Month: December 2017

*Scene 01* – 10:12 (Birds of a Feather)
[Follow-up to Chapter 12 – Scene 4 & Chapter 17 – Scene 4]

Bracing winds whistled along the sawtoothed spine of the overlook mountain’s arête ridges raking the gusts into shivering treble notes passing over the broken rocky jags.  The wind notes flowed along invisible high borne staff lines jutting up against invisible scales winding a garbled melody into the shifting soundbard of a steely gray sky.  Clouds and mists roiled and shredded by lower winds, attempted to obscure the deep wooded valleys and rocky crags below with their ragged, gauzy shrouds.

A dark, shadowy figure moved through the swirling mountain mists, looking like a caped frier of some bizarre monastic order.  The hunched figure hopped from rock to rock, stooping over the broken talus piles, muttering to itself in a strange warbling fashion.  Suddenly, the figure pounced, its cape billowing outward with a screech of delight.  Another figure, similarly cowled, with a flaring cloak hopped over, intrigued by its fellow’s find.  A shrill squealing noise came from whatever the former figure had pounced upon.

“Hello, morsel!” the cowled figure squawked, raising its crone-faced head, from beneath its feathered shoulders, its black eyes gleaming, its crooked teeth revealed behind skinned lips.  With one large claw it held a small squirming short-tailed, furry rodent.  “You got one, sister!” the other crone exhulted hopping over licking its wrinkled lips, its eyes shining with unnatural envy.  “Share a bite, will you?”

The dark feathered harpy gripping her wriggling prize, squawked and hopped away upon a larger flat boulder. “My bite! My bite!” it snarled, “Catch your own fuzzy!”

The other harpy opened its wings and flapped them in frustration.  “I’ll take the tasty from you, I will.”  The clutching hunter, opened its own wings in threatening response, “Claw your eyes, first sister!  My crunchy!  I caught it.  It’s Mine!”

“You ate the last one, greedy!” the other scowled, her bushy eye brows lowering, squinting in outrage, her broad wings flapping in frustration.

Winds whipped through the feathers of the two harpies as they squared off against each other, taking aerial leaps and raking at each other with their talons flared.  The two fearsome faces, partially avian, partially aged human female, spat and snarled at each other, sparring like a couple of fighting roosters.  Each swooped at each other with spurs and vigorous flapping in a frenetic dance among the broken boulders that lined the peak and narrow ridges along the crests.  Their squawks and screeches echoed down into the valley below.

A large shadow swirled in a gyre out of a crest riding  cloud, materializing above the two oblivious combatants.  Flying in fast behind the one clutching the terrified rodent, the swooping form clipped the shoulder of the angry bird woman, causing her to shriek and flare open both claws in surprise releasing her prey.  The small rodent landed on a stone and raced into a crevice among the rocks, freed of its captor and making the most of its opportunity to evade further capture.

A loud screech, pierced the ears of the two squabblers, causing them to look up in shock at the swooping newcomer.

“What fools are fighting noisy about?!” came a croaking voice from overhead.

“She dropped it!” the other harpy wailed.  “Making her lose the tasty!”

The voice overhead clarified as the other materialized out of the high mists and landed on a jagged boulder looking down at the two incensed sisters.

“Tasties!  What tasties?!  Wait here until I returned, said I.  And you two fighting over a tasty!”

The other harpy winced at the rebuke and offered, “Waiting long time on this mountain, we have!  Eaties scarce up here.  Hungry, we were.  Juicy scurries down in the night valleys, but you say wait here with no berries or grubs.  When spied these furries hiding in the rocks.   Hunt them, we decided.  Little pikas, squirrel-rats.  They fast hiding.  Get down between the rocks where claws can’t reach.  But we waited.  They curious.  We sit quiet, and they return to nibble the high grass.  We missed night catches, waiting for you as promised!  You gone a long time, Delitch.”  The other snorted, as if those words were a judgment against their scolder.

The dark and grey feathered Delitch fluffed herself up against the high mountain breeze and scowled down at them, chastizing them with her glare as if they were two naughty children.

“You make noises that squeak down the mountain, that not hiding. I to thrash you both.  Break your wings, might.  But…”

The two harpies waited, as the older, larger harpy, Delitch considered doing just that, but her mind balked, knowing she still had need and a use for the this pair.

Shyly, the harpy who had lost her “tasty”, gushed, “We see much in following peoples.  Sacred sword taken.  Streams awaken, and fill the dry river.  Small one who was, returned to dust.  Screeched much.  Loud and strong.  Then blew away.  The peoples, they hide in the hillcaves. Then we fly when the terrible monster came out of the rocks.”

Sighing, she fluttered down onto the rock between them and spread her large wings in a gather, indicating that the two should come closer in to hear her next words.  “Hold on. Hold on,” Delitch shook her head, trying to make sense of the younger harpy’s seeming gibberish.  “What sacred sword?  What streams?”

The other harpy bobbed its head up and down, anxious to offer clarification to its sister’s story.  “The old grove of many trees.  One where men once worked the grains, in the ridge top.  Wagons come and go there.  Many gathering from the fields below.  And new water falls from the high rocks, as it did long before.  Sword in the wood has been taken.  And water now flows, where once it did.”

Delitch mulled this news over, blinking slowly, thoughtfully.  The outworlders were already beginning to bring changes to The Mid-World.  Somehow they had awakened the water from the place where grains were sifted and milled in the highlands.  That water would flow down the old channels and eventually gather into the streams that fed the rivers and watered the lower valleys, bringing the green back into the fields and forests.  This was not good.  Not good at all.  The plan she had in mind required deadness and parching.  Her lip curled in a snarl and quivered just mulling this news over.  But she was committed.  What she planned must be done sooner, rather than later, before the woods regained their old vitality and health.

Resolved, she gathered her two underlings in and spoke conspiratorially.  “I speak with The Pan.  When finished, I drank black waters of the mystic pool. The one where he searches visions into outer world.”

“What did he give?”

“No.  I thought we had favor to take Kilrane for ourselves. But he deceived us. He gave woods to another…”

“What other.  Who?”

“The nymphs,” Delitch growled, hating the taste of the very words.

“Betrayed us, he has!” one wailed, fluttering her feathers, her eyes rolling upward, as her head turned and twisted at odd angles.

“Careful quieting that where others may hear, sister,” the other warned.

“Hungry, cold, and betrayed!” the feathered sister squawked flapping her wings in indignation.

“What does matron Delilah say about this?!” the one who had captured the rodent demanded of Delitch.

“Delilah will do nothing.  Always bends to The Pan’s will. But we may do something.  Yes, we may do something about it.”

“What we do about nymphs?”

“We bring gifts to their new homecoming. Special flowering gifts to welcome them,” Delitch grinned wickedly.

“Why gifts those who robs us?!  Nasty seedlings!  Sirens love flowers.”

“Not the kind of blossoms we bring.  We will seed the woods of Kilrane with flower every nymph so desperately fears.”

“How?  How we do this?”

“The matron has made pact with king in city of stone.  We will wear carriers.  You will soon see how it will be.”  Delitch pulled the two bird hags in and explained the rest in urgent whispers.

*Scene 02* – 21:41 (Distant Measures)

When the creepy trio of harpies flew off the mountain, a portion of one of the rocks in the talus field slowly moved.  Hunched down between two jagged boulders in the mountaintop talus pile in a high ridge trough of the overlook peak of a range called Mount Zefat, a camoflaged scout carefully lifted a dusted and scraped shroud made to look like one of the weathered rocks.

The strange bird-like sounds had pierced and punctuated the wind noises in rising and falling falsettos drawing their commander’s attention.  The scout had been dispatched to make a silent ascent, check it out and report back as soon as the sources had been identified.  The strange noises of the fighting bird creatures attracted attention and could attracted other creatures to their location.

He had come out amid swirling fogs, moving silently up the back of the slope through blinding wet and white, careful not to slip on the moisture laden rocks.  It was a precarious climb but he soon located the bird women on an upper section of the arete shelf, approximately seventy fee higher than his present company’s secret redoubt.

Creeping closer, he had insinuated himself among the broken rock field and sparse tufts of weather beaten scrub grass, located on the short sharp shoulder just below the top of the granite peak.  The two harpy creatures appeared to be preoccupied hunting small, mouse-like creatures, called pikas, among crevices in the rocks. While they were distracted, he hunkered down in a cleft break where ice and snow had fissured the edge of the precipise through its perpetual cycles of freeze and thaw.  He pulled his disguised shroud over his crouched body, silently settling in to wait and watch.  For about forty minutes, he observed the two sister creatures squabble incessantly, seemingly irritated by their long wait on the upper peak for another Harpy, they called Delitch.  From what he could make of their garbled speak, this Delitch had ordered them to fly to this upper talus field and wait for her until she could meet with The Pan and return.  Best he could tell, the harpies seemed to be unaware that they were not the only ones presently occupying the mountain, and were heedless of the possibility that anyone else might chance to overhear them.  They complained of wet feathers from exposure to the cold moist air, the lack of sheltering options of spartan and stunted alpine foliage and the discomforting growling in their pot-bellied stomachs.

Two days prior, the scout and his fellow rangers had stealthily climbed the ascent to the top of the mountain under much more favorable weather conditions.  The rangers were comprised of men who were trained residents of the ghost city of Azragoth, presently under the command and direction of a seasoned and renowned warrior, the men called “The Eagle”.  The company had spent the last four days climbing to the upper stone shelves along the shoulder of the mountain, up through a lightly traveled switchback trail under and through the mountain’s tree cover.  When they ascended past the timberline, they each donned carefully dusted gray cloth covers to make them blend in with the exposed stone faces of the mountain, until they reached the upper summit.

The crest was strewn with exposed stone and broken talus rock, and loosened gravel peeled off of the jagged stone by the merciless claws of wind and weather.

Almost within moments of crossing to the talus field and being led to a small, obscured outpost hidden in a boulder field on the high-shoulder ledge, the weather changed and grew wet and windy.  When additional storm clouds rolled in, a draft of warm air was sucked upward from the leeward side of the range forcing the upper mountain mists to descend, obscuring their view, requiring them to spend more time on the mountainside than their leader had initially planned.  Two days they waited in a long cave under the stone redoubt before the lower clouds had thinned enough to allow the watchers to begin to peer into the lower valleys.

The place was an ideal strategic vantage point, but when the weather conditions worsened it was hard to tell much, for the resulting cap of fog lowered to cover the top of the mountain, stirred by winds blowing scouring ice grit.  During the two days of hunkering down around firelight that cast flickering orange light against the stone walls, their lead assured them that the weather conditions would change and should clear within a day or two.  That though mountain weather might seem unpredictable, it did follow slightly predictable cycles that were constantly changing due to the confluence of warmer winds drawn up from the plains and sunlit valleys, and the cool moisture-laden breeze that flowed from the sea across the highlands into the drop from the upper shelf hitting air masses rising from the rivers and the falls as they depended into the lowlands leading to the fjords.  The cave was well-stocked with warm furs, iron pans and fired cookware, sealed cannisters of tallow, salt, and spices for cooking and other dried foodstuffs suited to long term storage.  An ample supply of dried wood that had been hewn, bundled and carried up from the lower hills, lay piled upon elevated racks, to allow selection of varying lengths and thickness to feed into the four firepits that both heated the cave and cooked their food.  Piles of straw and fir boughs served the party as warm beds for the troops, and the stone stacked walls around the firepits served as reflectors keeping the warmth distributed throughout the cave and half tunnels.  Stone chimneys allowed the smoke from the cook fires to escape and be channeled up through vents in the crevices of the overhead rock ceiling.

Most of the time, the cloud cover settled on the upper crests of the ridge, carving through and around the pointed peaks that soared into frosted tips.  The strategic position of the lower shelf at an elevation of 6,430 feet typically gave them a broad view of the plains and the upper and lower valleys without exposing them to the high-flying winged spies of the strange Half-men creatures.  Those creatures tended to either soar over the cloud tops or low enough under the cloud ceiling to give them visibility as they glided through and around the upper peaks.  These might be able to spot them on the upper shelves of the mountains as they flew over the cumulus cloud banks.  At 6,500 feet, the base of the cloud coalesced at a dew point, creating a perpetuating ermine stole of cloud cover that shifted in the churn as cooling air was forced and pushed into the peaks, before descending into the lower valleys beyond.  The Zefat range gave the illusion that its rocky teeth held up and constantly chewed into the frothing white belly of the Mid-World sky.

On a sunny day–their commander claimed–one could see for miles and miles, just under the white ceiling, and with the advantage of a good spyglass, one could spot and track the movements of any large group approaching the highlands from the westering lands.  Few of the land-based leaders knew of this strategic place, for most of the overland transit moved by horses or pulling wagons or came on foot, utilizing the valley passes, with no need to climb to the summit of the Zefat range.  But observant and battle-wise military minds knew the value of a highpoint with a broad field of vision.  And that was why ‘The Eagle’ had overtime invested resources and valuable cached supplies in creating a secret outpost here.  From the front of the cave, three naturally eroded channels carved by ice and snow run-off coming down from the high back of the cave and overhanging slab of rock, radiated outward to the precipitous drop-off of the cliff, dropping a sheer five hundred feet down to a lower talus pile that descended into the lower tree line that scaled the steep decent to the lower valley.  These radiating scars had been deepened and carved into half tunnels and had large slat slabs placed over their runs to the edge.  Hanging woven mats covered the passages from the cave, keeping the heat from the fires from escaping down the tunnels.  At each end of the tunnels, a small chamber was carved out where the spyglasses were lock down and anchored into the rock under a slab ceiling.

Two of the anchored and pivoting spyglass scopes he had positioned to sweep and focus on strategic points in the lower valleys where groups in significant numbers must necessarily pass.  One focused on the positions of the townships located within the wide valley basins, and another held the aspect encompassing a broad view of the half-moon harbor where the village of Skorlith received large wooden ships. Such vessels had deep drafts extending below the waterline, allowing them to ferry significant shipments of commercial supplies, while also featuring deep, high capacity holds filled with freshwater fish netted and caught up and down the broad and long fjord lakes of Cascale.

When the clearing began, the rangers in the company finally understood the strategic value of the place.  From within the hidden rampart redoubt, they were soon able to observe distant troop movements in the split valleys and rolling plains descending to the large lake chain fjord.  Surprisingly through the large anchored multi-lens spyglasses they could even make out the distant fishing village of Skorlith on its far shores.

For the past two days they had finally gained enough intel to be able to make modest calculations on how far the hostile companies had progressed and how soon they might converge on the other armies moving along a parallel valley that would eventually channel into the pass in the Zefat mountain range.  For days they had watched the armies through field glasses and a large lens scope, making marks and tallying the numbers of each landing party.  Down a central valley, the distant silver band that was the long chain lake called Cascale glimmered in the half-light of mottled cloud cover combing the sunlight overhead that sparkled and danced upon its waves.

The scout that had hidden among the upper rocks carefully made his way down to the lower ledge taking cover in a fog of mountain mists.  He materialized out of the white, stepping carefully across the wet rocks down to the cut ledge, and into the long shallow cave that was merely a scooped scar under an angled pillar of granite.  A net stretched across the opening, masking the presence of the cave from spying eyes that might belong to tellers with wings.  Channels, that had been carefully carved and cleared, radiated outward to the edge of the shelf, allowing the soldiers to move back and forth to the edge and view the panorama of lower terrain through their staked and anchored long lenses.

A sentry posted at the tent opening to the cave raised his bow weapon, as the scout entered.  The man spoke the password, and the sentry lowered his weapon, relaxing the draw on the nocked arrow and string.

“What did you find?” the guard asked.

“Harpies.” the scout answered.  “They flew away after another joined them.  Two of them were fighting, but the other broke them up when she arrived.”

“What were they fighting about?”

“They were hunting among the rocks and one of them caught a rodent.  I think they were both just hungry and irritable.  But there was mention of The Pan, some sword, and something to do with the nymphs.”

“What do you think it means?”

“Not sure, but I need to report it to The Eagle.  Perhaps it’s nothing, but if it’s important, he will want to know about it.”

The scout moved forward into the cave and turned down one of the chute halls passing underneath the canopy.  The scout knew The Eagle would be stationed at the large spyglass with his personal scribe, giving his assessment of those marshalled in the fields below, with their central tent covering what he now knew to be one of the clan’s Builder Stones.  The scribe would be dutifully taking down the notes dictated by The Eagle, so that the notes could later be drafted into a field report and the strategies could be discussed with the council when they returned to the city.

The Eagle had remarked that the mysterious stone was making progress across the lower plain in the valley.  Its location had been spotted through breaks in the layered clouds along the second day and the change in location marked on the third day when the overhead sun had fully cleared the cloud cover.   The tent had moved a quarter of a mile toward the northeastern pass and split through the Zefat mountain range and was causing the field troops to adjust their positioning with the gradual progress.  The observers were anxious to note today’s progress, compared to the prior day, and they had spent the morning searching through their glasses for its current position, but the misted occlusion was making that difficult.  Since the morning the lower mists had risen again, pushed up and over the bridging valleys by a westerly progressing low pressure front gathering moisture from the coastal seas to the east.  The clouds now flowed like a roiling stream settling between the two valleys, but beyond them the distance had cleared along the silver glimmer of the lake chains.  Dark forms plied the waters, angling towards the lakeside village of Skorlith.  A banner of blue appeared at the top of one of the lead ships central masts, that could just be seen through the large spyglass that held The Eagle’s interest.

As the young scout approached, he overheard The Eagle speaking to his scribe.  “Looks like the Capitalians have achieved a lakeside landing.  Skorlith has long been wary of strangers.  I am surprised that they were allowed to anchor in their harbor still flying their colors.”

“A bold move for those so far from the safety of their wall.  I wonder what gives them such confidence?”

“They must be expecting reinforcements soon to follow.”

“But still, the Skorlithians have always maintained their need for neutrality in their position along Cascale since they are one of the few deep water ports.  Do you think they have finally chosen a side?”

“I doubt it is as simple as that.  Some port authority might be bribed or coerced, but I am sure they fear retribution from Xarmni if word gets out.   The Ammonites will surely be watching.”

“How many of the towns are actually loyal to the Xarmnian crown?”

“Loyalty is not a characteristic of regions governed under the threat of Xarmni.  These municipailities will act in their own self-interests, and if that means spying for Xarmni, that is what they will do… unless they have some greater dread,” he said more thoughtfully to himself.

Returning to the present focus, The Eagle squinted again into the eyepiece of the large telescope, continuing to talk to his scribbling attendant.  “So far I can only count six foreign ships.  Estimating the size of each galleon, at capacity each vessel might be able to field seventy or eighty fighting men.  They have four masts.  Vessels like that can accommodate one hundred men.  Maybe one-twenty tops, but that would sacrifice too much of the cargo hold space.”  He pulled back muttering to himself, working out the possibles in his mind.  “Of course, they will retain twenty or so to hold and defend the ships.  That would be the only reasonable thing to do.  But it would still allow for an advancing force of nearly five hundred Capitalians to stage an overland assault with half a battalion.”

“So few?” the scribe wondered aloud, pausing in his writing.

The Eagle nodded, explaining, “Larger divisions would be harder to mobilize and feed.  They will surely need provisions and riding stock which will take some time.  I doubt they travelled from the far shore by ship with much livestock.  Skorlith will be hard pressed to make accommodation for them and will most likely want them to leave as soon as possible.  I doubt the city guards would be a match for such a large landing force, so whether by will or by duress, they may not have had much choice in granting or denying them anchorage in their harbor.”

“Will the Ammonites report the landing to the Xarmni?”

“Not if they wish to maintain trade relations with the Skorlithians.  They are dependent on the fisheries, and on the master shipwrights who maintain their boats that ferry them to the far shores of Cascale.  In general, they hate the Xarmnians almost as much as the Skorlithians do.”

“It is odd to hear you talk that way about Xarmni.”

The Eagle nodded.  “What was done, was done long ago.  Ammon and Skorlith still have a lingering dread of Xarmnian influence.  They distrust each other too, but they share a common enemy in Xarmni, and I think that tenuously binds them together in spite of their mutual suspicions.”

“What’s our next move?”

“Has the scout returned?”

“I’m here, sir.” the scout spoke quietly stepping out of the hallway shadow, into the watcher’s chamber.

“Did you identify those noises?”

“I did.  Harpies, sir.  They were awaiting another which finally came.  I could not make out much of their speech over the winds, but I did hear them mention both The Pan and something of the Kilrane woods.”

The Eagle rubbed his forehead leaning back on his heels.  “Harpies,”  he sighed, “I suspected as much.  The Pan is getting bold coming out from the twilight north.  He has long had some peculiar interests in the Kilrane, but the legends of the old guardians kept him from seizing those woods.  I doubt the edicts of Xarmni’s quarantine had anything to do with it.  If The Pan has designs on Kilrane, it won’t be long before they discover the ruins of Azragoth at the back of it beneath the shadow of the upper highland shelf.  Were you spotted?”

The scout shook his head, “No, sir.  The two harpies waiting above were hunting and arguing.  Too busy to notice when I slipped into the cut in the rocks to watch them.  I don’t think they would’ve spoke so freely if they suspected I was there.”

“Did they comment on the movements deep in the valleys below?”

“No, sir.  The older, bigger one they were waiting for seemed annoyed and preoccupied when she came down to join them.  She may have been flying above the cloudtop and missed what was going on below.  She gathered her two in and that is where I heard them mention Kilrane and The Pan.  I think, perhaps they may have plans of their own related to The Pan’s nymph sirens.”

“Sirens!” the Eagle jerked his head up reflexively.

“What is it, sir?” the scribe asked in alarm at his commander’s sudden reaction.

“The Son of Xarm will be implicated if ever the sirens return to the woods of Kilrane.”

“Sir?” the scout inquired.

“The present king of Xarmni has a little known history related to the wood sirens.  They spared his life once, but at a terrible cost.  He was charmed by them, but also fears them.  He is addicted to something only the wood sirens can produce.  But he must trade with them in blood.  He has tried to hide his need, but every flowering season, it comes raging back, driving him mad.  Few of his personal council know what causes this.  It is a guarded secret, even from those he eventually sends out on a suicide mission to “collect” what he needs from those bloodthirsty wood-maidens.  Anyone speaking of those rumors, the king silences with an elite group of dark inquisitors.”

The Eagle stood up tall, turning into the low light from the opening beyond the anchored spyglass, a metal breastplate of steel armor covering his chest, emblasoned with a fiery red eagle, wings flared across it.  He stared hard into the distant valley, gathering one last considered glance into the now tiny movements in the valleys below.

“I think we’ve seen enough here.  Gather the other rangers from the two look-out chambers and bring their scribes.  Xarmni is moving inward from the south and these two groups below may be unaware of each other until they reach the joiner pass.  It’s time we returned to Azragoth.”

“How much time do we have, do you think?” asked the scribe as both he and the scout followed The Eagle back down through the cut tunnel towards the long cave.

“So far, they’ve made slow progress, but that may change.  Those stones are moving steadily now, but I don’t know.  From what I could tell, the soldiers below are cover troops.  Not field soldiers.  If they intended going to battle, they would carry Grauplin boxes for a first skirmish.  I don’t think they are aware that the Capitalians have landed and are poised to follow on the other side of the pass.”

*Scene 03* – 15:28 (The Damage Path)

“Do we know approximately where the digging beast is now?” Nem asked Ryden as they quietly rode their horses along the shadowy, narrow gap behind the back of Azragoth’s towering perimeter wall.  Their current path took them along the northern side of the city’s massive curtain and parapet, butting up under the slight overhand of the highland cliffs and the dense forest situated in a slanted hidden gorge just beyond it.

For the past several hours, since witnessing the fault lines and the strange behavior of the precious metals in the city’s vault, brought to his attention by Kallem, the city’s treasurer, Nem had attempted to remain calm and give no indication of a general alarm, until he had found out more about what was going in the rock layers deep below the city.  The fissures that he had witnessed with his attendant, Chetsrown, in inspecting the former day’s work on the rebuilding of the city’s inner wall, could be attributed to the work of the strange burrowing beast that the Lehi Ryden had warned him about. [Chapter 22 – Scene 3]  Ryden and the couple from Crowe had discovered the signs of the beast where it had emerged from under the upper ridge covered by the forest of Rim Wood.  From what he’d been told, it appeared that the large beast had breached the cliffside, collapsing part of the edge down into a tailing of debris and comprised of deep earth tunnel dirt and the broken talus of the upper cliff’s edge and collapsed rock face.  The beast, according to what Ryden could make out, had left a damage path through the forest at the base of the highland cliffs, tearing across certain parts of the back trail that the Lehi had but rarely used to work their way toward the backwoods leading to Azragoth.  They had track the debris all the way to the massive fortified wall and the streams fed by branch off-shoots from the highland rivers that ran along the lower eastern wall, forming a partial half moat near the area of the city once designated as The Fountain Gate near the curtain edge, running through grates under the wall to fill a basin with fresh water once known a the King’s Pool.  Ryden had encourage him to examine that area along the outer curtain of the back wall to see if Ryden’s perception matched with Lord Nem’s objective assessment.  From there, he and Ryden had moved to warn Azragoth’s city council.  Since their general military leader was still away from the city, leading a team of scouts and trackers to make observations of the Xarmnian troop movements from his secret watchpost on Mount Zefat, the had not military mind to consult to deal with this new monstrous threat to the city’s foundations.  The damage extending along the wall rebuilding effort comported with Ryden’s early assessment, as an effect of underground displacements in the proximity of where Ryden had thought the beast entered the city’s underground.  The risk was serious enough that he had opted to waste no time in having Ryden inform the council of this new danger.  He had then met with his chief project managers and stonemasons to alert him if they saw any further sign of subduction along the walls and foundations, hoping that they could track and anticipate the heading and progress of the monster, so that they could figure out how to draw it away from the underground vats holding the city’s toxic “black tongue”.  So far, he had received no further reports and this puzzled him.  The next alert he received was from Kallem, when he had urged him to come to the treasury vaults to witness the damage being done there.  He had stationed some of his trusted men to continue to watch the vaults with Kallem’s staff and try to follow any signs of sinking and depressions that might indicate that the beast had left the vaults and was proceeding deeper into the city.  When the shaking of the metals ceased, and the gaping fissures no longer widened, Kallem enlisted the men to help get what remained of the city’s wealth into another location that did not have fault line damage.  For hours, there were no indications that the underground beast was still lingering directly below the treasury.  No further reports came to him, so Nem had opted to join the newcomers in the refectory for the afternoon meal.  His men were to alert him immediately if any further damage was found.  After the meal, he quietly withdrew, asking Ryden to go with him and show him the place where Ryden believed the creature had penetrated Azragoth’s underground.  This required them both to go outside of the city, into the backwoods, so they went to the stables to get mounts to ride along the back wall to the area Ryden suspected.  They rode quietly through the narrow path between the stone curtain and the shadowy overhang of the upper highland cliffs.  When they reached the turn along the eastern wall, they could hear the gurgling of the stream up ahead.

As they approached the area of the stream where it had curved around to run alongside the high wall, Lord Nem and Ryden dismounted and staked their horses to crop grass.

The far side of the bank had tapered and sloped downward, impressed under ponderous weight.  The moss had been torn and ripped, the tall grass and reeds were broken and their swirling ends bent into the water.  The opposite bank along the backwoods had been folded and forced down to into a slaloming gulley that cut through and exposed twisted roots formerly covered by a rise the ran along the stream’s crushed and swollen bank.

There was no doubt some massive, slither-crawling creature had caused the damage.  Brown water churned and eddied in the widened pool created by the beast’s watery entry.  The large swirling pool, now part of the narrow channel,  appeared like a liquid version of a constricting serpent’s stomach, where its recent kill blistered its elongated form as the consumed victim was slowly being digested and broken down in the viper’s pulsing belly.  The riverbed in the pool was occluded, but it was clear that the rocks lining its bed had been pushed into a conical depth, and the dirt, gravel and rocks had closed in upon the bottom of the pool where the creature had burrowed beneath its rippling surface.  The banks beyond the pool were muddied and wet, where the displaced water had receded and the surged over the opposing banks resulting from the monster’s foreceful plunge.

Ryden and Lord Nem bent down studying the broadened pool and observed where the water gurgled along the city’s outer curtain. Dust and silt still stirred above the rounded hole and muddied the formerly clear water that once ran over a rocky bottom that could be seen at a former depth of 12-13 feet.  The rounded pit in the bottom caused the stream to swirl and eddy as it flowed over the scooped-out bowl of dust at the bottom.  Part of the embankment that led up to the base of the wall had slumped and dipped down into the water, exposing part of the deeply buried foundation of the city’s stone enforced skirt.

“Have a look there,” Ryden pointed to a section where the bottom of the stone base slumped into the water.  A fracture and jagged cracks spidered up through the crumbling mortar grooves, and bits of the massive bottom stone skirting were chipped and broken, sagging into the water of the pool. “See where the monster tore away part of the lower foundation of the wall’s deep buried base stones.”  New nodded, “Yes, I see it.  The wall has weakened.  The weight of the upper wall is bearing down on the area where the footing buried underneath has split apart.  And look here,” Nem pointing into the edge of the water near the wall where a swirling eddy spun around a dark encrusted black barb barely jutting out of the water.  Lord Nem squatted and moved in for a closer look.  He grabbed a stick and probed at the barb, as silt and dust swirled around it.  Rising to his feet again, Nem nodded and spoke quietly, “That is part of the lower underwater grate, where the water flowed into under streams.  These once provided the city’s source for fresh water.  It also was the water supply for the cooling of the heated volcanic vents, feeding the mineral baths in the old sectors.  This also was a feeder stream that ran and filled The King’s Pool, and the Fountain Gate, just around the bend and on the inner side of this wall.”

“There is more damage in the woods leading up to here.  I could show you where it breached the upper cliffside and tore through the woods, pushing aside trees, digging furrows through the underbrush,” Ryden said.

Lord Nem wiped his hands, dropping the wet stick as he turned toward Ryden and nodded in the direction of the quietly grazing horses.  “I’ve seen enough here.  I agree with your assessment.  There is no mistaking what happened.  And it is disturbing and ironic as well.”  They climbed up the grassy bank, removing the stakes and gathering the reins of their horses’ bridles, preparing to swing back up into the saddles.  “Ironic, sir?”

“Its seems this beast is reopening old wounds.  These water ports along here,” Nem gestured with a downward sweep of his arm, “are where we suspected that the city’s rat infestation entered the sewers.  Wood rats that eventually led to the plague when the gutters clogged with debris carried in by those filthy rodents.”

Seated and mounted, they turned their horses and rode back along the narrow path between the outer skirting wall and the highland’s broad cliff face.  Nem continued to speak quietly to Ryden, explaining what was done in the rebuilding and restoration of Azragoth. “Those channels had to be closed, and the water feeds bricked in.  Too much debris, and the underground pipes were grimed and polluted.  We had to find a new water entry that could not be so easily compromised.”  Ryden nodded, “Was that when the tunnelling was done?”

Nem grunted, “Not exactly.  We found a purer source through a seep from the river higher up on the ridge.  The water is cleaned by fissures and filtering through loose river rocks, on the upper side of the forest gorge.  The stream that feeds this lower tributary also bleeds into that sidewise seep, and it comes down through the far side where we had to quarry stone from the northern side of the city back.  There is no known way that the forest vermin can get through those rocky crevices, so we realized we had a purer source to supply the city wells.  We built underground aqueducts to route the water to where it was needed to be accessible to the fountains and deep wells above.  The fresh water is kept separate from the wastewater, by design, but these old submersed grates will still leak through to push the waste waters along the city gutters.  We pressurize it in holding tanks and then release it to flush through when we perform the cleansing.”

 “About that,” Ryden cleared his throat and cast Nem a worried, sidelong glance, “I’ve been meaning to speak to you.  Is there a chance that those underground reservoirs…”  He paused, dreading the thought he was about to voice.

“What is it?” Lord Nem asked, when Ryden did not immediately continue.

“While we were out on the latest assignment, I had a chance encounter with The Walker.  He is on the move again.  And this time he has taken a particular interest in the upland rivers and watercourse.  He suspects they are being tainted.  Contaminated.  He had this stoppered vial with him, and in it…”

Ryden went on to tell Nem of the black writhing substance that Hanokh had shown both he and Shimri  and its effect on a capture Xarmnian prisoner.  He described what happened when the mysterious giant had him touch the glass vial, the terrors and feelings it called forth in him, and the prisoner’s fearful reactions whenever Hanokh had brought the vial near him.  “…The black twisting substance had sudden filled the vial to opacity, and seemed to absorb the firelight that should normally have reflected on the glass vial, and the cowering prisoner’s eyes had darkled into a matching blackness.”

“In that case,” Lord Nem said, stiffening, “I suspect we may be receiving a visit from The Walker sometime soon.”

As Nem and Ryden returned to the stables, deep below in a large cavern the monster moved back and forth through the length and wide of the cavern, leaving odd mud-caked mounds covered in a filmy gooey substance in its wake.  As it slithered along each ranked row, its gills pumped out mud forms in short columns, with the oozing substance forming a plastine, glistening covering over each mound. An occasional pulse of liquid light throbbed and flashed over each mound, causing it to gather into a rising conical point and twist and writhe with each darkling flash given off by the weeping scaly surface of the creature’s skin.  Row after row of regimental bumps, over mounds of expelled dirt, clay and rock, jiggled and twist, bending and stretching upward under the embryonic ooze, responding to the liquid flashes that briefly illumined the dark cavern walls, casting jumping shadows of conical shapes.  When the cavern was almost filled by these strange forms, the creature huffed and snorted, expelling dust clouds that swirls and twisted to mask the ghost lights of the strange forms it had created.  Its dark eye, and pale blue eye blinked rapidly, seeming to scan the cavern walls for something more.  Its ponderous head raised and lowered in a rhythmic fashion, scanning and searching for something it needed.  Finally, it curled its neck and its massive claws dug deep into the rocky floor, as it drew a shuddering breath in, tensing, coiling its legs under it, preparing to lunge.  It had sensed a weakening in the rock strata.  A place where it could cut through and clear a vent tunnel to the outside mountain upon which the city overhead rested.  This was where it would bring them in, to complete the work it had begun.  To give these seedling creatures of its digestion an awakening, using the fouling breaths of its forbearer.  Its likening.  Its monstrous kind, that had emerged from the ancient world so long ago.

*Scene 04* – [Part 1] – 17:03 (Dangling Death – Part 1 of 3 “Blood Baskets”)

“I smell blood!” Brem shivered, trembling under the burly and brusque, knobby-kneed troll and the chaffing saddle, strapped tightly around his under girth.  “Keep your yap, shut, and keep moving!” the troll growled, jerking the collar and bridle that he had fastened around the onocentaur’s human neck, cruelly fitted with a choak ring the troll could slide to the ends of the reins at the back of his mount’s neck to ensure the man-animal did not entertain any wild ideas about ditching its cruel rider along the shadowy and bushy trail. With abraded arms Brem attempted to push the intersecting brambles and branches out of the way, as his cruel rider drove him forward over a trail barely visible under the moist ground cover and molding forest detritus.  The smell of decay was thick in the air, sickeningly moist and sweet.

For the past several hours, the two sullen trolls, Grum-Blud and Shellberd, atop their reluctant rides–a pair of onocentaurs, named Brem and Bray–forged ahead through a dense wood as their lead scanned the way for scant traces of the dim path their human quarry had recently taken along the irregular brow of Rim Wood.  They climbed up through shadowy thickets and dipped down into irregular gulleys leading them along the tracer trail rarely used, but still discernible to the trained eye of any competent pathfinder worthy of a modest wage.  The ground was soft and spongy, caked with lime green moss, earthy mushrooms, and layers of decaying leaves, all of which were covered by low lying ferns that would shield any signs of a prior passage to untrained eyes, who might have stumbled unaware into the snarls of these winding woods.  A few times, Grum-Blud had had to dismount, and part the fronds of the ground foliage, to find the hoof tracks that had pressed the detritus mats down into shallow moon arcs, and had cut and scraped moss beds, chewing the mossy carpet up as the proceeding horses had scraped its hooves across the stones and blackened, broken branches beneath them.

“The scent’s getting stronger.  I smell it, too, Brem!” Bray the other onocentaur concurred, risking the ire of their riders.  “Hssst!” Shelberd hissed at Bray, the onocentaur he was riding carefully following behind his fellow Grum-Blud and Brem.  “Don’t make Grum mad.  You won’t like what he does when he gets mad.”

Bray turned his head slightly, grumbling quietly over his shoulder to Shelberd, his rider, “What more can he do to us than he’s already done?  If he hobbles us, or injures us, whose gonna carry his tack?  You?  You trolls have the boniest butts I ever did see.  These saddles are not thick enough for us.  Feels like you have broken bricks in yer britches.  Faces like frogs…”  Up ahead, Grum-Blud turned and snarled, “Shut him up, Shel!”

All of the sudden, Bray felt his throat tighten under a sharp tug of the leather strap collar, as a cold metal ring gathered the coarse reins and pinged against the back of his skull.  He gulped and gurgled as the leather pressed his Adam’s apple into his windpipe.  “Anything more to say, donkey man?!” Shelberd snarled.  Bray wheezed against the pressure.  “Frogs, is it?!” Shelberd snapped.  “The Pan may get away with calling us that, but we’re not taking that kind of talk from you two mouthy mules!”  Grum-Blud turned again and glared.  Bray’s face was turning red, his eyes bulging.  He pawed frantically at the air in front of him, trying to get Shelberd to release the choking ring he had fisted at the back of his head.  Bray’s mouth gaped, opening and closing like a fish out of water.

Finally, Grum-Blud nodded and turned back to face the front, growling over his shoulder.  “Better let it breathe, Shel.  Lest you want to be walking after us, carrying our packs like he said.”

Brem had stopped moving forward and had spread palm fronds apart, staring and shuddering.  A loud gasping sound signified that Shelberd had finally relented and pulled back the choking ring, allowing the slack in the reins to loosen around Bray’s neck.  Bray huffed, filling his lungs, taking in the stale and fecund air, no longer caring so much that the scent of blood and flesh rot had grown more pungent.

Noticing that Grum-Blud had ceased to urge his mount forward, Shelberd leaned to the side, trying to get a better view of his fellow through the intersecting branches.  The senior troll had stiffened and stood up higher in the short stirrups.  He moved his head from side to side, surveying whatever had caused Brem to stop suddenly.  Worried, Shelberd called out, “What is it, Grum?  What do you see?”

In a low voice, Grum responded, no longer as confident and brash as he had been before.  “I now see why these two have been smelling blood,” he answered ominously.  “We’re gonna need to dismount and figure this one out.”

Shelberd and Bray, still wheezing a little from only recently having gained his breath back, moved forward on the narrow leafy trail, pushing mottled fronds aside and crowding next to Grum-Blud and Brem.  They collectively gasped gawking up and down at the disturbing scene before them.

Large, densely woven pods hung above a collapsed pit, like massive cocoons spun in thick vine wrappings from the spinner thorax of some gargantuan and monstrous spider.  Thickly twisted vines anchored these dangling pods to the treetops, dangling these disturbing cocoons some thirty to forty feet over their heads and over the sunken and oblong pit depressed into the ground before them.  A pungent wetness seeped from each of about six or seven dangling pods, dripping and drizzling into the sunken earth.  One of the pods dangled much lower than the others, for one of the trees that it had been secured to, leaned outward over the pit, and the back of its root ball had lifted from the anchoring earth, showing signs that this pod would soon fall with the trunk it had been secured to.  A bad smell of rot and decay came from the lowered pod, as they watched it sway and dangle over the pit, realizing that the tree might soon collapse and drop its pod down into the hollow beneath it.

“W-w-w-what ARE th-th-those, Grum?” Shelberd stammered, breaking the stunned silence.  Grum-Blud shrugged and tugged on Brem’s bridle.  “It seems these beasties might know that answer to that.  Speak up, donkey!”

Brem answered quietly, “Blood baskets.”

“What might those be?” Grum growled.

“The wood sirens spin them.  They drink from them.  Just like a hummingbird sips nectar from morning dew left on the petals of a flower,” answered Brem.

“Drink from them?!” Shelberd recoiled in disgust, shivering.

“It is how they maintain the appearance of their human forms.  Blood keeps them looking youthful, even though they are centuries old.”

“What kind of blood?!” Grum-Blud grunted in disgust.

“The only kind that works for them,” Brem replied with a shrug.  “Human blood.”

“You mean to say…?” Shelberd gasped, pointing at the grisly pods swaying overhead.

“Um hm.” Brem answered casually, “They collect their victims at random.  One here, maybe two there.  Anyone wandering in the woods, unaware that they are being watched,” Brem said, trying to hide his savage pleasure in Shelberd and Grum-Blud’s apparent alarm.

“So those ‘blood baskets’ are filled with blood?” asked the senior troll.

“Partly.  In a manner of speaking,” Brem shrugged.  “They catch their victims, wrap them in crushing vines and then pierce them through and through with tubular vines to drain their lifeforce.  Then they hang them up to let them ferment, slowly softening their skin and organs down into a kind of soupy mix that they can drink later, during the mating season, when they are pollenating.”

“How do we know when they are…pollenating?” Shelberd asked, dreading the answer.

“You’ll know.  The forest leaves and ground will be coated with the golden dust they give off.  If you breathe it, or get too much of it on you, you will fall asleep and wind up in one of their sleeping bowers.  Woven hammocks that they build in the treetops.”

Grum-Blud grunted, “I’ve heard stories about these wood sirens.  What is the difference between them and those they call nymphs?”

“No difference really,” Brem snorted.  “It is merely phasing for them.  Their nymph form is what pleases the men they seduce into their bowers.  The unwitting man won’t realize what they are until it is too late for them.  They expect extreme pleasures, but they will get exactly the opposite when they lie with one of these creatures.  You should see what they do with their nurseries.”

Shelberd gulped. “Nurseries?”

“Yeah, just like an insect.  A female mantis kind.  They mate, and then sever the heads of their male victim, and deposit their fertilized egg seed into the brain of the victim. Then they string it up into the treetops to hang by its spinal cord wrapped and reinforced with strong vines.  Their seedlings sprout from these like potted plants, and when they are ready, they eventually crawl out of those dangling skulls and up the cord and vine into the treetops to feed in the sunlight.”

Grum-Blud urged Brem to turn and walk along the edge of the pit, keeping shy of the softening shoulder.  “Bring me closer to that lower one that is leaning towards us.  I want a closer look.”  Bray followed, carrying Shelberd after them until they stood just below the leaning blood basket.  “Look there!” Shelberd pointed, as the vine woven cocoon twisted under the forest’s dappled glow.  Rays of mote-filled sunlight passed over the grisly pendulum, illuminating the twisted mesh of vine.  Just inside, the outer weave, something stared back out at them.  They had to twist their heads to the side to be sure, but as the sunbeam landed on the bottom edge of the ‘blood basket’, they saw it more clearly, realizing the inner form was inverted.

A shocked face stared blindly out from among the mesh of vines, eyes bulging, mouth sprouted and gawking from the side of the blood basket.  Grum-Blud grunted and shivered, muttering, “I know this one.  He was one of Bayek’s crew.  Name was Lerk, but the men called him ‘Slurp’ behind his back.  Hated that name.  Got very mad if he caught anybody saying it.” Shelberd answered, quivering as well.  “He was the one missing his front teeth, wasn’t he?  I thought he was that Chewnek fella.”

“Both of ’em had no teeth, but I think this one was Lerk the Slurper.  Chewnek had a lazy eye.  Squinted a lot.  This one’s got both eyes bulgy.”  Grum gestured downward and across the pit, where the present ‘basket’ once hung closer to the trunk still partially rooted across the pit.  “Looks like this basket also dropped a hand down there.  See it, partway down the bank of the other side, caught in that bush?  It’s missing two of its fingers, but that is not a new injury.  It fell from this basket here.  Definitely belonged to ‘Slurp’.  He could barely hold a blade with that hand.  I think one of the Cerberi took those fingers from him.  He was slow releasing a piece of meat he pitched to them.”

“Well then, that’s the one,” Shelberd coughed, covering his nose at the putrefying smell.  He turned to Brem and asked, “And you say these sirens will come back here?”  Brem nodded, “These kill baskets are prepared for drinking when the time is right.”

“Well, if Brem is right,” Shelberd observed, “and the body is getting juiced by the piercing vines of this blood basket, it looks like it won’t long before ‘Slurp’ gets himself ‘slurped’.”

Grum-Blud chuckled at that.  A savage sound that gave Shelberd chills at his senior’s cruelty.  “What’s funny?” Shelberd asked.  “Never mind,” grunted Grum, shaking his shaggy head.

In the disturbing quiet that followed, Brem offered, “It is not often that the victim’s head can be seen through the weaves.  I think this one fought quite a bit, before succumbing to the siren’s assault.  Its face is still fairly enfleshed, so these are fairly fresh kills.”

“What are you saying!” Grum-Blud barked, tightening his fists into the reins around Brem’s neck.  Brem answered, with a trembling tone, not wanting a repeat of what happened to Bray.  “I’m only warning you.  Don’t be mad at me.  Both Bray and I know how these nymphs behave.  I could keep what I’m telling you to myself, but I thought you’d want to know.”

Grum-Blud relinquished his hold, allowing the reins to slacken once more.  “Speak donkey.  I would hear more of what you know.”

Brem sighed, relaxing a little, but was cautiously aware that the troll would not brook any duplicity from him.  “They’ll let them season a while, but you can be certain they will return to drink whatever remains after they are given time to rot for a bit.  It is possible that they could still be in the vicinity, but without the time for these bodies to decompose, there is no immediate reason for them to come back here.  Unless…”

“Unless?” Shelberd prompted, his voice rising in barely controlled alarm.

“Unless they feel the need to post a watch.  This back trail is mostly untraveled, but if they suspect others might follow those we are tracking, they might guard this particular clutching of their hanging drinks.”

Tentatively, Shelberd raised the question, he had been hesitant to broach.  “Do sirens have a taste for trolls?”

Bray snorted unable to restrain his resentment.  He answered Shelberd’s nervous query in a raspy voice, before thinking it through, “They might go for frogs.  Yes.  They have killed other creatures, just to sample them for taste.”

Brem snorted a warning at Bray, wincing at the thought that this response might bring them a further, more painful reprimand.  Shelberd was distracted and disturbed by Bray’s answer, but Brem knew that Grum-Blud would act more swiftly and impulsively in his displeasure.  Quietly, however, Grum-Blud seemed more thoughtful about Bray’s hasty answer.  In a low voice, Grum asked, “What about you two?  Have they a taste for your kind?  Do Half-Men creatures eat others in their own kingdom?”

“Sirens have no problem killing.  But they do have preferences for what they choose to… uh… taste.  I am sure that neither Bray or I would be the first on their menu.”

“Why not?”

Brem shrugged.  “They are not shy about deciding on what is beneficial to them and collectively suits their strange tastes.  They tried to eat a cousin of mine, but it didn’t go so well.  Their matron, Briar, once told me, that I would not have to worry about it, but I’m not too sure she was serious when she spoke to me.”

Shelberd spoke up, “What did she tell you?”

Brem tried to hide another savage smile, and Bray grinned in spite of himself, knowing exactly what was coming, for he’d heard Brem’s joke before.

“She said, ‘Sirens don’t eat ass.'”

Grum-Blud threw back his head, belting out a deep, sonorous belly laugh, and Shelberd, nervously laughed too.  A nasal sound that squeaked, in a weird accompaniment to Bray’s wheezing guffaws.

Their laughs seemed to echo oddly throughout the wood, but the tonal quality had a higher pitch ring that just felt…in a sense…female.  The liquid laughs split, resounding and reverberating all around them.  From the low brush of the dim trail to the overhead canopy, huffing through the shadowy branches, adding a hiss to the myriad clapping of a million rustling leaves.

*Scene 04* (cont.) – 15:34 (Dangling Death – Part 2 “Wailing Sirens”)

A spray of leaves exploded around them as sirens seemed to sprout out of the bushes and drooping canopy on all sides.  They were surrounded by leafy bodies swinging among the branches overhead.  They swung lower, swiftly brushing by, waving leafy branches across the frightened troll’s bodies, as Grum and Shelberd tried unsuccessfully fend off those abrading them, swatting them, whipping them in a rollicking, swiping frolic of playful mirth.

“Go this way!” one of them chimed, swatting Shelberd, when he jerked his head around raising his arms.  “Go that way!” another chirped, smacking Grum-Blud on his back, with a branch.  “Not that way!  This way, shorty porty!” one conked him on the head, flattening the crown of Grum’s hat, and laughing.

“Into the hole, you roll, troll!  Into the hole, you roll!”  They taunted again, striking randomly with short branches and laughing in a singsong trilling melody.  The two trolls fought and panicked.  Their assailants were all around them, popping out and shrinking back into the brush in a whimsical fashion.  Grum-Blud spurred Brem, attempting to goad him to charge forward, down the rim of the pit.  But Bray spoke up, refusing Shelberd’s rocking and kicking efforts to get him to move and react to the assaults.

“Took you gals long enough!” Bray croaked.  “These trolls were getting wise, ’cause you’re all getting sloppy.”  He gestured up at the dangling basket with the inverted face of the one Grum-Blud had recognized as ‘Slurp’.  “How’d this one get his face out?”  And he swept his arms, pointing downward.  “‘Sides that, your baskets are practically spilling out body parts.  There’s a hand down there on the slope of this pit.  Fingers missing.  These frogs spied it.  They know these men, and they’ll report this back to their king.  The one you call ‘Sonnezum’.”

One of the sirens laughed, descending out of the canopy on a lowering vine that spun out of her raised arm.  Her lowered body, beneath her entwining and unraveling branch, appeared to be that of a human female with curvaceous hips, a bare, narrow and muscle-toned waist–a stunning figure.  Her form was shapely, her skin was fair and alabaster smooth, her torso and hips shimmered in a green web of tender leaves.  Her face was framed with luxuriant, shoulder-length, black curls that shined in the forest twilight like polished ebony, waving as she wagged her head.  A look of gentle amusement creased her cheeks with dimples, and she smiled sweetly, as if watching the antics of a beloved infant.  “Talky, Donkey.  You are so sweet in your innocence.  Precious, precious.  Too bad you do not taste as sweet as you seem, Honky-Donkey.  Leave Sonnezum to us.  We have an arrangement with the human king.  His needs will give us seeds.”

There was a ripple of laughter that reverberated as beautiful bodies and faces came up and down around them, but Bray held his ground, while Shelberd cowered behind the onocentaur’s upper torso, peeking around him.  His eyes darting from each beautiful form unable to decide whether he should be charmed by their seductive beauty or chilled by it.

“Eeee!” Shelberd suddenly squealed, scrunching as one of the siren beauties that had moved up behind him, softly walking her fingers across his shoulder and the back of his neck.  “This one seems like a sweet one,” she cooed, her voice soft and breathy.  Shelberd ducked his head into his arms, covering his head and back, shying away from her.

The former siren turned, smiling broadly, then pouted her lips.  “What are these two shortlings doing with you two double-donkeys?  Did poodums, gettum ‘selves lost?  Hmm? Little squatty froglings? Hop the wrong way, diddums?”

A warbling giggle made its way around the circling, swinging sirens, each sweeting smiling with eyes that shined in the dappled forest rays, giving their fair skin a leopardine appearance.

Bray croaked again, turning to the siren that had descended in front of him, “We were assigned to these frogs, Briar.  The Pan fancies them.  They are something other than mankind.  Something that is not quite clearly one of us, but it is enough to intrigue our master.  But if you feel like you doubt our words, you are welcome to take a small, non-lethal bite of either of these you may choose.”

Brem spoke up, “Might I suggest this fat one on my shoulder.  He has a finger he likes to point too much at us.  I’m sure you might find it to your liking.”  Grum-Blud, who had so far remained silent in the back and forth exchange, but suspiciously watchful, gritted his tusks teeth, bulged his jaw, and lunged forward, slapping the back of Brem’s head, almost toppling out of the saddle with the force of the blow.  Brem grabbed the back of his head with one hand where it stung, and twisted around, glaring at Grum.  Angered by his outburst.  “On second thought, how ’bout you take off this frogling’s whole hand!”

“Why you…!!!!” snarled Grum-Blud.

A sudden vine shot out, wrapping around Grum-Blud’s wrist as he snarled and raised his hand again for a fisted blow.  “Now, now, little squatty!  That’s enough from you.  It’s not polite to interrupt our friendly conversation.  We’ll decide when dinner is to be served, my puffy lil’ dumpling.”  That choked off Grum-Blud’s growl, as his worried eyes turned towards the tightening and twisting vine that had swiftly arrested his angered swing.  Another slithering vine caressed his bearded and bunching cheeks.  The siren holding him smiled and winked, lightly licking her ruby red lips.  The girl’s eyes flashed and glowed with a yellowing sheen, like those of a wide-eyed cat watching a flickering campfire.

“I like this one,” a siren cooed, emerging and shedding her leafy guise, transforming fully into her complete nymph form, matching the appearance of a fully human female in a sheer gown, looking like one of the ladies in the king’s court.  Her fingers brushed and stroked Shelberd’s leg, palming his knee, her nails raking gently against his pant leg and thigh.  “I could make him a golden boy, real easy.  Would you like me to?  Huh, Cutie-pie?”  Shelberd’s eyes widened, unsure, his mouth gaping at the transformation.

She quickly blew him a kiss, and Shelberd’s face was suddenly spritzed with a yellowish powder that puffed from her parted lips.  Before he knew it, Shelberd’s eyes drooped, and he felt woozy.  He leaned forward and then rocked backward, trying unsuccessfully to maintain his balance upon Bray.  When he swayed too far to the left, he crumpled from the saddle and fell into the beautiful woman’s arms, and she caught him and gently caressed his face.  Despite himself, he smiled up at her, before closing his eyes and falling into a deep sleep.

Grum-Blud had twisted around and saw Shelberd fall from the Bray’s saddle, a dreamy, euphoric grin on his face, as he blinked a few times and then drifted off into snoring slumber, with yellowish powder on his face.  He felt a hand on his thigh, and jerked back, seeing a pixie-cute redhead, smiling up at him as she rubbed his calf.  “What about you, chubby?”  The dappled light from overhead added a coppery glow to a light spritz of freckles on the beauty’s feyish-quality face.  She crinkled her nose, “I could golden you up like a cute little Buddha.  Put you on a pedestal while my sisters and I sip our nectar-sweetened tea.”  Grum-Blud flinched, pulling his leg up, shrinking away from the seductive siren.

Seeing his reaction, she smiled and pouted her lips, giggling.  She turned her attention to Grum’s stowed provisions and the oddly shaped, black-stained bag, he had tied to the back of Brem’s saddle pack.  “Whatcha carryin’, chubbs?  Can I see?”  Grum-Blud reached behind him, remembering his grisly prize.  He gripped the stained sack, pulling it loose from its slip knot to cradle it protectively.  As he pulled it forward, the blackened end of the sack brushed the girl’s reaching arm, and she gasped.  Grum-Blud tucked the rounded back into his lap and growled, “You can’t have this!  It is only a prize for your master!  It won’t work for you, girlies!”

Only then did Grum-Blud and the other sirens notice that the young redhead had backed away from Brem and the troll.  She had a stricken look on her face.  Her freckles had an ashen quality, her face was reddening and perspiring.  She held her arm out in front of her and it was beginning to blacken, shrivel and wither away.  Her fingers curled and crumbled away, like fire-scorched twigs.  The blackened stump that was her arm looked like a blackened fire log.  Black webbing, spread over her upper torso, coursing through her veins, as she twisted and writhed and shrieked, curling up on the forest floor, teetering, and then falling into the dark pit in the forest floor.

“Black rot!” several of the sirens started screaming.  “He’s brought black rot into the wood!” one frantically pointed at the dark sack that Grum-Blud was clutching. “Get them out!  Get them out!” another wailed.

The woman that had descended out of the canopy, whom Bray had called Briar, turned on the two onocentaurs.  “What is the meaning of this?!!!” she hissed, as barbs and thorns erupted from her once smooth, alabaster skin.  Wooden spikes branched out of her cheeks, as her green eyes shone with a limelight blaze.  Her hair became a wild tangle of writhing thorny vines, snaking in and out from behind her wooden fury.  Her arms twisted and corded, flaring and phasing between gnarled branches and smoothing out again to be covered with human flesh.  Bren backed away.  Bray stepped back, but bowed up, pushing his half-human shoulders back, puffing out his chest.

“Briar, I tried to warn you.  But to you I’m just a stupid ass.  Well, I’ve just had about enough of being sat on, pushed around, and poked and jabbed.  I been prodded once too many.  And this time, I ain’t steppin’ and scrapin’.  S’Time you learnt that this ass kicks back.”

Briar began to calm a little, growing thoughtful, and as she did, she began to phase back, metamorphosizing into the stunning, woman, she had been before.  Her body was sheathed in a light green, delicate, leafy gown.  Her hips were slender, curved and feminine, carrying her forwards in a rolling, regal grace, where she proudly stood before the two onocentaurs and their sullen troll, clutching the bag that had brought death to one of them, and had the potential to do more.

“What’s in the bag, frog?!” she commanded Grum.  He raised his chin, jutting his tusk bearing jaw out at her in defiance, “I am called Grum-Blud!  I am a troll.  My brother’s head is in this bag.  Shall I bring it out for you?”  Grum-Blud made to loosen the top of the bag, raising his arm to reach inside, but the siren woman, called Briar shrunk back.  Seeing that he grinned, a cruel chuckle spilling from between his gritted teeth, coming out with an accompanying hiss and spittle.

“Hold your hand, troll!” Briar warned.  “If you think to threaten us, remember that it will not end well for you either.  What is the black stuff, oozing from that bag?”

“My brother’s black blood.  What would you expect to come out of a severed head?” Grum-Blud snarled.

Suddenly, there was a loud buzzing sound, followed by a smacking, licking noise followed by a puttering.  The wood had grown quiet, so the sound was as puzzling, as it was strange.  Grum-Blud looked behind him, seeing Shelberd’s plump leg and foot shift and moving as it curled away under the lower brush.  Grum-Blud grinned.  Shelberd was still asleep, but the siren that had caused him to be in such a condition stood far away from him, slinking back into the trees, still in her lithe nymph form.  Shelberd had always been a noisy sleeper, which usually annoyed Grum, but this time, seeing how his nocturnal dissonance was causing alarm, further unnerving these sirens, he took a sinister pleasure in having once again gained the upper hand.

Briar turned an accusing withering glare on Bray.  “And you knew this?” she waved her hand back at Grum.  “You knew these froglings have this black death in them?”

Brem spoke up, wanting to gain standing and stick up for his fellow.

“We didn’t know for sure.  It is not as if we go about cutting them to…”

“Shut up!” hissed Briar, “It was you who suggested we take this fat one’s hand!” jabbing an accusing finger at him.

She whipped around, turning to Grum-Blud once again.  “What could The Pan want with this head of yours?  What is it that you would offer him?  Has The Pan promised you anything concerning us nymphs?  Have you had dealings with those…treacherous harpies?!” she ground her teeth hissing out the last phrase.

“My offering is a look into another world.  A living look, that only us trolls can offer.  My brother’s head is linked to one that has passed over into the old world.  The ancient one from where all origins of flesh come.  It is a gifting that comes within our black blood.”

“Where were you born, troll?!” Briar demanded.

Grum-Blud sat up taller in the saddle, bowing his chest out proudly.  “I have no memory of being born, or of having a childhood.  My first memory is from coming out of a locked box in intense pain, ravenous with hungers I cannot explain.  Of warfare, and of fighting.  Of ripping, tearing, smashing and beating.  Of cracking bones, clubbing flesh to pulp, stabbing and piercing, and sprays of blood.  That is my memory of birth.  I was born in violence and for violence.  Some of which I am happy to demonstrate, if provoked any further.  You’ll find we trolls are not so fragile as are men.”

*Scene 04* (cont.) – 14:36 (Dangling Death – Part 3 “Hanging On”)

Briar seemed disturbed, but undeterred in her pursuit of answers.  “I will only ask you once more…where did you come from?”

“I am a Xarmnian.  From the great stone city of Xarm.” Grum-Blud grunted and then pointed at the sleeping Shelberd’s foot protruding out from under the shrubs and ground ferns.  “We both are.  That stupid one and I.  I had one other, but he got careless and was caught and killed by enemies.”

Briar was thoughtful, and her eyes flared again, flashing with a pulsing green light.  She appeared to quit listening to Grum the instant she heard the words “Xarmnian” and “Xarm”.  She turned her back to him and the two onocentaurs. Her brow furrowed again; her pores seemed to open to reveal thorns once more.  “So Sonnezum has made his move…!” her fists twisted into wooden knuckles, looking like tree knots.  “I wonder what else that fool of a king thinks he can pull over on us and our master’s kingdom.”

“I say again,” Bray cleared his throat, gaining his voice a little better than before, “The froglings are particular to The Pan.  He charged us to bear them on a mission that serves his desires.  He didn’t tell Brem or me what that was, but he put it to us to bear them for a while until we can bring them back to him.  You know The Pan keeps his own affairs private and he wasn’t gonna give us the particulars. I ‘magine he keeps quite a bit ‘uv secrets from you and your leafys, don’t he?”  Bray huffed, blowing.  “Point is, if we don’t bring these here pollywoggles back to The Pan, in relatively one piece, he’ll want to know why. An’ you know he’ll get his answers, one way or t’other.  Shall Brem and I give him those answers, or d’you want you and your sisters to answer for them?”

Briar considered Bray’s words, surprised to recognize how much sense the donkey-man was making.  She looked at the brave little burro with a new kind of respect.  One that she never thought she’d have for this odd little creature.  At last, she nodded, signifying her internal decision and agreement.  She phased back into her more pleasing nymph form, her organic beauty shifting into lithe human grace.

“Girls, this one speaks true,” she indicated, waving her fingers in an aerial grace, sweeping back towards Bray.  “Molest these creatures no further.  Give them safe passage and ensure nothing thwarts them in their return to an audience with The Pan.”

Grum-Blud spoke up, “Well, ain’t that a dandy!  But you girlies put my buddy into a snore.  He’s useless to ride in a saddle.  You don’t expect me to carry him now, do you?  It’ll take a lot longer getting us to see The Pan.  Can you wake him up or something?”

Briar sighed and pointed to the dark-haired nymph standing at a distance who had put him into his present condition.  “Sylvan, since you gave him the pollen puff, you get to carry him until he wakes.”  The nymph raised her widening eyes in alarm, “But I…”  Briar threw her a stern look, silently showing she would brook no argument or complaint.  The nymph called Sylvan looked up at Grum-Blud with a worried look.  “Is someone gonna carry him too?”

Grum-Blud grinned wickedly, “You’re welcome to carry this sack for me, sweetie.”

Her eyes flared, and she moved towards Shelberd’s sleeping form, pushing aside the brush and ferns.  “Is he…?” she hesitated, “Does he…?”

“Does he what?!” Grum-Blud barked.

The nymph looked up at him again, her eyes seeming to water in fear.  “Does he leak?”  Grum-Blud creased his forehead, “Leak?”

The girl looked sheepishly from Briar and then back at Grum-Blud who was glaring at her.  “Is he cut anywhere?  Anywhere, where he might drip…”

Grum-Blud wagged his head, “Ahh.  I see.  He is not bleeding, if that is what you mean.  Unless you cut him with your branches and stuff.  He does fart in his sleep often enough and drools out of that big gaping mouth of his.  So, I guess you could say he does leak some.”  The nymph then bent down and easily lifted Shelberd up into a sling of vines forming out of her legs, her arms branching up into the upper canopy.  She pulled herself up, turning into a mixture of leaves, bark, trunks and branches.  She and Shelberd lifted into the upper trees, moving ahead and getting lost in the canopy.

“So, what about us, Briar?” Brem asked.  “We cannot keep up with the speed at which your kind travels.  Besides, there’s this long pit in front of us.  When did you start hanging your blood baskets over a pit?”

Briar looked down at the sunken pit, frowning.  “This was not here when we strung our drinking cups.  This is evidence that there was a Digger under these woods.”

“A Digger?!” Bray yelped, “You mean the kind The Pan used to use for…”

“Mining,” Briar finished, “Yes. Those monsters.  They usually kept to the wastelands, where The Pan banished them.  We thought they had eventually all died off, but this one must’ve survived.  They avoid the sunlight.  Darkness is their principal domain.  They can pierce through rock and mountains, but they never ranged this far from the mines where precious metals are buried.”

Brem interjected, “How did you know this?”

Briar straightened, raising herself up from the ground about six feet, her lower torso sprouting roots that dug into the dark soil of the forest floor.  “You claim to know so much about us, Brem.  And yet demonstrate that you still know so very little.  Rest assured we know what lies beneath us, little ground walker,” sniffing at his ignorance.

“Did it pass under you or your ladies?  Sniffing at your skirts?!” Grum-Blud quipped.

Suddenly, a vine arced down and spun swiftly around Grum-Blud’s neck, jerking him upward out of his saddle and dangling him over the deep pit.  Briar’s head extended coming up from the stalk of her neck, perched over the abyss, to glare at Grum-Blud as he struggled and dangled, turning red and then purple, unable to breath under the constricting vise grip of the woven vine.

“I do not repeat a warning, I issue, Frog Troll.  So listen, and listen well.  I may not be able to eat you, but I can certainly kill you.  I have spared you so far, because you are a curiosity.  But I could have but raised a buried root under your feet and tossed you down into this pit.  This way you could find out what exactly a ‘Digger’ is capable of.  There are enough deadfalls in this wood that I could use to beat you with and not get a drop of your nasty spillings on me.”  Her head leaned in, eyeing him with flashes of green light, coming from her irises, and Grum-Blud could feel the puff of air on his face as she whispered her warning, “Be careful what pours out of those fat lips, and piggy tusks, for I will answer your insolence and disrespect with swift action.  Then I will proudly account for your demise before The Pan.  He would be so regaled, in the way of my telling, that I need not fear any consequences.”

With that she tossed his body on the other side of the pit towards the direction that Shelberd had been taken.  Brem and Bray were lifted by slung vines and swung across the pit to the other side with far more care than had been shown to Grum-Blud.  When the vines released Grum’s neck, he gasped and spat into the ground, struggling to catch his breath.  Brem approached him, and stood neck to him, as he struggled to climb back up into the saddle, now as a much meeker traveling companion than before.

Bray merely looked at the humbled and cowed Grum-Blud and sniffed in contempt, then trotted up ahead as they followed the sirens swinging overhead in the treetops.  When he was far enough ahead, following Briar, as she shifted from nymph to branched woodling, he asked in a quieter subdued tone.  “Diggers tend to move under the deep.  How did you all detect this one?  What brought it so close to the surface?”

“You are persistent, donkey.  But courageous in that, and so I will answer you.” she responded.  “My girls and I have been watching the movements of men.  The time draws near for the mating season, so we watched them from the woods.  A group of Xarmnians, some of these we captured in our baskets, followed a group of others into this upper wood.  They had their three-headed dogs with them.  Cerberi.  Those dog beasts got split up, a couple followed the men pursing a group that had come in a rolling wagon, but the other Cerberi caught a new scent and wove into the woods beneath us…”

Briar went on to tell Bray how she and her sirens spotted a strange furrow moving through the upper fields, heading towards the Rim woods.  It moved fast, creating a wave of rolling earth, flinging stalks of wheat and grains into the air as it tore a tunnel underneath the tilled soil.  When the wave reached the edge of the wood it descended, flattening out again, some of it sinking into a deep trench behind it.  Trees swayed and tossed leaves, branches snapped, boughs broke and crashed to the forest floor as the beast beneath tore through the root system.  Some of the sirens near the edge of the forest fled the oncoming subterranean onslaught.  They caught sight of the weaving Cerberi barking and chasing, fleeing and growling as the surging ground rose and fell beneath them.  Some were sucked under the ground wave; some were pulled squealing downward as the ground folded them into a roaring burial embrace.  Briar and her coven of sirens surmised that the men who had fled into the side trail along the edge of the highland shelf were to blame, for the burrowing creature was clearing in pursuit of those moving along the upper surface.  She told how she had confronted them, finding out that they were unaware of the underground beast.  It was then that they learned of the return of Surface Worlders to this land and left one survivor, Bayek was his name, to deliver a message to the Xarmnian king.

“So where is The Pan now?” Bray panted, trotting through the wood as best as he could, trying to avoid falling and crashing into the boles of trees, stumbling over exposed roots, kicking through soft spongy moss, and the crunch of fallen and decaying leaves.  Briar responded.  “He is coming to the lower edge of Kilrane to an inaugural ceremony that will grant my sirens and I the taking of those lower fertile woods.  But we must warn him that there is the Digger coming.  He is the only one of us with the authority to command something of that nature.  If men cannot stop it, our hope remains in The Pan alone.  Perhaps, it will remember him and respond, otherwise this creature will destroy the woods before we have a chance to fully occupy it.  We haven’t had the chance to explore it yet, because of the memory of the guardians that once protected those woods, but they have not been seen in many years.  We needed to be certain, so The Pan agreed to accompany us for protection just to be certain before granting us full title to it.  He is bringing others of his throne guardianship with him.  Dangerous creatures of threefold kind blended to savage lethality.”

Bray panted, falling behind, unable to keep pace anymore.  Brem emerged from the wooded trail behind him, carrying Grum-Blud, only to overhear Bray shout a question to the back of Briar as she swung through the treetops surging ahead.

“Which dangerous creatures?  Surely not his…”

In the far away distance ahead, Briar shouted back over her shoulder, but the word was barely perceptible above the rustling of the forest leaves and canopy.  But Bray froze and shivered, showing that he had indeed heard her response.  The visage of the creatures, the word brought to mind, were some of the fiercest and cruelest beasts ever conceived.  Creatures with a grizzled aspect, bare vestiges of those who were once hairy men, with the long, massive body giant war cat, and the most disturbing insectile appendage that struck fear just imaging what damage it might be capable of inflicting.  Horrific sentries, that roamed and guarded the dark palace ruins in The Pan’s own kingdom woods.  Manticores.

*Scene 05* – 19:11 (Death on the Downgrade)

The main road down from the upper highlands, was a winding steep grade, curving down and around hundreds of feet of each slanted bend to descend to the lower shelf plains, woods and wetlands over three thousand feet below the top of the highland caprock.  Because of the difficulty in moving a large force and contingent of troops, much of the uplands had been spared the overreach of Xarmni’s initial spread of tyranny.  But as the kingdom grew in influence and power, amassing resources through raids and conquest, suppression and gaining control of strategic supply routes and chains, Xarmni’s king dispatched roving raiders.  Thuggish bands of Xarmnian troop units, to instill fear and provoke the townships into resistance so that they could justify aggressive acts of violence that decimated the defenses of the native villages and starved them into submission and grudging fealty and homage to the Xarmnian crown.  Their commerce was controlled, their traditional, and longstanding alliances with other villages broken, and filtered through those subjected to Xarmni’s will.  Collectively, those bands of Xarmnian patrols were known as “The Xarmnian Overwatch”, but individually the brute squads were called “The Protectorate”.  An ironic appellation, since the only thing these thug squads did “protect” was the selfish interests of the Xarmnian king in gaining power and control over the towns and labor, goods and production of the peoples of the outer lands.

When the Bruel Hadeon had split his company of Protectorate hunters, between himself, Bayek and Aridam to pursue the fleeing group of outworlders, the Inn keeper and his family, their Xarmnian scribe and his brood, and the strange band of riders purporting to be weaponry supplies escorts from the Iron Hills foundry, he hadn’t expected the latter to demonstrate any relationship or knowledge of the former group that they were seeking to capture.  When he and his company had spotted that fleeing group on the main road, from the top ridge of the valley where the remote Xarmnian stables her located, he and his team realized that the weaponry convoy might serve to detain those fugitives before they could get to them.  When they came down from the valley ridge, they set their Cerberi dogs loose to begin the chase, following those vicious creatures on horseback, to make sure the weapons convoy did not seize their quarry and take personal credit for their capture.

Leveling off, down to the main road, they could not see beyond the brow of the distant rise that led down the shelf of the upper highland.  They witnessed some form of engagement by the convoy group, and a seeming pursuit, but it was not until they reached the top of the brow that they realized the engagement between the two groups had served as a ruse.  They had been surprised to find that the two convoy wagons, had raised their canvas covers, making them appear from a distance like the one the Inn Keeper kept and used in his conscripted service to the locally installed magistrates of the Xarmnian Overwatch.  These wagons, and their attendant riders were splitting up, going in different directions, forcing Hadeon to divide his company to continue the pursuit, not knowing which of these contained the specific fugitives he was looking for.  To Bayek, he had given the charge to follow the wagon fleeing along the little used Rim Woods trail tracking along the edge of the highland shelf towards the east.  To Aridam, he had given the responsibility to run down the fleeing wagon and its posing retinue who had fled along the northwestern wood trail that ran down into the valley head of the declivity that extended back towards the remote Xarmnian Stables from which they had just come to refresh and replenish their travel supplies and rotate their prior mounts with a supply of fresh horses.  Hadeon opted to lead his own warriors down the main road in pursuit of the central wagon, which he believed was piloted by the Inn keeper and his traveling charges, both from the Outworld, and that of the traitorous scribe that he and his team had tracked for weeks from their initial flight from Xarm City.  The side routes seemed like mere distractions, for he was not aware of any way down from the highlands from this far north without utilizing the main road.  A fault line separated the two landmasses, with the highland forming the upper rim, and the lowland forming the slanting valley descending down towards the open harbor front of the fjord lake chain of Cascale.  Beyond, the land rose again stepping up towards the distant high range mountains until they reached the massive range called “The Walls of Stone”.

Hadeon and his crew had followed one of the wagon down the winding grade, intent on catching them on one of the curve-backs, but that was not to be.  Part of the way down, on a particularly steep grade, the men in the wagon started dropping supplies down onto the narrow road, breaking open wooden crates of long swords, battle axes, unhooked flat shields, and steel-cleated maces, strewing them down upon the dirt path, creating dangerous and sharp obstacles for the horses, men and Cerberi dogs following them.  A box of caltrops–wicked metal spiked, fist-sized clusters of spines, used to cripple and stab the feet of soldiers and beasts on a field of battle–were dumped and strewn across the downgrade, causing the pursuing horses to rear and twist away, loosing footing and sending their riders crashing to the ground and other unfortunates over the steep edge of the road falling to their deaths.  Hadeon’s horse had stumbled, its hooves slipping on a metal shield, slamming Hadeon hard into the ground rolling towards the steep edge of the road.  As he fell, he quickly unsheathed his knife and stabbed into the dirt roadway, trying to slow his slide towards the precipice where the road-edge fell off.  His blade stuttered on the hardpacked earth, scratching at stones.  The impact had knocked the breath out of him and his vision was beginning to dim.  His other arm and hand flailed grasping and clawing at anything that might slow his slide.  Clumps of scrub grass crackled and tore under his fingers, its shallow roots popping as he twisted and flexed his grip, finally coming to a stop with one leg dangling over the graveled edge.  Other riders tumbled headlong, some plunged over the edge with their horses, slamming against the side of the cliff and landing on a lower roadway over a hundred feet down with a sickening wet crunch and thud.  When Hadeon’s breath returned, his chest heaved taking in deep draughts of air, filling his lungs again.  A horse and rider skidded past him, barely missing stomping and kicking Hadeon’s prone body over the edge he’d just avoided.  The horses of the band shrieked and snorted.  The men yelled in alarm, grunting and roaring, as their bodies and mounts fell or were wrenched out from under them.  Two of Hadeon’s men were trampled, one had impaled himself on a caltrop, another had his wounded mount throw him and then roll over him crushing him under the weight as they slid down the graveled grade.  Their momentum in the chase and the tug of the slanted roadway propelled them into the strewn field of obstacles.  The abandoned weaponry proved to have a much more devasting effect than they might have had if they were each wielded in battle.

Hadeon sat up slowly assessing the damage.  Seven of Hadeon’s sixteen men were lost, another two were mortally wounded, five horses had been lost over the edge, two suffered debilitating injuries to their legs and feet, and most of them suffered abrasions and cuts.  Two of the six Cerberi that they had brought lay dead on the road, ragged gouts of flesh and blood wet the dirt roadway.  He had seen one of the creatures plunge over the edge of the road, growling and clawing at the edge to no avail.  Hadeon roared in rage and forced himself up, backing away from the narrow edge with a fist full of dried scrub grass clenched in his hand.  His blade had snagged the edge of a buried stone and had unearthed part of it, leaving a shallow cavity beneath.  The wagon and company they had been pursuing were now rounding a curve in the roadway several hundred feet below.  Their canopy had come down, no longer needing the pretense of masking their appearance to look like the other wagon they had seen through their spyglass in the early hours before.  No doubt it was tucked away to allow them to better unload their battle cargo and scatter it to such devastating effect.  Seeing this, Hadeon pounded the ground in rage and rose roaring, shaking and gesticulating angrily at the party below getting farther and farther away.  He had lost his own horse, and he spun around fiercely looking for another to continue the pursuit.  They would not get away from him.  They could not.  He would rake through the coals of Hell to find them, for what they did.  He would personally tear them apart, shave off their skin under his dagger, beat them with flails, shove dirks into their eye sockets, bash their skulls and cut them down into little bloody pieces.

He stomped up behind one of his men attempting to climb back up into the saddle of his horse.  He caught the man by the leg and jerked his foot out of the horse’s stirrup, pushing the man back down onto the roadway.  Unaware that the one who had grabbed him was Hadeon, his Bruel, the man spat and went for his dagger, starting to lunge up at him.  Hadeon merely glared at him, sheathing his own dagger with a snap of his wrist and put his own foot in the stirrup of the man’s horse, swinging himself up into the saddle, a dark and dangerous scowl on his face, his cheek twitching with rage.  The man dropped his dagger, splaying his fingers, as if he had touch a hot iron.  He bowed his head under the fierce gaze of Hadeon, not wanting to challenge him any further, even by accident, or by showing him even a brief indignant expression.  Hadeon turned and in a gruff, commanding voice growled to the dog handler, asking him, “Are those three Cerbs well enough to still hunt, or do we need to put them down too?”

The hunter, holding the three remaining Cerberi by their leads through a collar ring, nodded and added, “Seem well enough, my Bruel.”  Hadeon nodded and muttered, “Then bring’em.  And follow.  I’ll have further use for them.”

Hadeon reigned the newly acquired horse to the side, deftly guiding the animal forward through the cluttered and bloodied roadway, beyond the debris field.  When he had ridden beyond it, he spurred the animal and struck its flanks with a quirt, causing the beast to lunge forward galloping downward towards the path the fugitive wagon and its company had taken.  The other six men watched their lead and knew there was nothing more to be said or done.  He expected them to follow, and follow is what they did.  The one whose horse had been taken had no choice but to follow on foot, knowing full well he would never catch up with his company.  The graded road was over three miles down to the lower shelf, and he would simply have to make out however he could.  Someone might eventually come along.  And it was a few hours later when someone finally did.  Two of his fellow Protectorate hunters, one of which was leading a team of riderless horses.  The other, caring the frail fugitive man that Hadeon had beaten back at the Innkeeper’s Inn before they burned it to the ground–It–and the insolent waif of a serving girl who thought she might catch his bruel, Hadeon, off-guard and run a small dirk dagger into him.  Little did she know, Hadeon had spied the blade barely hidden between two ale casks, his suspicious eyes naturally searching for anything that might be used against him.  And he had hoped she would try to use it on him.  So, he could rightly show her just how cruel he could be.  She’d been the first thing to burn, the rest sort of came about as the men kicked over benches and broke up furniture, scattering ashes and setting the place ablaze with reckless abandon and wild, savage delight.  Then they’d set the barn on fire, locking the animals into the stalls to teach that Inn keeper that they meant business and would not allow him to ever entertain the thought of returning to his country home and business.  No one got in the way of Xarmnian will.  No one defied The Protectorate.  No one was ever beyond the reach of the punishing fists of the Xarmnian Protectorate.  No one.

When Tizkon and Bayek saw the debris field of abandoned armaments and the dead hunters, bawling and wounded horses and shaggy mounds of fly-ridden Cerberi carcasses, they knew Hadeon’s effort to capture the fugitives had not gone well.  Black carrion birds had already started to circle in the sky above them.  Black crows had landed on some of the dead and had already tasted flesh, pecking at gashes and open wounds.

Bayek had difficulty getting the string of horses he led through the debris field, and around the carcasses.  The horses he led had ridden into battle before, and charged through much worse carnage, but their balked and snorted at the sights and smells, twisting away from the areas where the flies were beginning to swarm.  The sun overhead warmed the sky, but up on the high roadway there was an upward gust of breeze, that took the scent and carried it on the current, whipping them with watery eyes, and forcing them to cover their mouths and noses just to get past.

Thankfully, once beyond the roadway death scene, Bayek and Tizkon were relieved to find that the upward breeze lifted those ghastly smells away from them as they proceeded further down the grade.  No far below they spotted the lone man walking and recognized him by his gait, and garb.  He carried a sword and was waving it in the air, as if wanting to strike something.  When he heard Bayek and Tizkon coming he turned swiftly, sword arm raise and threatening, and then he smiled…and laughed, lowering the blade back down and then sheathing it at his side.

“What took you two fools so long?!  And where are the others?!”

“We might be asking you the same questions!” Tizkon barked back.

The man grinned, skinning back his bearded lips to reveal crooked, yellowing teeth.  “Bayek, give me one of those horses.  I lost mine.”

“How careless of you, Kathair,” Bayek quipped.  “What happened on the roadway back there?  Did your quarry get the better of you?”

Kathair, the walking hunter, spat and cursed. “Ambushed us!  That fake weapons convoy from the Iron Hills foundry!  Bah!”  He cursed again, grinding his fists, “Dumped their pieces all over the road when we were coming down the steepest grade.  We couldn’t stop and we ran into the scatter.  Horses lamed, riders thrown, all of us went down one after the other.  Some went over the edge.  We were coming too fast to stop and avoid all that.  Hadeon almost lost it too.  He took my horse.  His went down.  You know how he is.  He’s got a boiling mad on, and he’s bound to run them to ground. What about you?”

Tizkon looked at Bayek in dismay.  “We’ve not had much of a time either.”

Kathair noticed the gaunt man bundled and tied across the saddle of one of the horses.  He looked from the bound man and back up at Tizkon, “I thought Hadeon told you to kill this one?  What’s he doing here?!”

Tizkon huffed, “Hadeon said to kill him when you all caught those wagons.”

“So?” Kathair growled.

“Doesn’t look to me like you caught them.” Tizkon sniffed, “So, if Hadeon still needs this stickman for leverage, what good what it do to have killed him and left the birds to pick whatever’s left on his skinny bones?”

Kathair snorted, thoughtful. “Well, I guess that’s so.  Nuisance as he might be, he still might be worth something to some of them we’re after.  If not, Hadeon’ll use him as an object lesson.  Kill him when they can see it.  Think about it a little.”

The man bound to the saddle, sniffled, signifying that he’d heard the discussion about his life and future use as a brutal object lesson.  He whimpered but said nothing, dreading what might follow if he did and the Xarmnians considered him more of a nuisance than was worth keeping for Hadeon’s cruelty.

“What about you, Bayek?  Last I saw, there were six others with you?  What happened to them?  Careless?”

Bayek snorted, bristling at the return of his prior remark to Kathair back onto himself, “If they had been riding these horses, you might be continuing your trek down on foot.”

Kathair mounted one of the stallions and Bayek loosened it from the tie string.  As the rode on, toward the meeting rendezvous place, Hadeon had planned to meet before, Bayek filled Kathair in on what had transpired with the siren in the upper eastern forest trail of Rim Wood.  Hadeon would not be happy.  Especially with their own failure to capture either of the fleeing parties or their wagons.  He only hoped Aridam had fared better in their pursuit along the northwestern trail.  If not, Hadeon would be too dangerous to be near for the rest of the day.  If Hadeon ever had a bad day, it was certain that all who rode with him would have one too.

*Scene 06* – 19:07 (The Blind Spot)

Azragoth was buzzing with activity.  Lord Nem had gone with one of the Lehi scouts to survey the older outer wall, and when he and the man named Ryden returned there was a hastily gathered meeting called involving some of his principal builders and foremen.  Afterwards, city leaders and some of the heads of the various families dwelling in the secret city were called in.  It was clear that these meetings would occupy him for the rest of the day.  People came and went, hurrying in and out of the council meetings, clearly moving directly from the private meetings with intention and purpose that arose from what was privately discussed with them.

Our group was once again chaperoned by Morgrath, the surly sentinel who had first received us upon entering the city of Azragoth through the narrow sally-port entrance with Maeven, through the massive backwall of the city.  Reflecting on that initial entry, I remembered the uncertainty of it, and trepidation I felt knowing it had once been a city of death, having fallen under the scourge of a dreadful plague.  The place was even more mysterious than it had initially been on arrival with the present knowledge of all the factors leading to its miraculous rebirth; the respite it had grudgingly been given under years of Xarmnian quarantine; the incursion of the outgrowth of the woods surrounding it, serving to conceal it further from discovery; and its present state as a thriving refuge for the outcasts and hunted; and use as a lethal training ground of resistance forces, showing the hopeful promise of a formidable future of reclaiming its founding purpose of serving as a protector and defender of the oppressed townships and people of the region.

When we first arrived, our attention was held by our initial forward glimpse into the perimeter of the hidden city, seeing parts of the old, abandoned streets, debris-cluttered and moss-covered courtyards, framed by fire gutted structures and crumbling façades, overgrown with vines from our limited and brief vantage point atop the higher skirt wall.  Under a half-canopy of stone, on the parapet allure, the extended wall rose only so far up the cliff face, to be even with trees to cover its towering from below.  The protruding stones rising up to the parapet and extending up the higher edge of the backwall were rough cut and unfinished, matching the stone faces of the higher cliffs.  It occurred to me that this was clearly built to hide the narrow cut of the back forested ravine we had come down through, using the city, and mature trees as a blind. With the dense woods of Kilrane surrounding the hills and pressing close to the old outer city walls, anyone observing from the lower slopes would never see the remains of the old city unless they happened to stumble upon it climbing up through the woods until they were almost touching it.

I was amazed that the builders of that backwall had foreseen that one day the city would need to resort to a season of concealment from the outside lands of The Mid-World.  How could they have known that there would be such a reason for it, following a plague, giving the Xarmnians only a Pyrrhic victory over its demise, rather than an actual conquest?  It reminded me of the account of the Roman siege of Masada from 72 to 73 CE, at the end of the First Jewish–Roman War, in the Surface World.  Like Masada, only located in a sub-alpine climate, I realized that Azragoth was built on a geological shelf known as a horst which was bordered on either side by two forest covered declivities called grabens making it hard for enemies to attack with foot soldiers and a formidable citadel to boot in its proximal situation.  Perhaps, that was why the Azragothians, prior to the Xarmnian siege, felt themselves safe from any serious assault, despite the rumored ambitions of area kings and warlords rattling their sabers, proposing strategic trade alliances and, when rebuffed, issuing bold threats.  Threats that were then laughed at and not taken seriously by the former populace and leadership of this mysterious city, which further enraged those who secretly sought to bind, plunder and conquer it.

The city was indeed a fortress.  And even if the Xarmnians had known about the backway we had come through, they could do little to exploit it.  For the route took us along the edge of a narrow stream that fell from the high shelved cliff, crisscrossing over short bridges and around tree boles and under tall shadowy woods, they could never have utilized to launch an effective assault.  They still would come to the massive outer wall and need to find a better access point following alone the perimeter to finally get into the city.  The graben declivities offered only a narrow shelf along the outer wall, with no feasible way to build a siege ramp or construct a battering ram swing frame.  It seemed to me that Azragoth’s defensible position had been well thought through before even the first stones had been laid and the foundational shelf terraces excavated.

The stream we had rode along and crossed through the gorge descended until it ran along the edge of the outer wall skirt that rounded to the southeast of the forested citadel. The outer rockface butte blended in with the concave backwall with the hidden rift gorge choked with towering trees and babbling streams in between.  Travelers coming through that hidden back trail were forced to ride single file along snaking paths and there were no large areas wide enough for significant grouping.  If not for the rats and the overconfidence of the former Azragothians, this city might have successfully resisted the Xarmnian advances indefinitely, and still be thriving to this day, rather than experiencing a tragic humbling and a recent rebirth.

Everything about Azragoth, its founding, its people, its past, and its customs seemed to convey some hidden message, and provoke deep thoughts of personal introspection.  There was a sobering sadness about all it had endured, and a hopeful promise in all it had learned from its successive tragedies.

Corimanth stayed with us, as we were ushered once again to the Warrior’s Court, but I noticed that Begglar and Nell lingered, talking low with the friends they had introduced to us as Shimri and Aida.  They leaned in, huddled together, and I saw both Begglar and Shimri hug their wives close to them as they evidently shared some very bad news between them.  Nell sagged against Begglar and her hands went up to the sides of her face and she shook her head, as if she wanted to hear no more of what was being conveyed.  Aida put her hands over her face, and I could tell she was weeping too.  Begglar and Shimri, put their arms across, gripping each other’s shoulders, as if to strengthen each other in a shared grief.  The two women broke down and shifted towards each other, coming into each other’s arms in a comforting but mutually needed embrace, weeping into each other’s shoulders.  I knew no cause for the grief I was witnessing, but I surmised that Shimri and Aida had brought them news of a tragic nature.  For several minutes they stood there, leaning into each other, receiving and giving comfort, and just being there for each other in mutually shared sorrow.  Both Begglar and Shimri bowed their heads, feeling the weight of grief, yet finding support in the strength of their friendship.  As I watched, I could not help but envy them.  Not that I wanted to experience grief, but in the way that they were able to share their burdens in the communion of suffering.  A part of me felt a deep loneliness that I could not shake.  An ache that my mind and my heart were isolated from the others, and I felt that I could not trust someone with my own vulnerability if I was expected to lead this group.  Something within me seemed to twist in my gut, and I knew I had felt that same feeling somewhere before.  My mind seemed to cloud over, making that somewhere and sometime unclear and elusive.  My eyes watered, with a feeling of anguish that I felt I had no right to feel.  Their grief was personal.  It was not mine to carry.  I had enough of my own crushing weight to bear up under.  I could not take on their burdens, for there seemed to be no one who could share in mine.  Disgusted with myself for even thinking so selfishly, I turned away, seeking some other thing to fixate on.  When I did, I caught the furtive glances of the others of “my” crew.  Those who I had purported to lead on this quest.  Me and my big mouth! I thought, remembering my presumptive declarations to them on the beach as strangers.  Me, the traitor! I snorted, how dare I say that I will take responsibility for anyone else, when I can’t even seem to bear up under my own responsibility.  Stupid, stupid fool!  I admonished myself, I should’ve turned right back around and dove out into the water, fought the surf and swam out to the receding oculus portal, or drowned myself in the process.  I had no business being here.  My leadership is going to get someone killed.  Three had already fallen.  We had seen them chased on the hill in the distance, being pursued by Xarmnian thugs on horseback.  What am I even doing here? My head bowed in my own shame, and I had to step away, finding it harder and harder to breathe somehow.

Where is my empathy? My compassion? My self-remonstrations continued.  I had moved briskly into the fighting field, not knowing where I was going or what I intended to do.  Morgrath moved angling toward me, his brow knitting, and his grip on his staff tightening.  Corimanth moved forward to intercept him, carrying a staff of his own in a loose unthreatening way, but with a readiness to interpose himself between us, if necessary.

“What is wrong with you?!” Morgrath asked, more in a tone of challenge, rather than out of sincere concern.  His fist shifted on his staff, swinging the back end up into a double grip, with the potential to sweep it out to strike my legs and feet, should I try to evade his confrontation.  Corimanth stepped ahead of him and turned, raising one open hand to stay Morgrath’s approach. “Morgrath,” he interjected, “Let me handle this.”  It was a quiet command of authority, rather than a request.  Morgrath eyed Corimanth, and shifted his eyes toward me, casting me a warning glance, should Corimanth’s dealing with me prove unfruitful.  He sniffed, and lowered his head in a slight nod, giving a modicum of deference to Corimanth.  Morgrath shifted his staff and planted it into the ground, taking a sentinel’s triangular stance, moving one hand up to the upper part of the shaft, and gathering his other hand to it in a two-fisted hold.  He sniffed, and raised his chin, casting me one more glance, then cocked his head indicating that he would defer to Corimanth’s lead…at least, for now.

Corimanth sighed, and then turned to me, speaking in a lowered voice so that only I could hear.  “What is troubling you, O’Brian?  Can I help?”

I nodded beyond towards Morgrath who still stood at a distance.  “What is with him?”

Corimanth shook his head slightly.  “All of Azragoth seems to be on edge.  The soldiers here sense something in the air.  An instinct to discern imminent danger.  I cannot fault them for that.  They are trained to watch for erratic behavior, certain signs that something or someone is not as they seem.  Goes with the profession, I suppose.  Makes them stay alert, and ready to respond at a moment’s notice.  Azragoth has good reasons to be suspicious of outsiders.  Many of our fellow countrymen are not aligned with the work we are doing here, or the rebuilding efforts that Lord Nem has been leading.  You may have not met all of our leadership yet, but there are some very honorable men and women among them.  Lord Zerub was this region’s governor, before Nem came to us.  He and Ezra were both responsible for bringing back much of the stolen wealth that had been plundered from this city many years before.  One does not easily move through the lands of the Mid-World in a large caravan, carrying wealth without attracting attention.  There are others in the surrounding community who became particularly interested in our secret project here, purporting to be part of the secret resistance, whose eyes might be more interested in personal enrichment rather than in rebuilding.  There have been attempts to thwart our efforts.  Spies sent in under the guise of offers to help, but secretly undermining morale, and caught sending communications out to those who could expose us and bring great harm.  Some of our distant kin have sought to threaten us, requesting bribes from us to keep from alerting the area patrols loyal to the Overwatch.  So, you see, your group’s coming here is in times of threat and uncertainty.  Not all of those in the secret resistance against Xarmni, believe in the old stories as much as they used to.  They’ve seen the Stone Quest fail to deliver all it promised, and in its failure, the Xarmnians have taken liberties and become more emboldened to act in defiance against the past warnings of the Capitalian counterforces.  They’ve grown in strength, amassed more wealth and seized more resources that they did not have when they were defeated and routed in the battles of long ago.  They believe Capitalia has abandoned it claims to it former holding in the highlands.  Appeals to those distant leaders go unheeded, and were most likely intercepted, if they ever did make it through the far mountain passes of The Walls of Stone.”

I understood all that Corimanth was saying, but still his reference to the failure of the prior Stone Quest stung.  I wondered if he even knew that its failure was largely my fault.  I let out a deep breath, trying to get my bearings and steady myself.  Morgrath had every right to be suspicious of me.  And whatever had upset the city council that necessitated the urgent meetings, could not be so easily dismissed as being unrelated to our untimely presence here.  I sighed and bowed my head, finding it hard to look Corimanth in the eye.  Finally, I said, “Do you have any idea, what is troubling Begglar and Nell?  What news Shimri and Aida shared with them?  I know it is none of my business, but I would like to be of some help to them, if I can.  Begglar is one of the few friends I still have from the old days.  I don’t want to pry, and if you don’t know that is okay.  I just…”

Corimanth nodded, and sighed, seeming to release some tension he was carrying as well.  “I think it is related to what happened with Begglar and Nell’s Inn, after you left.  I don’t know exactly, but when Shimri and Aida came in, I talked to Ryden, Maeven’s Lehi.  I think Aida had a personal loss, someone that may have worked for Nell.  They did not share this with them right away, for they had newly arrived in Azragoth and were uncertain of how they would be received here.  Maeven and Begglar both vouched for them, so I think they felt a little more at ease.”

I hung my head in shame for where my own selfish thoughts had led me.  I knew I needed to speak to Nell privately.  I would give her some time to grieve, but I needed to understand more of what Begglar and others had said about her.  This way of seeing she had.  The ability to feel something much more powerful than empathy, and to learn to understand what caused her to be able to do what she did with me and the young boy named Will when he was in a panicked state.  If what we had to do ahead of us was as difficult as I imagined it to be, I would need to learn how to quit thinking of my own pain and my own past and learn to see and understand the others to better prepare them for the inevitable dangers soon to come.  Despite that, I could not shake the deep worry I felt about a dark curse spoken against me by a monster in the deep woods so long ago.  It haunted me, for I could not discredit its power over me, after experiencing it being cruelly carried out against my fellow compatriots in the first quest.  Those I counted as friends, those I loved with a brotherly affection, were now dead.  I could hear that curse even now, inside my head.  “Everything you love will be stripped from you. Your betrayal has given me the key…and the means…”

*Scene 07* – [Part 1] – 19:56 (The Seer’s Gifting – Part 1 of 3 “A Grief Observed”)

The rest of the day we spent continuing Ezra’s training drills in the Warriors’ Court.  Morgrath taking one group to the archery range and Corimanth taking others of the men in our group training us in the use and battle techniques of fighting with a halberd blade and pole-axe.  Our training continued until Ezra finally returned to the Warrior’s Court, having spent most of the day at Lord Nem’s meetings, and he gave the team a charge to get rest for the remainder of the day.  We were tired and sore from the rigors of fighting faux enemies that swung down from platforms, or spun upon a turnstile, bearing a battering plank we had to jump over or dodge as it pivoted on a swinging hinge that could strike chest high or low sweeping our feet.  We were sore and stiff and were advised to walk out the soreness by taking a late tour of the inner city or going down and browsing in the market square and then returning to the upper landing for some herbal broth, said to alleviate some of the day’s aches, and give us a restful sleep.  We were especially encouraged to take in the sight of the closing of the new market from the view of the upper terrace where the evening’s refreshments would be served near the warming fire pits.  It was indeed a sight to see.

The market was a colorful bazaar of tents and awnings positioned to keep off the sun at its midday apogee and prevent any sudden short rain shower influenced by the saturated sea clouds’ descent off the highland shelf from spoiling their assorted and displayed wares.  Among its regular storefronts, it featured several temporary stalls and booths that presented a patchwork of color and patterns.  These booths sold garden grown vegetables, cheeses sold in block and in sealed waxed wheel forms, dried and cured meats, mushrooms and edible leafy plants, fruits and berries.   There were colorful bolts of fabric and drapes, woven mats and baskets, leather crafted belts, cinches, saddles, harnesses, and shaped slippers and moccasins.  There were blade smiths with a variety of sharpened cutlery, eating utensils and cultivating tools.  There were smithies that sold shaped metal pieces that might be used for anything from plated armor to horseshoes, binding rings, nails, axes or hammers.  There were tailors and dress makers who sold varied outfits from tunics to jackets, dresses to pantaloons and britches, underclothes to long shirts and camisoles.  There were repair shops and craftsmen that created custom designs of molded and fired pottery, and silversmiths and goldsmiths that sold jewelry and polished stones in crafted settings.

As the day came to a close, I ascended to an upper courtyard where some of our team had gathered to watch as the merchant city began to pack and fold up the market stalls, merchant carts and load up wagons for the night.  The evening marketplace, situated in the city’s center, was a spectacle to see especially from the aspect of the upper terrace.  Even as the westering sun began to lower towards the distant peaks, specially situated brazier posts and lamps were lit, casting flickering pools of light and illuminating the colored canopies as the colorful tents spread, flecked and finally folded and packed away.  It was an efficient and fascinating operation that occurred under the mystique of twilight, looking like a well-coordinated dance of sellers and last-minute buyers, as the cobble-stoned courtyards slowly began to clear.

As I watched the movements below, temporarily mesmerized by the spectacle, I happened to notice Begglar and Nell and Corimanth at the railing just beyond me.  They stood together in the silvering moonlight, as the red sun’s last rays finally tucked themselves to sleep beyond the distant mountains, and a field of stars began to peak out from beyond the purpling sky.  They too had been looking down from the terrace, but their gaze was directed further into the older broken courtyards, where the main market area used to be–remembering.  The contrast between the newer market location and the dismal and shadowy grey location of the old seemed to hold them in a somber melancholic mood of sad memories.

I tentatively approached Begglar, respecting their silence.  Begglar noticed me and finally turned, whispering low to Nell.  I cleared my throat gently, feeling that my presence might be an intrusion, but Begglar nodded slowly, and invited me over.

“Is there something you wanted?”  Begglar asked.  Almost embarrassed to ask, I could not think of anything other than seeking to find some answers to a question that had been puzzling me, ever since I had learned a little more of Nell’s gifting.  Especially after seeing what she had been able to show me of the traumatized young man named Will, and what he had been experiencing when he overheard our fight with the Cerberi creatures before descending down the backtrails to Azragoth.

“Do you mind if I speak with Nell privately a moment?”

Both Begglar and Corimanth looked up.  They exchanged a wordless glance at one another and then nodded.

When they had withdrawn, leaving us to go to one of the courtyard firepits to warm up and take a cup of a drinkable broth said to ease sore muscles so that they could enjoy a restful night, I leaned against the railing next to Nell.

I could see she’d been crying, as she looked down upon the market plaza.  What may have seemed a colorful and pleasing spectacle for me had a very different disquieting and painful reminder to Nell.  She spoke up first.

“You know, every time I think of this place, I cannot help but dread its collection of memories.  Some of them used to be pleasant.  Trips our mother and father took us here to sell our family’s wares.  Little pots, plates and ceramics my mother has crafted with her own hands.  Dad with his metal instruments he’d hammered and shaped in his smithy forge.  I remember times with my mother in the fields and woods between here and there, collecting mushrooms, and herbs for cooking, and the wildflowers.” She half smiled at the thought, “We dried some of the flowers my mother and I had gathered and pressed them to keep their colors.  We found a way to seal and mold them into panes and melted sandglass around them that she and dad had then crafted and blown into decorative vases, and serving dishes.  We specialized in containers of all sorts: Pots, cast iron pans, dishware.  So pretty.  Reflecting on happier days for feasts and celebrations.  Community gatherings.”  She was quiet for a moment, remembering something else.  “Noadiah loved our crafts and bought many of our finest pieces which she used in her Inn and Tavern in Surrogate… uh… Sorrow’s Gate.  All such happy memories.  And good commerce too.  Profitable.  Pleased customers appreciating the quality, and us supporting ourselves and the community, with serviceable wares.”  She paused again, her brow furrowing, and she sighed.  “But then, the Xarmnians came…and the happy memories came less and less.”

She turned to me, her eyes brimmed with nascent unshed tears, “Xarmni changed everything.  They told us who we could sell to and we could not.  They demanded we lower our asking prices and produce more, or else suffer the consequences.  They took things we had intended to sell to others, saying they would pay us later, but they never seem to remember to.  They threaten to break things if we ever raised the issue of fair return and asked us what kind of return we thought we might get with repairing and selling the broken items?”

She huffed, “Each time they showed up to our shop they were there to collect.  And they grew tired of collecting our products.  They began to demand money, and coinages of precious metals that we had difficulty keeping.  Some of our customers paid us in services or produce, and no money was exchanged.  We bartered for some of what we needed, but no money changed hands.  But the Xarmnians increased their demand for it.  They thought we were holding out on them and making excuses.  They grew impatient.  They threatened us if we did not pay them in silver or gold for tribute to their king.  Threatened to take Corimanth from us, to incentivize us to find some silver for them.  Our local townships did very little commerce in metals, so Mom and Dad knew they had to make a trip to the larger towns to be able to get the money the Xarmnians were demanding of us.  Cori doesn’t know this.  You see, I have kept some secrets from him too.  And I am not sure why I revealed that to you now.  Please do not tell him that.  I shouldn’t have told you.  Cori has suffered enough without knowing the reason for the increase in our parents’ trips to this city.  That they were being extorted, essentially paying a ransom to keep the Xarmnians from taking Cori from us.  And, then considering ways to threaten them with things they might do to me.  This went on for months.  The Xarmnians increasing their demands.  Our family worked day and night to meet the increased production demands that had nothing to do with the natural markets and the people who could buy what we were producing.  My parents had to travel more, making their selling circuits wider and wider, until they could not both produce, travel and sell and still meet the Xarmnian demands, and get coinage to pay the ransoms for us.  Azragoth was the only city center in the area that had enough commerce and trade to still pay the area merchants in precious metals.  Metals that Xarmni was demanding more and more from all of the local producers.  The roads were becoming dangerous.  Travel to and from the area towns, especially for those transporting goods, were threatened and robbed by thugs, and desperate people trying anything they might to pay their tribute or suffer the wrath of ‘The Protectorate’ bands dispatched by the Xarmnian Overwatch magistrates that had installed themselves in each of the area towns to enfore Xarmnian edicts and laws.  Xarmni put its fat fingers on the scales and ruled the outer lands by what they perceived to be the way we tradespeople did business.  They had no understanding of us and our local customs or realities.  They saw everything only through the way they assumed it worked in the big cities.  They had town treasuries, so they assumed every township had a treasury where all its gold and silver were kept and regulated.  The Xarmnian magistrates set up collection houses in the towns and demanded a percentage of all of the town’s commerce be kept in those houses that they alone ran.  They forced Xarmnian customs on us that we had no history or knowledge of.  They held elections for show, but no one really knew the people that came to govern us.  They all came from the bigger cities, someone told us, so they knew how a pitiful town like ours should be run.  Times became hard.  Daily living was eked out, barely ahead of our Xarmnian creditors.  Mom and Dad took to leaving us with Noadiah to help her run her Inn.  It was one of the few businesses in town that was still operating at a profit, and she was glad of our help.  The roads were too dangerous for children, I was told.  Even for those traveling with their parents.  Children could be kidnapped and sold into slavery in some of the larger towns that belonged to Xarmni.  So, Cori and I went to work for Noadiah in the off times, when our parents traveled.  This continued until…,” she sniffed, “Mom and Dad came again to this place.  And they never… came back.  A part of me died that day when I heard what happened.  Noadiah refused to let Cori and I go by ourselves to Azragoth.  She kept promising that one day, she would gather some men, and she would personally take us to see what became of them.  To somehow find their graves, if there were any. But that day never came.  The Inn was always too busy with strangers coming in and out of our town.  Noadiah was getting up in years and becoming more and more wary of the travelers and guests coming and going.  She had this way about her.  She could sense when she was being lied to.  She somehow knew who she could and could not trust.  Many tried to cheat her, but they never could.  Some said she had this gift of knowing.  It was only a matter of time before she discovered that I had it too, but mine was still raw and undisciplined.  It came and went sporadically, and I had no way of knowing how to control it.  She claimed that I had been touched by The One, but I was too wrapped up in my own grief to acknowledge anything special about myself.  I, sort of, resented the fact that I had been given something I had not asked for, and the responsibility that went with it.  I needed no more things to worry about and I had had enough of my own pain in life to worry much more about the pains and past of others.  I wanted to be dull, numb to everything, so I wouldn’t have more that I could bear.  I was having trouble enough keeping tabs on Cori.  My plate was full, and I was too sick to take on another bite of anything.  We’d lost the business, when my parents died.  We’d found our home ransacked and pillaged.  Our supplies trashed and sold at a rigged town auction that barely settled my parents’ debts.  My hope and dreams died.  The proceeds of the auction gave Cori and I about a year’s space in time to cover our ransoms.  Cori and I could not run a family business on nothing, so we lost everything.  The Xarmnian demand for money is one of the many ways that kingdom controls us.  Thankfully, Noadiah took us in as her personal help.  Payment from our service to her was our only income and her Inn was the only place left we had to go.  Realizing that, another piece of my heart broke, and my hopes, all I believed I had left anyway, had died.  And ever since, death seems to pursue me.”

Nell gestured below with a sweep of her arm.  “This place, despite what it has become still represents death to me.  Begglar was the only thing good that came to me during our time in Sorrow’s Gate, when you and the others came through following Jeremiah.  Begglar and I found a new way to reach for hope again.  We left Sorrow’s Gate, after he returned from the coastlands as a fugitive.  We built a new life on that hill overlooking Crowe.  I felt safe there for a season.  I was tired of living in towns, much less the thought of ever living in one of the larger cities.”  She looked at me again with sad eyes, “I tell you truly, it was hard for me…coming here.  And now from Shimri and Aida, I learn that the place we called home… a retreat from all this…death, has been burned to the ground.  And we lost a dear friend in that fire.  One of our servants.  Perhaps, you remember her.  She was Aida’s sister.”  A tear spilled and ran down her cheek, “My son was born there on that hill outside of Crowe, in one of the lower rooms of our Inn.  That room was opened, and we extended it to form the lower dining hall and bar.” She sniffled as other tears spilled down her cheeks, “My friend, Aida’s sister, Atayma was brutally burned with it.  The cruelty of the Xarmnians seems to have no bottom to its depths.  I feel death has always been just a few steps behind me, and I have been running from it, avoiding it, hoping its reach withdraw would give me time to raise my son, and keep him safe.  But then you all arrived, and I knew my running was coming to an end.  It was time for us to turn and face it.  To take one final stand against it, come what may.  There was…is…no safe place.  I have been only fooling myself all these years.  I cannot run from it any longer.  It has at last brought me back here, to settle those things within me that must be settled.”

“We may have more in common than you know, Nell.  It seems to be after me too.  I have been met with too many failures to count, some of which led to the death of friends, others which turned my friends into enemies, who wanted nothing to do with me.  It is lonely realizing that.  Feeling lost, forsaken.  Despised.  Without meaning or purpose for my continued existence.  Just to live through another day, trying to meet the expectations of strangers who know very little about me.  Losing those you cared about.  I understand some of what you have said, though probably not as keenly as you do.”

*Scene 07* – [Part 2] – 17:34 (The Seer’s Gifting – Part 2 of 3 “Seeing Me”)

Nell stared out from the balcony, watching the firelights flicker and dance in the courtyards below. She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands.  She whispered, “I know a little of your story from Begglar.  Some of which you shared back in the hollow beneath the mound covering of The Marker Stone.  One’s sufferings do not necessarily mitigate another’s, but it does show we walk similar paths in life’s journey.  That is partly comforting, I suppose.  We can relate to a mutual acquaintance with pain and loss, suffering and the search for individual purpose.  To gain understanding around why somethings are given to us, and some things are taken away.” Another tear spilled down Nell’s cheek, as her brow furrowed in memory. “That girl, that stubborn girl!  Atayma, Aida’s sister who worked for us.  I am more grieved about her loss than I am about all the rest.  I told her not to stay when we left. To go on home and leave everything as it was.  But she insisted. She thought that she might be able to buy us some time on the road, if she were there when the Xarmnians came to tell them we had just gone out to market.  she assured me she would go at the first sign of trouble, but…” More tears fell, and I placed a tentative hand on her shoulder, until finally Nell let out a long sigh, wiping her eyes and giving me a short appreciative smile.

“I imagine The One who writes His Words into our Marker Stone knows the full story to the end, while we are given only the glimpse and shadows.  Perhaps, it is a blessing not to know.  To give us this moment to live in, without being crushed with the crowded knowledge of what will become of future moments.  To enjoy what we have now and find satisfaction there in being right where we are.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof*, as the sayin’ goes.” [*Matthew 6:34]

“I do know there are joys of special moments I’ve lived through.  I know the joy of holding my newborn baby.  A combination of both myself and my husband, and of watching him grow and discover new things, to taste and develop his own personhood.  What shadows may come, never can darken those moments for me.  I keep them in a place that is safe, if I lean into Who gave me such moments to enjoy.  Treasures no Xarmnian can ever take.  Nor no earthly tyrant can steal from the treasury within my heart.”  She sighed and seemed to release a weight off of herself in doing so.  She folded her hands into each other and asked, ” So what is it, Mister O’Brian,” she said with a slightly teasing tone, “that you wanted to speak to me about, that my brother and my husband couldn’t hear?  I am spoken for y’know?  And happily, at that.”

I cleared my throat, unsure of how to respond to the jest, but decided it was best to just come out with it.  “Well, I… hmm.  Well, Begglar mentioned that you could teach us to ‘See’.”

“Ahh, that,” Nell smirked a little.  “Yes. I knew it really must be that.  But a woman does enjoy a bit of self-flattery sometimes.  Yes.  What about it?”

“I…” I stammered, “I meant no disrespect, I…”

“Am not very good at being teased by overly emotional women,” Nell laughed, “I get it.”

“Um…yeah, I guess…” puzzled on what to say to redeem myself.

“Go ahead, Brian.  I am listening…at the moment.  Have out with it, before the moment changes,” she grinned.  “With as many women are in your little group of twenty or so, you’re going to have to get better at it, so you can safely practice here with me.  I won’t bite you.”  She snapped and chuckled to herself.

“A-After what I witnessed with Will,” I began again, “I could not help but wonder what that meant exactly.  Seeing, I mean.  How does it work?  Is the ability an acquired skill or a special gifting from The One, only?  I assume, from what you’ve said, it is not given to everyone.  Only those whom He intends to use it for some meaningful purpose.  But somehow you made me see and feel what you saw in Will?  How did you do that?”

Nell wiped a lingering, brimming tear from the corner of her eye, returning back from past memories, and her teasing to the sobering present, “I am not sure ‘See’ is the right word, but it serves, I guess.”

“Forgive me for asking this, I do not mean to trivialize your gift, in anyway. I ask only because I am in ignorance of it.  I hope you will forgive this, but what is so important about this way of seeing?  How will it serve us in this quest, specifically?  Do we all need to learn how to do it, or is it just for you and I to know of it?  How much should we reveal to the group about what you can do?  Does Will know what we saw inside of his past experience?  Would it embarrass him to know we looked and invaded his privacy?”

Nell was quiet a moment before answering, but then finally spoke up, “Mr. O’Brian, before I tell you more about my gifting, I need to ask you something first.  What is it that you plan to do here in our world?  What is the purpose your present quest here?”

She had caught me off guard, and I cleared my throat.

“Excuse me?”

“Why is it that you are leading this group of travelers, and why have you involved my husband and our family?  Why did you come to our Inn and seek Begglar out?”

I was puzzled, “Begglar was the only one of my former company that seemed to remain friendly to me.  The only one I felt I could still possibly trust to reveal my present calling to renew the stone quest after I failed the group in the first mission under Jeremiah.”

Nell nodded, “Yes, that is true.  He held no grudge against you.  Never did.  He seemed to understand what you might be going through after losing the faith of the group.”

“Yes.  I believed so too.  Begglar and I… There was some special bond there.  I knew he liked me somehow, even though he delights in teasing me.  Calling me by names that are not my given one, though it is close enough to it.”

Nell smiled, “That’s my Begglar.  That’s the so called, ‘Irish’ in him.  Keeps his mates guessing but loves big and deep.  He’s loyal almost to a fault, God luv him!”

“Yes.  And he was the only one I had the hope of gaining his trust and assistance.  I lost track of the others.  I knew I needed to get as far away from them as possible to keep them safe from the ‘Death’ that seemed to follow me.  But I never intended to bring trouble to your family or place an additional burden on you. That is why I eventually left those many years ago.  I did not expect him or you to join me this time.  We just need someplace to stay for the night and perhaps get a warm meal into those under my charge.  I had no plan to disrupt your lives. Remember, it was Begglar who told me you all would be joining us in this present Stone Quest.  I didn’t press him.  He insisted.”

“Begglar and I both knew you would return.  We just didn’t know when.”

“How could you know that?!” I asked, surprised.

“Because I am a Seer, remember?  I knew your story was not over, even when you were leaving us.  I touched you when you came by the Inn.  I saw your path.  I know more than you think I do.”

Shocked I stammered, “I-I-I don’t…  So, you can see what is ahead?  The future?”

Nell shook her head adamantly, “No. No, nothing like that.  What I see with my gift are seminal decision points.  Crisis points, you might say.  Places where a deep trauma was experienced that shaped the person and pointed them towards a decision.  A life-altering decision.  A path that they chose that shaped who they would become.  I do not see the final result.  Only The One can see the future.  My sight is limited to past events, so it cannot be used to divine an outcome.  You understand?”

“I am not sure,” I scratched my chin, “Then how is it you were certain I would come back?”

“Because of the crisis point in your life.  The drowning, and the result after.  Your story was not finished, even though you thought you had given up on it.  The image of the key that turned into a pen was still vivid in your mind.  Your decision to leave was made because you feared that the lies you were told might come true.  That everyone you loved or wanted to love would be destroyed.  The Pan told you that lie, and you believed it.  So, you doubted the power of The One who called you to the other stone quest, to protect you against The Pan’s curse.  You gave The Pan more power in your own mind, than he has the capability for.”

“And that made you believe I would come back here?” I asked, incredulously.

“You don’t understand,” Nell sighed, seeming to become exasperated with my thickheadedness.  “A lie only has the power that you give to it.  But The One has the command to make all things work toward your good.  To give you the opportunity to learn from your mistakes, and place that guilt back into His hands where it belongs and live according to the capacity He will reveal through your yieldedness to Him.  You are called to be something, you are not capable of being, but because He called you to it, He requires your surrender to equip you with the capability that He reserves for those He calls.  The quest you believed you walked away from is not over, simply because you took your hand off the proverbial plow.  You were not called to a mission that was under the limits of your power alone.  The One wants you to learn that. To trust Him and lean into Him to supply all you lack.  That is what we do.  We walk in a relationship that trusts His sight of the future, not our speculation of what it will turn out to be.  That is faith.  It requires no sight of your own.  It is a certainty in whom you place your trust.  A knowledge of Who you follow and walk with on this mission.”

“Aaah,” I sighed, trying to digest all of the depth and width and breadth of the words she was speaking to be.  They felt to be more than just words emerging from her own perception, but words that came through her from a source of wisdom, deeper than the deepest ocean.

I struggled to find words to adequately respond, but they failed me.  No response I could muster, would plumb the depth of this profound wisdom.  But my puzzlement still nagged me in the back of my mind.

“Is there…?” I hesitated, “Is there…anyway to know what past decision made, could lead to destruction?  I mean, some irreparable choice that locks in one’s slide towards their doom?”

Soberly, Nell nodded.  “There are some pivotal choices in a person’s past that seal their doom.  Many of those cruel characters I met in Noadiah’s Inn.  Ones I served meals or drinks too or brushed up against.  Those that grabbed and pawed at me, before Noadiah intervened and threatened to throw them out, or report their behavior to the magistrate, many of those had such darkness in them, that they had no further hope.  Reprobate minds.  Turned over to their savage natures, and willfulness that sealed their future fate.  They give off a dark aura when I see them the way I do.  I know even then that their future will be what their dark choices demand from the outcome.  Pride blinds them to it, but its nightmarish end will come to them eventually.”  There was a sadness in her voice, but it was an uncomfortable truth she had accepted as inevitable.

“And with me?” I asked, carefully hesitant to hear her reply.

“With you, there was still light in the aura halo surrounding you.  Even in its dimming, you cannot mistake the difference if you’ve seen the contrast between a condemned person, and one still on the gradient of hope.  You still had belief even though you could barely perceive it.  Hope lingered in you, though faint.  You saw the blue light before, and you could not erase it from your memory.  You knew and believed that The Praesporous Stone was still in the crown, and so you believed what you saw and experienced.  You know of the blue light that shines from the Walls of Stone in the west.  You knew Begglar could take you back to The Marker Stone to see it once more.  You needed to see it again, to assure yourself of some evidence that the Stone Quests could be completed, since that one is evidence of a successful mission.  Begglar knew why you were so intent on going back to that sight.  You needed to believe again.  To find Hope, after failing so badly.  But we both knew what had happened to the site after you left.  I knew how hard Begglar had taken it when he and others were forced to witness the atrocity done to it.  To take part in covering it up and entombing what mysteries it continually revealed about the events in your world on the Surface, and the implications that it has resonating her in our lands of The Mid-World, and the revealing of The World to Come, that we call Excavatia.  Our fates are joined.  What happens in the outworking of your world affects ours.  It has always been so, though some have tried to deny it.  Those most adamant against the return of Surface Worlders here are the ones most intent on insisting that our world has severed ties with yours.  Wishful thinking, but wishing does not make it true, for the mind has no capacity to create ex nihilo as The One does.  His Stone exists here in permanence.  It upholds our world and joins it from its past to its future.  We natural born here remember what words we were taught in our youth.  The truth from teachers who have lived both in your world and in ours for the remainder of their days.”

I slowly nodded.  Nell seemed to understand me, better than I understood myself.  My fears, my worries, my need for assurances and evidence that what I had been through was more than just a dream.  I needed some guardrails for my sanity’s sake.  To let me know that the tasks ahead that seem so impossible were to be taken one moment at a time, rather than anticipated as an avalanche burying me under the weight of this proposed and dangerous undertaking.  Fear made me feel so lonely and weak before the giants ahead, that I hesitated to even step onto that battlefield.  Ezra had advised me to know the ground upon which we were to make our stand.  To understand our footing, but to me, it all felt like the beginning of a seismic shift was about to occur and the ground would open up below my feet and swallow me, crushing me as it closed around and over me.  I trembled in spite of myself wanting to be brave in the face of being called to lead those who still knew very little about me and had no clear reason to trust any of what I told them.

Seeing Nell watch me, wondering if she perceived the emotional turmoil that was brewing within, I tried directing her thoughts away from my internal struggles.

*Scene 07* – [Part 3] – 00:00 (The Seer’s Gifting – Part 3 of 3 “The Decision to Join”)

“So, what made you and Begglar decide to come with us?  You could have turned back.  Maintained your life there.  Just send us on our way.”

She raised an eyebrow at me, “Don’t you remember what happened with the troll?”

“Um…,” I cocked my head, “Yeah.  We bagged it, and it caught fire when it tried to roll and hit one of our smoldering torches.  But what does that have to do with why you, Dominic and Begglar decided to come with us?” I continued, “Begglar told me the Inn was failing to make a profit, that it was serving more the needs of the invaders, rather than those of your communities and that your family were now in imminent danger.  He said Xarmni let you exist but not thrive, because they only wanted a place to quarter their leaders and hold meetings when they ran militia and Overwatch campaigns in the highlands.”

Nell waved my words away dismissively, “Those are just the average trials of our day-to-day life.  Uncomfortable, but not impossible to manage our way through.  The One has managed to put is within a blind spot of those that once hunted us as fugitives.  They gave up trying to find us and were so certain that if they could not trail us, that we must have been killed through some other misfortune.  They had no idea we were living and operating under their very nose, since no others in their mind would ever attempt such a thing.  They are a suspicious lot, but to confident in their own prowess, and too arrogant to believe they could be fooled or evaded for so long.  We lived under their suspicion and served what has been termed ‘The Resistance’ for years now. We seem to be helping the Xarmnians on the surface, but we are actively involved with gathering enough intelligence from them unwittingly that Maeven and her Lehi riders could stay a few steps ahead of them in their ambitions and schemes.  That Troll you discovered, was their silly attempt to keep tabs on us, making sure that we were serving the Xarmnian masters, instead of working to undermine them.”

“So, you knew that the…?” I began.

“That the troll was slinking around our fireplace, trying to hide from me?  Of course, I did!” she answered, “And why do you think we both weren’t aware of it?”

“What are you saying?”

“Much has changed since you and Begglar were first involved in the prior mission involving Surface Worlders.  There are not very differing factions within ‘The Resistance’.  The loyalists are split with regard to The Marker Stone, and the present dangers.  Azragoth, for the most part, takes the traditionalist view in reverencing The Sacred Stone, as do Begglar and I.  Maeven is now part of it.  We both have knew when Maeven first formulated her team of Lehi horsemen.  She and her men paid us a visit back in the early years, after we had set up the bakery just on the outskirts of Crowe.  We had just added the building that served as our Inn, when you mysteriously left the Mid-World.  We knew you were contemplating leaving, but did not know when you actually left.  We searched for you, but found your old shack abandoned.  Maeven has since been running forays against the Xarmnian guards.  She’s been very effective at it, and we have on more than one occasion provided them with emergency provisions and a fresh change of horses, while they were being pursued by the local Overwatch agents.  Only recently have the Xarmnians sent out The Protectorate Guards for them, because the Overwatch was being lured from the towns, and the people were taking advantage of their absence and distraction to take back from the storehouses so they could survive and fund the resistance effort.”

“So, you knew all along that there was a troll watching you when you were aiding that family?”

“Of course we did!” she laughed, “What do you take us for, fools?  The Xarmnians wanted us to give them a false sense of security and delay them until they could arrive.  The troll was sent to spy on us because the delay tactic we were supposed to employ often did not work and those we helped were able to get away before we could detain them further.  The troll was, in fact, leaving to report that the family had arrived, not that we planned to help them.  We acted like we did not know it was there, so it could feel confident of its hiding place and effectiveness at spying.  Did you not see me come to the hearth and stoke the fire as if I was oblivious to its presence?  Scattered some hot ash and coals on him as he was scrambling for the flue.”

This was all more of a revelation to me.

“I am not fooled by trolls any more than I am the other supernatural monsters your kind has too often led into our world.  Oh yes, I am aware that your beasties are here because of you Surface Worlders, as are these Azragothians.  It is why your kind are not allowed to intermarry with an Azragothian.”

“But you…?” I started, but she raised her hand stopping me before I could say anything more, “Be that as it may, and I say it without malice, for I love my husband dearly, though he came from your world, your being here is quite disconcerting in a time of gathering war.  The Half-men are here because of the ancient Surface Worlders that came with The Pan creature long ago.  Your modern creatures, possible that very thing that destroyed the granary, are here because of you.  So again, I say, what is it you are called to do by the One?”

I cleared my throat, feeling sheepishly like a scolded child.  My response, I felt was foolish and repetitive, and seemingly obvious.  I hesitated again, and Nell sighed.

“I need to hear you say it, Brian.  I need to hear why you are certain enough in your calling, that you would bring further risk to my family.  If you and your followers had left well enough alone and not interfered, then that troll would be on his merry little way, snorting back his report to those he serves, not smoldering in some bag, making the Xarmnians wonder what we may or may not have done to their squatty spy.  Trolls tend to travel in pairs or at most groups of three or four.  There would’ve been others out in the woods waiting on this one.  Either way, the Xarmnians knew something was amiss and that is why they would come themselves to our Inn and demand an account of us.  That is the danger you brought to us, whether you knew of it or not.  You upset their plans, and Xarmnians get very mean when their plans go awry.”

I shuddered, realizing that again, death had followed me, and I had let it right to the doorstep of Begglar’s Inn.  Nell saw the shock and clouds gathering on my countenance as that realization sunk in, but she raised her hand flat and shook her head.  “Stop!  Don’t go feeling sorry for yourself.  That is not what I am asking of you.  Quite piling the guilt on yourself for things you couldn’t have known until I told you.  Begglar and I knew that when you came back to the Mid-World, we would be joining you.  We were meant to help you and when I saw the little ones that came with you, I knew my mother’s heart could not just turn you all away.  Those little ones need special help to get through this.  Help which I am all to happy to provide.  Begglar has learned quite a bit over these years we’ve spent waiting for your return and a renewal of the Stone Quests.  They never end until they are complete you know.  Remember The One knows the future, and He knew what would come of those He called to undertake that responsibility.  Begglar was one of those called.  His duty to serve his own calling is not diminished, even though the timeline was interrupted.  Jeremiah knows it too, though we do not presently know where in the Mid-World he has gone.  His calling is not over, and he will eventually be drawn back to the task and mission he was given in the first place.  The One does not ask amiss.  His purposes will be served, one way or another, and Excavatia will be brought forward into this world and to yours as surely as the prophecies foretell.  You’ve only kept us waiting.  Twenty-one years, yes, but at last you are here.  So, I say again, tell me what it is that you plan by and are called to do.  Show some faith in it, for The One’s sake, and dispense with your limiting thoughts on what may or may not be possible.”

“I am called to lead a stone quest.  Call from my world into yours.  To fulfill the mission, I set out to complete, many years ago under Jeremiah’s leadership.” I said quietly.

Nell leveled her gaze at me, searching my eyes as she asked, “And how will you lead a group of people, you do not take the time to get to know, because you are too focused on yourself and your inadequacy?  How will you learn to put them first ahead of yourself, and do everything a good leader must do to ensure they can trust that you are following your own leadership?  Are you willing to become vulnerable to learn and understand what it is that they will need from you in the days and weeks to come?”

I bowed my head, ashamed of my own insensitivity.  “Of course.  You are right.  I have been so trapped by my own faults that I have not allowed myself to get to know them.  I do need help with that.  It does not come easily for me.”

Nell nodded, a smile beginning to crease the ends of her lips, as she added, “And that, Mister O’Brian, is why you need a ‘Seer’ such I on this mission.  I am here to help you become a leader who actually sees, hears and responds to the needs of those he serves in that capacity.  That is what I needed to hear from you.”  Her voice broke, “Your willingness to do what must be done, even if you do not yet know how it will come about.  The One will supply the rest.  You are like a book kept in a locked case, refusing to be open and read.  We are given a peek perhaps at what may be inside, but not much more, and that is what keeps them from fully trusting you.  Transparency.  Not just token glimpses.  You still have much to learn about empathy and sharing.  That’s what I believe I am called on this quest for.  To help you see, truly see those you lead, and to give them that same respect, to see you too.”

“The heart is the key, O’Brian. That’s why…the words of The Marker Stone–the Ancient Text tells us: No matter what wisdom you are given, no matter what abilities you are given, if you don’t operate out of a genuine heart of Love, it can come out …ill.”

“Not every gifting given is used by the recipient as it was intended by The Giver.  Unfortunately, I know that from painful personal experience.  Our shared origin and the gift of having a free will outlines this very dramatically.  Your history is replete with examples, as is ours. Man was given the ability to mine precious metals and ores to build beautiful adornments and reinforce structures, and yet he chose to forge and fashion weapons out of them to threaten, subjugate and rule over his fellowman. Gifts are beneficial tools, but the heart of mankind determines how those gifts will be employed for good or ill.  That is why the heart of man must be yielded under the righteous governance of The One. The Builder Stones should be indicative of that too.  Those stones were taken and used to build cities and walls.  Xarm built a massive stone city in the shadow of a great mountain, to make itself an imposing fortress where it could rule the surrounding lands from.  Capitalia built an impassable wall, sealing up the only major pass through the Stone Wall Mountain range, to keep their brothers from following and invading them on the rich and fertile steppes beyond.”

“To be able to ‘See’ in the way I do, you must first clarify your vision of who The One is and how He sees you.  Seeing Him clarifies your ability to ‘see’ for others.  It is as simple as that.  It’s an intense empathetic viewing, a brief visual glimpse into the heart of another being.  But it is not as one might think.  You must look with your mind focused on The One, understanding the manifestation of His attributes as they pertain to His view of you, to be able to see into another being.  Sometimes those visions are painful.  If you are not careful, sometimes the visions you witness can undo you if you are not first anchored in your beliefs about The One.  It is an internal connection that radiates through The One and remotely views into the experiences of another soul.  You have to look through your own personal connection to The One.  Once you learn to practice that insight, eventually your gifting will emerge and be as strong if not stronger than mine. But it is something you must deliberately choose to practice day by day.  The moment you lose sight of this knowing, your mind will begin to darken again, for our supernatural enemies are agents of The Shadow and its interference causes a temporary darkening.  It will continue to be this way until the day of our completion.  With the gift, you must see yourself first, before you attempt seeing another.  Otherwise, you will be deceived, for there is an invisible battle raging in the unseen realm.  That struggle between His light and the absence of it will continue to test and prove you into the strong, chiseled image of The Marker Stone that occupies your own central being.”

I nodded, but cautioned her by saying, “Some of your own would argue that the mission we Surface Worlders are called to, should not be a concern of Mid-Worlders.  That since we must leave this place at the end of the quest, we are only leaving your fellow countrymen to deal with the backlash of what is to come from it,” I added, “if we succeed, that is.”

“Do you not see what the Virtue Stones of the Stone Quest represent?  The Praesporous Stone represents Hope.  Everything worth doing begins with having a Hope to break free of those things which bind and entraps us.  The Cordis Stone represents the Heart, but also Love itself.  It is what you surrender your passions to.  The One first loved us, so we surrender to that Love, which gives us capacity to move towards the Hope we long for.  And the Fidelis Stone is the Faith stone.  It is where both Hope and Capacity combine to give us the steps to exercise what we believe in, to experience the capacity that Love gives us.  Faith is essential to bring the unseen into the realm of the seeing.  It must move from word and thought into deeds that demonstrate what we truly believe.  These are why the Stone Quests are given.  To work out and enjoin us in the process of realizing Excavatia in our own time and experience.  To let that Kingdom in, to dispossess the old kingdom rule.  To give us the Dominion back that was lost at our very beginnings. To take back that which was stolen from us.  These quests are not merely meaningless tasks, but a pursuit of a way to truly live.  To see the Hand of The One be given permission to be invited into this Mid-World and to the one you come from in the old Surface World.  That is why the Stone Quests are so important, and why those in The Resistance ranks who choose to ignore them are so misguided and foolish doing so.  And it is why Begglar and I are willing to risk our lives and that of our son to see this mission through to whatever end that may be.”

Her deep wisdom and insight astonished me, and I choked as I spoke the words, “Well, for my part, I am so very glad to have your company in this.  I needed this talk, more that you may ever know.”

“Well, then..,” she smiled, “perhaps we should go get some of that special broth, before the others drink it all up.  My bones and muscles ache from fighting and training all day.  But I must say, my spirit and heart are as light as a feather, and ready to do what we must.”

*Scene 01* – 09:35 (A Covenant Foundation)

Ezra led us up the stair to the terrace overlook where Nem, a man of brawn and strength, worked with attendants on a large miniature model of the city of Azragoth.  Ezra broke from our group ascended a higher terrace stair and spoke privately to Nem, who cast glances back at us and then finally nodded.  Ezra walked down from the overlook with Nem to meet us as we assembled along the outward balustrade of the lower terrace.

As Nem stepped down onto the lower deck our eyes met, and I saw recognition in his face.  We knew each other, but Ezra did not know this.

“O’Brian, I would like to present the governor of this region and the chief restorer of Azragoth.  This city stands as a testament to this man’s faithfulness and love for this city and his commitment to carry out the will of the One.  He will instruct you in the foundational ways and then bring you to me for the handling of your armaments.  He will answer the questions you have been seeking to understand.”

With that, Ezra stepped back and returned to the stairway leading down to the Warrior’s Court and Nem, arms clasped behind him, stepped forward taking in our measure with a keen eye.

“It has been a while,” Nem said, stating the obvious, giving no other indication to the others of our mutual past dealings.

“I am told you would know more of the Breathing Sword, but to understand it, you will need to know something of foundations.  That is where I come in.  For as you may see of our work here,” he said gesturing back to the scale modeled map of the city, “We are the rebuilders of Azragoth.”

“I am also told that you were brought in from the back wall of the city, so you have seen but a little of the work being done here.  As part of the cleansing, this last evening, you will be somewhat familiar with the streets of the interior by now, but there is something more you must see.  We do not often allow visitors to Azragoth, so, as travelers, you should know that you have been given a certain dispensational privilege by the city council.  Further, you are Surface Worlders, which is even more irregular.  We have Surface Worlders among our citizenry, but they are few and not permitted to hold leadership positions here or intermarry with any of our clerics.  To live among us, they are required to adopt our ways and customs, even to the point necessary for leaving their own.

As we are quarantined people, we, too, are a set apart, people.  These are the terms upon which you are permitted to reside within our city and learn of our methods and ways here.  As you may have surmised, we are a city rebuilding in secret.  Every lineage of every citizen is known here.  This city is mutually bound to one another and under covenant with each other.  Together, in the very heart of the city, we all pledged to this covenant, hand upon shoulder until the human chain reached the inner court with the central leaders placing their hands upon the honor sword of the city.  Without the mercy of The One, we knew that the moment would not have occurred.

The covenant is with The One, whose writings appear on The Marker Stone.  The One Whose Word stands forever.  That Honor Sword is a symbol of our covenant with The Word Maker, and it is the very one we collectively chose to return to The Sacred Grove of The Fountain.”

Here he faced me, fixing me with a solemn stare.  “It is the very one you have brought back to our city. You have been appointed for this, for no man could draw it forth from the grip of the Terebinth in The Sacred Grove,…unless The One allowed it to be used for His own purposes.  Purposes that may involve…say…one of The Marker’s Stone Quests.  If you carry our Sword, you too are bound to our city’s covenant to serve The One Who made The Sacred Stone.  If you carry this city’s sword, know that you carry a portion of our hopes with it as you journey to seek The Dominion Crown.”

I cleared my throat and spoke quietly, low enough so that only Nem could hear me.  “I’m not sure I understand.  Ezra told us you would explain to us about foundations.  That understanding foundations was essential to understanding the meaning of a breathing sword.  Is the city’s sword I found in the stream, a breathing sword?”

Nem sighed and reached out and gripped my shoulders, forcing me to look directly into his eyes.  “You have eyes, but you do not see.  Ears, but you do not hear.  You are locked into the carnal, but need to look with your inner spirit and hear deeper echoes from the place and realm you were sent here to seek.  What do the words of the Apostle Paul say to the Corinthians about the spiritual weapons of warfare?”

My mind shifted and pulled forth a verse from the Ancient Text.  Something within me awakened, suddenly seeing what both Nem and Ezra were alluding to.

Nem saw the realization coming into my mind as my eyes widened.

“Excavatia’s door is within The Called,” Nem said.  “We know this Mid-World is a place between two places.  It is characterized by aspects of both the beginning finite surface and the eternal dwelling.  No weapon has any power beyond that of the weilder, except a spiritual weapon empowered by The One.  Your foundation is key.  We are all born in death, unless the newness comes and indwells us.  His Presence is predicated upon the foundation of our personal covenant.  It is an individual agreement, sealed and certified by blood.  The Blood that kepts us from the emptiness.  You are the house that this Covenant secures.  If you are in Covenant, that is The Foundation, of all that follows.   A physical foundation can be compromised by physical forces.  I am a builder and I can assure you of that.  What is needed is a Foundation not subject to physical wear.  Once that is established the rest of what you are made to be and do can be built upon that security.  Evil cannot reach, what it cannot access.  Threats cannot compromise The One who Indwells the heart of a new-made warrior.  But you must allow The Resident to deal with the forces that arise against you, and yield to His authority.  This is not a passive relationship.  It is a readiness, and an active daily pursuit.  You must surrender to The Covenant Resident, and He will equip you to act as a Breathing Sword.”

I was stunned.  I had expected to hear him talk to us about strength, training and discipline as a foundation to warrior training, but not this.  We had undergone sparring drills, and weapons handling, when I had first come to The Mid-World, but this was taking an aspect of warefare in a new direction.  A mindset.  A posture of warfare.

Nem continued, “Man was created and became alive by The Breath of The One.  If you let Him breathe through you, you will be functioning as a Breathing Sword.  This is why Ezra’s teaching will be of no use without that understanding.  If you cannot perceive beyond what you can physically touch, taste, see or smell, you might as well abandon the stone quest.  What you will come against on these quests are not merely flesh and blood.”

“So the physical skill is not needed?”  I asked, incredulous.

“It is, but it is not the most important,” Nem pointed to and tapped my chest.  “Eternity is within you.  You must go through yourself to that inner part of your heartland to be equipped for the warefare ahead.  The Word is Living and sharp.  Connect to The Truth.  Any blade you carry will only cut and carve a physical form, but is ineffective against supernatural enemies that pursue you.  The Flame to imbue the Sword you weild with cutting fire capable of penetrating those enemies here that are more than mere flesh and blood, comes through your surrender to the Conqueror within you.”

*Scene 02* – 04:04 (Catching On)

Shelberd, Brem and Bray had not been waiting long before Grum-Blud returned to them, blood splattered and trembling with rage.  They stared wide-eyed as Grum came knuckle trotting along the tree line, muttering angrily to himself in a dangerous mood.  Spotting them huddling in the bushes, he spat, “Blasted longshanks killed Corg!”  Longshanks was a pejorative appellate trolls reserved for humankind that had not transitioned to their status.

“What’er we gonna do?” Shelberd ventured.

Grum knuckled up to them, sneering. “Saddle up these beasties and beat the bushes for The Pan.”

“Oh, Grum..!” Shelberd groaned.

“Shut it!” Grum-Blud threatened, snaking his blade out of his waistband.  The dark blade was still wet with blood and gore, but wickedly sharp, as the glinting daggers shining from Grum-Blud’s glaring eyes.

Brem and Bray whimpered, shrinking back.

“Saddle’em up,” Shelberd nodded, shuddering despite himself, as he turned to Brem, slinging the small saddle over its back, pawing blindly, frantically, for the cinch strap, while looking warily back at Grum’s threatening blade.

Satisfied, Grum, slowly hunched down gathering a sheaf of wild grass and ran his blade through it scraping away the gore and grime.  Shelberd scuttled quickly to the other side of Bray and slung the saddle over its haunches, catching the cinch belt and threading it through the rings tugging it snug.  “Watch it there, bub!” Bray snorted.  “My ribs abrade easily. If I’m gonna walk and carry, I gotta breathe.”

Grum growled something unintelligible, and Bray trembled saying no more.

Once mounted and loaded, Brem and Bray headed off in a trot, the trolls riding them through the brush, widely skirting the bordered property of the stone farmhouse and surrounding pasture.

“Grum, where are we going?” Shelberd groaned.

Grum-Blud scowled and gestured with a pudgy fist, towards a small shadowy path through the brush headed into the woods.  “Someone’s gone through here recently.  I saw this broken path while watching from the wall near the stone house.  Grass has been trampled.  Low limbs broken.  There are hoof prints of at least three horses and their dung droppings.  If there is a back path down into the valley and to the woods of Kilrane, why should we go by way of the open road, when we can find out where these lead and who made them.”

Shelberd’s eyes widened, his head bobbing up and down. “Perhaps we can follow those who killed Corg. It wouldn’t hurt having more information to give The Pan either.”

Grum-Blud grinned, “Now you’re catching on.”

Both Brem and Bray snorted their grudging approval.  Perhaps The Pan might have use for these ‘man-frogs’ afterall.  If these creatures did please him on this humiliating mission, that might grant them a little more favorability as well.

They plunged into the thick brush following as the shadowy path unfolded darkly under the leaf-filtered light.   The foliage pressed in tightly around them, but since prior travellers had made the initial passage the brush gave way more easily.  Eventually they came to a downsloping depression in the forest with tall uprooted trees crossing over the gulley standing on broken limbs with their exposed root ball descending into a darkened brow.

Brem and Bray sniffed the stale, fecund air and attempted to balk at going forward, but Grum-Blud would hear none of it.  Reluctantly they press on down into the gulley of softened earth.  Their animal senses heightened to the unmistakable scent of danger.

*Scene 03* – 07:00 (Interruption)

In the courtyard, where we had been speaking with Nem a short, bald headed, pudgy little man with wiry, white hair, ascended the steps below and was met by two imposing guards blocking his way.  The man’s shrill voice carried as he sputtered in a verbal altercation with the two guards, gesticulating wildly as he tried frantically to get past the two stawart soldiers.  Nem moved to the stone railing and peered downward, and the pudgy man, face reddened in exasperation pointed upward, calling out to be granted audience.

“There he is! There he is!  I must speak with you, Lord Nem!  It is a most urgent matter!  Called off your infernal sentries!  I must speak with you!”

The two guards on the lower platform, looked up, and Nem signalled to them with a wave of his hand to let the man approach.  The two stepped aside, allowing the insistent man to pass between them, but they followed close behind as he puffed and panted up the stone staircase to the courtyard above.

Nem turned to us and excused himself, and moved to meet the man at the top of the steps.  The chubby man leaned against the stone baluster, catching his breath, waving futilely at us to give them some privacy.

They conferred in low tones and the man urgently beckoned Nem to follow him.  None of us could make out what was said but we did catch an off-handed word, as the urgent man raised his voice in a pitch that carried.
Treasury.

Nem stepped back over to us, and one of his guards followed him, while the ansy little man huffed and paced impatiently, glancing back down the stair case to the lower walkway, and nervously wiped sweat from his reddened face, neck and forehead.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Nem said.  “It seems an urgent matter has come up that I will need to attend to.  My man Jorda will convey you back down to Ezra in the Warrior’s Court, and I will join you all later in the day for the midday meal.  I beg your leave,” he said with a slight bow, receiving our full consent, disarmingly surprised by his graciousness.

Once Nem returned to the waiting man, the man seemed to bounce impatiently, turning to descend the steps, urging Nem to make haste.

As our new escort turned to us, I heard Will snort with folded arms, “I wonder what that was all about.

Jorda stood with his pike staff held regimentally as he swept his arm ahead, once Nem and the urgent man had a good lead start back down the stairway.

“This way, if you please.”

“They are so polite here,” Cheryl observed.  “I wonder what’s got that little man so upset.”

Someone muttered, “What did he say?  Something about the treasury?”

“He looked like a chubby little clerk.  I’m sure its nothing more than some clerical concern,” one said dimissively.

“Yeah, but why would he urgently need the city architect for something like that?”

“It was kind of funny watching the chubby man bounce up the steps.  Looks like he was unused to doing much more that sitting behind a desk in a counting house.”

We decended the steps, dutifully following the guard Jorda, winding our way back down to the Warriors’ Court where we had first joined Ezra that morning.  The overhead sun was midway up in the sky, not directly overhead and feathery clouds drifted slowly, rising with the light winds skirting the edge of the towering cliffside that loomed over the backend of the city of Azragoth.  A low mist hung like a canopy along the edge, fed by the skirted streams that banked along an outer wall surrounding the city.

I knew it would not be long before we broke for a noon meal, but I could not help but wonder what might be going on the required Nem’s attention.  Whatever it might be, I was certain that it did not bode well for the city and its peoples, and I somehow wondered if our presence here might have something to do with it.

Beyond us, about three streets ahead, Nem strolled easily behind his corpulent escort.

“It’s been happening all morning,” Kallem, the chubby man continued, mopping his mouth and forehead, panting from the exertion he had expended frantically searching out the whereabouts of Lord Nem, finding few onlookers less than helpful as he had scurried about seeking direction.

“What has been happening?” Nem asked calmly striding forward, following the smaller man who was barely keeping ahead, turning frequently to ensure Nem and his other guard were still following.

“You’ve got to stop it.  There are cracks everywhere.  The printed coinage keeps falling through.  We will be ruined.  You’ve got to hurry.  Every few moments everything in the treasury vault rattles and topple to the floor and the fissures are widening.  My clerks and I have been raking the coinage back, but when the pulsing starts they seemed to be fixed to the floor.  More of it pours down below.  We can’t afford this kind of loss.  No one would believe it.  You must see it for yourself.”

“How long has this been happening?”

“Two days.  At first we did not know what to make of the noises.  We thought a rat or something had gotten in and knocked over some of the bagged coins, but it has been going on repeatedly and we have seen no evidence of rodents.  We noticed the levels beginning to sink and that is when we discovered the cracks in the flooring.  If there is any way to dig those fallen coins out, we must do it.  Something is affecting the precious metals.  Something that is pulling them down into the crevices.  We should never have quarried stone beneath the city. Never!”

Nem sighed, “There has been no quarry digs beneath the treasury.  There should only be solid rock.  We have avoided digs under any significant weight bearing structures.  We made contientious effort to keep the digs under the dead sectors of the old city, besides the grain holds under the old keep tower.”

“What about the old springs?  How far do the water courses go under the city?” Kallem huffed.

“The old springs were diverted.  That is why the upper fountains have dried up.”

“But in the council meeting this morning we were told there is something that has breached the underground.”

“We are looking into it.”

At that point, the two men reached a fortified door with a formidable stone edifice and iron barred portico.  Kallem pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and opened the iron barred gate.

“Well, you need to look into this,” he said opening the iron braced wooden door, and leading Nem into a torchlit hallway.

*Scene 04* – 03:44 (Fault in the Vault)

Kallem stood with his attendants and Lord Nem as a tremor rattled the floor.  Coins clinked, golden goblets wobbled, chains swished and tinkled, and a low clattering eminated from deep below.  A dark, jagged crack scarred the fitted stone floor, pitting and peaking as the grout sifted down into a deep abyssal hollow.  Mounds of coins, molded bars and ingots slinked towards the cavities created with a vibrating rattle.  Attendants scrambled trying to rake back the mounds from spilling into the widening crack, but they were dragged bodily by the inexorable metal wave slouching towards the ominous gash.

“What could be causing this?!” Kallem huffed, still mopping his forehead nervously with his sweaty hankerchief, a sheen of sweat glistening in the firelight over his bunched cheeks and bald widowspeak pate.  The floor gash was widening and somehow being wedged open from deep below.

Lord Nem knelt and raised a torch over the shadowy crack, attempt to peer downward as far as the light would allow.  “I don’t understand it.  This area has always been undergirded by thick layers of solid rock.  There is something down there that is cutting through the mantle.”

“Well, understand it or not, we are losing the city’s gold and silver.  Only the Ezra’s temple storage has the remainder of the gold and silver, but those are consecrated vessels.  We cannot melt or barter with those without causing a citywide scandal!  We need this money for daily operations with those still willing to trade with us for supplies.  These coins were imprinted and re-forged with Xarmnian crests to avoid suspicion.  Years of recasting work.  Outsiders are forbidden from accepting or hoarding any coinage that does not bear the Xarmnian mark.  Anyone found carrying non-authorized monies are to be brought before the Xarmnian tribunals, tortured for information and excuted publicly by The Protectorate, with all coinage confiscated and sent to the Xarmnian city.  You must send a search team down into the deep caverns to find out what is causing this.”

Nem rose to his feet as coins continued to spill over the edge of the widening crack and plink and ping off the stone edges of the gash down into the darkness below.  “I will attend to this personally.  Say nothing to no one for the time being.”

Kallem gaped in astonishment, a look of horror crossing his reddened face.  He stammered, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no!  No one can know.  We dare not mention a word of this to anyone!  No one would believe what we’ve seen, and they would string us up for sure.”

Deep below, water dripped from the fragmented ceiling, and from a deep gash, coins plinked downward in a darkling dance, landing on a broad surface like a formation of scales across the broad hide of a shadowy monster temporary cloaked in darkness.  An electric flash of luminescents scintillated across the webbing of coinage, as the beast sent another magnetic pulse upward through the crack it had bashed into the ceiling of its newly cored tunnel.  It could smell the metallic scents of gold and silver just as easily as it could smell the presence of living blood and perceive a gathering collection of heartbeats far above.

*Scene 05* – 13:01 (Stragglers)
[continuation of Chptr 17-Scene 5]

Back on the ridge of the valley leading down to the Xarmnian stables, Tizkon, the Xarmnian Protectorate guard assigned the duty of holding the outworld captive prisoner had waited for hours before taking the old man down from the ridge of the horse valley escarpment.  He had watched the lower road where Bayek and their Bruel Hadeon had pursued the fugitives and the dual wagon weapons convoy, purportedly coming from the Iron Hills foundry.  When none of his team re-emerged from the split routes they had taken in their pursuit, Tizkon sensed something must have gone terribly wrong.

Hadeon’s orders were: “Wait here with him for now, and watch.  Once we take his companions below, he may be of no further use to us.  Slit his throat and toss him out for the carrion birds.  Then you should be free to swiftly join us in the valley below.”  The problem was, there was no way to tell whether they had taken the man’s companions, so there was no way to be sure killing the man was still the best course of action.

Hadeon had assumed a successful capture as a given.  The Bruel was rarely wrong, and Tizkon longed to be rid of the spindly carcass and ride hard after his crew.  Nothing could be gained by delay.  He had no choice but to bring the old sack of flesh along giving it yet another day of sucking air.

The sun climbed high into the midday sky, its heat blistering and bleaching the sands on the broad descent road.

They rode along a shrub-lined gully near the main road’s juncture point, just over the brow of the descending hill.  From the cover they could see both of the side routes the fugitive wagons had taken: one in a darkening rim path that headed east into the Rimwood forests, and the other headed northwest into a skirting trail that seemed to wind back into the long valley where the Xarmnian stables were kept and their field stock were pastured.  A deepening spring fed river ran through that valley and cut downward as it passed into the westward woods, broadening out into a series of cataract falls coming down from the highland shelf.

Tizkon was on high alert, scanning for any movement from the encroaching woods that stood a few hundred yards shy of the road and circular clearing that wound down from the shelf of the highlands.

Suddenly he heard noises coming along the eastern trail.  He held his sword at the ready as Bayek came alone out of the shadows, leading a team of riderless horses.

He hailed him and Bayek paused, squinting and blinking uncertainly in the light of the midday sun, still allowing his eyes to adjust from the shadowy forest to the bright and open sky.

“What have you done with the others?!”

Bayek shaded his eyes as Tizkon rode up, his spindly prisoner riding behind, barely hanging on.

“I see you haven’t killed him yet,” Bayek commented dryly.  “Perhaps that is just as well.”

“Where are the others?” Tizkon huffed.

Bayek coughed, wiping his face.  “Ran into trouble with wood folk.  Bloody sirens.  Two of our Cerberi are missing.  The others must’ve circled back through the woods.  What of the other teams?  Have you seen any come back from the ridge run?”

“I’ve been watching for hours,” Tizkon replied shrugging.  “I don’t know what to expect.  Looked like Hadeon took the main road down.  No sign of them either.  What do you think we should do with this one.”  Tizkon inclined his head with a backward nod, indicating his prisoner.

Bayek scowled at the old man in disdain, clearly annoyed that his continued presence caused them an inconvenience.  “He is no good carrying around like that.  If we have to ride fast, he will flop around like a sack of potatoes.  Toss him down and let’s tie him over one of these saddle horses.  Have you had to feed it yet?”

“I fed it a bite or two while we were waiting on the ridge.  I think the begger wanted to spit it out, but was too famished to do so.  It doesn’t talk much.”

Tizkon unhooked the man’s bound wrists from around his waist and the saddle horn, slipping the hitch knot loose with a sharp tug.  The old man groaned as his wrists were further abraded by the rough rope that had bound him to his captive and the horse they both rode.  Tizkon’s mare snorted and rolled its neck, bobbing its head up and down.

The old, emaciated man slouched, weakened by lack of sleep, the dry and windy conditions, its sustained bruises and cuts from its interrogation, and its dread of what might follow.  He fell off the back of the horse onto a patch of scrub grass as Tizkon swung out of the saddle and Bayek dismounted as well.  They grabbed the man by his arms and legs and uncerimonoiusly pitched him across one of the saddles of the riderless mounts.

Tizkon continued talking, as he lashed the man to the horse with additional rope.  “Wood sirens, eh?  I’m told their quite the lookers, despite being deadly.  Did you talk with any of them?”

“It was mostly being talked at rather than with,” Bayek grunted.  “They gave me a message to give to the king.  That is the only reason I was left alive.”

Tizkon looked surprised.  “The king?!  What dealings would wood sirens have with the Son of Xarm?!”

“Dealing in gold…” Bayek muttered.  “Or something like it.”

“What was that?” Tizkon asked, turning.

“Rumors only.” Bayek grumbled.

“Rumors?” Tizkon arched an eyebrow, “What rumors?”

Bayek stared hard at the continuation of the main road and across the gap to the shadowy forest trail beyond.

“What rumors?” Tizkon persisted, when no answer came.

Finally Bayek turned to Tizkon giving him a stern look.  “You are still very young, Tizkon.  What was done was done before our present king took the throne.  It is rumored to be part of the reason he never leaves the Stone City.  If I tell you, never speak of it anywhere you might be heard.  If it were to come back to the ear of the king, you will not wake to see the morning, after retiring for the night.  The Son of Xarm will send a Silencer after you to forever still your loose tongue.”

Tizkon’s expression took on gravity, as Bayek’s ominous warning sank into his thoughts.  Silencers were the Son of Xarm’s elite group of assassins.  They worked in secrecy and always in darkness.  They were rarely identified, and wore coverings of all black living in the shadows.  Parents warned their misbehaving children, that if they did not obey, the king might send a Silencer after them to forever hush them in their sleep.  Rumor had it that Silencers had a key to every locked door in the city.  That they could somehow find their way into a room through the tiniest crack or crevice.  The very thought of Silencers gave even grown adults the tremors.  The spectre of their reputation even quelled most gossip through the town folk.  People were suspicious of each other and often did not trust others with information for fear that a neighbor might somehow get the Son of Xarm to send a Silencer after them.

Tizkon flinched at the thought and shuddered.  “Forget I asked.  I don’t want to know.  Tell me instead about the wagon you followed into the wood trail back there.  Where did it go?”

Bayek returned to his horse and swung back up into the saddle, checking to secure the rope line that he had led the remaining horses belonging to his fallen comrades.

“The wagon was rammed into the trees when the path became too narrow to forge ahead.  They smashed the spokes of the wheels and wedged it against us, barring further pusuit on horseback.  We had to follow on foot until we reached a dead end.”

“And that is where you encountered the wood sirens?”

Turning his horse torward Tizkon, who was also mounting up, he nodded.  “Siren.  There was only one that showed herself.  The others surprised us from overhead.  They are fast.  Unnaturally so.  We did not expect them in Rimwood.  It was agreed that The Pan and his kind would keep to their lands, if we would keep to ours.”

Astride his horse now, Tizkon huffed.  “Any agreement made with that dark creature is suspect.  I would not trust him or those we send to broker deals with him.  Trolls are entirely duplicitous.  Only good to be used as berzerkers when they are in their Grawplin phase.”

“Be that as it may, the Siren claimed that there was… ‘ a digger’ under the wood, on a destructive path heading down towards Kilrane forest.”

“A digger?” Tizkon smirked, “What kind of digger worries wood sirens?”

“A digger capable of tearing up the root system of the mature trees and tunneling close enough to the surface to weaken and collapse the forest floor.”

“What evidence do we have of that?”

“None yet.  But somehow I believe her to be telling the truth.  Seems to think that these outworlders are the cause of it.  Some creatures are more than just brute beasts.  Rumor had it that some were once used in the quarry caves for mining ores.  Diggers we built for hollowing out the ground and could draw precious metals from it, which they would shed and shake off later.  The metals were then collected and melted down in the forges.  Then hammered and poured into forms.  Rumor has it that The Pan himself was once a master metal worker, before it rebelled and took with it the Half-Men into the Moonlit Moors in the dark northlands.”

Tizkon pondered this a moment trying to remember some of the legends of the monsters of the dark lands.  “So what upsets these wood sirens?  That a few trees are falling down?  What connection is there with The Pan and these wood nymphs, and a digger?”

“I once heard that the matriarch of the sirens was both wife and sister of The Pan.  Her name was Naamah before she became what she is now.”

“His sister?!  He mated with his sister?!  Shouldn’t their offspring have deformities as a result?”

Bayek stared at Tizkon until he realized the absurdity of the question and blushed in embarrassment.

“Wouldn’t you say being born half vegetable and half human was kind of a persistent deformity?”

Tizkon nodded, pondering the implications.  “And The Pan, being half man and half ram would make him have desires to consume both meat and plant as well.”

“It’s an age-old story.  The Pan worshipped the power and strength of the ram’s horn.  His wife worshipped the power of the field, its beauty and its produce of food.  Seed worship.  Both seemed to have gotten what they wished.  They became the objects of their worship and declared themselves to be gods, while fighting the internal desires to consume each other.”

“Do they…?” Tizkon wondered.

“Do they what?” Bayek said directing his horse towards the switchback down road leading to the lowlands.

“Eat each other?” Tizkon spoke in nearly a whisper.

“I would not be surprised.” Bayek commented, kicking his horse into a trot.

As they ambled their horses down the shelf, Tizkon looked back to the other trail their other detachment had followed.  “I wonder what happened to the others along that rode heading to the falls?  How could Aridam and his group fail to capture that other wagon?  Should we wait for them?”

Bayek answered over his shoulder, “Hadeon said to meet him and the others down at the clearing near Kilrane.  We follow orders until we are given leave to do otherwise.  Wherever those riding the wagon we chased went, I expect we will somehow find them in the lower valley in Kilrane.  When we meet up with the others we may find Aridam and his team there too.  But even if not, I’ll need to get leave from Hadeon before I ride to deliver the siren’s message to the king.”

*Scene 06* – 15:41 (Corimanth’s Secret)

We spent the remainder of the morning doing grip drills with Ezra back in the Warriors’ Court.  He had us working at striking the pells-thick wooden columns with hack marks on them.  Getting us used to toughening our hold on the blades selected for us.  We worked until our hands were numb, and our fingers sore. It was grueling for a first day’s lesson and we had worked up a considerable sweat, striking the columns high, low and mid-level while he observed how we reacted to the shock of the blade’s stop at the end of a swing.  Eventually, as we tired and our minds buzzed with Ezra’s repetitive drill commands, we were all very glad to hear the tinny mid-day bell signalling a respite.  Weary but having worked up an appetite we filed into the corridor leading back to the commissary where we had breakfasted that morning.

True to his word, Nem rejoined us as we assembled once again in the large dining hall for the afternoon meal.  He took a seat across from Begglar and Nell and their friends from back in the village of Crowe, Shimri and Aida.  I was just down the table far enough to hear some of their conversation, though for some reason, Nem seemed to be avoiding eye contact with me.  We had all wondered what the man had wanted that called him away from us, but Nem gave no indication that he was disposed to tell us.  Since he made no further comment about it, we felt it might be a subject he was not at liberty to talk about.

Nem looked thoughtfully at Nell as he took his first few bites and finally spoke to her in a low voice.

“You are known to me, yet I do not remember from where.”

Nell wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin and raised her eyes to him, staring directly for a long moment, yet with no seeming pleasure in doing so.  Quietly she layed the napkin down, lowered her eyes and speared a morsel of meat on her plate, avoiding further eye contact as she spoke.  “We met in Sorrow’s Gate, many years ago when you and your company were traveling through.  I served you at the Inn where I worked with my brother Corimanth.”

“Ah, I remember,” said Nem, recognition widening his eyes and forming a half smile. “You were the Seer.  The one who could sense connections between tales told and the people whose stories were being told.  A prophetess among the women.  You exposed the lies of Noadiah when she tried to deceive us.”

“Yes,” Nell acknowledge, still focusing on her plate, adding with a bitter inflection, “And for that, you and The Eagle took my brother from me.”

Nem sat up straighter and took a deep breath.  “You have not heard of why we intervened on his behalf?”

“Intervened?!” Nell raised her eyes staring forward defiantly, openly glaring at Nem.  She set her jaw and tried to lower her voice to keep from drawing attention to their low conversation, but hissed through clenched teeth.  “My parents died in this place!  Corimanth was all I had left!  I gave you the truth, helped you… and you repaid me by enlisting my brother into your scheme. Not only that, you kept me in the darkness, grieving the loss of all I had that I could call my own.  What do you mean you intervened?!”

Begglar interrupted, “Nellus.  Let’s hear him out.  All might not be what it seems.”  So speaking, he attempted to put his arm around Nell, but she shrugged him off.

“Well?!” she hissed at Nem, “What do you have to say for yourself?!”

“Your brother and the others with him were caught stealing from our packs.  Ceremonial items we had hidden and were bringing back to Azragoth for use in the Temple.  He and the others had raked up quite a haul from some of the other merchants in Surrogate, and they made the mistake of raiding our travelling party as well.  We caught them with the items, and others they had stashed.  We could have made an example of them.  Turned them over to the city magistrate…  But, I didn’t… for your sake.”

“For my sake?!” Nell looked stricken.

“Yes,” Nem bowed looking down as he cut a portion of meat with his knife and fork, continuing, “They were soon to be discovered and would have been marked for death by the Overwatch.  The local merchants were tired of being robbed, and though they avoided enlisting the Overwatch in their internal affairs, they had finally made an appeal to them as payers of tribute to the Xarmnian crown.  They could not pay the Son of Xarm’s taxes, if they could not sell their wares.  The Xarmnians agreed.  They did not have a name, but they suspects and would have soon discovered him because of the people.”

“We were strangers in Surrogate.  Trying to keep a low profile while seeking craftsmen and stonemasons, and all who had some connection with Azragoth or desire to see it restored to its former glory.  Xarmnian involvement was the last thing we needed, and so we had a decision to make regarding the boys we had taken prisoner.  We needed information.  We needed those who might be able to blend into their surroundings and not raise alarm.  To be able to steal something more valuable to us than mere merchant treasures and food stocks.  We needed information, and we considered that those we had presently in our custody, might just be willing to trade their life of petty larceny to something more worthwhile using the same skills that had made them effective theives.”

“You made them spies?!”

“We offered them a deal.  Work as spies for us, or take their chances with the town magistrate and the Xarmnian Overwatch.”

Nell fiddled with her fork and the remaining food on her plate, her ire was deflating, and so was her appetite.  She had heard Corimanth’s apology and side of the story and had given him forgiveness for it, but somehow she was reluctant to offer the same to Nem.  She felt betrayed by him.  He had been a guest in their Inn.  Or perhaps, she should consider it Noadiah’s Inn, but it had become a home to her and her younger brother, so she could not help but to think of the place as partially their own.  Noadiah had offered her and Corimanth part of the ownership of that Inn, in exchange for their help in keeping it running.  She could not afford to hire extra help, but both Nell and Corimanth had needed a place to stay and something to keep them occupied and productive now that their parents had been lost in the fall of Azragoth.  When Noadiah disappeared, Nell had been left to run it until Noadiah’s return.  Only Noadiah did not return.  She left soon after Nem and his men arrived.  She suspected Noadiah had gone with them to find Azragoth, but she could not be too sure.  Noadiah had been secretive.  Strangely so, ever since she learned what Nem and his attendant crew were there for.

Nem continued, attempting to further convince Nell of his part in the enlistment of her brother.

“We needed some inside information from within the city of Xarm.  Our trip from Capitalia had come at a time when there was still breaks in the valley wall.  Emissaries had been sent to Capitalia, but by then the wall had made the only path to get there an attempted trek up over the mountains.  Few made it through, most were intercepted by Xarmnian patrols.  Of the ones who made it, few had knowledge of Azragoth, after the Xarmnian siege.  Capitalia was still then feared and grudgingly respected by the Xarmnians.  An edict born by the kings of Capitalia once commanded respect and caution not to interfere with Capitalian messengers, but the Xarmnians, we soon learned, were becoming more emboldened.  Your brother recognized that the Xarmnian’s maintained a wary distance from us when they learned we were from Capitalia.  When he came to us, he wanted to know why and if we were coming in response to the long-ignored pleas for assistance.  He and the others tried to distract us and made a clumsy attempt to steal the golden bound scrolls we carried with us.  This effort was easily put down, and we could have turned him and the others over to the Xarmnian Overwatch, but we thought to have mercy.  Your brother’s anger was one of desperation.  He hated the Xarmnians for the death of your parents.  He was helpless in dealing with that rage, so we offered them a bargain.  We enlisted their service and swore them to abide by our code, and we would spare them their lives, and in return, we would solicit aid from the Capitalians with whom we had grown in favor.”

“Then why does my brother wear a binding about his chest?  Where did he receive such injuries that he struggles to speak, and why is it that he has not communicated with me even once in these many years?”

Corimanth emerged from the end of the dining hall and walked forward to the gathering having overheard the question.

“I can answer that for you, Nellus.”

All eyes turned toward him.

“I trained here in Azragoth yet kept some semblance of my weight in check.  I assisted with the rebuilding and was given a place here, should my mission succeed, and I return from it.  My skill with a halberd developed and it became a weapon best suited for my size and stature.  I was taught how to control my aggression and channel it for constructive use.  The Azragothians reminded me of what honor is and what it meant to live with a noble purpose, the same as what our father taught us.”

“Once the timber had been brought in from the back forest an opportunity opened for me to blend in with a gathering of young men being conscripted and marched back to Xarmni to serve in their armed court.  Swordsmen and spear throwers and archers were the most needed in their marching armies, but for palace guard duty, they wanted stout fighters skilled with halberds to stand watch by their doorways and council halls.  My proficiency proved useful to them, so I was given a sentry post near the donjon.”

“I later learned that was where in they kept their sacred Builder Stone.  I had seen it through the doorway, a few times standing post.  We were given quarters in the wall units so that we could be close to hand at any alert sounded during the evening watch.  I served under a company of men, under the command of Captain Jahazah the Crusher.  He was a brutal and bloodthirsty man, known for mangling and crushing people through various means.  It was from him I received the wounds that require this present binding.  I had to fight him the night the Lehi came for my report.  Thankfully, they were not far when he confronted me from the shadows, brandishing my own halberd.  I was slashed in the ribs before I was able to get it free from him.  We grappled and fell down stone steps, but the prideful Captain would not call out for the other guards.  He was incensed by my treachery and wanted to kill me himself.  He broke four of my ribs in a crushing squeeze.  I heard them snap and the pain was intense, but I was able to get free by striking him in the throat.  The Lehi returned and bore me up and into the darkness.  The last sight I remember of the Captain, he was on his knees spitting up blood and coughing.  We were barely far enough away before he gained his voice enough to alert the other guards to pursue.  If it wasn’t for the Lehi, I would have been a dead man.  Travel was excruciating, but the Lehi were well-trained in field medicine, and when we were far enough away, they dressed my wounds, staunched my blood, set and bound my ribs with this truss and tied me to my mount.  I am told I passed out several times during the journey, that I suffered feverish rants, and a sort of delirium until they found some medicinal plants to ease my suffering.”

“So, it was Corimanth who delivered the intelligence of what is happening with the Builder Stones,” Begglar remarked.

Maeven stepped forward from the group and joined, “Yes.  I did not know he was Nell’s brother though, or I might have told you before.”

Nell shook her head in bewilderment, “Some seer I am.  All of this going on under my very nose, and I had no inkling of it.”

Begglar patted her affectionately, “Now don’t be too hard on yourself, Nellie dear.”

Nell carefully embraced her brother, tearful eyed, mindful of his wounding, “You’ve done me proud, Cori.  And no one can say less of it.  It was a brave thing you’ve done.  Foolish but brave, and just as courageous as father hoped you would ever be.  ‘Tis a shame they were not here to see it.”  More tears poured from her eyes as she held her brother, sniffling into his shoulder.  But then she pulled away and lightly cuffed him on the cheek, “But you could have told your sister something, stead of making me think as I was!”

Nem observed the exchange and then spoke to them, “Your brother now lives with honor.  He brought the secrets forth from the Xarmnian fortress.  He told us of the mysterious movements of the Builder Stones and what may come of it.  It is the reason we have sent The Eagle to the summit of Mount Zefat.  To study the terrain, to see the positioning and progress of the tribes as they are drawn out following their stones. To take a high vantage point to align their paths to see if what we all suspect is happening is true.  We hope to predict the convergent points at which the conflicts may erupt between them.  But we all have the same suspicion.  The Builder Stones are being drawn back to the one stone of most consequence–The Ancient Marker Stone where they first were found.”

*Scene 07* – 00:00 (The Black Tongue)

After the meal, I and the others of my group followed Nem to the outer courtyard, where I had previously spoken with Corimanth when we had first arrived.  Nem had his foreman show members of my group the areas of the city they were working on using the large city model map and the areas that could be overseen from the high terrace.  Quietly, he stepped away from the group and came over to speak privately to me as his lead man gave a comprehensive tour referencing the map and the reference points in the city below.

He leaned on the stone baluster and indicated the Warrior’s court below with a vague hand gesture.  “When Ezra began his training in the courtyard, he called you out as the leader.  You may not have known, but from this terrace, I could see you this morning in the Warrior’s courtyard,” he paused.

“Then you must’ve seen him knock me down on my butt,” I huffed.

Nem nodded, looking outward, but still not looking directly at me.

“And when he called you to stand and be armored for the demonstration, did you notice what was at your feet before he struck your leg, and you fell?”

I turned to him unsure of what he was telling me.

“I thought not,” he continued.  Quietly, he observed, “Ezra will often give you a clue as to what is about to happen if you are listening closely to what he tells you before. Ezra usually begins his lessons with proper footing and foundation.  The goal is to give a fighter an awareness of the ground upon which he will face an assault.  Often times a fight can be won of lost within the first few moments of combat, if one of the fighters loses their sense of their foundation and their footing.  The same is true as in all things.”

Here he glanced at me, “To begin anything… you need to fully understand and rely on where you are positioned.  You must have certainty about it–a degree of confidence–before you lift your eyes to build anything or face an enemy.  Right now, at this very moment, our city foundations are under assault.”

I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but I had a sense he, somehow, was holding me personally responsible for whatever foundational threat he was alluding to.  I could not imagine what I may have done to give him that impression, but he seemed hesitant to bring that charge directly against me.

“I am not sure you are ready for what soon must happen.  But foundations are something I am particularly concerned with, and you should be concerned with them as well when preparing for the warfare ahead.”

“Just as you must be aware of your own foundation, by the same token, you must also have a sense of where your enemy stands and assess the relative strength or weakness of their positioning.  The same is true with buildings and fortifications.  And it is true of relationships as well.  Even those we think we know, can fool us.  It often comes with too much familiarity to the point when, rather than listening and perceiving, we run ahead into interactions based on assumptions derived from what we anticipate.  How much of Ezra’s lesson do you recall?”

I thought back, remembering the words spoken over me as I lay prostrate in the dirt after he swept my footing out from under me.  “Yes.  Obviously, he said, we needed to be aware of the nature of the ground upon which we were standing before he abruptly sat me down on my pride.”

“And,” I added, “he said the blade is not the only weapon I bear.”

“He was correct,” Nem said, “He positioned you among anchor points, which you may not have noticed.  Pieces of wood staked into the ground which had you looked down you would have seen.  They are used for fighter’s foot placement.  A warrior stands with the lead foot against one anchor point, and his back foot against the other.  He noticed your focus was on him, so he used it as an illustration instead.”

“You’re saying he tricked me?”

“In a word, yes.  Had you positioned your steps accordingly, you would not have so easily fallen.  Had you kept a sense of the ground, even if you did not know the purpose of such staked blocks, you may have circled beyond them and retained your footing.”

“Also,” he said, “the blade is not your only weapon.  Your sense of purpose should also be part of your drive, your cognizance of the nature of the assault and the countenancing of your opposition should also be part of your arsenal.  You must know that you fight with your entire body, and not just your blade. And your mind should be as keen on what is going on, as well.  As you are the leader of this band, it is critical that you learn the first lessons so that you may lead in them by example.  The Xarmnians are flesh and blood the same as you and me, but the monsters here have abilities that you must be aware of and fight with both with your mind and your soul under the empowerment of The Word–The first sword made into flesh that lives and breathes and is breathing still through you.  As I said, it is you, who are a breathing sword.”

He let that sink in for a moment.

“Lord Nem, I know you are trying to help me, but I am struggling with the fact of my return here, and what The One wants me to do.  I am not sure I am the best choice for this mission.  I am not a natural leader.  In fact, if you were to speak to Jeremiah again, you’ll find that I was also not a very good follower.  I betrayed his leadership, and my only guess is that I was brought back here to correct what I got wrong.  To somehow recover The Cortis stone I let fall into the possession of The Pan.”

Nem was thoughtful and did not respond right away.

“I am told you are familiar with the Ancient Text, and that you can call it to mind as circumstances present themselves.  This ability is essential when fighting the creatures that stalk our lands.”

“Yes, but that was by accident.  I fell against The Marker Stone, and that ability was a byproduct of touching that sacred stone.  A result of my clumsiness more than anything.”

“Recite for me from the prophet Isaiah chapter 55 verse 8.”

My mind shifted and I quickly recited the passage: “For my thoughts [are] not your thoughts, neither [are] your ways my ways, saith the LORD.”

“Think carefully about those words.  What does that say about your reasoning as opposed to the perspective of The One?  You might be surprised how often what some believe to be a mistake is actually a benefit and a gift.  The One wastes nothing, even those things that seem to have come about by your own failings.  Because you have that ability, which you may believe was accidental, it serves in the providential plans The One has for you.  To face the particular form of creatures that will attempt to thwart you in your journey ahead.  You alone, and perhaps Begglar, have been preordained to fight those creatures that have come here from the void.  Be careful to not let novices, who have no understanding or familiarity with the Ancient Text, attempt to fight the monsters of this land, or you will guarantee their defeat.  Only the Ancient Text will cause them to succeed, but they must know it enough to handle it against the mind assaults of their adversary.  Flesh and blood may be defeated with practiced skill, but the weapons needed to defeat the creatures are not made of metal and steel alone.  Their arrows of the mind cannot be turned by armor plating, finely linked chain mail or the parry of a masterfully wielded blade.  Do you understand this?”

“I do.”

He sighed, clearly something was troubling him.  Some further uncertainty that I could not perceive in a man who otherwise seemed so confident and assured in his other decisions.   “There is something you are not telling me.  Something that troubles you more than my failing to understand the import of what we are here to do.  What is it?”

He was quiet for a long minute.  Finally, he spoke.  “As you know we are a city that survived and recovered from a terrible plague.  And now something has come to my attention that threatens to unleash that plague once more, despite our memorial efforts to ritualistically cleanse our city.   It could awaken the black tongue again.”

“Black tongue?”

Nem was quiet again for a moment and looked off into the distance.

“I will tell you of what ‘Black tongue’ means, but for now you need to know more of what the ritual we performed signifies, and how it fits in the future defense plans of this city.”

“I assumed it was to keep it clean against another plague. Was it not?” I asked.

“To defend it,” he reiterated pointedly.  “What you may not know about me is that I was born in this city, but was taken as a captive in my youth when the first caravans came through this area.  The caravan leaders then were the patriarchs of the two major warring human nations that now divide this country.  The nations that are now called Xarmni and Capitalia.  The patriarchs were relatives.  Cousins actually.  The regent Xarm and the regent who became king of Capitalia named Xerxes.  It was their custom for their successors to take their father’s first name, as a second name: a patronimic name, so called.  When the families eventually split and formed feuding factions, I was retained in service to Artemis Xerxes, the son and heir of Xerxes.  I came to be a trusted servant, such that I was given the responsibility of being the heir’s cup bearer, and was always present at the king’s table.  Artemis was in dread of spies from his uncle’s kingdom.  Both his father and his uncle were killed in the ensuing conflicts that arose from their feuding.  Most of Xarm’s sons were slain in the skirmishes and battles prior to his death, and Xarm was obsessed with retaining an heir to succeed him on Xarmni’s throne.  Before he died, he grudgingly conferred his legacy and rule on his bastard son, reportedly the child of one of his daughters.  The one who now calls himself by the title “Son of Xarm,” asserting his legitimacy.  From his death bed, Xarm charged him to exact eternal revenge on Capitalia, and his cousin, by conquering them and bringing them under subjection.  He was to subjugate and occupy any of the cities that remained friendly to Captialia or hoped for its aid, against the rising dominance of Xarmni beyond the mountain ranges and their wall.  Azragoth was one of those cities.”

“In the years that followed, Xarmni sent a sporatic succession of spies into Capitalia, on many failed assassination attempts to infiltrate the court, and take out the Capitalian monarch.  They succeeded once, taking out the father of the king I eventually was trained to serve.  He was poisoned, and I discovered the former cupbearer was paid handsomely to allow it to happen.  That man was then hung from the ramparts, and a vacancy opened up in the king’s service.  I volunteered and was given the position to serve the regent’s successor, with whom I had become friends while serving the royal family.

“As the king’s cupbearer, I was trained to detect the subtle presence of poisons that may be slipped into the king’s wine.  I became very skilled at detecting the trace differences in smell, color and taste.  Thus, I kept the new Capitalian king alive despite many further attempts to fell him.

“He came to trust me and value my judgment–My skill of detection, both in detecting poisons, but also in detecting artifice in those who served him.  The king confided in me, and I grew to respect and honor him, even though I was his conscripted servant.

“What I did not know through all of my captivity back then is that all my experiences were being used to prepare me for this work.  I learned from being a servant, what was most important for becoming a leader.  I learned from being in the king’s court what a hierarchial structure should look like and how the servants at court worked in concert to provide a support system for those in leadership.  I learned how the system relied on mutual trust, and how servant leadership changed the dynamic of a network of fear, to a organized system of mutual benefit, and shared vision.  Even in my role as cup bearer, I was given a vision of how to rebuild the city of Azragoth and establish a defense against overwhelming odds.  I gained not only insight, but the goodwill of allies and a king, willing to finance this rebuilding effort.  These experiences shaped the foundation of what we are doing in this city.  Even to the idea of cups.  Concentric cups, placed one within another, are indeed reflective of the design of this city.  The back of this city is under a cupola of the upper mesa.  Each ring extends in a semi-circle from the back of the overhanging cliff face.  The outer ring is in fact a poisoned cup, with series of underground vats holding the poisons and filth ritually and routinely purged from our city gutters, down the gullets into these holding tanks that are pitched and weighted against the downslope of the old front gates of the city.  We have effectively built a massive underground poisoned cup to be unleashed and spilled out into the old valley and fields below that once served as the attack grounds the Xarmnians used to lay siege to our city.

“The grounds of the old, weathered outer rings of this are set to collapse, thus pushing the lower vats to break the outer tubes forcing this poison to flood down into the valley below.  No standing army will survive a frontal assault of this city, upon the poisoned fields.  The black tongue will sweep them away, the same as it did the plague victims of this city, who in their sickness, suffered a swelling black tongue and constricted airways as they died in horrific spasms as the contagion spread through their bodies turning their veins black, webbing the appearance of their skin in a ghastly tangle of dark vines.

“My study of poisons providentially perpared me for effectively purging the plagued city of its former toxins.  I only learned this in hindsight.  The One truly moves in mysterious ways and wastes nothing of the experiences we go through to shape us for our roles in the future He had planned for our lives.  I know that now.  To become a leader, I first had to learn to see myself through the eyes of a servant.  All I had thought and reasoned to myself, was not according to the  mysterious ways of The One.  Only now, do I truly see.”

I pondered all that he had told me.  “The One wastes nothing,” I told myself.  Somehow those words comforted me, beckoning me out of the fog of my own self-doubts.  This insight from a man who was himself once a slave and was now the representative of the Capitalian monarch as governor of this region.  A profundity that had not escaped my notice.

Nem went on to tell me how the plague that had once destroyed Azragoth from within, would finally serve to destroy its enemies, and force any new attackers to contend with attempting to channel their forces through dense forests lines that flanked the wings of the city.  The trails through massive ancient boles of trees would hamper any dense attack and foil any attempt to build siege works or large trebuchet launchers to assault and breech the fortified sidewalls of the new city.  Only small hostile bands might enter the old city, but they would soon discover that the grounds of the outer dead rings had become an inner moat of seeping black death and filth, effectively killing any foolish combatant intent on reaching the heavily defended inner ring, that had been defensively coated with pitch and tar, only to be quelled by a cleansing offering of fire.

The prevailing winds that sweep downward from the uplands, just beyond the massive back walls of Azragoth, would drive the stench of the diseased spewing black sludge across the plain and would chase the armies off the open fields and drive out the ranks from approaching the old front of the ruined city gates.  Self-preservation and fear would consume the ranks and cause them to flee for their lives.  Any of the small bands foolhardy enough to touch or approach the pitched walls, would come away with tar smears that the army leaders would assume was plague contamination and the returning soldiers would be killed at a distance, rather than allowing them to rejoin their ranks for fear of carrying contagions.  The armies would unavoidably be divided and decimated, delivering Xarmni, once more, a humiliating defeat and granting Azragoth a few more years of unmolested quarantine.

It was a brilliant plan.  Filth and fire.  Sins of the city, purged and expunged by a following flush of fire, cauterizing old wounds.  The valley gate and the dung gate, had been enjoined together to form a cleansing gate that would outflow down into the Hinnon valley, where so much death had been buried in the old siege ditches dug by the former Xarmnian army that had invaded the city under plague long ago.