((Closed to The Mongrel. Follows events from The Gnarled Roots of Osiris II))
"Does it always rain this heavily in Raiaera?" Shinsou muttered, shaking his soaked brown hair as he scrambled into the doorway of a crudely constructed tent. The afternoon was made dark by heavy and cumbersome rain clouds that had rolled over the outskirts of the tainted forests of Linqualme, ones that hung there for what seemed like an eternity. The rain fell in sheets, bombarding the ground and kicking up spats of mud.
Bane Stark, who had stood guard at their campsite on the fringes of Lindqualme for most of the day, shook his head silently. A single scarred hand remained gripped around the hilt of his double bladed swallow, as always, in habit alone. His navy green ranger’s gear, smeared with mud and streaks of rusty dried blood from slain fiends, flashed momentarily from underneath a black greatcoat as it was rushed by the constant, chilling torrents of rain that swept through them.
“Not long ago, Shinsou, The Forgotten One, Pode, tainted this already terrible place with a maelstrom of dark magic. There are undoubtedly fiends waiting not far from here that are the stuff of nightmares for stronger men than us. Yet,” Bane queried, shooting a quizzical glance at his client, “you are concerning yourself with the weather?”
Shinsou shrugged. “Pode is dead, and I have all the protection I need from anything that Lindqualme throws at us. I’ve got more chance of catching pneumonia than being killed here. We’ll be fine.”
Bane sighed, shaking his head in frustration. Whether the Telgradian realised it or not, Shinsou was never far from conflict. The scent of it was always there, enveloping him, almost as powerful as the stench of the dead of the corpse war. Being relatively new to Raiaera, and despite Bane’s warnings to the contrary, the ranger feared Shinsou had still not grasped the enormity of what the Corpse War and Xem’Zund’s armies had done to life in this once beautiful region. For the most part, Raiaera had ground to a resounding halt. What few cities remained were now empty husks or besieged, and the majority of Raiaera’s citizens were living mostly in the northern forests under the protection of various hidden sanctuaries. There was fear and desolation at every turn. At the hands of the Corpse Horde and their mighty archlich, Bane knew that some of these cities had suffered fates much worse than destruction.
This time, he knew better than his client.
Shinsou, however, was characteristically calm. His soft, golden eyes veered through the rain and across the rugged tree line edges not so far away as he remembered his mission in Raiaera. They were here to investigate a suspected Jal Shey portal site north of Lindqualme, a place that the texts in The Cartographer had indicated had been built in the midst of the Corpse War. With everyday life thrown into turmoil by the fallout of Pode’s handiwork, Shinsou knew that the rare opportunity for his bitter enemies to construct such a gateway, completely unhindered and unchallenged, was going to be too good for them to miss. He could see the gateway in his mind, pieces of broken stone pillars placed in formation on an obsidian pedestal. Then they would come in their hordes, shadowed by their evil creation; Temperance. There would be that familiar horrible, rotting stench of flesh, the kind that would heave the stomachs of even the steeliest of men, as they cut through the broken remnants of Raiaera before turning their attention to the rest of Althanas.
By the time anyone had figured out what was happening, it would already be too late.
“The fact is, Shinsou,” The gruff and irritated Bane started, turning to face the soaked Telgradian. “You don’t have all the fucking protection you need. We are here to track down a Jal Shey portal in a region that has had its heart savagely torn out. This place has become a lawless free-for-all, for the most part, and we are about to blindly march into the middle of it all. If we are to do this, we need someone who knows Raiaera, and, to be honest, I’ve already made the fucking arrangements for you anyway. So, my friend, you might as well learn to deal with it.”
Bane had endured more than a decade of fighting for everybody else’s causes, and was damned if he was going to be killed needlessly for another one. He had served armies, fought for bandits and rogues, fought for any bastard who would pay him enough gold to do their dirty work. But the main attractions of doing this sort of work relied heavily upon him staying alive long enough to enjoy the benefits.
“Oh?” The Telgradian asked whilst he shook the rain from his own white greatcoat. “And whom, may I ask, is it that the mighty Bane Stark turns to when faced with overwhelming odds?”
Bane stroked his beard irritably, holding back the urge to throw a right hook at the glass chin of the young, cocksure Telgradian.
“Her name is Illara.”
The rainstorm beat at the already weathered skin of the ranger’s face, with monstrous droplets shattering into white pearls against his jagged visage, but the ranger barely flinched. He just watched silently as Shinsou’s expression morphed from one of complete disinterest to one of a sudden, burning curiosity.
“Illara the half elf? The vanquisher of Pode?” The Telgradian’s golden eyes lit up. “How does a shabby, two bit, worn out ranger from Corone like you know her?”
Bane smirked at the retort from the man he was coming to call a friend. “Shabby, two bit rangers like me still have some reach in the world, Shinsou. Did you think I would agree to travel to Lindqualme, into the heart of Raiaera, and not have a bit of insurance? She is to meet us here, at this campsite, tomorrow at dawn and will take us as far as the portal. She’s getting a cut of my pay, so be fucking grateful.”
Shinsou raised an eyebrow and wiped his brow with a dirty sleeve, smearing a streak of mud across his glistening forehead. “Good thinking! Bring her back to a place like Lindqualme, where she can be reminded every minute about Pode. Nothing like getting off on the right foot, eh?”
With that, Shinsou picked up a nearby water tankard and took a swig, throwing it casually to Bane before disappearing inside his tent. "See you in the morning, friend. Let's hope our guest doesn't take the choice of rendezvous personally."
As he took a swig for himself, Bane noted how much Shinsou reminded him of his younger days as an arrogant young ranger. In those formative years, there was that fire in his belly, steel in his eyes and power in his bones that made him a real warrior, even if a slightly foolish one.
I was so sure of myself back then, and I knew nothing could get in my fucking way. We crushed rebellions with our fists of iron. We broke clans and we smashed gangs into oblivion. We were invincible.
As with the uncertainty of the journey ahead, there was the same uncertainty again about the violence of this storm. Just when he thought the rain had done its worst, another two or three downpours would come in sudden bursts, the silver sheets driven by the wind to spatter against the landscape of the red forest’s perimeter like grapeshot. With one final glance from the outside of his own marquee, Bane carefully secured the ropes that held his refuge together in order to prevent the harsh winds from tearing it apart. It was time for rest now.
They needed to be up early to meet Illara.
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