Between the Numbers

[Caden Law]

Liquid time! Specifically, this is (probably) a solo that's (definately) set in the month-or-so timeskip between FQ chapters. In short: I'm going to use this to resolve where Caden spent the month, what he was doing, and formally introduce a few of the things he picked up during his recent mishaps with teleportation. If'n you happen to be one of the other folks who got 'ported and want to experience the true joy of Thermically Neutral Quantum Dickings, feel free to drop me a PM or something.

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12:35 AM, Day of the Back-Fanged Venomous Otter, Month of Young Prodigies, 3177 of the Occultist Calendar (OY)

Most people are born into the world with a scream. Considering the lungpower you've got at that age, it can be a mighty scream or a weak one, but it'll always be a scream. It's generally motivated by absolute, undescribable terror in the purest, most uncomplicated sense of the word. Babies, being without language, don't have anything to muddy up the concept of fear. Point in fact, they don't even really know what fear is.

Move to the opposite end of the spectrum and you'll find the Wizard. Not the road-mage or the hedge-taught wiseman, but the actual, honest-to-no-particular-god Wizard. He and his ilk are taught academically in the lands of Salvar, primarily to try and control the abyssmal weather there, but a side-effect of the training is that most Wizards learn to speak many different languages. A few of them learn to speak any different language. One or two, and this is important, learn how to speak every language -- including the ones they don't actually have vocal cords for, and the ones that technically don't exist.

So, about a hundred feet above an ocean far off the coast of Raiaera, you'll find a Wizard screaming in a language that didn't exist until his instincts called for it to be created. Because he felt the same type of absolutely undescribable terror an infant feels when they're born into the world, except slightly marginalized because he can make up names for it. His given name is Caden, his family name is Law, his middle name may or may not exist and his Sorcerous Name is Blueraven.

And his name for this hitherto undescribable terror is, "OGNTSAAAAAAAAA!!!!-," cut rather violently short on the grounds that he just smacked face first into the water at around ~60 miles per hour. Give or take a flying fish to a random lower extremity. The name of the fear is, by the way, pronounced exactly like you just read, but with a few more exclaimation points, a 1, a 0, and then another 1 and then finally a little pi sign.

And yes, academically trained Wizards can actually pronounce these things. It's part of the job description.

In any case, following a period of blackout and then a frantic moment or two defined as OH FUCK I'M DROWNING I'M DROWNING I'M DROWNING, Caden regained enough control of himself to pull his head above the water, flail around, and finally calm down. This came with a short stint of hyperventillation, and then some gagging on seawater, and then the casual reassertion of Normalcy. This in turn involved taking stock of the situation and effectively naming the place he was in. Aloud. Just to insult any Gods that were listening.

"Middle of the ocean...somewhere in the mysterious placename generically translating as Other Regions (http://www.althanas.com/world/forumdisplay.php?f=24)...the Keb...no...the Raiaberas Oceanic Division Line. Yeah. Yeah, that'll work. And fuck anyone who says otherwise." Nodding. Which is followed by the sound of distant thunder, which is in turn followed by a loudly shouted PISS OFF!

No more thunder.

Caden spat out a mouth full of seawater and continued. "Back...back in my own time. Back in Althanas. 12:35 PM? AM. Right. AM. Right year this time too." This prompted the jarring memory of his recent mishaps with teleportation (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=12597), including the part where he had (probably) most recently materialized about two years before the present. Which meant that Anton the Warlock had about that much time for a head start on his Nefarious Plans, assuming the cold of Salvar hadn't killed him. Caden hoped it had been a brutally hypothermic death involving shrinkage that bordered on implosion. He knew it was a long shot, but he hoped anyway.

A little splashing.

"Okay. No help's coming. I'm sharkbait if I stay here. So."

In his hand -- still very much in his hand, as a matter of fact -- was the Wand. Acquired at the very end of his trip through the horror world of N'Thayn'sal. His knuckles were going white from how hard he held the thing, but now it was time to put it to use. Spell by spell, magic by magic, Caden Worked his way up out of the water; diminished personal gravity meant less weight meant more buoyency but less stability. Caden was essentially able to wade waist-deep in water where the nearest ground was probably a mile or two beneath him. Then came the thermics; freezing the water around his feet until it formed enough mass to float on its own. He kept freezing water too, until he had essentially created his own iceberg.

The process took Caden about half an hour.

It also left him numb and in pain almost everywhere that didn't have Core Body Temperature stamped on it. When he was done, he spent a while laying there in near-shock, using yet more magic to try and raise his body temperature...

...and when that pretty much failed, Caden decided there were worse ways to go. Which, apparently, prompted a random God to flip him off.

Cue the great big flash of light, as another chunk of Caden's quantum shadow (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=12219) merged back into itself. The light was accompanied by a broken harp note, a misplaced echo, and a flood of memories and extra weight that had been missing. To put it simply: Caden had existed in two (or more) places at once, twenty years removed, for about half an hour in one place and two or three days in another.

Try not to think too hard about that; your brain might explode.

A few seconds later, the light dissipated and Caden was standing in place without ever having gotten up at all. His clothes were dry, his temperature was normal, he felt about twenty pounds heavier and his bones were sore from one inch's worth of split second growing pains. He also had the familiar scent of the Scara Brae Bazaar lingering in his nostrils for a few seconds, before the smell of salty ocean air could overtake it.

"Oh," he mumbled, taking the moment to marvel at his other new Wand. Which he'd apparently bought from a lady who, now that he actually had the time to remember her, had sold him a bowie knife, a scalpel and a burlap sack. "I'll have to thank that woman sometime," Caden said to himself. Considered the circumstances, a listener would've heard the underlying promise of I'm going to live long enough to do just that.

Except for the part that there wasn't a listener. Anywhere. For miles enough that the horizon dropped off in every direction and no land was visible anywhere.

Caden fell over backwards. The ice didn't make for a soft landing, but at this point he was too tired to care. He stared up at the stars and they stared back, and then he made a point of tucking the Bazaar Wand into his empty sleeve. The other wand was too thick and sturdy for that kind of treatment, which meant--

"I'm gonna have to make a trip to the Bazaar again," Caden noted. This was as good a reason as any to sit back up. After tucking the wand into an uncomfortable empty spot between his battered chestplate and coat, Caden drew out his bowie knife and went to work.

[Caden Law]

Raiaberan Ocean, Division Line (Not yet contested territory)
12:35 PM, Day of the Bomb-Eyed Hermit Crab


I'd like to say something trite and amusing, like a monologue about how I've lost track of the days and the nights and I'm starving and going to die and all that.

But it's been twelve hours and, frankly speaking, I'm just bored as shit. I spent a little while distracting myself by putting a purpose-built Circle of Power onto my makeshift iceberg-turned-liferaft. A few runes to keep it intact, way too many to make it move (I had to actually erase a few to avoid breaking the thing), and a one or two for direction. Everything after that, I spent tweaking around. I've put in a water filtration catch on an uprisen part of my ride, meaning I won't thirst to death any time soon. I tried fishing, but it turns out you can't make a spear out of ice an expect it to work on the first try.

Or the second. Or the third. Or the fourth, fifth, or even the thirty-sixth. I eventually gave up and now wait for a slow, lingering death by starvation. Hurray.

In the meantime, I've kept myself relatively occupied wearing this pencil here to the bone. Odd as it may be, I found two or three pencils lodged inside my Hat. Presumably, they're debris from my pass through Time. Which I will elaborate after I ramble some more. Each one is six-sided, very thin, lacquered and orange with these rubbery things* on one end and a sharpened tip on the other. I have to use a knife to keep them sharp. There's some tiny writing along one side, loosely translating into Scarabrian obscenities, the number two, and LUV BRIT-KN EE. I have no idea who this Brit-Kn Ee is, but I can only assume it's an Outsider of unimaginable horror and glory.

* Note to self: They're erasers! Dear Swaying Saint's Bottom YES!

In any case...

For posterity's sake, I suppose it's only prudent to give whoever finds this a rundown of what happened to lead to my tragic and unforeseeably grim demise. I will now summarize it in a short, point-by-point analysis so as to spare lead. I made the tragic mistake of deciding to visit the lands of Raiaera. Right as the not-exactly-Forgotten-anymore Necromancer, Xem'zund, launched a massive offensive on the Elves.
A bunch of Elves threw me through a door and into a conference room. Then a bunch of other Elves talked down to me, tried setting me on fire, and generally turned me into a seething cesspit of racism and imagined violence. Assuming I do not die, I will excise this violence from my being with an Elven prostitute* and as many pints of cheap ale as I can afford on a shoestring budget.
I somehow wound up commanding an entire brigade of 400-some men and a few Elves. We held a bridge, lost the bridge, died in droves and were seperated accordingly. Last I saw, some of them were out in the fields. While they're probably all dead now, there were a lot of them and I gave them my Sorcerous Name as part of their group identity... In a bastardly way, I'm starting to wonder if I gave myself unintended insurance against Curses. See Magic Section.
Teleportation. Hilarity ensued. Quantum. I visited an alternate timeline called N'Thayn'sal. It striking sucked and I'm going to abort it.**
Unfortunately, I happened to make the trip back while dragging a murderous inhuman Warlock with me. He was weakened somehow in the jump, but still formidable beyond reason. His name's Anton. I'm going to have to kill him, if something didn't do the job already. Joy.

* According to most pointy-eared propagandists, Elven prostitutes either don't exist or only exist in human-or other-dominated lands. I intend on disproving this even if it takes me the rest of my natural life.
** I will abort it by virtue of cheating like a mother-striker. I got my hands on Greyspine's Grimoire in N'Thayn'sal. It's got a hand-written account of just about every major disaster that turned Althanas to N'Thayn'sal. Unfortunately, the actual magic was lost. At this point, I speculate that it was ripped out by the timejump. It may have also been reabsorbed by the current version of the book. Magic is funny that way. Either way, if I meet Greyspine again, I'll ask.
Sighing to himself, Caden set the book down and stared at the tortured little nub of a pencil he had left in his hand. There were still two more in his Hat, but it was looking more and more like it would be a very long time before he could make that run to the Bazaar and buy more.

"Gods, I have to stop being so cheap," he mumbled. Then went right back to writing with Nubby McLeadkins perched between his fingertips. Noticably, the letters he wrote straightened themselves out as soon as he finished each one.

I suppose the most unnerving thing about the past few days is that I was apparently killed in the history of N'Thayn'sal, by a woman named Viola Darkstalker. Who, also apparently, cannot stay dead. Which completely scares the shit out of me. Among other things, I now have to figure out how to kill someone and keep them dead. Which may help in keeping N'Thayn'sal from happening as well, since a brief skim of Greyspine's notes revealed a similar ability among at least one of the Forgotten Ones. When I get enough time and writing equipment, I'll hand-copy his account just for redundancy's sake.

For what it's worth, I need to sort out a lot of things from all this, but I have no doubts that I'll be able to do just that. My libido (Darkstalker was the sort of woman who makes Hate Sex seem like a worthwhile goal in a relationship), heart (I need to speak to Veshua again; make sure she's okay) and mind (so many apocalypses to avert, so little time...) are all effectively at war right now.

...and there now appears to be a boat the size of a small castle coming at me. Fast. I would include a detailed description but
Here, the grimoire entry ends. Not because Caden's little raft was destroyed, but because Nubby finally gave up the ghost. So, Caden tucked his book back into his Hat, straightened himself up a bit and made an obscene gesture to somebody's religion.

Then his little raft-berg was destroyed.

[Caden Law]

The next few days were marked by endless repetition of the word OY, along with the occasional smack upside the head that left Caden's teeth rattling and his vision blurry. There was also the smell, which combined a great variety of different atrocities into a nasal holocaust much worse than the sum of its parts. Imagine thirty-two different types of animals having twice as many forms of dissentary, then tack on a few hundred people relieving their hangovers on the pile. Now set it all on fire.

When Caden finally regained a full measure of consciousness, this sensory horrorshow was the first thing that hit him. He almost threw up. Point in fact, the only reason he didn't throw up was because he hadn't eaten since arriving in Raiaera -- the one or two snacks he'd swiped in N'Thayn'sal had apparently flittered away in the timestream. Or something like that.

The second thing he noticed was that someone had lobbed him into a cage. A rather unclean cage made out of what he rightly assumed to be some kind of metal -- possibly an alloy of dehlar, judging by how Empty it felt -- that was utterly empty except for himself and a pile of bones in one corner that had probably been human. Once. A really long time ago. Whatever they'd been, someone had picked them clean, broken most of them open and left the rest to vermin.

Caden, by now well above and beyond his Breaking Point for Disgusting Things, merely looked around the cage and said to himself, "How utterly quaint and thoughtful. I wonder if they went to the trouble of hanging it from the ceiling by a solitary chain link?"

A quick jostle to either side confirmed it. Caden gave what amounted to a golf-clap and a whistle. He was genuinely impressed. Unfortunately, someone didn't give a damn.

"OY," that someone bellowed at him. What followed was a stinking pile of gibberish: "Et uck nuka wagh NENKADA?"

To which Caden replied, "Say again?"

The someone promptly rushed up out of the prerequisite shadows of what must've been the ship's cargo/slave hold, smashed headfirst into the cage's down and roared into it. Profanity, in all likelihood. In Universal Readspeak (where everything is English unless someone slaps fifty apostrophes to each letter), it translated into a drunken, rude, decidedly stereotyped Cockney accented tirade.

"YOU'Z A WIZA'D, AIN'TCHA?"

"Can you please stop speaking in all caps?" Caden calmly asked after enough verbal abuse to pick up the gist of the language. By which point he was completely covered in spittle. "It's been a long day."

"YOU DON'T FOOL ME, BERK!"

"Shut the hell up already," Caden ordered in Common with the Wizard's Voice. Though his abuser didn't speak the language its meaning still got through. The cage had holes in it, after all.

"...oy," was the eventual response. "You is one o' dem fingots. Wiff da magicks. Don't look nuffin' like da ones I know though."

"Th!" Caden sounded.

"Th?"

"You're learning Common! I'm so proud! Open up the door and lemme give you a hug!"

"...whut?" asked the thing Caden quickly came to know as Gannasen Ritzer. More on that later. When Caden finally gives up on tricking Ganna into letting him out. Which, for the record, sure as hell isn't gonna happen any time soon. "You'z a strange one, Berk. Whuss ya name?"

"...Berk, actually," Caden answered, smiling.

"Well whutta de odds o' dat! OY!" Ganna bellowed, which prompted the arrival of another captor. It bears mention that both of them were a rather greenish shade of dark grey, with stubby looking pig noses and comically oversized mouths (except, Caden decided, if those mouths were biting at you). Their eyes were red, their hair was missing completely, and both were dressed in outfits that looked very much like shit-stained fatigue pants worn in tandem with faded red shirts.

"WHUT?" the second captor, who Caden eventually identified as Matterak Dackdack, stomped into view not long after. Aside from the outfit, he was holding a nasty looking battleaxe.

"Dis goy's name iz BERK!" Ganna pointed out.

Cue hysterical laughing. Absolutely hysterical. With spittle and clanging axes and knives the size of falchions and soccer hooligan stomach thump-a-jumps and everything. And the ever present OY! from both of them.

Inbred, Caden decided. Completely striking inbred.

"OY!" Ganna yelled, then rattled Caden's cage around. This had the net effect of covering him with broken bonestuff and bugs, along with turning him upside down against the far wall. "OY, BERK! SAY YA NAME!"

"BERK!" he answered back on reflex.

Cue more hysterical laughter.

Denebriel, please kill me now.

[Caden Law]

Bay of Long Teeth, Western Coast of Kebiras
5:00 PM, Day of the Piecemaker's Saw

As it turns out, and Caden would later write at length about this, there were many different types of Orc. The breakdown is somewhere between ethnic and species, such that the Orcs of Long Teeth have adopted a somewhat unusual term to define it: They don't have ethnic groups of sub-species, they just have tropes. Orcs are, on the whole, not a particularly common lot in the lands Caden had frequented. The vast majority were barbarian tribes in Scara Brae and Berevar, with a token few in the Tular Plains and some others scattered about.

Kebiras, however, had more Orcs than you can shake a boomstick at. Hundreds of types, and that was just from what Caden saw during the time when Ganna, Materack and the rest of the Ill Fortuna crew dragged around through the streets. Well, not exactly dragging, so much as they took turns haulling him around, cage and all, from shoulder to shoulder. It was an enlightening experience in some ways.

For one thing, there were the Orks (Issh spelled wiff a K, see? Makes it all X-treeeeme like, yeh?) who were his captors. Put bluntly, they were all probably inbred to the point of insanity even by greater Orc standards. They were hunchbacked, ugly enough that there were no females (Dass whut udder orcs is for!, which somehow still translated as totally inbred), and apparently had no concept of...pretty much anything that didn't involve pub crawls, money or violence. Or some combination thereof. But they at least had the decency to explain the presence of a gold standard in Kebiras. The exact same gold standard you'll find everywhere else.

Gods work in mysterious ways.

Other Orcs included the Torcien crowd, who were more human but decidedly uglier even than the Orks. There were also the Tribal Orcs, who were close in many ways to what Caden was used to; your bog-standard, overly stereotyped shamans with hard-ons for honor and warrior traditions even though they professed pacifism. Then there were the Smorcs, who walked around carrying firearms. Caden recognized them as such because they looked passingly similar to ones he'd seen in use by Aleraran Elves. Except slightly more and less advanced in that they could probably fire anything that could fit down the barrel, and the barrels themselves had axe-blade bayonets welded to them.

Then there were the Whorcs, who are what you think they are. The less said about that, the better. The Ercs were apparently a tiny minority, resembling brutish elves with green skin, absolutely no hair and slightly pointed teeth. Their women had even less modesty than the Whorcs, though Caden was the only one amongst the Ork convoy who found this remotely appealing. Dey'z got no morals, Ganna explained at some point or other, Just bewbs an' dees wimpy ikkle teef dat ain't even good fa luv-bitin', which was followed by, AM OI ROYT?, then a chorus of OY!s and more hysterical laughter.

Then there were the Borcs, who were simply bigger than everyone else. Twelve feet tall was the average, and half as wide, speaking their own even more guttered language than everyone else in Long Teeth. They were, culturally, somewhere close to the Tribal Orcs. Mostly. Except for this one pack that looked like an italian mob gone totally medieval. With axes and falchions and spears that had human skulls dangling near the blades.

Caden was quick to notice that the Orcs were the only versatile things roaming the streets. Any other humans, and he only saw one or two, were in cages or worse. He saw no Elves, no Dwarves, and nothing remotely resembling a giant cow person because cows are beef and beef tastes great and there you have it. No trolls either. Or zombies. Or anything like that. Just Orcs, Orcs, more Orcs, and then some Orcs.

The city itself was little more than Huge. Liek dis here x-bawx fing what woshed up de udda day, as Materack so eloquently put it. Buildings ran the gammut from shoddy little huts made out of whatever was on hand at the moment to huge, proper fortifications of solid masonry -- and even a true Mage's Tower dotted the cityscape here and there. Animal-drawn carts clogged almost every street that wasn't big enough to carry them, and a few ships floated overhead, held aloft by obviously arcane magicks judging by the glyphs and sigils painted onto their keels. Many had crude jet engines, most looked like they might fall apart at any second, but a select few terrifyingly well put together.

As it turned out, Caden was going to get to know one of these very soon.

"So," he eventually asked, once he'd gotten the Kelbiran equivelent of Common down, "Where're you guys taking me?" Of note is that he didn't ask why they'd left him fully armed and armored. Presumably it was because anything he happened to be carrying was pretty well useless against an orc. They had guessed his magic and dealt with it using a dehlar cage, after all. They were inbred and insane, but (sort of) intelligent.

"To da auction house," Ganna answered. "Cap'n Krumbaz'z got a bounty out on softies like you, Berk. Says 'e needs a guide to da Westlands."

"Ah. Well, when you put me up, feel free to point out that I've been everywhere in the Western Lands," Caden explained. There was no forethought in the statement. In fact, he was almost painfully aware that something or someone else had effectively hijacked his mouth and vocal cords to say it.

Common Sense compelled him to not contradict it, either.

He was, of course, met with another chorus of OY!, this time accompanied by YEHHHH! and one or two further trademark infringements -- including a WAAAAGH!!!

Caden eventually smiled, in much the same way as someone in the middle of a nervous breakdown would.

"Oy," he parroted. And this was also met with hysterical laughter.

"OY, BERK!"

-----
A few realities removed, a certain Sage smiled too. Not that he'd ever tell anyone why.

[Caden Law]

The Jagawak Auction House, Bay of Long Teeth, Western Kebiras
6:00 PM

Caden saw a larger concentration of humanity in the auction house than he'd seen in the rest of the city combined. This was, in and of itself, not at all unexpected. What surprised him was that he really didn't look like most of the people being sold from Orc to Orc for everything from slavery to pets to a tasty meal in five screams or less. For one thing, they dressed differently. Most wore variants on the Loin Cloth look, with enough bruises and marks to show that they'd been wearing more but someone ripped it off. More noticably, the vast majority of them were black.

As it turns out, though Caden himself wouldn't be the one to make a connection since he had never been to any version of Earth, Kebiras is basically the Althanian equivelent of Africa, aboriginal Australia, Native Alaska and northeastern Russia. The only whites were in the regions close to Berevar, and that was quite a ways off from the Bay of Long Teeth, so most of the people captured there were sold (and/or eaten) elsewhere. Incidentally, the shamanic traditions of the Tribal Orcs were little more than secondhand knock-offs of the Southern continental humans.

As Caden himself would likely only learn somewhere far down the line, Kebiras was the sight of more than its fair share of genocidal wars between Orcs and Humans. And unlike in happier high fantasy worlds, you're not gonna find any Gandalfs or Thralls to go around stopping them. Tack on the presence of rainforests and some decidedly ancient mythology revolving around the War of the Tap, and voila.

And the Ercs, for reference, are just what you get when Humans, Orcs and an isolated population of Elves spend about ten thousand years intermingling like rabbits.

Beyond the whole humans-for-sale bit, which Caden more or less forced himself to ignore, the Auction House was much more upscale than the rest of the Bay that he'd seen so far. The walls were mostly clean, the floors only had a bit of rat shit on them, the auction blocks were well kept and the Auctioneer spoke a dozen languages with the fluency of a Wizard and the speed of anyone who was whipped and brutally beaten if they tripped over even one syllable out of a hundred. Scurrying about everywhere, no surprise at all, were gremlins. Ugly little cheetah-spotted vomit green bastards with freakishly big ears and noses and beady little red eyes.

In all, the experience was as novel as it was numbing. Caden's cage was hung up at the central block and Ganna threw his pitch to a crowd of every kind of Orc you can put a name on.

"OY! DIS HEA IZ A WIZA'D! A BONA FIDE ONE-OF-A-KIND FINGOT WHAT CAN DO MAGIC AN' ALL DAT! E'Z BEEN ALL OVA DA WESTE'N LANZ AND 'E CAN BE YOHS FO DA ROIGHT PRICE! HIGHEST BIDDA WINS!" Pause, as Ganna looked almost sadly at the cage. "An' 'is name's Berk. G'bye, Berk."

Caden gave a little wave. "Oy," he replied. This was not met with hysterics for once. He didn't want to think about why.

Bidding started at a paultry 500 gold. It didn't take long to hit 1000. Then the price doubled, tripled, quadrupled, somebody went bankrupt and a fight started after one of the gremlins got beheaded for no apparent reason. Dangling in his cage, Caden sat back and watched the melee with the most disinterest he could conjure up on tattered whims. Blood splattered on his cage and his shoes several times, but never quite reached anywhere else. The highpoint of it all was when Materack's head went cackling by, utterly seperate of its body.

Naturally, this had to be when the fighting was stopped. Suddenly and violently and all over the place, by a Borc who stood head and shoulders above the rest -- so tall that he was a few inches shy of headbutting the ceiling everytime he took a step forward. He was broader than the rest, bigger than the rest, and just plain meaner than the rest. He resolved the whole damn fight with a roar that sounded more like a dinosaur than a humanoid, then ran four lesser Orcs through on a sword so big that it made claymores cry in their sleep.

He didn't have to do the last bit, either. He just did it to show that he could. When he was done, he kicked all four off the blade and beheaded them in one swipe. It ended with a snap that threw blood all over a nearby wall, but left the blade utterly spotless.

"That's enough of that," he said, with a disturbingly light, reserved voice for something that big. The fact that he was literally dressed like a classic Victorian pirate, sans the hat and plus a stark white vest decorated by a very red skull emblem, somehow did nothing to diminish how dangerous he was. Apparently, being fifteen feet tall was a good excuse to wear whatever the hell you wanted.

"My name's Jhall Korumbaz. I'm Captain of the skyship, Red Skull. I'm going to buy the human for exactly 10,000 in gold, and I'm going to castrate anyone who tries to outbid me. Whether or not I feed your leftovers to my pet Erc is entirely up to you. Any questions?"

Absolute silence, save for the eventual, Going once...going twice...gone!

"Good then," Korumbaz said with a smile, to which Caden could only reply...

"...oy."

[Caden Law]

Red Skull, Eastern Raiaeran Ocean
Day of the Scorched Bandit, Month of the Viral Lovers

Despite its name and the general attitudes of its crew, Red Skull wasn't all that bad compared to other ships Caden had been on in his life. There was no seasickness for one, and First Mate Drenshaw was an utter stickler for keeping things clean. Which generally involved someone taking a hose and blasting Caden's cage out with it. Said hose was apparently magic-powered. The only problem Caden had with the cleaning was that he happened to be inside and trying to sleep at the time. This basically set the standard for his tenure on the skyship.

And really, flying in the skies is a hell of a lot less romantic when you're surrounded by angry looking green people who think you'd be tasty with some bread and mustard. The only true bonus to any of it was that Korumbaz did his Captaining from a veritable throne set up right behind the helm, and Caden's cage was hung right out in the open next to him. Which was basically the closest thing Caden got to insurance that nobody actually would eat him. It also gave him a few opportunities.

The least of these opportunities was the eyecandy. Red Skull had a bona fide harem of Erc slavegirls, along with a few Whorcs that Caden made a point of ignoring. Orcs handled peacetime discipline issues differently from Human navies, largely because they didn't have peacetime discipline in the first place. Among the slavegirls was Korumbaz' personal pet, a beautifully melancholy number by the 'name' of Ugh-ha.

No, really. That was her name. Presumably because it was what Orc men said in relief when they were done with her. She spent the whole damn day running food, cleaning up, and handing out sexual favors to any Orc that looked a little too feisty for Korumbaz's tastes. To the best of Caden's knowledge, that was her only real purpose. Any Orc she couldn't screw back into line ended up falling overboard in the middle of the night. Whenever she wasn't Servicing the crew, she was literally serving as Korumbaz's lapdog, sitting pretty and seductive on his knee for hours at a time.

To say that she was built for the job would've been an understatement. She was beautiful by any standard, in a savage and sad kind of way. Her head was shaved, her ears were pointed, but her face had the right proportions to pull it off and her canine teeth were only just sharp enough to be alluring. Her voice was almost designed from the ground up to hit a male libido with the accuracy of a sniper rifle, and her curves were the sort of things that banish pretenses of modesty outright. She wore nothing but loose strips of fabric and the occasional bikini, which only barely did the job of holding her breasts together -- and as a result of her Orc heritage, she didn't exactly need a bra to keep them up.

The thing of it is, Caden reflected over his first week with the crew, She's got absolutely no confidence or sense of self.

Which fed into the bigger opportunity. The one that Caden took to as naturally as a fish to water.

Complaining.

"You do realize I need to eat in order to live, right?" he asked every so often, which only rarely resulted in anything more than a glare. "And I'm too valuable for you to just kill me because, y'know, I know everything."

"Shoulda just killed you and taken the damn course through Berevar," Korumbaz replied from time to time, and though his heart was in it, his mind was not. The route given by Caden did turn out to be considerably less hassle than any trip through the frozen reaches of Berevar would've been. They could already see land for that matter, and would cross over it sometime early in the morning by most estimates.

Caden continued this all week, from the Bay of Long Teeth to the ocean off the coast of Raiaera, more insistent each time. Every single time, he was turned down on the grounds that opening the cage to give him food would give him too much of a chance to escape. So he played weak. Wizards are natural verbal acrobats, and that includes being able to sound weaker than they actually are. The fact that Caden was already a scrawny academic in clothing that looked much bigger than anything he should've been wearing only made it easier. When nobody was looking, he went the extra mile of crumpling his Hat a bit, scuffing his clothes and tipping his glasses crooked.

And finally, on the night before Red Skull was to pass over land, Caden played his sole trumpcard: The Wizard's Voice.

He waited long enough for most of the crew -- including its captain -- to go to sleep. And then he leaned back in his cell and started to Whisper.

"Jhall...Jhall...don't wake up, Jhall, not yet. This is your conscience speaking, along with your common sense. The Wizard is dying, Jhall...he needs a full meal...but he's weak. Weak enough that you can send someone else to do it...someone close, who can be trusted..."

Caden stopped there. Pretended to fall asleep while faking the occasional shudder and twitch routine whenever a night crewman wandered by. Thanks to the wonders of autopilot, they were few and far between.

He didn't have to wait long.

Ugh-ha came up, bearing a bowl of whatever passed for skyship rations among the Orcs. She stopped short of opening the cell for a number of seconds -- long enough that Caden risked what felt like life and limb to crack open one of his eyes and see if she had any company. She didn't. Which lead him to another risk.

"It's okay," he said, and made it a point to sound weaker than Hell when he did it. "Not like I can even move too well right now."

On cue, Ugh-ha opened the cage up. She sat the bowl down, and Caden met her in the eyes. For the very first time in his entire life, he actually felt remotely guilty about lying to someone.

"Sorry," was his only lame excuse, coming all of a split second before he threw himself out of the cage and tackled her to the floor. The Bazaar Wand slipped out of his sleeve a second later, a chorus of sparks dancing madly around it as he slapped a hand over her mouth and made ready for the kill.

Caden stopped short, mind you. In hindsight, he'd probably try to pass it off as I just wanted to get laid. The sad truth is that she just wasn't fighting back. Or making a sound. Or even squirming. Just staring at him with eyes that were as much pleading as they were pleasing, and even more accusing than either. Caden had a long list of petty little crimes, and he had killed a woman or two in his lifetime (the scars on the back of his neck were going to be a painful reminder of that one). But the Erk, whose very existence seemed to revolve around hitting the male personality in all the right places, managed to find the one part of Caden's human decency that hadn't quite eroded just yet.

"Gods dammit," he muttered, in Western Common. He stood up without another word, but Ugh-ha remained in place. "Get up," he told her, and she finally did just that.

It is here, of course, that the aforementioned human decency did erode a little bit. Caden gave her the once over, the twice over, decided that he liked what he saw and came to the irritating realization that he would've probably tried saving her anyway. This lead to the following statement, spiteful and misguided as it was: "You make me want to kick puppies."

It's probably a good thing Ugh-ha doesn't speak Western Common. Chiefly because she would've cried and there probably would've been 'comfort' sex lasting long enough for a guard to show up and kill both of them. She nodded like she understood, but otherwise didn't move an inch.

"Do you have a name?" Caden finally asked her, irritated at everything.

"Ugh-ha."

"I mean an actual name-name."

She gave him a perplexed look. Caden gave a sigh. Thought about it. Nodded to himself.

"Your name's Denebriel now," Caden said, then tacked on as an afterthought, "'Cos I'm fucking a saint for this one way or the other," in standard Common of course.

[Caden Law]

Raiaera, Eastern Floodlands
4:00 AM, Day of the Genki Spiderchild

Caden didn't have a whole lot of experience actively using his newfound Cosmic Positioning Sense, but he knew well enough when and where to kick his shoddy little plan into motion. He started by using his wand and a low-intensity thermal spell to scorch runes into the floor around the helm. He continued by using the same spell to scorch runes into just one of the engines. He finished by more or less dragging Denebriel to the back of the bridge and sitting her down against the rails there.

Then he took the time to utter a sweet little blasphemy to the real Denebriel, and sat down next to her.

"Hold on tightly now," he ordered, which wasn't really meant to translate as half-suffocate me in your glorious green cleavage, but he wasn't exactly objecting either. It was a nice way to face death, all things considered.

And they were facing death. It took about for seconds, give or take an eternity, but they were facing absolutely certain death by any standard.

Parachutes don't exist in Althanas.

"Here goes," said the Wizard Blueraven, hoping against hope that they weren't his final words.

A flick of his Wand and the runes on the engine immediately detonated. It went off with an intensity rivaling that of a battleship firing an entire salvo and hitting the mark with every single shot; a jet engine the size of a small house, gone in a flash of white-hot ghostfire and the shockwave to match. Red Skull jarred to the opposite side for a split second, and then instantly began to yaw towards where the engine used to be.

There was an instant loss of altitude in general as well, worsened by how quickly the ship went screaming into a wide arcing turn. Within a matter of seconds, the whole crew was flooding up onto the top deck with weapons drawn and a combination of fear and murder in their eyes.

Caden gave the wand another flick. Runes activated in front of the helm, and it immediately turned hard to the side without an engine.

Behold, dear readers, the very first barrel roll in Althanas history, ending in a terminal spiral dive with no chance of recovery. Within seconds, a dozen or more Orcs, Erks, Whorcs and associated cutlery went flying off the deck. They all screamed right to the ground, and their bodies were going to rain down hard for the next half a minute -- but Red Skull raced them down and won. If you could call it winning.

The ship planted nose-first into a patch of hard ground and forest in the floodlands, and its remaining engine went up like the Fourth of July on impact. Trees for a hundred yards in every direction toppled over, and shrapnel was found as far out as a mile. The bodies of the dead littered almost as much distance; some died on impact with the ground, others hit water and died of shock and drowning instead. In all, however, there were only two confirmed survivors.

Caden and Denebriel made splashdown a few seconds after the ship. The rail gave out behind them, Caden cut their falling speed as much as he could and threw a cushioning barrier into play as well. The shock of landing still left him utterly numb from head to toe, but he made it out without any real injuries. Denebriel, who was ultimately just a pretty Orc with some Human and Elf blood on the side, would've likely gotten out with nothing but scratches and bruising anyway.

It took about half an hour for them to recover their wits though, at which point Caden sat up. Barrier not withstanding, they'd landed in a patch of dry grass on a hill. Denebriel stayed down, either from fear or force of habit. This, and this alone, is why Caden didn't make a wisecrack about victory sex at her when the sounds of explosions and fire finally died down.

Instead, he propped his hands on his knees and said to himself in Kebiran Common, "I'd say that went well, all things considered. Kill the baddies...save the girl...avert an apocalypse.

"...wait," Caden mumbled, realizing only belatedly that someone else had truly been Speaking through his voice. In the relative quiet to follow, he took off his Hat for the first time in weeks, reached in and took out Greyspine's Grimoire. Even before he opened it, he knew exactly what he'd find.


I have a bad feeling about this. A skyship of unknown origins flew over Evernorth en route to Sulgoran's Axe today. Color me a cynical bastard, but Alerar ships don't look like that and it just felt like someone was scouting us. The Orc Tribes I've spoken too lately have made mention of recent innovations in skycraft to the South, in the mythic Kebira...

I'll write more when I know. And I hope to Sway I never know.


-----
They say the Sage God never stops smiling. They are of course wrong.

Sometimes, he laughs too.

[Caden Law]

Eastern Coast of Raiaera, the Floodlands
Day of Sorrows Sung

The Floodlands have, throughout history, been a true haven for growers of both the rice and berries that help to make up a large portion of the average Raiaeran diet; from the actual rice they eat to the eventual wines they drink. They're a part of the Eastern Coast marked for being incredibly vibrant and alive in comparison to the shores north of them. For about a month each year, the sea floods in and the region earns its name. For another month after that, there is wonderful fishing. The rest of the year is spent growing the aforementioned rice and berries, once the native magicks have done the job of purifying the waters.

In the wake of the Necromancer and the Day of Untold Agony, however, the life has pretty well gone out here. It's a reality that Caden had to deal with as he and Denebriel trudged along through knee-deep water and over long stretches of beaten dirt between each growing pond. It had been a day or so since the crash of the Red Skull. They hadn't seen or heard from so much as a single farmer, and where there should've been at least makeshift huts to serve as communal rest stops, there was now nothing but a few rotted stilts someone had left behind in a great hurry.

This wasn't quite so bad, in and of itself. What made it wholly unbearable was that Denebriel said nothing while she spent the entire time staring holes through the back of Caden's head. And not in a good way. He was too itchy and hungry and exhausted to think it was in a good way.

Eventually, he applied what little authority he felt entitled to and ordered her to walk alongside him. When Denebriel just kept staring even then, Caden finally asked, "Can't you talk?"

"I don't know how."

The answer was jarring. Caden almost stopped in mid-stomp through somebody's rice patties. "You know words. Talk," he ordered, and loathed himself for it.

"I don't know how."

"How to what, exactly? Make conversation?"

"That. Yes."

"Pick something. I don't know...what's something you've always wanted to talk about?" Caden asked as he hiked up onto another dirt pathway that'd end entirely too soon for his comfort. Denebriel kept alongside him without complaint.

"I've never wanted," she eventually said. "Just been wanted," which was a start, since she added it without a prompt.

"See? We're getting somewhere now -- and before you say anything that's what we here in The West call a metaphor."

"All my life...but what about you, Berk? What've you ever wanted?" she asked.

"My name's Caden, actually. And...damn. I've never really thought about it either. I just kept studying my ass off and trying not to get killed."

"I just kept doing other things to try and not get killed."

Common ground! the Loin Fairy screeched. Go for the kill!

Note the distant sound of a one ounce hammer smashing someone's skull in.

I think not, said the Conscience Fairy.

"Have you ever wanted to get married or anything?" Caden asked, utterly unaware at any conscious level that his Conscience and Libido were quite literally trying to murder each other.

"What's a married?"

"Marriage."

"What's a marriage?"

To which Caden replied, "This is gonna be a longer walk than I thought..."

[Caden Law]

Tolari Vashan, Floodlands
6:30 PM, Day of the Irritable Saber-Tooth Mongoose

Eventually, the walk did end. By which point, Denebriel had acquired the concepts of modesty and Caden's greatcoat had acquired a few missing inches of fabric. It now went down to a raggedly cut line around the knees, and all of the missing material had conveniently resurfaced as a bikini and a skirt. If not for the wonders of alchemic stretching, said outfit would've broken in a matter of minutes. It still looked close to doing so now.

To his credit as a member of the Male Species at large, Caden's stares were growing increasingly discreet. Why, he could not and would not say. They were longer and more focused, oh yes, but never made when she could catch him in the act.

More important was the final destination of their walk: The once peaceful farming village of Tolari Vashan, named for an ancient Elven hero who took up his scythe and slaughtered Durklan warriors wholesale before returning to a life of peace and song. It was elevated from the rest of the Floodlands, as if a sign of Raiaera itself showing favor to the Elves who inhabited it. The houses were all blissfully simplistic looking works of summer art; plaster and wood for walls, straw and stones for roofs, a tiny market district and an Inn standing within stone's throw of the Mayor's officebuilding, which itself doubled as a Church to long forgotten deities...

Forgotten for the time being anyway.

"Hurray," Caden mumbled, "Civilization." Even if it is pointy-eared, he left unsaid. There was something wrong though. Everyone moved in a panic. Houses were being torn down for wood, and the trash was being unceremoniously burnt up at the center of town. The Elves were out in force to do it, and there was nary a Human -- or anything else -- in sight.

"Are they Humans?" Denebriel asked.

"Elves," Caden answered, just before flagging someone down. "What's going on?"

"Didn't you hear?" The Elf asked, a younger man with movie star looks in a world that wouldn't have cinema for centuries. "Didn't you hear?"

"Apparently not!" Caden answered with a chipper tone. "Enlighten me."

"Aurë Unótimë Unqualë!" the Elf shouted. "The Day of Untold Agony! The Day of Untold Agony! How could you be here and not know about that? You look as if you've been in battle!" Cue the paranoid fingerpointing. "You're one of Xem'zund's agents, aren't you!" It wasn't a question.

Caden slapped him anyway.

"YOU--"

Slapped him again.

"Thanks," said the Elf, his cheeks bruising from the strikes. "I needed that."

"Yes, yes you did. I was at Eluriend. A teleport spell screwed up and I've been on the other side of the world for a month now. Tell me what happened, as shortly as you can."

"Eluriend fell," the Elf answered. "All of Raiaera has fallen, or is falling. We of Tolari Vashan are among the last left in the Floodlands, and even we are going to leave as soon as our boats are finished and the village is destroyed."

Caden stared at him. "Isn't that a little counterproductive to mounting any kind of counterattack?" he asked.

The Elf scoffed. Then he laughed. Then he walked away.

"Uh-huh," Caden sounded.

"What?"

"I said Uh-huh, not Ugh-ha. And your name's Denebriel now."

"What if I don't like Denebriel?"

"Then pick something else," Caden said.

"Era," said the Third-Orc. "Era of Kadin."

Caden gave her a look with one eyebrow raised high enough to jostle his hat. "Kadin?"

"The village I was born in," she said, then offered up the first smile Caden had seen in the entire time he'd known her. It was an instant excuse to adjust his pants a little. "Don't give yourself so much credit," she added, which came off more timid than it should have. It was a start.

"Well," Caden mumbled, "Time to do the Good Guy thing then."

The newly christened Era followed him as Caden made his way to the largest crowd of Elves. They were a haunted lot, standing around that fire. Dirty and ragged looking and they hadn't even seen the front lines, judging by how few were actually injured. Fear through rumor had done more to hurt them than their enemy. Men and women huddled close for comfort, children cried and the oldest looked tired beyond words and reason. They wanted to be alone, to grieve for the loss of a way of life that had seen them through centuries.

Caden did not give them the honor.

"'Scuse me!" he shouted in Raiaeran. "Can I speak to someone about taking an extra refugee with you? She follows orders well and she's a strong worker and--"

"Go away," said the nearest Elf, spitting the words. "Go away and take that abomination of a thing with you."

Strike one.

"It's just one person, and like I said--"

"We don't have the supplies to take on garbage like that," the man said, and finally deigned to turn and look down his nose at the two of them. How he did so when he was a foot shorter than either Caden or Era was a testament to how strongly arrogance had interwoven itself into the Raiaeran people. "Can't you see our lives are already in enough turmoil as it is? In better times, maybe, but not now. Probably not ever."

Strike two.

"Just go. Leave us in peace. May your gods have mercy when the Necromancer comes for you too."

"Sir," Caden said, his patience already wearing thin. "I fought at Eluriend. I'm a defender of your lands, asking you to do one decent little thing."

"Who has time for decency anymore? We are Remembering those who were Forgotten," the man sized up Caden's Hat and added, "Wizard. Your hedgemagicks obviously did nothing to help Eluriend and--"

Somewhere between hedgemagicks and did nothing to help, you'd find strike three. The Elven man certainly found it.

Largely because Caden gave him an unceremonious field goal kick in the groin. He held the Elf by his shoulders in utter silence for a moment, well aware that the crowds of villagers were staring at him like he'd just spat in the face of everything they ever held sacred.

Then he kicked again, and it was truly on. Caden cast aside the whimpering Elf at the same time as a hundred pitchforks and torches practically materialized from the nothing.

"How dare you!"

"Who are you to judge us?!"

"We are the children of Gods!"

It just kept coming. Eventually they began to form battlelines, and Caden let them. Era, knowing full well what was probably about to happen, almost ran for it. Caden grabbed her by the wrist and nodded, and it could've been interpreted a hundred ways that she chose to hide behind him then. He let go, and she stayed there.

"What have you done to give you the right--"

"SHUT UP!"

The temperature in the crowd dropped. Even the fires grew cold and clammy after a while. Within a matter of seconds, there was only silence and unspoken judgement waiting to find its voice.

Caden spoke again. There was nothing flattering in what he had to say.

"I fought and bled and had someone's name carved into my fucking neck because I believed people like you deserved to be saved from the big bad Necromancer. I've been shoved, I've been talked down to, I've been beaten and I've almost died repeatedly, all because of you and your lot. Elves. The Fair Folk of Raiaera, whose music binds power and glory and a terrible glamour.

"Well, there's one thing right about that. It's a terrible glamour. I've met three Elves out of a thousand who've been worth getting to know the names of, and I still haven't liked any of them. When you get right down to it, what have the Elves ever done for the rest of us to deserve our respect and admiration?

"Nothing.

"You're one big pointy-eared orgy of lies and letdowns. Your bards are ridiculous, your magic was a failure, your council is a joke, your heroes are all dead and your gods are forsaking you because you never did anything worth their affection to begin with. Screw you, sons and daughters of Raiaera! If you're all so utterly self-obssessed then don't do the right thing. Don't earn some shred of salvation and redemption by taking on one extra refugee who looks like she may as well be one of you anyway. Don't prove any of the worth you touted over all our heads for the past thousands of years! Don't stick with the rigid code of honor that almost got me set on fire for some Bard's ego! Just die and get it over with!"

The fires had gone out entirely by now. Caden seethed, and the air fogged with his breath. His hands were fists clenched hard enough that the knuckles had long since turned blue, and the look in his eyes could be accurately described as homicidal.

Wizards are quick to anger, but seldom are they subtle about it.

In the end, it fell to an elder to make the call. It always does when the wisdom of age is the only thing you can pretend to have left. An old woman, haggard with centuries of life and bowed on a cane in ways that Elves so typically don't, made he way through the crowd and became the first to speak. Her voice carried the chill of Caden's magic, and there was no song to be found anywhere inside.

"We will take her," she said. "Does she have a name? Do you have a name?"

Bruised beneath the surface and exhausted all over again because of it, the crowd began to disperse. Leave the old to make peace, they'd all probably reason in some way or another, because they're the only ones who are truly good at it.

"Era of Kadin," the Erc answered before Caden could find the words. "Native to Kebira."

The old woman raised a brow. "Your Raiaeran is archaic, young lady. And your clothes need some serious work."

Caden, who had still been seething up to this point, simply deflated into a string of obscenities that ended with the obvious declaration of, "Swaying Saints, I striking hate the Elves," which he made a point of saying in his native Salvic.

"Really?" said the old woman in the same language. "But you hide it so well."

Cue facepalm.

[Caden Law]

Between the Numbers

The next few days were a little bit of a sleep-induced blur. For the first time in a month, Caden was given the chance to catch his breath and rest. The villagers, with sparse exceptions, simultaneously took in Era like she was one of their own even as they glared pointy-eared death in Caden's direction. He saw the woman less and less as the days went by, either because she was busy being shown the ropes of manual labor or because Caden was busy sleeping off an adrenaline-fuelled temporal hangover.

He spent the majority of his time drinking it up at the Inn, one of the last buildings not yet cannibalized in the villagers' efforts to construct their ark to safety; Scara Brae, as it turned out. He might've gone with them too, if not for a combination of seasickness and the hunch that they'd try and throw him overboard if he imposed any further than he already had.

By day four, he stopped seeing Era all together. And that was fine. She was just a temptation, Caden rationalized to himself, And she kept making me feel guilty and confused. This would be followed by much nodding, a beer, and the quietly renewed vow of finding an Elven prostitute for some good ol' No Commitment To Anything fun. The sort that wrinkles bedsheets and gives neighbours trouble sleeping.

He had a small measure of success on day five, when the locals tried to hold some sort of celebration at the completion of one of the ships. For the first time in his life, Caden saw a true Elven bar wench; busty, red-haired, pointy of both ears and chin, and wearing the typical blue skirt/white shirt combo that all regulation wenches have. If not for the fact that she looked like she'd try to poison his drinks, Caden would've taken a shot at it.

Night six, and Caden finally sat down on his adopted bed, took out his grimoire and one of about two-dozen pencils he'd swiped when no-one was looking, and wrote. About an hour on magical theory and academia, another hour recapping choice bits and pieces of the tale you've just read, and finally a personal note. For himself, to himself, and maybe someone else would read it long after his bones were dust and his Name had passed into legend. Such is the nature of a Grimoire.


Between the numbers of Good Things and Bad Things, I'm attempting to work out what I'll call the Blueraven Equation of Divine Comedies. I'm not entirely sure how it will turn out, but we'll see.

More importantly, I have finally recovered from my latest misadventure. For much of the past months, I've been...

It's too long to write about in one sitting. I tried earlier and couldn't finish. In the very most recent step alone, I not only saved the world, I also saved the girl, lost the girl, then got over the girl. Which is a right shame since she had a rack that defies description. And the rest of her matched up too. I'm also starting to think that, in light of my all consuming hatred of the Elves as a whole, I'm going to need two or three of them before I resume not giving a damn. Preferably all at once and with a variety of hair colors ranging from blonde to red to green and yes I am thinking about this a lot. Every three and a half seconds. Sometimes more than that.

I have no idea why my contempt of Elves has channeled itself into wanting to screw an Elven prostitute or three. I'm assuming it's not healthy though.At which point, Caden sighed to himself and skipped through the muck. He ended it with a simple one-liner.
I've decided that I'll head north.He shut the book at that. The following act of tucking it back into his Hat, now with a collection of pencils added, came as something without thought.

He was going to head north. Where the teleportation spell was supposed to send him. And maybe he'd get there, and maybe he wouldn't. One thing was certain though, just as it had been all those weeks ago in another inn, in another city, in what felt like another lifetime.

"I need to go kick a puppy or something. All this goody-two-shoes crap is going to get me killed."


-----

On the seventh day, Caden got lucky. In the same sense that most people get lucky when gravity keeps them from being able to fly. As he stepped from the Tolari Vashan Inn for the final time, the old lady was waiting for him. Her face was equal parts grim and tired.

"A rider came last night. He died. The horse is still alive. If you can ride, it's yours. You can find it in the stables, just down the road from here," she explained, ending with a pointed finger.

"Good luck," she added, in the way that only a little old granny can make such a statement sound like a casual go to hell.

"Thanks," Caden replied in much the same way.


-----

Caden arrived at the stables to find them in mid-deconstruction. Elves were disassembling them piecemeal, each man carrying back his weight in wood and useful scrap. The only horse, conveniently enough, could be found with the only woman.

Era, enjoying what Caden never knew to be a very brief respite from working her hands raw as she threw herself into what was for all intents and purposes a rehab-education program. The only things missing were orange jumpsuits and teachers with stunguns. In their place, Era wore a pair of men's pants and a shirt two sizes too big for any Elf's chest, but still a size too small for her. The horse, for the moment, was the instructor, as it allowed her to walk it in circles by a rope.

In some genuinely roundabout way, there was probably a therapeutic purpose to that.

"Hello," Caden greeted her.

"Come for the horse?" she asked, and he was surprised at how easily she spoke now -- and in what almost passed for normal Raiaeran no less. "Its name is Zelwe."

"Did you name it?" Caden asked.

"Does it matter?"

Cue the shrug as she handed Caden the reins...

...and then grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him into a hug. Which, given the actual height difference between them and the fact that she stood on her tiptoes, wound up faceplanting him into her chest.

"Mmmf dff ddt nnf pfpf," Caden noted, but did not object.

"Yep," she answered, her voice immediately going husky. "Enjoy it 'til next time."

She left without so much as a kiss after that. Just a wave, a laugh like music, and a hipswinging power walk that made Caden's knees tremble. Thankfully, this was not a problem he had to deal with for very long. Chiefly because, just like so many weeks ago at the end of his last stay at an inn, he had a visitor.

Kaerul the raven slammed into the back of Caden's head at a good twenty miles per hour. Maybe more, but definately no less. The result was something along the lines of, FUCKING BIRD!, a drawn knife and a few attempts at on the spot fried raven.

Eventually, this too calmed down. The raven landed in the saddle. It looked at him with those freakish red eyes, and simply said, "To the storm."

Then it left as well.

"Fucking bird," Caden repeated.


-----
"Between the numbers and into the storm," said the Sage, his smile cryptic.

"What fools these mortals be," said the Dragon, his talons clenched.

"Like you're ones to talk," said the Queen, her fangs dripping.


END
Spoils Requested: A bunch of pencils. Yes. I essentially tried to write all of this in one night. For pencils. :p

Incidentally, don't mind the authorial decay. I decided half-way through I wanted to finish this in one night so I'm ready for whatever style hits you feel like imposing. Thanks in advance to the thread's judge.

EDIT: The horse is little more than a one-use transport to the next thread. Where it'll be abandoned or confiscated accordingly.

[Ataraxis]

Quest Judging
Between the Numbers

Dude. That’s all I’ll say, mostly because I can’t think of anything else to fill this. Wait, yes. You put to shame the memes of the FSM and IPU drinking from Russell’s Teapot.

Since you didn’t ask for anything specific, I’ll make this short and sweet (kinda), with in depth comments where such comments are due.


STORY

Continuity ~ 5/10.While I did get more than just hints of his previous adventures, I was left with quite a few questions. His involvement in the war against Xem’Zûnd, his battle against Darkstalker, all of that was good, but I was confused about the whole quantum shadow thing, and the links don’t count in this, especially when the page you link to contains links as well. I’ve lost too many hours on Wikipedia, I’ve learned my lesson! And this Anton guy, and N’Thayn’Sal… In a nutshell, I was missing too much of the multitude of past stories you’ve knit together here to really get a good feel of continuity. On a side note, you did an amazing job at creating an outrageous nation, giving them a culture and peoples and putting them in a society that could, sensibly, function.

Setting ~ 6.5/10. You did well here, at least at the beginning. I think I can honestly say that you depicted Caden’s surroundings in a way that really stood out. Let’s take his fall into the water, his fashioning of an iceberg and the way you wrote its sundering: that was skilfully done, and amusing to read. If you’d carried it out throughout the thread, you’d have netted 8 here, easily. But yeah, I know, you powered through it… for pencils. Damn, I should really give you a bonus for frakking mad dedication, somewhere.

Pacing ~ 6/10. I was drawn into the story instantaneously, because it was so wonderfully weird. If there was any filler in this at the beginning, I didn’t feel it, because I could literally follow a thread of causality that stitched everything together almost seamlessly. After the scene at the auction house, though, it went downhill, though at least it wasn’t a freefall.

CHARACTER

Dialogue ~ 7/10. I loved everything about the Orks and their manner of speech. Subtle integration of gut-grinding tropes everywhere was a fine touch, I’d say. Caden was pretty eccentric himself, and I’ve not seen a wizard pull it so well in a long time. The elves at the end weren’t entertainingly cliché, though. I enjoyed the parts with the Grimoires, since they said a lot about those writing in them.

Action ~ 6/10. Props for finagling an iceberg. The fact that Caden wrote and recounted in his grimoire/journal/diary was a nice detail that did show him for the scholar he is, despite his crass eloquence in written words. His escape from the Dehlar cage wasn’t stellar, though the build-up to it showed Caden’s cunning. I didn’t particularly like the more licentious moments following his meeting with Ugh-ha/Denebriel/Era (well, I did at first but the constant hinting at sex had me yelling at him to find a damn haystack and be done with it), but the way Era said goodbye was… unique, I should say. Back to the escape, though, I thought it was too easy, what with a complex flying ship so under-manned that not one living obstacle stood in his way from the main deck to the engines.

Persona ~ 7/10. The Orks were a hearty bunch, and I’ll miss their infectious liveliness and particular sense of humour. I didn’t get much from Korumbaz except his obligatory bad-guy-badassitude. Era’s growth from empty-vessel/repressed-mind to a free(er) spirit was well done, while Caden displayed a wide enough sheath of emotions throughout this, all well-described.

WRITING STYLE

Technique ~ 6/10. I was stunned by how well you could write a style I’ve seen so many fail at, myself included. I loved the mix of Althanas and Earth culture (which is warranted due to his traveling to other worlds, you smart bastard), aloofness and vulgarity, mixed with both raw and clever humour. You did falter around post 6-7, though, and then it was mostly words strung together to support the atmosphere you’ve set previously, or to be more precise, to keep I from completely crumbling.

Mechanics ~ 8.5/10. Very few mistakes. They’re in the notes annexed to the judgment.

Clarity ~ 5/10. There were many, many things that left me confused in this quest. I won’t even pretend I understood what happened at the end.

MISCELLANEOUS

Wild Card ~ 7/10. I really loved the start, but I think a hook’s permanently stuck to my brow now, with all the quirking it did during the second half. I did give you credits here for the sheer dedication to pencils.

TOTAL ~ 64/100. commentary here

EXP Rewards

Caden "Blueraven" Law gains: 1619 XP!

GP Rewards

Caden "Blueraven" Law gains: 120 GP!

Other Rewards

Caden "Blueraven" Law gains: A bunch of Pencils!


Pretty good for a one-nighter. Scribble well for the ages to read, Caden!





stint of hyperventillation (1) hyperventilation
ice an expect (2) and
dissentary (3) dysentery
Kelbiran equivelent of (4)
Erks (7) Ercs
I've spoken too lately (7) spoken to
Eluriend x4 (9) Eluriand
All together (10) altogether

[Witchblade]

EXP and GP added!