Vultures & Scorpions

4/52 Vultures & Scorpions 

1/ Absent Thorns 2/ The Blue Fire 3/ Year of Year 4/ The Silk’s Emerald 5/ The Secrets of the Snow 6/ Past in the Worlds

/1/ Absent Thorns 

A training camp, an evening and supper in lightest rain, meditating in the storm. By the next day at noon, walking thru thick forest, branches pushed aside and clearing walking quietly in open shade, by evening boots on common road. A distant city with a wall, a tavern with farmers at dusk, producing jokes and half drinking, singing and half wincing at the locals’ stories of ghosts. Onto the city, absent of guards in the pathway streets, absent of garrison, requesting an audience with the high court, but absent of king. The banners still hang, the flags still fly, and the people still whisper rumors about unknown visitors. They’re surrounded by fighters, but no warriors. The jester peeks from behind the throne, “give up now, you’re surrounded,” only to laff at them. “What happened here? Where is the king?” “Why, so you can kill?” They answer, “There’ll be no killing, we seek a trophy that only your king has, we come for the Rite of Pol’u.” and a child shouts, “but they have weapons,” and the fighters stand defensively. “We would not explore without defenses. Stand down and let us sit with your leaders, without king, we will go to join his campaign.” The answer, “the king is gone, the council is gone, the alders are gone and they’re not coming back.” “What do you mean?” “The Shirsho come, they take the leaders, take their place and they’ll come for YOU.” the jester presents himself, “Strange for sure, but wait for night, and hear them circle the city. /

/2/ The Blue Fire 

Capable soldiers, curious people, and wonderful food, warming and waiting to learn more of the town language, words the hunters know and revere they speak, the wares and wiles of local lives are learned, the children repeat three syllable pronunciations where they give instinctually two. More importantly their warrior language planning to fight monsters at sundown, somber fear and safe caution - counting weapons and exits and boundaries. They see a necklace and ask for it by name, "where did you get this Claw Hammer" and the child corrects, "It's Clo-Amar" - 'take is to who makes it and you might be King on that empty throne the morning' the maker in a shop with wooden door, a small office with quarters in the back with slanted wall. The grey seller in short had made it himself, and knows what haunts the city, when asked, avoids answer. The maker and of their origin, behind a story of youth and memory there, and with pressure tells a story. These people are good, and to save themselves took pride in magic and science, and without the old magic, the old demons came. There is no sound as the warriors pause. They believe in magic, but not demons, and say as much. Talking it out, they ask where the maker learned to make the necklace, the culture it represents, the spellbinding used to protect the children that wear them at the order of their superstitious mothers, and he tells them about a trader on a road. The trader was a travel companion for a time, but he'd watched him die "during another pointless war, in another pointless country" that gathered the hunters quiet again, they knew the name, "he only mentioned them as the 'Monks of the Blue Fire' - the amulets were made with items traded into the town, themselves made of parts unknown. They take one of these amulets from the neck of the shopkeep. The warriors explain their voyage, with some objections, with some silence, they worry, the knights errand make solace a truer place by giving light-imbued medallions to the children. 

/3/ Year of Eclipse?

Knights of light make across meadow, riding for an hour nightfall brings about caution and pace, slowed to horses walking and caution in the wind, marching against the moonlight, a constant light breeze of clouded glow the wind blows clearing the mist, quiet enough to be asleep in the saddle, a group of ghouls attack the lead and last horses, leggings unraveling and torn with sleeves battered and worn, awfully lacking armor vs broadswords, but their wanton hunger makes them strong in close clasps of desiccated grasping and rasping, arrows let no blood and hatchets only slow their momentum, fists are tearing limb from limb and bites turn into glowing green venom, those bitten groan as others cleave to bones, splitting skulls twain drop them to crawling attack over ground. A grin with narrow eyes in hood and skin of moondust, with raising a hand the ghouls become the undead, even missing limbs they crawl and bite unless their eyes are smashed, by the first undead snuffed the warlock has turned one of the knights to ghoulish puppet, sunken eyes and thin gaunted skin, with armor and broadsword and boot and skill. Two men twist in poisoned anguish as three stand against their zombie brother. The warlock is ghoulish and bites one of three, the poisoned brothers rise with survival rage and fill him with four knives. The warlock laffs, the ill fall back again, the three end their brother pinning his sight and then shortening him, swinging spinning and slashing at the cannibal warlock. The evil creature laffs without sound and smiles as long as a blink, with his knives stabs with blades like fangs the green glowing toxin his feet pause from dance as he readies to bow, their little cuts are scrapes with toxic roots, but the third knight stands behind him. A heavy swing behind the knee makes him kneel. He laffs with echoes and the madness cuts thru the clouds, he laffs with thunder and the sound rises from the earth. A blade would only cut air faster than he loses his head, but it was too late. The eclipse begins.

/4/ The Silk’s Emerald 

They use magic to closingly burn their wounds and alcohol to dilute their blood. Once sure safe to move they retreat in fear of breezes and broken blades of grass, limping and having lost a horse, one another making it back not without pain and suffering. They reenter the town of only youths and elderly, as they stitch their wounds the oldest stand around a sundial seeing the faded glow of the sky’s hanging eclipse. The knight leader, Arawn, orders anyone able to lift a weapon to keep it with them at all times. At the coals of the metalworker he orders a white fire and magic colored fuels, in the fashioning of amulets and finding of artifacts, both heavy and old. One of his men has pains from wounds not healing, he inspects as it infects with web and weaving of silk spider breathing beneath the wound itself from the claws of a man. Arawn pours his own blood into sand, a cup carved with runes, he breathes life into words and light escapes his lungs. Bloodworms seem to spawn from larvae in the cup, but he quickly pours it all over the fierce red and hot coals, from it an iron post gathers it, and with rolling and boiling and burnishing and patience it becomes a unique mosaic blend of red and silver. With a mallet the marble is broken and falls into coals, when the sharp edges sink he takes it in metal tool, carrying it with deep focus, it steams without touching water. The wounded man, different in appearance than the other knights.

Arawn: What’s the weirdest woman to wrestle you at night?

Collin: What?
Medic: What strange tale of beds and breakfast do you know?
Collin: Dolosantra, a Kinian mercenary, during, she would laugh and cry, back and forth.
Arawn: What did it sound like?

Collin: Well it----.

Arawn drops the heat forged marble into the wound, without notice, as Collin screams miniscule spiders break from the white woven nest, electricity arcs and kills each spider as Arawn and medic hold him down. As Collin yells at the pain he screams seeing his wound. 

Medic: I imagine it sounded something like this. 

The medic pulls the stone from cauterized traumatic wound, it glows green. 

Medic: Now we have a warning beacon at least. 

Arawn: Sleep it off. Get him a drink. Hell. Get me a drink.

The eclipse waits. 

/5/ The Secrets of the Snow 

The color of the sun dances in wicked darkness around the moon, the edge of shadow hiding in the echoes of light, around it the sky a mist and fiery smoke, holding high in the sky while the horizons leagues endlessly distant are filled with stars as tide of nightfall kept afar from burning eclipse. Harsh and confusing against the eyes, but the air gets colder. Day after day a new clear winter grows against the tarnished night, each wave of air blades of grass grow weaker in the tarnished light, grinding the patience of the knights errand. The air thick and lazy, like fog between walls and no roof, in this cold the fog becomes snow, not melting against the fires in the dimly lit city, not falling straight like lines of rain, and grey to the touch, the snow is ash. 

/6/ Past in the Worlds

A stranger comes into town. Collin trains with sword in his off hand, and dagger with his wounded arm, He trains himself to make purpose-filled attacks or dodge an assault from Arawn. Thru the gates several soldiers enter, some with weapons already drawn, others ready to fight nonetheless.

Arawn: Looks like vultures, make a distraction. 

Arawn fixes his collar and walks away. The knights continue their planning at a map the nearest forts circled. The soldiers poke thru the baskets and plates of the people they cross, until confronting the knights. Pretends to be wildly drunk, a soldier prods his wound hurting him, the knights stand and protect him, the lead soldier makes his threats and taunts the crowd and mocks them all. As he claims the whole town as his property he points a sword at Collins heart, Arawn secretly captures one of their men with blade against his throat, like a scorpion with control. The soldiers pause and Arawn orders them to leave, the soldiers are silent and Arawn puts the blade against his eye. The hostage orders a truce. 

Nevil: How did you know?
Arawn: You only have ten men and just enuf favor to scout for wares yourself...and - I’m - not sure the ash in the air -- didn’t come from you.

Jester: The ash has to be them

Collin: It has to be something.

Nevil: You need us here...we came for support…

Arawn: Support? 

Nevil: The ash is on your map, Villa Tsoro, Emmis, fire and death, and our Ft Huro scorched earth and undead in sacred armor.
Arawn: If I don’t believe you?

Jester: They can’t be trusted, they started the fires.

Soldier: Let him loose, or fight us all.

Jester: He’s going to kill him, kill them all! 

Arawn stands looking over Nevil’s shoulder at the soldier. Behind himself the jester, akimbo and cocked head in stare. Arawn gracefully releases him and turns to the jester...who grins.

Jester: Oh...can you tell...I got ahead of myself didn’t I…

Arawn: On the ground, slowly.

Jester: ...at least tell me how I look in a cape and hat…

The jester’s eyes turn smoke and green like the warlock the week before.

Arawn: We have questions, I have questions.

Jester: I’m like an open spellbook really.

Arawn: You’re going to answer. Hands in the air.

Jester: Fire away.

The jester raises his hands quickly, the clouds glow red, the town begins to burn as particles of sunlight drip from the weak boundary of the moon, the air polluted with ash of moonstone and fires of a volcanic starlight raining down. They cover their mouths and twenty men begin fighting the warlock. 

The evil jester stands prepared to dance a waltz and offers his hand to any of them, refused his fangs drip and he lashes his arm out, throwing the dense air and half of them into or toward the wall as others attack. 

Jester: You are kindling! 

One man is backhanded to the ground, another brash charges and his helmet dented and bludgeoned toppling backwards heels over feet. 

Jester: You are leaves!

Shield against fist whose bones of knuckles break skin and heal with white fire blood. Sword against arm in the face of destiny, foe against fighter, three swords of three men swing high to low against his back, the warlock turns around swinging, knocking their weapons from hand. 

Jester: Branches and trees!

A spearhead pierces his leg, but only the surface as a knight leaps at it clutching with both hands, skewering the jester’s leg. The jester takes the spear with both hands and slams it and the knight into a wall, then pulls the spear and launches it with a grunt into that knight and wall both. 

Jester: YOU ARE ASHES OF THE MORNING STAR! 

Arawn stands a forearm taller than the jester, battling until his shield breaks, a bigger sword from his belt, now two hands and double-edged sword. Lash against instinct and crash against spirit, stabbing at darkness in the hope of dawn. Arawn hacks once into the warlock jester’s face, infuriating him, his vocal chords tear thru the red air with black smoke, a howl as he strikes Arawn who spins, landing on his knee the jester claws down his back. Arawn stands and turns, now shirtless from it. In the smoke, in the red eclipse, among the fires with scarf as a mask. He holds his arms out, a pillar of virtue and statue of mockery against the jester. 

The jester attacks, Arawn takes stance and defence, using rage as a weapon he only blocks the jester with his sword and each time steps inward, making opportune strikes, elbow to face, shoulder to back, and in the fires Arawn now spins like black smoke. Each block with blade cuts the warlock’s skin, until in rage losing a hand and clutching his wrist. 

Jester: One fire dies, one bolt of lightning and even the air you hide in will burn.

The soldiers and knights spear him many times simultaneously, and the youths and elders launch arrows. As Arawn approaches the gravel crushes beneath his boots, with lunge into kneeling he swings and takes the warlock’s head. 

Arawn: Cremation.

He drops his sword there and walks. 

The sun and moon release each other and go separately, across the sky the colors of clouds and rain glow again from the horizons, and daybreak reveals how heavy the smoke is as fresh air returns. A mere child picks up the glowing red and silver marble and it begins glowing. 

/6ch