thought, dear SubRosa will not miss the opportunity screaming so loudly here. And sure enough, they did not go far before the expected magical resolutions surfaced to their big heavy loads and little magey muscles.

More welcome detail on part of the reason Aela quests - to pay off her mage student loans.

I'm glad that she and Loria have each other to support as you continuously remind us that mages are a bit rare in Aela's world and how they use their magic has consequences.

And finally, it was delightful to see 'Gandolf' as the ship's propulsion engineer as he gently coaxed an undine to power the ship.

Acadian: The last segment was another good opportunity to show the issues Aela has with society, not to mention with her own body. No one is born perfect, no matter how green it may look from the other side of the septic tank.

Heavy loads and magey muscles definitely do not mix! I like using little every day things like that to show how magic ought to work in a real world. Not just for zapping bad guys, but for everyday life. Though not everyone appreciates that.

I could not resist a nod at the archetypal wizard. I think Gandalf pretty much set the mold for what a wizard is 'supposed' to be.




Chapter 3.2

"Excuse us good folk," Aela turned at the sound of a husky Teodon voice. "We could not help but notice from your spellcraft in the hold that you are mages. Perhaps for hire?"

Aela and Loria found a pair of Teodon and two more Rasenna standing behind them. The Teodon speaking was dressed like a human, wearing what had once been a good, cream-colored linen tunic edged with red embroidery. Its faded color and frayed threads betrayed the wear and tear of time however. His scales were just beginning to fade, showing his middle years. Those of his head and back were dark green, transitioning to light brown as they went down his throat and chest. His headspines were dull orange, and bore a band of black that ran horizontally through the center of each.

Beside him stood a much older saurian with washed out green and brown scales, and headspines that had faded to a dull brown in color. Where the first Teodon appeared to be perhaps in his early forties, Aela imagined this one to be at least two decades older still. Like most Teodon that Aela had met, he wore nothing more than a belt around his waist, from which several pouches depended.

Then there were the Rasenna, with their race's characteristic olive skin and dark hair. One was a young man dressed in a rough-spun tunic, who bore the calluses and weathered skin of a farmer. The other was a woman with long hair and soft brown eyes. She wore a dress of green linen, which like the first Teodon's clothing was faded and worn by time and work. Aela imagined from the calluses on her hands, yet healthier skin, that she was an artisan. She was certainly someone who worked indoors with her hands.

"Why indeed we both are magicians!" Loria declared. "I am Loria, the finest wizard of Alalia! And allow me to introduce to you my partner Aela, the most brilliant Witch of Cymner."

Aela could not help but to roll her eyes at the Silaine's theatrics. He always did like to put on a show. She would think that a black marketeer would want to keep a low profile. It was just her luck to befriend the only smuggler in Aulerci who wanted everyone to look at him.

"If you will allow us to introduce ourselves, my name is Vesia," the human woman began. She gestured to the linen-clad Teodon, then the older saurian, and finally the Rasen man in turn. "This is Daehyun, Hyunsu, and Ranazu. We are from the village of Agrigento, and are in need of folk such as yourselves."

"I am afraid I have never heard of your settlement," Aela said. "Is it here on the Bronze Sea?"

"No, not quite," Daehyun said. "Our village lies far inland, within Kye Rim."

"You have come a long way then," Loria whistled.

"I come here often in fact," Daehyun said, "to sell our soju in Veia. Or at least I used to. So it is not an unfamiliar journey."

"So what is it that you seek mages for?" Aela asked.

"Raiders," Vesia said. "For years now they've been preying upon us. They come twice a year, every time after we have distilled our soju. They take it, and anything else they want, and kill anyone who tries to stop them. Or just anyone at all."

"The last time they ate someone as well." Hyunsu glanced at Ranazu. The young Rasenna did not say a word, but Aela noted that his hands clenched into fists so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

"Cannibals?" Aela looked to her elven partner. That seemed quite a coincidence, given their recent expedition into the Stone Forest.

Loria looked back to Aela. The Arvern Witch could see the wheels turning behind the Light Elf's eyes. Could these outlaws be part of the same group they had destroyed?

"Are they led by an elf wearing lorcras armor?" he asked.

"Nay," Vesia answered, though all of the peasants shook their heads. "Their leader is a Teodon, with one eye."

Aela shrugged her shoulders. There had been no Teodon among the Manaha cultists in the Dark Barrow. "They are not the same group that we just destroyed then," she said.

"In any case, this sounds like something for the Kye Rim authorities?" Loria ventured.

"The Gyukon has better things to do," Ranazu practically spat upon the deck beneath them. "We tried appealing to him already. He couldn't give two squirts from a croc's tail about us."

"So we need people like you," Vesia said.

"What is the opposition?" Loria asked.

"Fifty bandits," Ranazu frowned, "give or take a few."

Aela coughed. "It will take more than a pair of mages for that. You'd need at least, oh a dozen good mercenaries. Even then, they would have to be people with experience, who aren't afraid of long odds. Or perhaps half that many, if they are really good."

"What is the pay?" Loria asked, his eyes taking on that crafty look they always possessed when the subject of gold came up.

"These ones can feed you," the aging Teodon Hyunsu finally spoke. "Three meals a day, and offer some soju as well."

"Feed us!" Loria sputtered. "Good luck finding anyone that hungry!"

"Wait!" Ranazu held up his hands before Loria could turn away. "I once heard their leader say that there was a price on his head. You could bring it here for the bounty."

"The raiders have loot as well," Vesia added. "They are bandits, preying upon those who travel up and down western Kye Rim, and back and forth here to Veia. They have many stolen goods: gold, jewels, you name it. All would be yours if you can defeat them."

Aela noted the sharp look that Daehyun shot the Rasen woman. The Witch imagined that he would prefer to keep that loot for himself and the village. Aela could not blame the Teodon. Some of the treasure was doubtlessly their own to begin with.

"Well, we just finished with a band of Manaha worshippers in the Stone Forest," Aela declared. "We have to sell off our own loot, and have accounts to settle. So we cannot go anywhere with you right now. I suggest you try one of the mercenary warbands in the city. They might take your contract."

"That was indeed one of our thoughts," Daehyun declared. "But perhaps when your business is concluded you will come find us? I always stay at The Captain and the Mule inn."

"Perhaps we shall indeed," Loria said. Aela noted that the Light Elf had that thoughtful expression again. She knew that he was thinking about that bounty, and imagining what kind of loot a band of Teodon robbers might accumulate. The Manaha cultists had collected quite a haul of goods, especially in the form of armor and weapons. The Arvern had to admit that she was wondering how much wealth a company of Kye Rim raiders might possess as well. But first things first. She owed Mamarce the Knee gold. She needed to make a deposit at the temple to keep the money-lender off her back, and her knees in one piece.

A wonderful introduction of the villagers seeking help.

Korean Kye Rim soju!

”Or perhaps half that many, if they are really good." – I had to smile here as the phrase ‘magnificent seven’ came to mind.

I’m pretty sure the witch and her elven pal will sign up for this. I look forward to the how/where and dynamics of assembling a somewhat larger team.


Tiny suggestion: ’Its faded color and frayed threads betrayed the wear and tear of time however. His scales were just beginning to fade, betraying his middle years.’ – You might consider an alternative to 'betray' for one of the two times you use it in such close proximity. Perhaps something like announce, bespeak, declare, display or proclaim?

Acadian: Hopefully they will be magnificent!

Betrayed by too many betrayals. Who ever would have seen that coming? Thanks for catching that!


Chapter 4.1

Aela resisted the urge to elbow Loria. The Light Elf was fidgeting again, as was his wont when made to wait. First it was his leg bouncing up and down a hundred times a minute. Then he was drumming his palms on his thighs. This made it clear that Loria was no musician. Now he was loudly cracking his knuckles, his neck, and all the other joints in his body. Aela knew that next would come his amethyst ring. First he would spin it around his finger, then he would take it off and roll it around on the nearest table.

Aela tried to ignore the pent-up ball of energy that was her Silaine friend, and instead turned her gaze around the room once more. The chamber was floored with polished hardwood. Divided into square panels three feet on a side, each section of floor was made up of a diagonal mesh, framed with strips of oak. The walls were painted a soothing shade of cream, complementing the gold that gilded them. Sunlight spilled in from windows lining one wall, enhanced by the light of several glowstones set into sconces along the opposite side of the room.

A huge mural of the world goddess Dohman took up the entire ceiling. Here she had fallen into her long slumber after giving birth to the gods. Surrounding her were her children: Mhuira the sea god, Sirona the healing goddess, Esus the woodworker, Toutatis the defender, Karnon the horned god, Tarann the god of thunder, Suil the goddess of rivers, Brighinde the goddess of fire, poetry, and smithing, Mhorlor the raven goddess of magic and death, and many others.

The new gods were singing to their mother, and from their music sprang the first of the solascran, the great glowing trees of the Light Elves' far-off land. Then came the elves themselves, and finally the other races. Shining high in the sky over all were Dohman's own progenitors: Egrieine the sun god, and Gealas the moon goddess.

All of Creation loomed overhead. It was a big ceiling.

"Lord Camna will see you now." Aela nearly started at the servant's voice. He was a young man, with the olive skin and dark hair that bespoke of Rasenna birth. The green and white livery he wore was of soft velvet and silk, stitched with cloth of gold. Aela was certain that he was wearing more than she was worth, not counting the loot she and Loria had so recently gained from the Dark Barrow.

"Brilliant!" Loria sprang to his feet in delight. He hefted the canvas sack at his feet with an effort. Then Aela felt a wash of weight-reducing mana flow down the elf's fingers. "Let's get cracking then!"

Aela rose feeling less enthusiastic than her partner in spells. Her own gentrified birth notwithstanding, she never liked dealing with aristocrats. They literally lived according to their own laws, and woe betide any mere commoner whom they decided to cross.

The youthful retainer led them to a grand hall. The polished green marble floor was inlayed with the design of a great white stag's head with spreading antlers. The vaulted ceiling was supported by a double row of circular columns that were leafed with gold. Sunlight pierced the chamber from clerestories floating high overhead, filling the hall with warmth. A pair of massive bronze doors led to the street outside. Across the room brooded a second, mahogany-paneled door, nestled between by a pair of curving staircases that rose to the second floor of the manor,

Coming from that door was a human woman wearing a simple gray tunic. A cape of the same color fell to her knees, with its attached hood thrown back over her shoulders. Her legs were covered by white leggings of the Skanjr fashion, tied about with gray cord. Her hair was white as snow, matching her milk-pale skin. Her features were delicate, beautiful even. Yet from a distance Aela could not miss the mass of long scars that marred her left cheek and chin.

Aela might have thought she was a Light Elf, like Loria. But while her skin and hair were the right color, her gray eyes were far too plain, and her ears failed to poke through the strands of her hair with a characteristic elven point. For that matter, her hair looked rough and coarse, words never associated with any elf. She was clearly human, and Aela wondered if she might be an albino?

As the mages approached, another servant appeared alongside the white-haired woman. He seemed to be the double of the man who led them. This new retainer was much older however, with a neat-beard sprinkled with gray. Father and son, the Arvern Witch imagined.

The older servant handed the woman a bared longsword of silvery astril. Its double-edged blade was a good three and a half feet long, including a blunt ricasso that stretched a hand-span above the guard. The crossbar curved slightly toward the point, thickening as it did so. The long hilt was wrapped with what appeared be dark leather, and ended at a large pommel shaped like a multi-faceted scent stopper.

White-Hair took the weapon without a sound. A silver glow emanated from her hand and flowed down across the sword. Aela could feel the mana rising in both woman and weapon, clear and cold as a mountain stream. The sword faded into the light, and vanished entirely.

"Now that is something you don't see every day," Aela said dryly.

"Aura-bonding," Loria said, "an ancient technique. I read about it in some of the restricted books."

The older servant openly gawked for a moment. Then he composed himself. With a grunt of effort, he handed the woman a massive book, bound with cracked brown leather. The great volume must have been heavier than a money-lender's conscience, but the white-haired woman tucked it under one arm with only a nod to the retainer. He said nothing to her, and Aela noted a sour look on the middle-aged man's face. White-Hair paid him no more heed, and instead turned and strode purposely across the hall toward Aela and Loria.

She stared Aela directly in the eye as she approached, without flinching or even blinking. Aela gave back her stare evenly, and noted that like the rest of her monochrome appearance, the swordswoman's eyes were hard gray steel.

As they closed, Aela shifted her perception to the aether. White-Hair's aura sprang to life in a brilliant tapestry. She appeared normal in the spirit realm, possessing bright threads of power that spoke of magical training. Aela saw no signs of albinism in her aura, though with such a cursory glance she imagined she might simply be overlooking it. What she did feel most of all from the other woman was... coldness. Like the steel of her eyes, or the snowy mane of coarse hair that spilled from her scalp. Aela could not put her finger upon why, but she felt a chill crawl up her spine as they silently passed one another.

Aela pulled her senses back to the mundane world. The chill passed, and a moment later she felt the warmth of the sun kissing her skin. Aela spared a glance back at the white swordswoman, and wondered if she had imagined the entire thing?

"Who was that?" Loria's voice lilted softly beside her.

The young retainer made a sound that was half grumble and half growl. "Just some hired thug," he murmured in a low voice, "no one of interest."

A hired thug who could magically meld her sword into her aura, and took a book as some form of payment? Now that sounded interesting to Aela.

"She never blinked," Loria whispered in an even softer voice, one Aela knew was meant for only her. "Not once, the entire time."

"She didn't breathe either," Aela replied in an equally low tone.



The woman in white

her sword

Nice to see you unleash the full slender of your description gun. A delightful picture of her bouncing, musically-challenged elven partner in spells. Followed by a wonderful description of the ‘waiting’ chamber they were in. I like how the ceiling mural so unobtrusively allowed you to share some of the religious aspects of Aela’s world. A very well-done opening scene.

’Aela was certain that he was wearing more than she was worth, …’ - - Love how cleverly this makes the point.

More opulence in the next room. . . and a mysterious white haired scarred woman.

"She didn't breathe either," Aela replied in an equally low tone.’ - - Oh. My. Goodness. It’s Persephone!!!

YASSSS! Pursephone! I made the connection as soon as I read this:

Then I saw the screenshot and cheered!

Looking forward to more!

And of course, meeting the villagers before the visit to the noble's home. Liked how they tried to entice our pair with the promise of loot. That never seems to pan out, does it? As I'm sure dozens of pirates will tell ya . . .

Acadian: I was originally going to simply describe how lavishly furnished the noble's mansion was, in order to show how rich he is. That waiting room was meant to overawe all of his visitors. I was looking at pictures of RL Renaissance palaces like Versailles, and that led me to the idea of working in a subtle lesson in cosmology into the description. I am glad it worked out so well. It is like Zalphon was saying before about trying to use dialogue to convey information. Except in this case the dialogue was all in Aela's eyes.

btw. speaking of Versailles, the crosshatched hardwood floor was taken directly from that of Versailles (it seems to be very popular even today)


haute ecole rider: As you both noted, that was indeed the Living Dead Girl. She underwent a number of alterations to make her fit into the story and world. In fact, her actions form a very important (and horrific) part of ancient history, as will be alluded to later. Her name is now Phereinon (among other titles), she wears different armor, her sword Malediction is different from the games, etc... But deep down in that cold undead heart she is still the Persephone we know and love.

Hopefully the bandits will pay of well enough for Aela and Loria to keep up on their student loans.


Chapter 4.2

Then they were at the door between the staircases, and the younger servant ushered them past. They found themselves within a study whose floor was covered in thick Aymaran carpets. A desk of glowing solascran wood stood before a pair of wide windows. A full suit of ancient Rasen bronze armor was fitted out upon an arming dummy. A line of weapons stretched out to either side of it, old bronze swords and spears, a bright astril arming sword, a gleaming black lorcras great sword, even a recruve bow of the Aymaran nomads from Tiwanaku's deserts.

The bust of a bearded man that Aela recognized as the ancient philosopher Aritosthene graced one pedestal, flanked by other worthies whom she could not identify. Books sat in state like honored heroes within a series of velvet-lined cases. She recognized a few from their counterparts in the Ingenium's library: The Golden Bough, Mercurus the Thrice Great, The Book of Dzyan, The Mysteries of Magic were ensconced in glory, along with and more worthy manuscripts of magic and history by Trithemia, Agrapina, Heirdot, Alorri-Zrokros, and others.

Aela noted a space missing in one of the display cases, large enough to accommodate a book. For a moment her mind went to the one that the white-haired swordswoman had carried out with her. But that grand folio had been far too large to fit in the space that Aela saw. No, it must have been a different, more ordinary-sized volume that had wandered free.

A full-sized chariot of her own people - the Arvern - stood along one wall of the room. Floating above a pair of small wooden wheels, the simple, square cab was made of oak. Semi-circular panels rose knee-high to either side, but left front and back open. A long tongue stretched out before it, fitted with a yoke for two horses. Aela imagined that it must have been a replica, since no one had used such things since before the Skanjr came, centuries ago. In fact, now that she thought about it, nothing else in the room appeared to be less than four hundred years old.

Behind the glowing wooden desk and beyond the glass panes of the window was a wide atrium open to the sun. Green grass and flowering plants lined the airy expanse. In its center rose a marble fountain carved in the likeness of Sea Elves with arms raised high, as if they were drawing the fountain's water up into the air with their magic, only for it to spill about them in a crystalline shower.

Sitting behind the desk was a thickly-set Rasen dressed in black brocade crusted with rubies and stitched with cloth-of-gold. His mustache was black as pitch, but the gray, neatly-trimmed beard underneath betrayed his years. His raven hair was brushed back from his forehead in widow's peak. The dark eyes that stared out underneath were as fathomless and piercing as the abyss.

Still, Aela noted a slight tremble in his fingers as he inelegantly set down a gem-encrusted drinking cup. It clattered loudly upon the golden tray he set it upon, nearly knocking over a crystal carafe that was only half-filled with a smoky, amber liquid. The cup was clearly empty, otherwise it would have sloshed its contents all over.

Standing in each corner of the room was a warrior clad in mail overlaid by hardened leather vests. These were dyed green and emblazoned with a white stag's head. Their round shields were likewise decorated, and swords hung from their hips. Two of the oathmen were Rasen from their olive skin. The third's straw hair and liquid blue eyes betrayed his Skanjr heritage. While the final one bore the green skin and tusks of an Assina, one of the Forest Orcs from far off Hiakwia.

They were less than four hundred years old, Aela thought wryly.

"My Lord Camna," Loria said with polished courtesy and bowed graciously. Aela curtseyed beside the elf, hoping she did not trip over her feet as she did so.

"I have been looking forward to meeting you, certainly more so than my other business of late." The Rasen looked away for a moment, to the empty spot in his book displays. His features fell into shadow, and he brooded for long moments upon the missing volume.

Camna rose from behind his glowing desk and strode around to face them directly. He was a great bear of a man, whose frame was sadly the worse for wear from too much good food and the merciless advance of age. Yet when he stared down at Aela, it was a great black wolf she was reminded of, that gazed down upon a sheep.

"You are Aela, are you not?" He gestured for them to rise, and both she and Loria straightened. "I understand you are the first ardhanari to graduate from our old school's hallowed halls. The honor is all mine."

Now Aela noted the crystal-adorned staff beside the desk, and the testamur framed in glass upon one wall. Its fine calligraphy proclaimed Serves Camna to have graduated from the Ingenium as a Master of the Arcane, just as her own did.

"My lord is most kind," Aela stammered, hunting for words that would not come to her tongue. She could feel the mana within him, and detected a glint in his eyes that showed he was aesensing her. She resisted doing the same, and could not help but feel like one of the many prizes he kept cased in glass around the study.

"Nonsense," Camna said with a matter-of-fact air that belied his obvious wealth and power. He spoke more like a tradesman than a pampered noble. "Kindness is something I have never been accused of, and for good reason."

He leaned his not inconsiderable bulk back upon the edge of his desk, and waved his oathmen away. The warriors filed from the room with a stamping of feet and jingle of steel, leaving the three alone.

"I mostly keep them around for show," he almost winked at Aela after the last shut the door behind him. "But sometimes they earn their keep."

Apparently he did not expect the warriors to need to earn their keep with her and Loria, unlike with the white-haired swordswoman. Aela supposed that was a compliment.

"Is it true that you, changed yourself?" The older man's gesture to Aela's private parts made it plain what he meant, "with magic?"

"Yes it is my lord," Aela tried not to flush. But the aristocrat's stare made it hard not to feel self-conscious. "I rewove the threads of my aura. Well, I still am to tell the truth."

"And in so doing you rewove the threads of your body as well, remaking yourself in your own image," the old man sighed. "Amazing, simply amazing."

"I admire those who master their own fate, regardless of the opposition or consequences. You and I have that much in common. I graduated the Ingenium without two eagles to rub together, and a debt to a money-lender the size of the Bronze Sea. But from such humble beginnings I was able to build all of this."

"Let us hope that Aela and I are even half as successful," Loria said dryly.

Camna laughed, but it was a bitter sound, whose humor did not reach his eyes. It felt more like a pale imitation of happiness, made by someone who had never known real joy, "And you, an outsider elf, son of an outcast. How many times did you smuggle books in and out of the restricted section of the library? Aule Cursni always swore he would catch you at it and throw you out, but here you stand despite his best efforts."

"Well, the headmaster did come close that one time in-"

"I'm sure Lord Camna doesn't want to hear about that," Aela shot the elf a glance. What smuggler wanted to brag about his infamy? "Perhaps my Lord would like to see what we brought him?"

"Yes, down to business." the Rasen looked at the sack pooled at Loria's feet. "My man said you brought me a suit of armor for my collection."

"Why not a mere suit of armor," Loria clucked, "but rather an opportunity. One to fulfill a lifetime of collecting."

"An opportunity it is then?" Camna raised an eyebrow. "You should come work for me. I can have you selling water to the Sea Elves."

"I've already done that..." Loria breathed as bent down and opened the bag. From its canvas depths he produced the suit of lorcras armor most recently worn by the high priest of the Dark Barrow. Cleaned of blood and grime, its glossy black lamellar plates reflected the sunlight with a high sheen. Each individual lamellae was an individual work of art, embossed with gently curving designs of fantastic beasts, astronomical symbols, and even floral motifs.

"It is a good thing I have more than two Alalian eagles to rub together these days." Camna's eyes glowed as he stared at the ancient Silor armor.



Serves Camna

Very much a pleasure to read as you weave this tale. Once again, your rich descriptions continue to reveal the considerable wealth of their host.

"My lord is most kind," Aela stammered, hunting for words that would not come to her tongue. She could feel the mana within him, and detected a glint in his eyes that showed he was aesensing her. She resisted doing the same, and could not help but feel like one of the many prizes he kept cased in glass around the study.’
- - I quoted this for two reasons. First, you expertly craft a lot of goodness into this concise paragraph. Once again you show us Aela’s discomfort with being the center of attention and how she is challenged to find the right words when on the spot even as you give us much insight into Camna. Second, I found the word ‘aesensing’ to be unfamiliar. Did you mean assessing or was I simply unable to find its meaning?

Camna’s blunt and potentially awkward question about her being a changeling was well managed by Aela – likely due to experience at answering similar questions. Camna’s open-minded and supportive response revealed his keen interest in all things magic.

I also enjoyed how naturally you revealed more of Loria’s background as he and Camna discussed ‘good old days’ back at the Ingenium.

Acadian: I wanted to show that with an item as rare and valuable as ancient Dark Elf armor, you didn't simply go to an ordinary armor shop to sell it. Instead you go to rich collectors, like with stolen art!

I went into writing this section without much forethought on what Camna as like. I found that pic of Orson Welles and stared it for a while, and he came together for me. A great black wolf, whose free time has gone to collecting historical and magical artifacts of all kinds (which in turn act as visible demonstrations of his wealth and power). All of the wealth displayed in his home is not mere vanity, but a calculated act meant to overawe visitors.

Aesensing is my own made up word, short for aetherial sensing. I will use it throughout the story.

Lora/Ungarion's background has always been vague and unplumbed. Changing that is one of my challenges with Loria. In this world his race does not mingle as freely with others as Altmer do in Tamriel. So I have been working on how it is he was born and raised in a human city. His father being an exile is the first part of that picture.


Chapter 5.1

"Perhaps we might take ship to Felathri." Loria paused to take a sip of wine from his cup. "It is said they are war with Priana. They probably want to make up for that land they lost to Alalia."

"Perhaps not," Aela frowned, "I still remember how Alalia dragged us out of the Ingenium and into that war of theirs. Thousands of people lining up and killing one another, and for what? So their highborns could have bragging rights for the next decade?"

"Well, there was that copper mine too..." Loria noted.

"And innocent people getting caught in the middle, only to be dispossessed, robbed, or murdered." Aela shivered. "Not again."

"I did not mean we would fight in it," the Light Elf said. "Wherever there is a war, there are always other opportunities."

"I think we can find enough opportunities here in Veia," Aela insisted. "You told me yourself that this city was built on gold."

"Aye, but I'd sooner not have to use a shovel to get it…" Loria murmured.

Aela shook her head and took another bite from her lunch. The hot piadina was filled with grilled chicken, diced tomatoes, strips of sharp cheese, and bubbling with extra flavor thanks to a sprinkling of basil. The sandwich was far too good for street fare, and she vowed to return to this hot food stand whenever they were in Veia.

The kiosk that sold the delicious food possessed a simple cloth awning to provide shade from the sun. Beneath ran a long stone counter, whose surface was lined with large holes filled with earthenware jars. Each brimmed with a different form of hot meat, fish, or mulled wine. Sprigs of garlic and other spices hung from the canvas awning, and farther back in the stand loaves of fresh bread and wheels of cheese were stacked on a table, with bottles of wine and ale sitting on the pavestones underneath.

Like most of the other patrons, Aela and Loria sat at a long table beside the food stand. Just a few feet away horse and hadrosaur-drawn wagons and carts clattered along the cobblestone street. Pedestrians dodged between them, and crowded either side of the avenue. It seemed that people of every race and animals of all kinds were packed into every square inch of space, along with their sounds, and especially their smells. Whitewashed stone buildings rose two and three stories high all about, and the streets went on and on like a tangled ball of yarn in all directions. The sprawling city was like a world unto itself.

Aela missed the smaller towns along the shores of the Bronze Sea, with their fresh air and quieter avenues. Or better still, the Stone Forest between Veia and Kye Rim. While rocky and often inhospitable, the karst landscape and its quiet earth spirits provided a welcome respite from the press of humanity. That rough land had little to offer people, especially when there was rich farmland along the coasts of the two seas which bracketed the isthmus upon which Veia and the badlands sat. So only a few daring, or desperate, folk lived there.

The rumble of laughter from a deep throat roused Aela from her ruminations and brought her head around to view its author. Across the street from her and Loria were their acquaintances from Agrigento. Towering above the Kye Rim farmers was the largest Skanjr she had ever seen, wearing mail armor and sporting a long axe nearly as tall as he was.

"Scalebacks make me laugh!" the blond giant guffawed in broken Rasen. He slapped Daehyun on the back with enough force to send the linen-clad Teodon stumbling away. Then the Skanjr lumbered off down the avenue while the other Agrigentans stared in shock and dismay.

"It seems our friends from Agrigento are not doing so well with their plan to hire mercenaries," Loria dryly observed through a bite of his own flatbread sandwich. "Perhaps we should lend our assistance?"

"Are you planning to pay off Mamarce the Knee with rice?" Aela shook her head and took a sip of wine from the worn cup the food stand had provided. It was far from the luxurious Recie or Amaron wines of Alalia, but at least it was not tepid water or stale beer. "In case you have forgotten, our education did not come for free."

"Thanks to those cultists, we have enough gold in the temple to keep Mamarce at bay for a long time," Loria insisted. "Besides, if these raiders pay out nearly as well as those cannibals did, I expect we will be making more than food and drink from this venture."

"There are fifty of them," Aela pointed out. "Don't you think that's a bit much for even us?"

"All the more for us to loot afterward," Loria waved a dismissive hand in the air. "Besides, I am sure we can conjure up a few swords to even up the odds."

Aela shook her head. She knew there was nothing she could say to sway the Silaine's mind. She had the feeling that it was not even the promise of loot that had set the hook in the wizard's mouth. Rather it was his sense of adventure. She had known him long enough to realize that he would do this sort of thing just for the fun of it alone. Money was only an added incentive.

The next thing the Arvern Witch knew, her friend was waving the four Agrigentans over to the table where they sat. Aela ate the last of her piadina in silence as they crowded around, and drew stares from many of the other patrons of the food stand.

"How goes your recruitment efforts?" Loria asked.

"I am afraid you just saw how well," Vesia frowned. "We even had an audience with the zilath in the castle, but he will not send troops into Kye Rim. We tried the White Company and the Frisverd this morning. The Whites are out of the city, fighting in some war up north. The Frisverd had just returned from some other place it seemed, and their leader turned us down as well."

"We have done no better at hiring individual mercenaries either," old Hyunsu lamented with a down-turned head. "No one will help us."

"Fear not," Loria declared. "Aela and I have discussed it, and we are with you."

Aela just shook her head again as she chewed the last bite of her basil-flavored chicken sandwich.

"Good!" Ranazu practically boomed. "It's about time we found someone around here with stones."

"Oh, it's not the stones that are the problem," Loria rose to his feet. "It's a matter of finding the right people, at the right time, in the right way."

"And with the right amount of hunger," Aela added.

Loria ignored the quip, and continued. "First, you need to stop asking people off the street. That is never going to work. They are either going to laugh at you like that Skanjr, or you are going to end up with some cutthroat who will murder you in your sleep."

"So where do we find these people?" Vesia asked. "I thought surely the Frisverd or the other mercenary company would conjure up any number of warriors."

"They have their bottom line to think of," Aela said, standing up beside Loria. "This is a contract that is going to tie up their resources for a long time. So it has to pay their expenses for that entire period. You just don't have the money for that, and they cannot gamble on the loot from the bandits making up the difference."

"What we need are people who are footloose," Loria said, "not tied down with families to support, rent to pay, that sort of thing. Hrollaug from the Frisverd is married and has children. For most men that would be reason enough to stay away from home as long as possible! But by some miracle he actually enjoys being a father, so he doesn't like hiring his company out for long stretches away from the city. Our prospects will be folk who can just pick up and wander to another part of the world at the drop of a hat."

"So where can they be found?" Ranazu asked.

"Why at the tavern of course!" Loria grinned.

Aesensing – Yes, I thought perhaps you had intentionally created the word. It does fit in and gives exactly the impression you intend. I also wanted to compliment you on your nice, relaxed posting schedule – frequent enough to stay fully engaged yet slowly enough to fully savor each episode and look forward to the next. And finally, I also applaud your episode length discipline; I see you are still working with the guidelines we all sort of developed several years ago for ‘just right’ episode length.


Your opening here, as the pair of mages debated their plans, filled the senses with the tastes, sounds and smells of the crowded maze-like street venue. I could clearly envision the scene.

A smooth and natural-feeling segue back to the story’s premise – a rice farming village in trouble. So the die is cast, even as you show us more of what makes the adventurous elf and the more cautious witch he travels with tick.

So it is to be mercenary hunting at the tavern is it? The task sounds perfectly suited to Aela's silver-tongued elven pal.

I continue to draw inferences between your fiction and both the saegeuks and the Japanese samurai/American Western classics. I need to dust off my copy of The Magnificent Seven to refresh my memory regarding the personalities of the characters involved. I do enjoy this sort of fiction - while it's immersive and sweeps me along with its hadrosaur drawn carts and the food stands (fondly remember those from the Teresa fan fiction), I enjoy the memories and thoughts and associations it stirs up in the Murkmire of my mind.

Acadian: We are finally getting to the start of the start, so to speak, with the Seven being drawn together.


haute ecole rider: One thing I like about classic westerns is that while their protagonists were not perfect, there was never any ambiguity about their actions. They fought the good fight, and their opponents were always those fighting the bad one. Likewise, samurai movies always had an epic feel, even if it was just seven samurai taking on a band of thugs for the sake of some farmers.

I work hard to not only create vivid characters, but also a vivid landscape for them to play their roles out upon. The hadrosaurs, the food stands, mages working as ship's navigators, etc... When I am reading books or watching tv and movies, the more real the world feels, the more I care about the people in it. That is what I always like about Marvel comics using real settings like New York, over DC's made up ones like Metropolis, Central City, or Midway City, etc.. The made up ones just don't feel real. Only Gotham has come to seem like a real place to me, because of how long it has been around and how consistently it has been portrayed.




Chapter 5.2

The Light Elf led the Agrigentans across the city. They paused at a three-way intersection. To their right a wide boulevard led to large square. Beyond that rose a great palace of white marble, topped by a huge dome of what appeared to shining gold in its center. Smaller domes of bronze rose from each corner of the palace. The pennant of the city flew from a staff rising atop each: a crowned man riding a dolphin, holding a spear in one hand, and a shield in the other.

Ranazu whistled. "Who lives there?"

"No one," Loria said.

"People call it the Font of Gold," Aela explained. "The Captain's Council meets there, to argue about how they run the city."

"I thought the zilath ruled over Veia?" the old Teodon Hyunsu wondered aloud.

"He is just an executive appointed by the council," Loria said. "He oversees all the day to day affairs that keep the city running. Collecting taxes and customs duties, commanding the army, and so on. He has that castle overlooking the Spout at the western tip of the city. But in the end he is just the council's errand boy. The real power in Veia lies in the Font."

In spite of what the Light Elf said, he turned away from the palace, and led them in the opposite direction. He stayed on the same street through several more intersections, and finally the avenue became lined with armor and weapon smiths, and the faint sound of metal dinging against metal wafted from the buildings and into Aela's ears.

They passed the White Company's compound, marked by a banner of a white horse against a blue background. The area looked nearly deserted, with only a few women hanging up laundry and children playing in evidence. Aela imagined that the mercenary company itself must be in Felathri, fighting in that war Loria had mentioned earlier.

"I do not see any taverns," the human farmer Ranazu noted.

"All in good time," Loria smiled. "First we shall make our rounds with the armorers and weaponsmiths. They may know of good hands looking for work."

They were approaching their third shop when the glass window that fronted the armorer exploded out in a shower of jagged shards. Bursting through the opening were two humans wrapped in a violent embrace. One was a dark-haired young Rasen clad in velvet and silk, a sword clenched in his hand. The other was a white-haired woman in pale linen, who appeared to be unarmed.

It was the same white-haired woman they had seen at the Camna estate!

Aela leaped back along with the others, to give the two room in the street. So too did the other passersby. Traffic halted in the street, as everyone stopped to stare.

The pair hit the ground and rolled to a halt in the street. White-Hair sprang instantly to her feet. She whipped the gray cape from her shoulders and passed it between her hands, twisting it into a cord. The Rasen man rose more slowly, and Aela saw that he possessed a neatly trimmed beard. His eyes flashed with anger as he leveled his gold-hilted sword at the pale woman. Bared and in its full glory, the fine sword practically trumpeted the name Princely Gift at Aela.

"Justice will be done upon you assassin!" he cried.

Without another word he lunged forward and stabbed at the woman. She neatly side-stepped, and threw her cloak around his wrist. Catching the free end, she wound it tighter, trapping the Rasen's sword arm. Twisting his arm up and around, she effortlessly flipped him across her back and down to the paving stones below. The sword clattered from his nerveless fingers, and she bent to pick it up by the blade with one hand, releasing his wrist from her cloak in the process.

Now armed men came boiling out of the shop after them. All wore green leather vests emblazoned with a white stag's head, and long-sleeved mail hauberks underneath. They gripped straight, double-edged swords of the Skanjr type, and carried green and white shields.

"Oathmen of House Camna," Loria murmured. Aela too, recognized the distinctive livery from their recent business with Lord Serves Camna. But she had little time to consider what that might mean, as the warriors charged upon the mysterious white-haired woman.

A red-haired Skanjr burst through the window, while two Rasen charged through the front door in single-file. White-Hair threw her cape at the face of the first man through the door. He ducked to avoid the missile. But the man behind him literally never saw it coming, and staggered blindly as the cloth wrapped about his face.

Then the Skanjr who had leaped through the window was upon White-Hair. He stabbed with his sword, and she used Princely Gift to deflect it to one side. Rather than gripping the sword by the hilt, she still held the purloined weapon by the blade, point to the ground. With the Skanjr's blade swept toward his shield side, she stepped in closer. Her flatted palm jammed into the side of his armored head, followed by the pommel Princely Gift, which crashed into his face. The nasal of his spangenhelm saved his nose from ruination. But he still ended up flying backward onto the pavement. Now Aela noted that White-Hair had slyly inserted a foot behind his ankle, which the warrior had tripped over.

Now the first oathman through of the door was upon her. She effortlessly parried his sword stroke with Princely Gift. Again, she moved chest to chest with the Rasen, grabbing his sword wrist with her free hand. Her right leg swept out and caught his own right ankle, and toppled him to the ground. A quick kick to the head followed, and Aela winced involuntarily. One of the plates from his spangenhelm burst completely from its rivets and clattered away down the street, dented almost beyond recognition.

By now the third oathman had freed himself of White-Hair's cloak. He was upon her before she could dodge, and slammed his shield directly into her unarmored face. Aela saw her nose buckle under the impact, but otherwise her head barely moved.

White-Hair smiled, and her eyes glowed silver-white, like stars on a clear night. Aela shivered as a wave of ice seemed to wash over her body. Then White-Hair grabbed the top rim of the Rasen's shield and yanked it - and him - closer. At the same time she leaned into him, and smashed her bare forehead into his armored one.

That should have been a foregone conclusion. But it was the armored man who fell limply to the pavement.

There was clearly much more to this woman than met the eye. Or the mundane eye at least. Aela shifted her senses to the aether, and closely studied the mystery woman's aura. Like at the Camna estate, it shone with the bright light of a magical adept. But other than that, she appeared completely normal. Except of course for that glacial coldness, that nearly chilled Aela to the bone.

Now Aela noticed that even though White-Hair was exerting herself to the utmost, the threads of power that governed her body appeared calm and at rest. For example, there were no signs of faster breathing or heartbeats, nor even of sweat. Aela searched for the web of magical fibers that governed the woman's shattered nose, yet found nothing in them out of place.

"She's cloaking her aura!" Loria whispered into her ear. "Aranath wrote about it in Hidden Magic. The technique was used by human slaves to escape the notice of their Dark Elf masters, and later to hide from Inquisitors during the Sacerdotium's rule."

"Let me guess, one of your books from the restricted section?" Aela smiled wryly, not taking her attention from White-Hair."

"Of course!" the elven mage replied. "I did thumb through a few of them, from time to time."

Three more oathmen of House Camna came from the shop. One was a gray-skinned Guzuk orc, armed with the point-heavy kopis his people were known for. Next was a brown-haired Arvern carrying a leaf-shaped sword with a pommel that flared out to either side like a pair of antenna. Finally came a dark Rasen armed with a straight, double-edged Skanjr-style sword.

They did not rush in as their predecessors had. Instead they moved slowly around White-Hair, careful to stay out of her reach. They beat the flats of their blades against the iron rims of their wooden shields. In spite of the quick work White-Hair had made of their comrades, their eyes showed no fear. They were wolves, closing in for the kill.

In the meantime the first Rasen, clad in velvet and silk rather than armor, had climbed to his feet off to one side. "Murderer," he hissed, drawing a jeweled dagger from his hip. Still, he made no move to enter battle himself.

Once they had White-Hair surrounded, the oathmen all moved in at once. The Guzuk and Arvern in front of her shouted loudly. The orc struck high, the human low. Somehow White-Hair parried and dodged each of the simultaneous attacks. But she could not ward off the final, silent attack from the Rasen behind her. The rounded point of his double-edged sword sank deeply into her lower back, and Aela shook her head. Surely this would end it.

But it didn't. White-Hair did not slow for an instant. Pivoting on her hips, she sent a crushing back kick into the midsection of the Rasen. Aela heard a distinctive crack, and her aethersight witnessed the threads of his vertebrae shatter. The hapless oathman fell to the ground with a broken back.

His comrades did not slacken their efforts however. The orc bashed with his shield, which again had no effect upon White-Hair, but did trap her stolen sword against its surface for a moment. At the same time the Arvern brought his antenna sword down in a high, slanting cut.

White-Hair dropped to the ground, and the sword sailed harmlessly overhead. She swept out with one foot to trip the shield-basher. But the orc leapt up with both feet to avoid the trip. White-Hair sprang back to her feet in an instant. But she was too slow, for the Arvern stabbed out with his leaf-blade, burying the weapon deep into her shoulder.

Aela shifted her senses out of the aether and back to the meat world. Now she noted that there was no blood, not from the stab to her back, nor from this most recent wound. A magician skilled in vitamancy could easily stop the flow of blood. Aela did it all the time when treating wounds. But to do it in the middle of a fight, before the wounds were even incurred, that was inconceivable.

It was almost as if White-Hair had no blood to begin with...

White-Hair dropped Princely Gift, and before the Arvern could withdraw his sword, she grabbed it. Aela noted that she took care to grip the weapon by pinning the flat of the blade between the tops of her fingers and the palm of her hand, so that the edge did not touch her skin. The oathman tried to pull his sword back for another blow, but could not budge it from White-Hair's grasp.

Now she twisted to the side, tearing the point out of her shoulder, but only after gouging out a long line of flesh with it. Again, there was no blood. She pulled on the sword as she twisted, dragging the Arvern with it. He blundered into his comrade, who was beginning a cut with his kopis. The orc's sword was fouled by the Arvern, and both went stumbling to one side.

White-Hair released her grip on the antenna sword and came up behind the Arvern. Before he could react, she wrapped her hands around his waist. Bending backwards, she effortlessly lifted his armored form up over her head in a belly to back suplex. Continuing in a swift, fluid motion, she bent over completely backwards, so that her hair brushed the paving stones. The oathman flew above her, and his head and shoulders slammed directly into the street with a crunching of bone.

White-Hair twisted to one side after the back arch throw and bounced to her feet. The final oathman stared at her. His sword clattered to the ground, followed by his shield. But the gray-skinned Guzuk was not surrendering. Instead he moved forward with fists raised.

"Is he mad?" one of the Teodon gaped. "She'll kill him!"

"I don't think so," Aela observed. "She has not killed a single one of them." Indeed, White-Hair had stunned, concussed, and crippled the oathmen. But not one of their injuries would be fatal. In fact, Aela knew from personal experience that with skilled magical healing every one of them would be back on their feet as hale and hearty as before.

"For someone called an assassin and murderer, her singular avoidance of killing is most interesting," Loria said.

The two came together and traded blows in the orc-style of kick-boxing. Using fists and feet, they exchanged a flurry of strikes and counters. Blood and part of a tusk sailed from the orc's mouth. His answering blows had less effect however. In fact, Aela now saw that White-Hair's nose was just as straight and true as it had been before the earlier shield-bash had crushed it. Likewise, the wound on her shoulder had closed, and there was no sign of the stab to her back. As Aela watched, even the skinned flesh on her knuckles flowed back together seconds after every punch she landed.

"She's regenerating," Aela noted, " and she's clearly enhanced her strength and speed."

It felt strange, just standing by and watching someone else fighting desperately. But given that she had no idea what this about, she was not going to enter the fray herself. She would be just as likely to be helping whoever was in the wrong as who was in the right. Assuming anyone was in the right.

"Maybe she has armored her skin?" Loria wondered aloud.

"Not enough to stop a sword." Aela shook her head. "I think she is just taking the pain until she heals."

Now the oathman kicked low, at White-Hair's knee. She lifted her leg to block with her shin. She instantly replied with a similar kick with her opposite leg. He likewise blocked, and followed with a knee to her mid-section. She shrugged it off, and landed a hammer blow to his ribs.

The orc seemed unfazed, and launched a push kick directly at White-Hair's jaw. She side-stepped however, and caught his leg with one arm. Twisting to one side, she brought her elbow down hard on the Guzuk's leg. The resulting crack was like thunder in Aela's ears. The orc fell with his shin twisted at a right angle to the rest of his leg. Jagged shards of bone protruded from the rent flesh around the wound, and more blood pooled in the street. He didn't make a sound, but he was clearly finished.

Belly to Back Suplex (German Suplex)

By Julianos’ Little Teapot!

With the Magnificent Two looking to increase their numbers, they certainly came upon a candidate worth considering!

White Hair is clearly a woman of many mysteries – even beyond the aesensing abilities of Aela. The biggest question surrounding this white-haired master combatant who can regenerate faster than a troll is what motivates her to fight? Will a just cause suffice? Be she potential friend or foe?

Acadian: Aela and Loria certainly agree that White-Hair would be perfect for their team. But can they recruit her? We will find a little more about the mystery regenerator this segment.


Chapter 5.3

Now there was only one man left on his feet, the Rasen in velvet whom White-Hair had originally crashed through the window with.

"You may really be the White Death," he growled. "But I don't care. Blood calls for blood."

Now it was his turn to advance upon White-Hair, holding his dagger in an under-handed grip. He kept one hand out before him to block, while the other held the knife at shoulder height, point always facing White-Hair. He moved in slowly and tried to circle her. But instead she cut him off, stepping directly into his line of advance.

White-Hair did not attack even then however. Instead she let him make the first blow. He stabbed, and she ducked under the dagger with lightning speed. She darted beside him and hooked one arm around his right shoulder. Continuing the motion, she swung her entire body up into the air and around his torso like a fulcrum. Her legs flew up above his head, while her own face dipped down toward the pavement. The Rasen was pulled off his feet by her momentum, and her legs locked around his neck as he toppled to the ground.

White-Hair retained the arm-bar on his dagger arm as they struck the ground, and rolled them onto his back, with her right side against the ground as well. This left her choking him with her legs, his weapon-arm pinioned helplessly.

She whispered something to the Rasen, too low to hear.

It was too low for mundane hearing at least. With barely a thought, Aela channeled mana into her ears. Suddenly even the slightest sounds reverberated through her skull. The breathing of Loria and the farmers was loud as thunder, as were the gasps of amazement from the crowd. The Arvern Witch concentrated on blocking the unwanted sounds out, and focused her attention directly upon White-Hair and the finely-dressed Rasen.

"Didn't you ever think it odd that every young, attractive woman in your father's service disappeared Sethre?" White-Hair asked. "Didn't you ever wonder where they went to?"

"The comings and goings of common-born maids are no concern of mine," the Rasen - now clearly Sethre Camna - gasped though the vise around his throat.

"Didn't you wonder about the book that is missing from your father's collection?" White-Hair continued to needle. "The one by Borellus?"

Aela caught her breath at that name. She had never taken much interest in the books in the restricted section of the Ingenium's library. She was much too busy with transforming her body from male to female. But that name stood out. His books were banned everywhere.

"Your dear brother Fanre was a necromancer." White-Hair spat the final word with more violence than any of her assaults upon the oathmen. "He murdered every woman he fancied. He reanimated them. Then he raped them, again and again."

"No, that can't be," the Rasen nobleman sputtered. Whether from the revelation, or the lack of air Aela was not certain. "That's impossible!"

"Your father knew all along." White-Hair continued. "He did nothing, until your brother kidnapped and murdered Hercna Ulthese. Yes, of House Ulthese. The others on the Captain's Council gave him the option of settling things quietly, before they stepped in. Since none of your oathmen would do the right thing, he turned to me."

"I don't believe you assassin!" Sethre swore.

"Then see for yourself," White-Hair insisted. "Go to the sub-basement. In the wine cellar, behind the third cask on the left, there is a secret door. Follow it, and see what your brother has been doing."

"No," the nobleman murmured. But Aela could see that the fight had gone out of him. Perhaps he now believed her. Or perhaps he was simply about to pass out.

"If you truly want justice, it has been served," White-Hair whispered. "Come after me again and I will kill you, your father, your uncles, your cousins, and every one of your family's retainers. Scorched earth, no survivors."

With that White-Hair released her hold upon the Rasen. His dagger clattered to the street, and he instantly reached for his throat with both hands, gasping for breath. The mystery woman rose to her feet, and did not even spare a glance at the crowd that had gathered in the street to gape at the incident. Instead she strode directly into the armorer's shop and disappeared from view. Sethre made no move to follow, or even rise to his feet. Neither did any of his oathmen, who groaned and winced in the street with disabling wounds.

"I wonder what she said to him at the end?" Vesia roared in Aela's ear.

Aela winced at the noise, and let the spell that had enhanced her hearing fizzle into the aether. She had forgotten that the others had not heard a word of the exchange. It was curious indeed, and made her think back to their recent deal with Serves Camna in a new light. He had ordered his own son's death to avoid a blood feud with another noble house, not to mention the ruination of his family's honor. She had imagined him like a wolf even before this revelation. Now she understood what he meant when he said that he had never been accused of kindness.

But there was no time for wool-gathering. Aela looked to Loria. As usual, the elf seemed to know what she was thinking. With a nod in silent reply, he sped after the mystery-woman. This was someone they wanted on their side in the fight to come. To say that she was skilled would be an understatement. Perhaps even more importantly she possessed the restraint to avoid killing when it was not necessary, even when she could easily have done so.

In the meantime Aela moved to the Rasen nobleman and his wounded men. If she could keep them occupied, that would give Loria enough time to talk to White-Hair and let her escape without further incident, hopefully in a quiet manner via by a rear exit.

"My lord," she began deferentially, "I am a healer. I can help you and your men."

Sethre Camna looked at her, then to the broken window of the shop. Clearly he was debating whether or not to give chase. Aela would have to help him decide, as diplomatically as possible.

"Your men have fought with valor." Aela moved quickly from one man to another, assessing their injuries both physically and in the aether. "You can take pride in their loyalty to you, and their willingness to endure any sacrifice for you and your House."

Aela settled upon the man whose injuries appeared the worst. It was the first oathman through the door, whose head the mysterious stranger had kicked in. His eyes were already dilated, and blood flowed freely down his face. She took hold of his broken helmet, and tried to gently remove it from his head. She made as great a show of this as she could, and looked to the nobleman.

"My lord, could you help me with this?"

That made up the Rasen's mind. He turned away from the armorer's shop - and his enemy within - and instead moved to help Aela with his fallen retainer. He knelt down in the street at her side, and held the oathman's battered head as Aela gingerly drew off his helmet. Blood and sweat dripped everywhere, and the Arvern tossed the wrecked spangenhelm aside.

"If you can just hold him still my lord, I can take care of him." Aela breathed. In reality he could have set the man's head down. But at least this kept the nobleman occupied.

Then Aela banished all thoughts of keeping Camna distracted from White-Hair. Instead she gave the injured man her full concentration. She took her time, and thread by thread, stitch by stitch, she reconstructed the fallen warrior's flesh and bone. She finished it off with a Cleanse spell to wash away the blood, and was gratified to see the swordsman's brown eyes fly open and stare up at her.

"What!" he jerked into a sitting position, and reached for sword and shield. "Where?"

"Easy Arte," the nobleman soothed. "The battle is over."

"Do we have justice my lord?" the oathman's eyes scanned the broken bodies of his comrades in the street.

"Justice?" Sethre Camna said. "That is now in the gods' hands. But we live to fight another day my friend. That is all that matters for now."

One by one, Aela moved to the remaining retainers and healed their injuries. When she tried to minister to Camna's own cuts and bruises, the Rasen nobleman simply shrugged her off. But he did pass her a bag of coins for her efforts, along with the thanks of his House.

Aela waited until he and his men had vanished before rejoining the Agrigentans. They parted when she approached, and she found Loria standing behind them. For once the Light Elf had remained out of sight, at least until Camna was gone.

"So how went it?" Aela asked.

"She turned us down." Loria frowned. "She was there to pick up her armor from the smith. She took it and said she had business elsewhere. I suspect it has something to do with that book she left the manor with."

"Did you get a look at it?"

"Of course!" the Light Elf exclaimed. "It was nothing interesting though. Just some ancient sketches of an old Arvern city."

"What would a sellsword want with something like that?" Ranazu said.

"What indeed my friend?" Loria said. "We are each and every one of us a story. I am afraid we shall be hearing no more of that particular tale. Unless she changes her mind. I did tell her where to find us of course."

"Did you even get her name?" Vesia asked.

"Phereinon," Loria shrugged, "at least for whatever that is worth."

"What do you mean?" the old Teodon Hyunsu scratched his headspines in confusion.

"Pherein Phonon is old Rasen." Vesia was the first to answer. "It means 'To Bring Death'. It's a myth."

"Some say she killed the Dark Elves." Ranazu whispered. Aela was not sure if the young farmer actually believed in the tales. But he must have heard the same stories as Vesia.

"Which Dark Elves?" Daehyun asked.

"All of them," Aela answered. "They say she's the reason we have a word for genocide. Every race has a stories about someone called Phereinon. She's the White Death, the Grave Walker, the Scale-Breaker, Elf-Bane, the Gray Wanderer, the Blight..."

At the mention of the Scale-Breaker, the two Teodon shot each other dark glances. They must have heard tales as well.

"Just children's stories," Loria scoffed. "Whoever she really is, this woman clearly has a sense of humor."

Aela looked down at the blood that stained the pavement. No one was laughing.

Cool spell to hear things not intended for Aela’s ears! To say White Hair could be a good addition to their hopeful little group is an understatement. In addition to the things Aela cited, White Hair seems to have a very tangible – albeit hard nosed – sense of honor that is likely unrelated to any pay involved.

I was pleased to see that Aela had no trouble finding the right words to move her purpose along when it involved healing the wounded. The healing force is strong within this one.

Acadian: While Aela is far from being a superhero, her chosen field of study - Vitamancy - allows her to use magic to enhance her physical form in all sorts of superhero ways. Like Daredevil's enhanced hearing. I found that was a great way to show what was going on with Phereinon and the Camnas, and why it would be kept secret by those involved.

Phereinon is indeed motivated by anything but money. But tapping into her real motivations might be difficult. We will see more of that.

Aela is indeed good at what she does. She can indeed find the words when it comes to practicing medicine. It is her profession after all. She can stop being self-conscious for a change, and just do what she knows best.


Chapter 6.1

The remainder of their tour of weapon and armor shops passed without incident. Aela let Loria do the talking, and simply stood back with the Agrigentans as the elf passed on the word that they were looking for warriors. In the end they did go to a tavern, and naturally not the one Aela would have preferred.

Waranari's was an unremarkable two-story building. The whitewash was peeling from its walls, and in many places shutters were missing from the windows. The inside was more of the same, with scratched, battered, and sometimes warped tables and chairs thrown in. A large 'U'-shaped bar dominated the central room, and a stair rose up to the second floor behind it. Dart boards were set up in several places. Wide openings led to rooms off to either side, filled with gaming tables for amusements such as bar billiards, skittles, shove ha'copper, and ringing the bull.

The entire tavern was worn, old, faded, and used. But Aela had to admit that it was clean. Waranari always kept it that way at least. It was the only thing that made the place bearable. It was still relatively early, so there were not many patrons hunched over mugs or adding more dings and scratches to the gaming tables. But Aela knew from experience that as the day turned to night, the number of loud-mouths and roughnecks would multiply, like rats on a lump of cheese.

"Warriors will be found in this place?" Daehyun was evidently less impressed with the alehouse than Aela.

"This is where all of Veia's mercenaries - and other unsavory types - congregate." Loria found them a table and motioned for them all to sit. Aela made sure that she had a chair with a wall at her back. Just in case.

"So how do these ones winnow the good rice from the husks?" Hyunsu asked.

"Well now, that is the trick is it not?" Loria's eyes sparkled as a large Aymaran walked over to them. His head was shaved until his brown scalp gleamed, and a neat goatee set off his chiseled features. He wore a simple tunic and leggings, with an apron pulled down from his neck and left to hang from his waist.

"Loria, Aela," he nodded to the mages as he stepped up. "Some of the Frisverd told me you were back in town. They say things went well in the Stone Forest."

"Well enough Waranari," Loria said. "We came back alive, and with a small amount of coin."

"A small amount?" the Aymaran raised an eyebrow.

"Just a pittance really," the elf replied. "But it is enough to buy you a cup of tea, say at the Blue Orchid?"

"You know I don't like tea," Waranari smiled.

"Neither do I." Loria's eyes gleamed.

The Aymaran laughed, and looked to the others around the table. "New friends, or are you two already at work on another job?"

"A new adventure!" Loria replied with zest. "Let me introduce our employers, who have journeyed far from the mysterious land of Kye Rim in search of only the greatest of mercenary spellweavers!"

"Unfortunately they found us instead," Aela murmured.

"This lovely goodwoman is none other than Vesia." Loria continued without pause. "From what I hear, she might be able to teach even you a thing or two about brewing the finest of alcoholic beverages. This ruggedly handsome young man alongside her is the Mighty Ranazu, goodman and planter. The dashing Teodon dressed in white is Daehyun - you had better watch your purse around that one, he's a salesman. Finally we have Hyunsu, the wizened patriarch of the friendly settlement of Agrigento."

"Well it sounds like I am in impressive company then!" Waranari grinned as he looked over the Agrigentans. "What can I get you, ale or wine?"

"Don't you have any Arvern whiskey?" Vesia asked.

"I had to stop serving that." The publican made a sour face. "It starts too many fights. So I have ale or wine."

Neither Loria or Aela had to say a word for the Aymaran to bring them each a wooden mug of wine. Vesia tried the same, while the other Agrigentans chose the ale. All of them stared down at their mugs. Carved from a single piece of rich brown wood, each had horizontal lines carved around their sides, giving them the appearance of tiny barrels.

"Who serves wine in a mug?" Vesia shook her head.

"The solid wood is harder to break than crockery," Aela explained as she took a tentative sip. The wine was better than the vessel which held it, possessing a strong, fruity flavor. "Things here are often thrown, or smashed, or crushed."

"Warriors tend to be a boisterous lot," Loria said. "Anyway, we need to be choosy…"

"Good thing we came here," Aela said dryly.

"…about the people we hire," Loria continued as if she had not spoken. "Some of those in here belong to one of the three gangs that run Veia's underworld. Waranari's is neutral ground, the only place they can meet without killing one another. Take that Guzuk back there in the corner, that's Ihsen One-Tusk, the enforcer for the Toklumen gang. He'd kill us all if he saw a coin in it."

"If everyone knows they are criminals, why doesn't the law come and arrest them all?" Hyunsu stared wide-eyed around them.

"The zilath tries," Aela said. "But every time his oathmen squash one gang, it creates an opening for another one. Before you know it that one moves in, or a brand new one sprouts up in its place."

"Like roaches," Ranazu frowned. "No matter how many you step on, there's always one more."

"So what do we do now?" Vesia asked.

"I don't see anyone here I trust, so we wait to see who comes to take our bait." Loria pulled out a deck of cards from one pocket. "Who wants to try a game of whist?"

Aela sat out of the card game, as did Vesia. If they had been in better circumstances, she would have meditated. Communing with nature spirits always made her feel better. Not to mention that as a conjurer, she always needed to nurture her relationships with them. Nature spirits served far better when they wanted to. But Waranari's was not a place that she dared to let down her guard. You never knew when a piece of crockery might come sailing through the air. She had already gotten more unpleasant stares than she would like.

So she was surprised when a friendly face came through the door. An Asokar, the newcomer was covered in fur that was reddish yellow along his back, and turned to grey-white from his lower jaw down the front of his torso. He stood upright like a human or elf, and bore similar hands and fingers. But his head was shaped like that of a fox, and a long, bushy tail jutted from his rear.

The vulpine wore the ironleaf armor of his people. Aela knew from experience that the long leaves of the aronsawa plant from which it was created were as strong and durable as iron. A cuirass of its wide, dark green leaves formed bands around his chest. Similar strips created pauldrons over the shoulders and upper arms. Finally, smaller leaves created bracers and greaves to protect his limbs.

The Asokar warrior carried a one-handed axe tucked into his belt. Unlike those favored by the Skanjr, the tamac's striking edge did not contain a long, trailing beard. Rather it formed a short crescent. A small hammer rose from the back of the axe head, which Aela knew was meant to be a tool as much as it was a weapon. An unstrung flatbow was slung over his shoulder, laminated dark red, with a line of yellow diamonds running the length of its arms. A quiver of arrows also rose from one shoulder, and finally Aela noted a small wooden buckler slung from his waist, with an eagle painted across its leather face.

"Dhasan!" Aela waved to the newcomer, and his brown, vertically-slit eyes lit up with pleasant surprise as he met her gaze. The vulpine silently glided to the table where they all sat, and Aela motioned for the others to make room for him. Taking an empty chair from another table, the Asokar spun it around and hunkered down beside the Arvern Witch, with his forearms resting upon the backrest.

"It is most pleasing to see you again Aela!" The furred warrior sniffed the air. "How has that cream cake been treating you?"

"Oh, he's a handful, as always," Aela smiled with genuine delight.

"The cream cake is sitting right here you know…" The Light Elf, with his soft pale skin, rolled his eyes.

"Oh, this one had thought it was a tall bottle of milk," Dhasan grinned, revealing a set of short fangs. "And how are you this fine summer day Loria? Still smuggling banned books?"

"Oh no, not since we graduated," Aela smiled.

"Well, I still have my contacts," Loria insisted. He straightened up his collar, and did his best to make himself look distinguished.

"So you did graduate!" the vulpine's eyes lit up with delight. "Congratulations! There was never one so deserving of it as yourself. Especially after all of the trials and tribulations placed in your way."

"It was hardly a walk in the gardens for me either…" Loria said dryly.

"And who are your new friends?" Dhasan asked, looking around the table.

"These are our employers," Aela said. "In fact, there's room for more, if you're interested."

"Oh I am sure he is far too busy," Loria waved one hand in dismissal. "Chasing his tail, breaking into hen houses, a fox's work is never done."

"This one should be glad to accompany you upon any quest Aela," Dhasan smiled. "If only for the pleasure of civilized company."


Wooden mug

Tamac (tomahawk)

Your descriptions are wonderful throughout! You concisely bring the dingy but clean tavern, its chiseled proprietor and the Reynardesque newcomer vividly to life.

I was impressed again by Loria’s silver gift of words as he so adeptly and graciously introduced the accompanying residents of Agrigento to Waranari.

As soon as Dhasan spun a chair around, straddled it and began to speak however, it was clear that Loria had met his match as far as speechcraft goes. I was grinning as I imagined the potential ongoing, competitive banter between these two as their quest evolves.

AAAnd Dee Foxy makes his appearance!!

Acadian: I spent a lot of time working on Waranari's. I wanted to replace the straightforward dive of The Lonely Suitor with something a little more suitable for mercenaries and adventurers. Not classy, but not vile either. I decided to go with a place for physical, energetic folks to have fun. A sports bar. So I did some research on old pub games, and built Waranari's around it. Waranari himself is of course Luke Cage. At least that is how he looks. My Waranari is not a superhero.

I had fun finding ways for Loria to make the ordinary farmer folk of Agrigento seem as larger than life as he prefers to portray himself and Aela. And of course it is fun to introduce his speechifying nemesis in the form of Dhasan.


haute ecole rider: I spent a lot of time working on the Asokar. I was first inspired by a Netflix series called Wild China, and the Dai/Tai forest people of Yunnan province. I was originally going to make them wood elves - because of how they lived in rural settlements close to nature (with wild birds living in their homes). But then I thought, haven't wood elves been done a million times? So I looked for a anthropomorphized animal race instead. I looked through legends on such, and the Kitsune just leaped out at me. So I decided they would be Fox-People.





Chapter 6.2

"Trump, and rubber," Loria crowed as he laid down his last card upon the table. Ranazu and Hyunsu groaned as they stared at the cards in the pot.

Daehyun grinned at Loria, revealing a mouth full of fangs. "Perhaps we should play some of the others here for coin. We might earn enough to hire an army before nightfall."

"Or get your throats slit," Dhasan observed from his seat beside Aela. They were still at Waranari's, much to the Arvern's regret. "Many in a place such as this take offense at losing."

"Yes, that is the trouble with gambling for a living." Loria shocked Aela by actually agreeing with the Asokar. "The better you are at it, the more likely you will need to be a good fighter. Rather defeats the purpose of trying to make a living without killing people."

The opened front door caught Aela's eye, as did the unusual sight that walked through it. The newcomer was a Skanjr standing at least six feet tall. She was clad in mail armor, but Aela noted that it was not comprised of ordinary steel. From the silvery glint of the links this must be astril, the lighter and stronger steel of the Light Elves. Stranger still, an elvish composite bow was slung in a combined bowcase and quiver at her right hip. Made of softly glowing solascran wood and bearing crystal tips, it drew the eyes like a bonfire in the darkness.

The round shield that was slung over one of her shoulders was of ordinary human manufacture however, as was the straight-bladed Skanjr sword at her left hip. An equally ordinary spangenhelm hung from her belt by its chinstraps. Aela noted a pendant made of black stone hanging around her neck from a simple rawhide strip, carved into the likeness of a bird.

The newcomer's hair was spun gold, and pulled back into an elaborate series of braids and knots. Two rows of thin braids ran along either side of her head, pulling her locks up from her ears. More short braids wove through a series of knots along the top of her head, pulling the rest of her glorious mane back from her face and spilling it down her back and shoulders in a waterfall of color.

She took a moment to casually slide her long, slender fingers across her locks, as if to smooth them out. Yet not a single strand in her resplendent coiffure was out of place. Aela wished that she could make her hair look like that, let alone stay that way, and wondered how the other woman accomplished such a magical feat.

The newcomer stood in the doorway and scanned the crowd. Then her eyes met Aela's. She stared for a moment, and the Arvern recognized the look of discovery upon the Northerner's face. The Skanjr had seen through her female presentation. But rather than sneering, or laughing, the woman's features seemed to fill with regard.

The new arrival strode purposely across the room to the pair of corner tables where their group sat. The others looked up as she approached, and Loria set down the deck of cards before him. The archer ignored them all however, and remained focused upon Aela.

The Arvern Witch felt magic resonating within the Skanjr's gear as she stepped near, and out of reflex she shifted her senses into the aether. The newcomer's glowing composite bow instantly told her that its name was Silinblaen, which Aela knew meant 'Cherry Blossom' in Elvish. That was just the beginning however. The Skanjr's armor was named Creidlan, or 'Faithful', and Aela could sense that it was enchanted to not only protect her wearer, but also to increase her strength. The Skanjr's sword proudly announced itself as Frostbita, which the Witch thought might mean 'frostbite' in the Northerner's tongue. Finally her pendant glowed with great power, and whispered the name Hrafnvartha, into Aela's ear. She did not know what that meant, but could sense the ward it placed around the warrior, protecting her from magical attack.

Aela glanced over to Loria. He nodded back at her. Clearly the other mage had sensed the same power in the newcomer's gear that she had. If that magic were not enough, the Skanjr had the hard set to her frame, the swagger in her walk, and the glacial look in her blue eyes that said she was a killer.

"I am Hrafngoelir," she declared in a heavy Skanjr accent. "I am told you seek warriors."

"What makes you think that?" Loria raised his fingers into a steeple before his chin.

"Cutu told me, at the Bowyer's Bundle," the archer said. She paused to glance at Loria, then turned back to Aela once more. "He said two mages - a Silaine and an Arvern - were looking for extra swords on a long term contract."

"We are," Aela admitted. She was beginning to find the tall woman's gaze more than a little strange. What was Hrafngoelir so intrigued by, in herself of all people?

"Then I shall join," Hrafngoelir declared. "When do we begin?"

"This is an eager chwa'ai!" Dhasan exclaimed. "Don't you even want to know what the opposition is, or the pay?"

"It doesn't matter," Hrafngoelir said. "If a seidberendr is involved, I know it's going to be remarkable."

"A seid-what?" Ranazu scrunched his eyebrows in consternation.

"It's Skanjr for-" Vesia began, only to be cut off by Aela.

"I haven't heard your name before," she said to Hrafngoelir. "What sort of experience do you have?"

"As a child I was trained by Hallveig Troll-Burster," she said. "I've sold my sword for about a decade up and down Aulerci, fighting in wars, bodyguarding, hostage rescue, even hunted bounties. I've slain ice trolls and frost wyrms in the Jotunfjeldene Mountains. I've raided the Guzuks in the Alagars, and fought alongside them and the Brightfolk against the Rock Tolls."

"I heard about that," Dhasan rubbed the lightly-colored fur under his chin thoughtfully. "Nasty business, trolls wiping out entire settlements, using tactics, fighting in formation. Not at all like normal trolls."

"Aye, the elves suspected that someone, or something, was guiding them. Perhaps even controlling them." Hrafn looked to Loria. "I spent much time with your folk then. I am not too proud to admit that I learned a great deal from them."

"About war?" Aela felt her brow furrow in bemusement. This did not sound at all like any of the Skanjr she had ever met!

"About being a better person." Hrafngoelir said. "I made many good friends then, elf and orc alike."

"Is that where your armor and bow came from?" Dhasan nodded to her bright astril cuirass and translucent solascran bow.

"Aye, they were a gift from a... friend of mine." The Skanjr's eyes looked away, as if gazing back through the years. The ghost of a smile played across her fair features, but drifted past a moment later.

"That is some friend." Loria said.

"Ryolin is some man," Hrafngoelir replied evenly. She took an empty chair from a nearby table and pulled it up to the table. Aela and Dhasan made space, and she sat between them.

"We had quite the adventure together in the deep roads beneath Mount Mazani," she said. "We became... close."

"So what happened to him?" Vesia asked, "When it was all over?"

"He returned to his people," the Northerner shrugged, "and I took a ship to Hiakwia. We are from different worlds, and those worlds rarely meet."

"But still..." Vesia's words trailed off into silence.

"Why did I not run off to live with him in a magical tower?" Hrafngoelir smiled, but there was no laughter in her eyes. "The Light Elves are not quick to welcome strangers in their land, especially not those with round ears. Nor are they fond of venturing from their crystal forests and shining cities."

"Which makes me wonder what a Silaine is doing so far from home?" The warrior turned to look at Loria. "I have met many of your cousins from the sea in my travels. But your own folk... why I can count those I have met since those days in the Alagar Mountains on the fingers of one hand. Are you an ambassador of some kind, or a wandering trader?"

"Well I have been known to make a few transactions." Loria straightened up in what Aela recognized as his best imitation of an honest businessman. "But the truth is I was born here, in Alalia in fact. I have never even laid eyes upon Ainetir."

"You are all a curious warband." Hrafngoelir gazed from one to another. "A Silaine, an Arvern, and an Asokar walk into a tavern. It sounds like the beginning of a joke!"

Aela smiled in spite of herself. She had to admit, she liked the Skanjr. Clearly, there was a great deal more to this woman than one could see upon the surface.

"I came to Veia a week ago with a friend of mine," Hrafngoelir said. "He said this was the city of opportunities. But I have been nothing but bored. The greatest challenge I have had since coming here has been against my hair."

"Well, you seem to have won that battle!" Dhasan laughed.

Aela looked to Loria and nodded.

The elven wizard smiled. "Our warband grows curiouser by the hour."



Raven pendant

Hrafngoelir

Wow! White Hair, Kitsune and now Goldenlocks – the warband is indeed growing in numbers and curiousness. Hrafn conjures Nord/Viking images and you did a wonderful job introducing her.

Her instant focus on Aela was interesting. Putting all the clues together, Hrafn obviously holds seidberendr folk like Aela in high mystical regard. So the fact that Aela cut off her explanation of the term does not reflect fear of being picked on; rather, it showcases that Aela simply does not like being the center of attention. Seasoned perhaps by her experience with seeing that not all folk who may be listening are as open or receptive as Hrafn. At least, that’s my take.

By my count, the band is four with hopes that White Hair will make five. I look forward to learning what will tempt White Hair to join them as well as expecting a couple more joins.

Acadian: I am liking how the Seven Magnificos are shaping up in this version of the tale. Because of the new setting, I am able to make them more unique than I think I did before, and provide more story hooks into their backgrounds. Things not always obvious in this tale, but which can be used for future stories.

You are right in that Aela has learned the hard way that when people learn she is transgendered, it changes how they treat her, usually for the worse. She just wants to be the same as anyone else.

White Hair will return in the episode after this one. So watch for temptations.



Chapter 6.3

The sun hung like a red ball over the western sky, bleeding long shadows across the parade ground beyond Veia's southern gate. Aela and Loria followed Hrafngoelir through the rough, sparse grass of the wide field. The high, snow-capped peak of Mount Ida rose up miles away to the south, and Aela's eyes traced the line of the stone aqueduct that sent its water across the plateau to the city behind her. To the east the ground gradually fell away, tumbling down into the great stone forest between Veia and Kye Rim. But it was to the west that the Skanjr led the mages, toward the setting sun.

The wind whipped at Aela's long, brown hair, and she was forced to hold it back from her face with one hand. The sound of waves came to her ears, and in the fading light, she could see that the field came to an abrupt end in the distance. Beyond that, the world vanished in twilight.

"You are certain your friend shall be here?" Loria raised a single eyebrow as they walked on. "Usually mercenaries prefer less idyllic surroundings."

"He'll be here," Hrafngoelir insisted. "Venca always watches the horizon at dusk. This is the best place in all of Veia to get a view."

"What is he looking for?" Aela asked, genuinely curious about the unusual quirk.

"I don't know," Hrafngoelir shrugged. "He never talks much about it. I think it's got something to do with Valfreia though."

"Valfreia?" Loria now cocked a second eyebrow. "Now that is just begging for a deeper explanation."

"He carries her Wheel." Hrafngoelir glanced back for a moment. "He has since I've known him. At least I think."

"You think?" Aela wondered aloud.

"Things are a little muddled for me around the time of the Sluagh," Hrafngoelir admitted. "I cannot remember much of what happened for the month beforehand, and nothing from that day."

"That is strange," Aela mused. She had still been living in Cymner at the time, so she had experienced the edge of the Sluagh herself. For a single day the spirits of her homeland had gone mad. There had been earthquakes, storms, tornados, and fires, all rampaging out of the city of Tregyn. But perhaps even worse had been the spirits of that's city's recent dead, whom had all risen up from their graves to assault the living. It had only lasted a day, but that day had seemed as long as a lifetime to Aela.

Even now, no one knew what had caused the calamity, nor what had truly ended it. Aela was simply thankful to have survived. Yet she had never heard of anyone missing the entire month beforehand. She could recall everything during the Sluagh with no difficulty. The same was true of everyone else she knew. Who was Hrafngoelir, that the Sluagh had devoured her life for the month before it had even happened?

"I count myself lucky," the Skanjr said. "Venca has it much worse. The Sluagh took his life with it. He cannot remember anything that happened beforehand. He's not even sure if his name is really Venca."

Loria whistled. Aela glanced in his direction and saw that he was thinking the same thing she was. Hrafngoelir and Venca had somehow been a part of the Sluagh. Not mere survivors, but active participants somehow.

"Here I thought the two of us made a pair," Aela said.

"We do," Loria insisted, "just a different kind."

The grass thinned out and gave way to hard rock, and they found the city walls coming to an end on their right. Now Aela could see the edge of the escarpment ahead, and the dark waters of the Spout beyond. Across the narrow strait rose a rocky bluff that stretched out of sight to the south and west, and opened up into the expanse of the Bronze Sea to the north and east.

Aela could see a figure sitting cross-legged near the edge of the cliff. Aela noted that he had broad shoulders, and was dressed in ordinary black linen. A sheathed longsword laid upon the ground beside him, with a hilt made of gleaming black lorcras. She was just barely able to sense that its name was Solagea, or 'Moonlight' in the elvish tongue. But she could feel nothing else from the elven weapon.

For Aela felt a power resonating from something on him that nearly eclipsed everything else in the area. Even more than a dozen paces away, it glowed in the aether like the moon in a clear night sky. She had never felt such energy from a magic item before, not even at the Ingenium. Even though she was not a master of enchantments, she could tell that it would devour any sorcery thrown at it, and fill its wearer with the power of the stolen spell. What its limits might be, if any at all, the Arvern Witch could not even guess.

But there was also another sensation coming from the artifact, beyond simply its enchantment. It was a strange thing, that made her think of ravens and black roses in moonlight. Aela suspected that was the touch of the amulet's creator.

She knew instantly that this was the Lorlonrhod or Ravenwheel of the goddess of death and magic. To the elves she was Mhorlor, to her own people Morigu, the Rasenna called her Nyktera, and the Skanjr Valfreia. Aela was certain that the other races had their own names for the same omnipresent entity as well. Those were simply the ones that sprang to life in her mind, as if conjured there by the Wheel itself.

Where many others might feel a chill at the touch of the night goddess, Aela instead felt nothing but warmth from her touchstone. The Arvern was a magician, and like all of her kind she walked between worlds. Morigu did the same, carrying souls between the worlds of life and death, as well as magic between the worlds of the spirit and mundane. That made her the ruler of transitions, something Aela was quite familiar with herself…

"Venca," Hrafngoelir said as they stepped nearer, "I have found a quest for us."

"A quest?" The black-clad man snorted derisively. He did not turn to face them, but instead continued to stare out into the straits. "Who even says that? You mean a job."

"No," the Skanjr said. "A shopkeeper has a job. A donkey salesman has a job. Warriors embark upon quests, and Tiewaz smiles upon our glory. It is our sacrifice to him."

"You can take Tiewaz and shove him up-" Venca could not finish before Hrafngoelir cut him off.

"You would prefer to sit on your lazy arse and brood for another week?" She rested her hands upon her armored hips. "Well, we can just go and slay those dragons all by ourselves then."

"Your sense of humor has not improved," Venca grumbled. Finally he did turn, and Aela saw from his dark hair and olive skin that he was a Rasen. He had a face that she imagined most women would call handsome, with short, curly locks and a neatly trimmed goatee. If she had to guess, Aela would put his age somewhere between thirty and forty. Not old yet, but not young anymore either.

His eyes were hard though. Even though he was sitting, Aela noted the stiff, erect posture, and the seemingly tensed muscles. Where Hrafngoelir's bearing had proclaimed herself as a warrior, his said that he was a soldier. He looked like a man who had stood at attention and marched in lockstep for so long that his body had forgotten how to do anything else. A huscarl or oathman was Aela's first guess, or some other professional military man.

"Your disposition has not improved either," Hrafngoelir countered dryly.

"So what is it this time?" the Rasen sighed, "vampires? necromancers? Or did you really dig up a dragon somewhere?"

"Raiders are threatening a village to the east." Loria rested his hands upon his hips. "We're looking for a few experienced people to stop them."

"To the east you said?" Venca thoughtfully stroked his beard, and turned to glance back at the eastern horizon, where the stars now began to shine in the dark sky. The raucous cry of a raven split the evening air. Its black shape briefly winged past Aela's eyes, only to vanish into the oncoming night.

"How many outlaws?"

"Fifty," Aela said.

"How many do you have?" he turned back to face them.

"Four," the Arvern said honestly.

The Rasen's cool demeanor finally broke, if only for an instant. "Well you certainly have stones, I'll give you that!" he nearly laughed.

Then he turned serious again. "Now you have five. I'll do it to follow the raven, if nothing else."

* * *

The foursome was making their way back through the darkened streets of Veia when a Teodon stepped out of the shadows along their path and blocked their way. His dark yellow scales bore stripes and irregular shaped bands of green across his entire body. Likewise, the spines that crested his head were banded in yellow and green. He was easily one of the most striking members of his race that Aela had ever seen.

He was dressed in little more than a loincloth and a belt. In one hand he clutched a long spear with a leaf-shaped head of steel. In the other hand he held a crescent-shaped shield of wood that was painted yellow, and emblazoned with a pair of large crimson eyes drawn at a slant.

"It is said that these ones are seeking warriors," the Teodon declared. "Alcheon shall join them."

Like the others, Aela studied the Teodon. The flickering light of the street lamps glistened off his lustrous scales, a sure sign of youth in one of his race. While his face seemed set in stone, his tail twitched, revealing his nervousness to all with an eye to see. His gear, or lack of it, again spoke of his inexperience. But most of all his eyes lacked that flinty edge that one got after having killing other sentients. Not from the first time, but the time after that, when you did it again even though you knew what it meant, and part of your heart went cold.

"You don't have what it takes boy," Venca said what Aela knew they all were thinking. "Go home, and live to see your scales fade."

"I am a warrior," the Teodon insisted. "I may not have fancy armor or magics, but I am strong, and I can fight."

"What do you know about fighting?" Venca growled. He stepped forward, and grabbed the spear from the youth's hand. "We aren't spearing fish boy, or hunting razorbacks. We're killing people. People you have to look in the eye as their life drains out of them, as they scream, and cry, and beg for their mothers. Can you do that son?"

"I am ready," the Teodon declared. The spines on his head rose up high, and his tail began to sway behind him.

"Then show me kid." Venca slapped the spear against the Teodon's chest, and the youth took hold of it with his right hand again. "Come on, stab me with that fish-sticker."

Aela felt sorry for the Teodon. He was clearly out of his depth. She hoped that he would just walk away, and spare himself the humiliation that was so plainly coming. But given his youth, she doubted that would happen.

Alcheon's eyes flickered from Venca to her, Hrafngoelir, and Loria.

They all stepped back to give the pair room. "Don't hold back Teodon," Hrafngoelir cautioned. "Give it all you have. Kill him if you can."

The Teodon stabbed with the speed of striking serpent. But Venca appeared to have seen it coming. Aela only knew a little of sword-fighting, and far less of spear-fighting, so she could not tell what the name of the move was the Rasen used to disarm the youth. All she did know was that an instant later Venca had the spear in his hand, and whacked its wooden butt against the side of the Teodon's ankle.

Alcheon fell to one knee under the blow. But he did raise his shield over his head to ward off more attacks. Venca did not follow up his assault however. Instead he simply threw the spear down upon the cobblestones at the Teodon's feet.

"Go home son," he said quietly. Without another word, he walked on down the street. Loria opened his mouth to say something. Then he shook his head and walked on as well. So too did Hrafngoelir.

Aela stared the young Teodon, and debated whether or not she should try to heal the bump she could already see forming upon his leg. She could not help but to feel sympathy for him. She knew all too well what it felt like to be humiliated before a crowd. But she could appreciate that Venca had not been motivated by cruelty. Of course, whether or not Alcheon would understand the lesson the Rasen had so painfully tried to impart was another matter.

Aela decided not to heal him. All actions came with consequences, sometimes painful ones. Alcheon would have to endure them all. It might help him decide his fate.



Venca

Woot! Number Five is Alive! Another wonderful introduction – this time to one blessed by some serious military experience, I’d wager, as well as by the Mistress of Twilight!

Speaking of the Mistress of Twilight, I enjoyed how you tied her to Aela as the goddess of transitions.

I can see already that Venca’s martial skill and manner will come in handy for the likely bit of militia training the town in jeopardy will need. You’ve certainly tantalized with plenty of mystery about Venca that we will hopefully gain glimpses into moving forward.

Hmm, something tells me we haven’t seen the last of the eager young teodon.

Oooh, who is that Venca? Where have I seen HIM before?

I continue reading your take on the Mag Seven with fascination. Sorry that I’ve been mostly silent, but be assured that I read every installment with deep interest and admiration for your imagination and world building. The tantalizing bits you keep offering up keep me intrigued, such as the recent introduction of an event called the Sluagh.

SGM