From Aphorisms: 1:35
Trapped deep in His own realm, far away from the Thief and Death, a growl shook the foundations of Szez’tek Vooznal’s resting place. Bright leaf-green light flashed. It sent ripples across the other spaces, a cosmic earthquake throughout the dimensions.
“Go, Juvenile of Scales! Initiate of the shadows in the Swamp. Show my acolyte, holder of the blade, how right he is. Save the seedling of the hidden path!”
The mighty God hissed as He watched the last daughter, weaving His own threads into what was to come. Wanting freedom as much as the Thief and more. He had been contained for far longer, and He ached to be free of this prison. Even though, in a way, His chains were more… Elastic.
Vivex charged through the canopy, knowing she needed to get there not only quickly but also quietly. And her trial had prepared her perfectly for that. She was a waft of smoke on the breeze, a swaying shadow in the branches and vines, unseen death in need of prey!
The medicine that the Ambassador gave her seemed to have healed minor injuries she had forgotten about as well. A bruise there, a fracture elsewhere, things under the scales that she hadn’t noticed for quite some time.
I had gotten used to them! A disquieting thought, and something to remember for later.
Must maintain. Must be fit!
And she could tell it was making a difference. Vivex found herself moving even faster, more dexterously, covering even more ground through the trees than ever before.
The wind started to howl, and it sounded fearful, the leaves rustling in tones that made her think of white and yellow, and under it she could hear the young barkskin’s howls of pain and terror. They creaked and groaned through the trees, bouncing from one to the next, explaining how she could hear them from so far away.
Arubra’s kin were resonating with them. A collective defense?
Faster! She knew she was leaving the Provider and Shashk behind at this point, but she couldn’t stop. She was called by the forces that maintained the Belly of the World. A rhythm of urgency, thundering in time with her heart.
Protect the barkskin! Her Instinct snarled, driving her forward.
Kill the interlopers! She snapped her jaws and leaned into her sprint.
An ancient calling, she could feel it.
There were trespassers, poachers, parasites and thieves. Strangers that had to be hunted like the game they were. The Apex leapt across nearly twenty feet of gap before landing with barely a rustle of leaves above. It had been easy!
I could jump even farther if I had a longer stretch of flat ground.
Thrive! There was a short pause from her Instinct. Careful! Quiet.
Vivex adjusted how she ran through the trees, slowing from a sprint to a run, sliding down one branch to then use a vine to swing to the next. What little sound she made vanished as she gave herself more time to temper against alerting the enemy. She had startled members of the brood before, the parasites couldn’t possibly stand a chance. Whoever these trespassers were, they wouldn’t even notice her.
Don’t rely on that though. Stay vigilant. Remember Scithaan. She couldn’t afford to be ambushed out on her own.
Her Instinct grunted in agreement, giving an impression of pulling at her shoulders to slow her just a little bit more. Forcing her to take yet more care. Stalk… hunt!
She could still hear Arubra screaming, and as she rushed in, leaning back to try and give her feet traction to slow down, she could start to hear the words.
“N-no! You can’t take my sap like this! You can’t!” The barkskin was speaking some other language, and yet the warrior could still understand her. She didn’t have time to wonder at it, as she prowled through the canopy.
“You will find that I can indeed take your sap, fool.” She couldn’t understand that, but she was pretty sure it was the common language amongst the smoothskins, similar words to what Tum and Jeg had used.
Maybe they have returned with a larger pack? She was distracted by a hornet that buzzed in front of her face, and with a precise flick of her claws she bifurcated the buzzing insect.
No. Dead or gone. Her Instinct growled, the faintest yellow hue of pride complementing the others because she had dealt with her distraction unconsciously.
With a quiet grunt of her own, the predator sniffed the air, keeping her tongue hidden. There was a strange scent on the air… Ozone. The scent was familiar.
Danger! Beware! Her Instinct hissed, filling her nostrils with the odor, trying to remind her of it. And it was familiar.
Where have I smelled that before?
Poachers. Magic. Lightning.
“You’re killing me! Why are you killing me?!” Arubra wailed, and again, the Initiate could understand the foreign tongue from the barkskin, but not from the others, who laughed and jeered.
At least it confirmed there was more than one smoothskin.
Her eyes narrowed, the situation getting more complicated by the moment. Did smoothskins have a strong sense of smell? Vivex doubted it with such flat snouts, but she couldn’t know for sure, it wasn’t something Tok had told them about.
Or if he did, I don’t remember.
Face the wind.
Arubra screamed wordlessly, agonized, then managed, “My bark! No! My beautiful bark!” They were flaying her, and Vivex growled, angry that they were playing with their prey.
Kill!
Vivex held herself back though and knew she would have to rely on the ambush. She could hear them, moving about. Only faintly, but a year of being the constant target had honed her senses as well as her muscles.
But what kind? And how many?
“Be silent!” After the foreign words, there was a loud sort of hum that then faded, and the smell of ozone spiked. The screaming was still audible but muffled. She cursed, wishing she had kept up her practice of the language, having forgotten so much of it.
Thock! Thock! Thock! She hopped forward, moving closer suddenly before slowing down. An ax?! Were they finally finishing the job?
No… No, it was similar, but not quite that. She leaped closer still, still moving through the canopy. Each strike was punctuated by another scream, and that was all she needed to know.
Need to see! Need to close the distance. She flexed her skin to blend in. As Vivex shifted, taking a step forward, something shone in one of her eyes, making her blink. She looked down to see what it was, worried it was one of the smoothskins.
Damn. It wasn’t, but it was just as bad with her needing to rush in.
She had forgotten about the shiny earthbone ax. As if to punctuate her blunder another hornet landed on the ax, forcing her to flick it away.
I don’t have time to wait. She hissed softly, frustrated. She’d have to risk discovery. Tok and Shashk can’t be that far behind.
Vivex blended, flexing her skin and slicing a vine free with her knife.
Silently swinging wide, the Greenscale placed a hand over the dwarf made ax to hide its shine. Her scales shifting as she moved, only matching hues, not patterns. She was moving too quickly for that, and was far enough away for it to matter little.
The hunter was still glad for the thick canopy and shadows to hide her form. She could see some of the trespassers now, but none looked up into the trees.
Fools.
Her feet dug into the trunk of a far tree, and she tore off a hunk of hanging of magebeard out of a low branch, draping it over the shiny earthbone before clambering up onto one of the branches and into the wind.
As the shrieking gale whipped by her the screams of the Barkskin increased in pitch, and she got a face full of scents. The Initiate knew exactly who was doing this. She had smelled these smells before too, most of them anyway. There were a few she had not. But one in particular was distinctive, and it confirmed her suspicions.
Humans.
She growled, hate scraping her insides like obsidian flakes. Traitors! Parasites!
Vivex stepped around a snarl of thin branches, making sure to go around them so as to not snap them off and make noise. She’d pick them off, one at a time. Kill them all! Eat their fl-
She jerked to a stop, staring.
The clearing was full of them!
Shit!
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Vivex counted, or tried to, but it was difficult with them all moving so much. At least several dozen. Maneuvering carts into position, pulling aside tarps to show more massive clear containers. Others were gathering at regular intervals around their incursion, looking out in all directions. And still more were hacking away at the underbrush and trees, making an open path towards the small fleet of barges that they must have used to penetrate the Belly of the World so far.
They mean to harvest as much as they can. They must know where other Barkskin are! She could see that there were already other containers out on the barge. Some already filled, something strange about the liquid, but the glare from the shine of the clear material they were made of made it hard to see.
Can’t let them have that. Or take more from Arubra. She would have to break those containers somethow.
Dangerous. Her Instinct repeated.
They had a variety of weapons, swords, spears, bows. None had tube-weapons though, to her mild disappointment.
One of them stood out to her, standing at the center of the pack, next to the tree. His garments were loose, stitched and embroidered with arcane symbols and runes. They were ironically purple, his actions alone contradicting the hue. At least he was furless as far as she could see.
Look closer!
Vivex squinted, there was… something. A shimmer, a dome of almost nothing swirling around him.
No, there are two! She looked over to see Arubra in one as well. Almost like a bubble.
The bag! Something similar, anyway.
He stood next to Arubra’s tree, and both of the bubbles made the air ripple like heat haze. Then she saw the hammer in the mage’s hand, and that explained the sound. He had pounded a tap into the tree, and was moving to pound in another, cutting into the bark already.
Sap poured out slowly from the first tap. It shimmered, twinkling like Zasa’avi’s eyes in the night sky.
The rootway! The Aether! She looked back to the barge. If that is the same sap… They were killing the barkskin for access to the magic within. But why?
That got her Instinct to change its opinion. Kill! Dominate! Teach lesson!
She planned to, baring her teeth for a moment. Snarling silently, the Initiate thought about what she had on her. Her bag, which was not much help in a fight, but she had the ax she had taken from Shashk, and her black blade.
And her bow.
I don’t have any arrows!
Take arrows. Hunt, idiot! Her Instinct yanked her into action.
She hissed, sliding down the back of the tree as the mage continued to mutter and wave his hands, and she could see that his skin was marked as well. Creeping forward, knowing that she didn’t have to kill them all, she scanned the whole group to make sure none were coming her way. Vivex just had to open up a path for the Ambassador and her Provider. She knew that were surely following.
Her Instinct grunted, excited for the challenge, the kill. The blood.
The humans continued to clear the area, some even laying out large cloths that they propped up on poles, forming flimsy shelters. Others were piling the wood and making small campfires, digging holes in the ground to hide the light of the flames if not the smell. Vivex was right next to a small pack of the archers. There were only eight.
Only?! Her eyes shifted back to the other warriors before looking at the archers again. They’re thinner than the others, but they are two feet taller than I am! It didn’t matter how inherently better she was when the odds were that stacked. And being thin didn’t mean that they were weak. She could see the muscles in the parasites’ backs and arms.
Not to mention that the rest of the pack would turn and join too once they heard the fighting.
Careful. Slow.
She would have to be.
Moving closer she shifted into the underbrush, crouched low.
That one.
He was a male, walking off from the rest, and Vivex wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t take long to find out. He lowered his garments when he was about twenty yards from the others, and started marking territory.
She snarled at the insult, at the challenge, fighting down the black and red. Can’t give away my position! She rushed forward on silent claws.
Like hunting rous. Like hunting ducks!
She leapt, three toed feet gripping his arms to hold them down as her matte blade found his jugular.
Punched forward.
The bark of the willow the human had urinated on dyed dark as he crumpled.
Aerosolized blood sprayed out in a thick mist, his lungs contracting as he tried and failed to scream. His hands jerking against the tightening grip of her feet, her toeclaws tearing into the fabric of his tunic.
Probably to try and clutch his throat. Idiot.
Kill!
Patience… The hunter wanted to see this, this one’s death. It had been so long… She grabbed the fur and pulled the head back.
Vivex stared into his ugly round pupiled eyes, sensing his terror. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Part of her was satisfied in a good hunt, a quick and silent kill. Another was savoring the terror and fear in the eighth genera’s eyes. A third was bored with it already.
“Please! No!” Arubra squealed, prefixes saturated with white and dirty yellow.
Distraction, idiot!
Vivex’s Instinct was right, she had others to deal with. Reversing the knife she rammed it into his temple. Twisted with a crackle of bone. He flopped the rest of the way to the ground, eyes rolled up.
Vivex snatched the quiver of arrows at his side, attaching them to her back with the corpses leather belt, finding some mud to cover the shiny buckle. With it on her back most of the bright leather of the quiver itself was hidden from anyone she was facing. The Initiate had done her best to darken it with the mud and greenery around her, but to her eye it was still the wrong color.
Will have to be sufficient.
He had a pack too, with a rope lashed to the outside. She grabbed it, snarling silently at how bulky it was.
Open. Take organs. An apt analogy from her Instinct.
The predator scrambled up the tree that the archer had urinated on, slowing for only a moment at a pond orchid. Not caring about the large tadpoles in it she washed off the blood.
Keep clean to honor the Gods, keep clean to continue to blend.
Vivex tore into the pack, looking through it. A polished piece of earthbone, flat so she could finally see her reflection, though she only took a moment to take in her scarred features before she put it into her bag. There was food, it joined the polished earthbone, and same with a strange leather container like the one she already had. That she left behind because of the weight of the sloshing thing. Full of liquid.
The Initiate left the pack in the tree, but took the rope tied to the side of it before moving on to a fresh vantage point. She had her eyes mostly closed, hiding amongst the vibrant tree orchids as she planned her next move.
Vivex needed to make this count, cut down the numbers before her Provider and Shashk arrived. But how?
Fire?
She eyed the encampment, but it didn’t look like they were settling in for long. Perhaps a single night? There was also a problem with that idea as well.
Might harm Arubra or her tree.
She would just have to do her best to deal with them all.
Bzzzzzzz… She hissed softly in frustration. There were no less than twelve hornets in the orchids around her.
Damn insects! She swatted one away, but another two took its place. Wait… Was there a hive? Vivex looked around, searching up above.
There!
Sure enough, there was a hive, and it was a big one too, nearly three feet across.
Save that for last. It would be a great way to completely disrupt everything before making her escape.
If I need to.
Thock! Thock! Thock!
Arubra shrieked even louder!
Vivex had to move, now!
She searched for a good target, and saw that there was one human by the edge of the camp, out of sight of the mage and away from the others. Pulling a cart along before stopping and pulling the tarp off of it.
Acting quickly, she prowled through the canopy, checking to see that the other humans weren't looking. They all were busy with their own tasks. Good.
She checked to make sure her target’s back was turned. It was.
Vivex lowered herself as much as possible before dropping to the ground.
… Thump…
The eighth genera jerked and spun at the sound.
Shit!
In Salkov’s Signet District, the young dwarf woman let the pub door swing shut behind her. She checked her cuffs before striding in, her boots clomping slightly on the wooden floor of the tavern. The Templars had just galloped past in their armor, shod hooves of their steeds throwing sparks off the cobbles.
That meant only one thing.
Guess they heard about ol’ Floss.
She and the Delmarva’s had known about it since last night, and it had been quite the ruckus. Delre shrugged to herself, it wasn’t her business. Hopefully the guards didn’t notice that there were several alchemical components missing.
Sorry Flossy, but you’re past caring about any of that. She hadn’t let Tim in, and she was glad for that. Whoever had broken in before them hadn’t made it quick.
Delre took the last pull of her cigar, listening to the soft crackle of the ember as she did.
She held the smoke in her mouth for a moment, letting it cool and then blowing it out of her nostrils and flicking the butt into the embers of the fire.
She ignored the glares of the few patrons, a few were low ranked nobles, but most were merchants.
She didn’t know what the problem was. She hadn’t stamped it out on the floor or anything.
Standing at five foot two, Delre was respectably dressed, clean pressed white shirt, plain dark blue vest. A hatchet and a buckler at her belt. Her boots were a bit worn, but they weren’t threadbare either, and her tan trousers finished her little ensemble. But clearly she was still too rough for these snobs.
She almost stole one’s drink to try and start something, but restrained herself.
The pub was in the signet district, which meant two things. First, the clientele was much less likely to pick a fight, and second, hassling any of them would call the guards down on her, unfortunately.
And that didn’t make it any less tempting to steal a drink.
Even the atmosphere of the pub screamed opulence. Dark exotic woods from the great swamp were the building material of choice in the place. Most likely traded for astronomic prices most likely from the leatherbacks that lived down there.
Or they’re spoils of war. She had the thought as she noted all the gold leaf and filigree everywhere.
Even rune candles, which never dripped or burnt out without deliberately snuffing them. They were far more expensive than aetherlamps. Warmer light, better atmosphere. And the prices, Gods… the damn prices.
Can’t take it with me, I guess. And now wasn’t the time to go to a different district anyway. Del sighed, and that also meant she couldn’t justify getting something particularly good, or intoxicating.
“Ale.” Delre ordered, her thick boots clomping on the tile floor as she sidled up to the bar, scattering more coin than she would have liked on the countertop.
She did smile at the Belmaian barmaid though. Del liked the striking ruby in black eyes she had, feeling like it went particularly well with her aquamarine skin, and elegant curling horns. The Barmaid smiled back, and had quite the adorable gap between her two front teeth.
Shit… Might as well do some dowsing.
When the barmaid returned with the ale, Del leaned forward to take it. “Thanks! Telianna, right?” She thought that was the woman’s name. She let their fingers brush together slightly as she took the crystal mug, pulling out another cigar with her other hand.
The Belmaian giggled, her tail waving intricately, reminding Del of a pleased cat. “Yeah, and you’re Delre, right?”
She lingered there, checking the room to see if any of the customers needed anything. It seemed that none did, because the barmaid leaned forward slightly, resting her elbow on the table and propping her own head up.
Del noticed, but she just took a pull on her drink. “Yep, that’s right.” She placed her cigar in her mouth, and Telianna grabbed a candle to light it for the dwarf, their eyes locked. The Belmaian’s tail swayed slowly.
Once Del had taken a few slow puffs, blowing the smoke away from the other woman, Telianna said “Thought that was the right name. I like the scar…”
She reached out with slender fingers, cupping Del’s cheek, running a thumb against the old wound. Del noticed the lacquer on the barmaid’s nails, pale yellow. Telianna looked out from under her brunette bangs, her eyes shimmering with reflected light, the curling horns shining with silver decorations.
Del smiled a bit wider around the cigar, happy at how well things were going. She took it out and said, “I could show you a couple others if-”
Telianna’s eyes looked past Del, they widened, she started to pull away. The dwarf saw the reflection in them.
Tydrik…
Del crammed the cigar back in her mouth as she spun, sloshing her mug of ale into the burly human’s eyes. Thickly calloused hand pushing Telianna back with her free hand, out of danger. The dwarven warrior threw herself to the side as she did, falling from the stool.
BANG! The cudgel slammed into the counter, leaving a dent right in front of where Del’s head had been.
Other patrons whirled around in shock. One woman screamed, and several jumped up to scramble out.
“Fuck!” the human assailant scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his red sleeve, stepping back.
A spindlier one moved in with a knife, face concealed behind a red kerchief. Delre knew exactly who they were.
“Fucking Bookkeepers!” she snarled.
They used to be into high stakes blackmail and the trade of illicit information. Now though, they were completely different. Cultists, gangers, and rivals trying to move into their territory. They were the reason she needed to stay up north near their hideout.
“Just fucking wonderful!” She snarled. She hadn’t even gotten to finish her drink.
PATREON! It is at least 15 chapters ahead, and I am working hard to get it permanently up to 20, with plans to add even more! All money there goes right back into making the series as good as I can, and every cent of it is appreciated more than I can say.