Daughters for the Raven God (Part I)

[Ori]

Solo

Widely-spaced clouds hung high in cotton-candy wisps against the sharp blue of the afternoon sky, each splotch of white perfectly placed so as not to be too close or too far from any other. The skies mirrored the isles of Istraloth, ensconced but free inside and around the shimmering blue-green lagoon, to each sandy green isle a comfortably independent cloud and vice versa. The edge of one small isle, however, generated its own low cloud, black as the deeds which transpired there throughout the morning.

What should have been a temporary village for a band of nomadic raft-people was now quite permanent, a sandy grave. The violence that had rendered it so was past, leaving a remarkable silence in its wake. The waves lapped gently against the shore a minute’s walk to the east, and even the smoldering fires within the blackened, skeletal remains of the huts seemed to hush themselves. Strewn about were the bloody remnants of the village, mostly men and children and women who were old or otherwise undesirable for work of various sorts. The flies had not yet started to buzz, in part due to the rolling black smoke which issued from everywhere.

At the edge of the dead village, two figures yet lived amidst tall grasses, looming over a third. The two were dressed in the motley way of the Freebooters, but one bloodthirsty band of pirates and human sea monsters that plagued this region of Althanas. The third was a slender brown figure, fresh into her voluptuous features and utterly senseless with bruises and shallow cuts and smears of grime from the black smoke of her ravaged home. The pirates crouched to either side of the native girl, bouncing on their haunches in poorly contained and black-hearted glee, glancing from their prize to one another with visible tension.

“Little point in fighting, we’ve done plenty of that today,” said the first.

“That’s a true thing,” said the second, who produced from his pocket a warped wooden die, its pips shabbily carved from the faces with the tip of a blunt knife. “What do you say? He who rolls higher gets first go?”

The first pirate gave the second a keen look. “Yes, well,” said he, “what if we roll the same number?”

“We’ll roll again, until somebody gets a higher number. Now, come on, let’s be good about this. If you win, you win, I won’t do any bitching about it so you shouldn’t either,” the second pirate said.

The first seemed satisfied at this and indicated that his fellow ought to roll. The second pirate made a great show of it, rubbing the die between his fingers and cupping it between his palms to blow at it, and then he tossed it into the grass beside the girl. The first pirate leaned over the girl to see how the cast ended, at which point the second drew his knife and buried it in the other’s back. There was a brief but fierce struggle between the scoundrels, the wounded trapped beneath his savvier attacker, who plunged the red blade into his fellow’s back again and again until there was no more struggle.

Satisfied, the remaining pirate dragged his bloody work out into the tall grasses and then returned to the girl. He stood over her for a moment. One might assume he was considering the price he’d paid for her, but to the Freebooters blood was cheap and a prize like this was rare and valuable. This pirate had already forgotten the name of the other and was instead appreciating his treasure as it now was – in a few short moments, she would be unrecognizable. She was a desert flower, and once plucked and chewed upon she would emerge as something altogether spent, different and ugly. The only question that remained was whether or not he’d put her down afterward.

She moaned from between cracked lips and her eyes fluttered and fell upon the Freebooter without comprehension. He decided to leave the undecided question until after, and made for his belt buckle. The girl watched, obviously sensible but without reaction. The buccaneer would not complain if she remained complacent.

The girl didn’t gasp or express anything at all until her would-be assaulter cried out in pain, collapsing to one knee as it was kicked in from the back. The pirate made for his still-bloody dagger, tucked as it was in his belt, but the new, hulking figure reached from behind him, gripped his chin and the back of his head, and twisted. With a wet, muffled snap the pirate fell dead, and the girl shrieked and retracted her legs just before the body would have landed on them.

She looked from the dead man - who exhaled his last into the sward - to his murderer. There a new man stood, and though he was not singular in height he was imposing, cutting a dark, broad shape from the backdrop of the sky. He was thick with muscle in a way the girl had never seen in a man before, with black hair that hung in thick, subtly wavy, haphazard tresses about his shoulders and across his chest. His only garment was a pair of frayed black breeks, and he was armed with a large sword bound in its scabbard to his back with a thick leather strap, which rested across his tremendous width at the breast and shoulders. He was well-tanned by the sun and yet made chestnut-bronze by its attentions whereas she, along with the other natives of Istraloth proper, was lovingly warmed to the color of roasted coffee beans.

The man left standing seemed to have forgotten his act of murder before the corpse hit the ground, for by the time the girl was looking at him he was gazing out to sea. Only after a long and thoughtful moment did he turn his gaze down at her, and then she swooned without a word.

[Ori]

The girl woke again in some confusion, unsure of the passage of time or the actuality of what she had seen and experienced. Her mind carefully chose what it would immediately recall about the morning’s events, and from her memories attempted to weave an inoffensive tapestry to protect her fragile spirit. The most innocuous thoughts and images amongst the threads of that tapestry were horrifying still: black smoke which coated the throat and stung the eyes, shrill cries amidst the sound of living flesh being rent, jeering calls in a hard, alien tongue, fires that seemed animate with the desire to seek out and sear innocent limbs, and fresh splotches of red in the sand. The girl chose to remember no more. All that she knew was gone in a rush of blood and smoke and fire. She acknowledged that this was true, logically, but emotionally her mind did not separate these facts of life from facts about childhood stories and recognized myths.

She went south across the grassy dunes, circumventing the smoking ruin of her village, and came back out onto the beach. She did not look in the direction of the place she’d briefly called home. Instead she knelt at the island’s shore where the murky waves sloshed timidly over her knees. She bent low and drank, oblivious to the water’s temperature and to the way her pale brown hair hung about her face and into the pool, oblivious to the time of the day and the shallow cuts on her long limbs. To her shattered mind there was a need to wash the soot down her throat and quench the feel of sand from her lips, and as she satisfied those simple needs the world sank away.

And then, just as waves recede and then return, the world leapt back upon her with the sound of a body hitting the sand some distance behind her. She should have been startled, but wasn’t – her nerves were shot.

She’d thought him a dream until she saw him that second time, the man who’d stealthily undone a bloodthirsty pirate with his bare hands, as deep of chest and wide of shoulder as she originally thought – it had seemed so unlikely before. He had dropped the body of one Freebooter onto the sand, and now he dropped the second. It was the two who might have had ways with her. The head of one of the pirates lolled unnaturally upon his shoulders, identifying him as the second to die. The other was caked in blood, but breathed in ragged spurts and gasps. She could hear blood in his lungs, even over the sloppy waves. The man drew the sword from its place on his muscled back, turned it about, and then drove the end of it into the pirate’s chest. With a wet rattle, he fell still at last.

The man put his foot to the shoulder of the new corpse and yanked his sword free, and then wiped it clean on the body’s already-bloodstained breeks. He glanced at the girl as he did this work, and something in her eyes caused him to say, “There are some things nobody deserves, and death becomes a gift. It’s the only human thing to do.”

Satisfied that his sword was as clean as he was going to get it, the man returned his sword to its place on his back, gave the girl one last glance, and then turned and went on his way back away from the beach and onto the grassy sward. She stared after him for a time, expressionless, and then suddenly regained herself and hurried after him. Though she was taller than he, he walked with such firm and tireless purpose that it was something of a challenge to catch up with him even jogging. When she did finally match his pace, it winded her, and she found it impossible to speak.

The island was a small one, and in short order they were on the opposite shore, and the man stopped near a thick collection of reeds and tugged at something. A sturdy dinghy bounced free, and the man tossed into it the mossy rope that had held it secure. He waded into the shallows, and the girl collected enough breath to wade in after him wide-eyed, hissing desperately, “Wait! Wait, you have to take me with you. They might come back!”

The man glanced at her for only the second time, his face an expressionless mask. He stood up straight next to the boat, holding the rim of it between his fingertips. “Who are you?”

“Desdemesne,” said the girl, “I lived in that village. I hid when they attacked, until the fire spread to my tent and I had to try to escape, so I ran, but the smoke was everywhere and I must have breathed too much of it in and fainted in the grass. If they come back and find me here alive and those two dead…”

“There’s no question about whether or not they’ll be back. It’s their way: the crew loots and burns, and then leaves four or five men behind to gather what goods that can be found, and the crew returns some time later to collect the scavengers. They’ll be none too pleased to find their cohorts dead.”

“So you have to take me with you,” Desdemesne said. “You can’t leave me here for them to find me.”

The man considered this a moment, and then said, “Are you certain you’re any better off with me? You watched me kill two men today, and I’ll admit to having killed three others besides.”

“You’re a murderer,” Desdemesne said with some poorly concealed revulsion, “but you seem preoccupied with putting your sword to other murderers, so between the two evils I’ll choose the one I know better.”

The man grinned hardly at this answer, and then held his hand out to the dinghy in a short sweeping motion. “Let’s go, then.”

[Ori]

Desdemesne watched her new companion row. The bloody islet was a distant memory now, fading into the afternoon haze that hung over the horizon behind her. There were other islands rising into view - and passing from - but the warrior-turned-rower paid them no heed except to skirt them. He was cutting through the outward current of Istraloth at an angle, the thick muscles of his arms and shoulders glistening with the tireless effort. Desdemesne supposed he was making for the mountain rim, a destination with some logic – the Freebooters rarely ventured this close to the lake-side, probably for the reasonable fear of running their ships onto a sandbar or reef, and the dense jungle would facilitate an escape.

Still, this was cause for some concern for her as well – she was a sea-person, an islander, and she naturally feared the lake people, and though she wore leather taken from the hide of a vicious shark, she had no experience with the harsh mountain jungles or its mysterious creatures. Desdemesne considered her companion’s skin tone, his dark hair, and the scars left by the claws of some huge alien best that ran from the back of his left shoulder over his breast. Despite the fact that he spoke her language fluently, though not without a unique accent, she was concerned that he didn’t know what he was getting himself into.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Origrue out of Tauvyk by Kull,” he said. “I’m called Ori, for the bear that tried to gut me when I was sixteen.”

Desdemesne recognized vaguely the word “bear,” she had only the simplest notion of what such a creature might be. She did, however, appreciate that it was deadly and worthy of fear from even the best-armed island man – it was almost a monster in her knowledge, a threatening shape from dark and unfamiliar places, places she would never see. “It seems he taught you a lesson about violence,” she said distantly, looking away from him.

“Aye, because I was the one that lived,” Ori said. “Prey learns nothing.”

The girl looked at him closely, a half-sneer of disbelief on her lips, “You mean to imply that you killed a bear?”

Ori didn’t seem to notice the tone of her voice, and his arms did not slow in their rhythmic work as he spoke with comfortable and casual sincerity. “Not alone, of course. I was carrying adolescent cattle through Morrigan’s River in the early spring on a misty day when I heard a band of hunters yelling. The grey-white bears of my homeland always stick to the mountain’s edge unless there is a heavy fog, which makes them grow bold because they blend in so well. They are like ghosts, completely invisible until they steal men or cattle.

“In any case, I was alone except for the hunters in the distance, who were screaming warning cries. I only just had enough time to draw my sword before he was on me. He made his mark on my shoulder so I couldn’t both climb a tree and hold a weapon, so I stood my ground and put my blade in his throat. He might have run if the hunters hadn’t earlier thrown spears in his haunches, so he took his revenge by leaping on top of me. I would have been crushed if the hunters hadn’t arrived to help me push him off again. The shaman called it auspicious that the bear chose to tear me into death with him, and so I was named Origrue. I wore his skin until the day I left the valley.”

Desdemesne was silent for a time, considering the tale and recalling stories from some distant place in her childhood memory. At last the skepticism faded and softened her features, making them pretty again, and she asked, “You come from the mountains? Here, in Istraloth?”

Origrue nodded. “I have heard tell that the lake people almost killed off the island people a few hundred years ago, but nobody here seems to remember the stories of when the island people tried to kill the mountain people, and drove them deep into the jungles. They climbed the highest mountain, called Cruach after the god who is said to live within, and only from that height did they see a deep and hidden valley, surrounded by mountains so steep that not even goats climb them. But the mountain people were great climbers by then, and knew that they would never be found in the valley, so that’s where they went.”

“And you’re one of these valley people? How did you get out?”

He shrugged. “I picked the shortest mountain and climbed. I was tired of hearing stories about skies that were blue instead of grey, and where misty days were rare, and where there were giant lakes which stretched on as far as the eye could see in every direction. And once I saw that the stories were true, I met island people who talked of men from across the sea, who have built giant cities out of stones and precious gems. So I’ll make room for myself aboard that pirate ship by killing men until I am needed, and then sail with them for those distant cities.”

Desdemesne leaned forward, as if she eagerly needed to share a great secret with her companion. “Must you always kill people? Couldn’t you just ask, or barter, or build your own ship?”

Ori grinned as he rowed. “There were fifty pirates aboard that ship when I first saw it, and they would kill one another without a thought if there was something to gain from it. I have nothing to barter, which is probably for the best since they’d just try to kill me and take it anyway, and I haven’t met a single man in Istraloth who knows where the pirates come from or how to get there. No, if I want to reach other lands I’ll need their help to do it, and they’re wild men, like valley people. They respect strength.”

“There are other ways to show that you’re strong,” Desdemesne protested. “Murder isn’t the best way. It’s wrong. Look at the way you’re rowing! I’ve heard my father say that it takes two strong men to row into the lagoon against the current. Can’t you show the pirates that you’re strong by rowing?”

“I am!” Ori said with a dark chuckle, nodding in the direction over the girl’s right shoulder. She turned and saw a marvelous black ship with red sails rounding an island not far from where they sat, close enough that she could just make out men in motley dress moving about the deck. “Perhaps you’ll get to tell them yourself that murder is wrong, but I have a funny feeling they’ll kill you for it.”

[Ori]

Origrue worked the oars silently - though the dinghy rushed through the water faster than Desdemesne thought a man-powered craft could - and sweat rolled from every visible inch of his skin. Still the pirate vessel grew larger, until Desdemesne could make out the leering face of the shoddy wooden figurehead at her prow: it depicted a lady of some standing – obvious in her ornate dress and the faded paint of her carven jewelry – with her arms seemingly held aloft by rusty chains that ran from the ship proper to her wooden wrists. It was a craft modified long ago for the express purpose of spreading fear and carrying out black rapine and piracy, and Desdemesne felt an overwhelming and primeval need to escape it. To step fair foot on its stained deck and look upon its crew in their oceangoing fortress would be, for her, to step into Hell and look upon an army of grinning devils.

When Ori abruptly dropped the oars, heedless when one slipped the rowlock and disappeared into the brackish green deeps, Desdemesne very nearly squealed. “We swim the rest,” he said.

“Why?” Desdemesne shrieked. “The boat is faster!”

“Probably, yes, but watching a boat land is a simple thing. We need to disappear in the water and, if we’re lucky, they won’t see where we reach the shore or hit the tree line. They’ll have to waste time finding our tracks. Now, come on, off the boat,” he said, and then rolled head-first over the gunwale. When his head and shoulders reappeared on the water’s surface, Desdemesne was still in the dinghy looking down at him.

“I can’t swim,” she said.

For a moment he wasn’t sure he heard her properly, and understanding his reaction she huffed and her cheeks turned red. “I was never taught!”

“Never mind,” he said. “Come on. You’ll have to cling to my back now, and I’ll swim for both of us. Off the boat, you’re not going to drown by touching the water – good, stop floundering. Mind the sword. Now, whenever your head is above water, take a single deep breath, and for gods’ sake stay calm.”

It was, she found, easier said than done, as immediately she was alarmed by the feel of the ocean opening up beneath her – the black and invisible vastness that made the water around her feet and legs significantly colder than that around her middle. “Gods, don’t drop me,” she hissed in Ori’s ear. “You’d best kill me before you let me go down there, so-help-me.”

“It’s twelve feet deep at most,” he said. “Now stop talking and take a breath, or you’ll get a mouthful of water.”

Though she shivered as she did, the island girl inhaled deep and held it, just as the water rushed up and over her head, pulling her hair back. She whined at having closed her eyes too slowly, and then clenched to Origrue all the more desperately when she heard her voice in her head, and suddenly the cool water that had surrounded only her feet ensconced the rest of her. An eternity passed and her lungs began to burn, and when she opened her eyes she saw only the lagoon’s murk. She even forgot that she was attached to another human being, despite how urgently she clenched to him, until the surface broke around her head and she gasped deep.

“Good,” Origrue said, as winded as he might be if he could respire underwater. “Breathe deep, and calm down. Your heart is going to shake you apart, it’s beating so hard. Take a breath.”

She did, and then they plunged down again, and again she panicked, until the surface broke again sometime later. The third time her heart began to slow and she started counting from the point when the water went over her head to when she could breathe next, until the next rush of the cold depths worried her not at all. Still, by the time they reached the beach she was panting for air on her hands and knees in the surf, greatly relieved for an end to it and a chance to rest. And then hard arms swept her up and she found herself tossed over Origrue’s shoulder, and he shot across the beach and broke into and through the underbrush before she registered bodily contact at all.

She began to beat at his back with her fists, kicking and wriggling frantically but to little avail, screaming again and again for him to put her down, and he scarcely seemed to notice. She lifted her head and, through the veil of her hair, realized what so galvanized him: an arrow buried itself in a tree trunk, having missed them by sheer millimeters. She resumed beating her fists against his back, this time screaming “faster! Faster!”

Soon the chaotic rain of arrows slowed, and then stopped, and on Origrue indefatigably ran over fallen logs and through treacherous brambles, snapping low-hanging limbs from trees and trampling saplings, panting in economic bursts like a loping wolf. The forest grew denser and the shade deeper, and for an instant they took to the air and dropped a distance, and then the rush of sultry air and foliage stopped. Ori turned and stepped under an earthy outcropping, and there dropped Desdemesne to her rump. She grunted and then moaned, wrapping her arms around her stomach where it had rested painfully on his shoulder.

“That hurt, you bastard,” she said, and he hushed her. She looked up at him and saw that he was listening, but how he expected to hear anything over the calls of jungle birds and startled monkeys in the branches overhead she didn’t know. Something must have satisfied him, because in a moment he sighed and sat himself down on a rock near her. Despite the strenuousness of their escape, he gave no indication of being drained.

“I should have figured they’d have sharp eyes,” Ori said. “They must have seen us hit the tree line and started shooting at us from the deck. No matter, their ship is as close as they can get it – they’ll have to come to shore on rowboats and find my trail, which will take time. We’ll rest here a bit, and then push for higher ground.”

“Do you think they’ll go through all that trouble to chase us in the jungle?”

“I killed five of their fellows just today. They’ll think I’m an island person and they’ll want to make an example of me to the rest of you. They’ll go to the trouble,” he said.

“Fine,” Desdemesne said, “but I’m not riding on your shoulder any more.”

“I apologize,” Ori answered with a faint grin, “I figured an island girl who wasn’t taught to swim probably wasn’t taught to run, either.”

[Ori]

“Stay close,” Ori said.

“I’m trying,” Desdemesne answered. “I’m tired, you’re going too fast. I need to rest.”

“Not yet. I’ll know when you need to rest.”

“How do you figure?” she panted.

“You’ll pass out, and then I’ll be able to carry you without worrying about the pirates hearing you squeal.”

“You’re a bastard,” Desdemesne complained without conviction.

Ori mounted a set of roots protruding from an earthy rise, climbing half way before turning and holding his hand down to Desdemesne. She took his hand, and immediately and without signs of strain he lifted her up off of the ground to a point even with him. She gripped the roots, but then he reached low and pushed her up the rest of the way by her backside. She yelped as she clambered up over the edge, and when he finished his climb she was sitting where she landed, blushing wildly.

“How is it that you were never taught to swim?” he asked, helping her to her feet. She seemed eager to look everywhere but at him.

“That’s a bizarre question,” she said, “what makes you ask that?”

He shrugged as he walked on, and after a moment she realized he was waiting for her answer. “My father taught me very much,” she said, “and he brought me to wise men, philosophers and shaman from many islands. I learned healing, and about spirits, and morality and ethics. I learned about the weather, and about roots and herbs that can cool a fever and settle the stomach.”

“But not how to swim or fish or hunt,” Ori said.

“No,” she said uneasily, fearing his disapproval. “I suppose my father didn’t think it was necessary.”

She began to say more, but her companion suddenly stopped her and lifted her over a patch of brambles by her hips, setting her down safely on the other side. She gasped, but went on walking once she landed.

“How did your husband feel about this? I have never seen an island man, father or brother or husband, who wanted a woman that knew ethics and philosophy but couldn’t gut a fish,” Origrue said.

“Oh, I don’t have a husband,” she said.

“No?” he said with mild surprise. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-four,” said she. “I rarely saw young men. We traveled with older men who were either married or had lost wives and were too old to take more, and there were women and a few children.”

“Your father never introduced you to a man?”

“No,” she said, growing defensively imperious. “My father said I was important and special, and there just wasn’t time for distractions. My education was vital.”

“Why?” he asked.

“So that I could be a wiser person, wise like the shaman and my father, and have a better life than the other island women. I have heard stories about men who came home with bites from the striped fish, and their wives and children sat and watched them die from the poison, never knowing that the herb which fights the poison grew right outside their huts. My father was teaching me about the world, and keeping me safe, so that I wouldn’t have to live like you barbaric valley people and those pirates, murdering and dying for stupid reasons.”

Ori grunted in response, but said nothing more as he walked.

“What does that mean,” Desdemesne said, and she mimicked his grunt, “what is that?”

The valley man shrugged. “It is hard to be safe,” he said, “and safety is a lonely business – stop here.”

They had reached a small clearing, where the trees formed a semicircle around a rocky perch, which formed a tall but comfortable stair up to a grassy path, which in turn bent higher, promising a way into more mountainous jungle heights. Ori lead Desdemesne to the very edge of the perch, and helped her climb the first outcropping before he changed directions, looping along the stone ledge and back to the forest edge. They had doubled back upon their trail, leaving no evidence of their passing on the smooth stone protrusion, and set off back through the jungle, walking in a wide circle before discreetly crossing their original path – here, Origrue took pains to ensure that the second trail was not noticeable – and then they set off in an entirely different direction, parallel with the coast rather than away from it.

“They’ll expect us to make for the higher parts of the mountains, where there are caves to hide in,” he explained. “That would be suicide, though. They’d be likely to overtake us with their bows at a switchback or a steep ledge.”

“Not if you were alone,” Desdemesne said. “If not for me, you could climb right to the top of the tallest mountain a thousand miles from here before the pirates ever traced your trail to the edge. For a murderer, you’re taking an awful risk to protect me. Stop that grunting! That is not an appropriate form of communication.”

Ori glanced back at the girl, and once again shrugged his mighty shoulders. “I wouldn’t be much of a man if I left an unmarried girl to try her luck with pirates.”

“I would hope it came quick,” she said softly. “My death, I mean. Like the first man I saw you kill, not the second.”

“I would prefer a good death, even slow,” Origrue said, “facing my enemies with a bloody sword in my hand, and a heap of them at my feet. It’s not death I’m worried they’ll give you, though.”

“What worse could they do to me but kill me?” Desdemesne said.

Ori glanced at her, at first assuming she was being sardonic. When he saw her eyes, though, he realized she was asking an honest question. He thought back to the very first moment he saw her, and it occurred to him that she had no idea what those pirates were preparing to do to her.

[Ori]

“I’m not going in there,” Desdemesne said.

Ori shrugged and went ahead of her, slipping off of the bank and into the mud, and he strode through the reed-brakes chest-deep. Desdemesne sighed and dropped to the ground, slipping one long leg into the muck at a time before pushing off from the bank and wading in after her companion. The typical jungle trees ceased before the swampy scar began, cut into the rainforest from the lake to the mountain edge, giving way to trees with thick, knobby trunks and roots that rose above the mud in great weaving arches like the legs of some colossal brown spider.

They made their way through the viscous murk laboriously, Ori choosing his footing cautiously, pointing out patches of floating plant growth to avoid as Desdemesne followed close, whining whenever the mud rose another inch. They went, in general, from root to root, where the bottom was least likely to be infirm or drag them beneath the murk. Only once did they pause, when a dragonfly easily the length of Desdemesne’s arm appeared and began to hover near. She had hardly time to scream before Ori caught it by the tail and yanked it beneath the mud, from whence it did not appear again.

At the opposite shore, Ori hoisted himself out of the mud and onto the bank, and then turned and offered the girl his hand, with which he lifted her effortlessly out of the slime. They were both covered in mire, mud, and flecks of plant, he to a point just beneath his nose and she everywhere but on her face above the chin and below the hairline, as she had gone with her head all the way back so as not to get mud on, in, or around her mouth.

“I’ll eat my sword if they get every one of their men through that,” Ori said with a hard grin.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” she asked tersely.

“Well, between the drops, the dragonflies, the poison vines, the snakes, the alligators, and…”

Desdemesne had seen neither snakes or alligators while traversing the mud pit, but at being warned of them she whipped around and scanned the pit a second time, picking out slitted, reptilian eyes amidst the muck, and what she had originally thought thick vines hanging from the roots were now clearly serpentine trunks. She gaped at him disbelievingly, and with a self-satisfied grin he continued into the jungle, dripping foul-smelling muck and dirt.

They went another hour before Ori began pausing at places where he could peer through gaps in the tree canopy or catch a glimpse of the sea through widely-spaced copses. When they came to a thin creek, he stopped and dropped to his knees in the water and began to scrub the sludge from his arms and chest. “Best to get ourselves cleaned up now, before the sun sets and we can’t see what else is attracted by the water,” he said. At that, Desdemesne followed his suit and began quickly scrubbing herself clean, using a handful of small rocks from the creek bed just as he did.

“Now,” he said once thoroughly clean, “we’ll head closer to the mountains and away from this creek at an angle, and then set up camp.”

This they did with a final, exhaustive burst of speed, until the sound of the waves lapping the shore faded, and the air grew colder as they went farther into the looming shadow of the mountains. When they stopped it was sudden, and the valley man ran about in a small frenzy collecting long, bowed branches from the ground and from trees when they grew low enough. With these he wove a simple shelter between the knotted roots of an ancient tropical evergreen, and then he collected a great stack of broad leaves and then rolled them into a dense but soft cylinder and handed it to her. “A pillow,” he said.

The sun set suddenly, which was of more surprise to Origrue than to Desdemesne, who had grown up on the open sea, where there were neither trees nor mountains to divide the sunset into stages of dusk. “Get into the shelter and sleep,” Ori said, and Desdemesne crawled beneath the weave of branches obediently. When she left him he was sitting upon one of the broad roots of her tree with his forearms rested nonchalantly across his knees – she assumed, incorrectly, that he didn’t mean to sleep that way.

“I’m cold,” she complained after a time, when the evening breeze began playing through the trees. “Can’t we make a fire?”

“No, the pirates may choose to keep chasing us into the night, and could see the light. We’ll make a fire in the morning, between sunrise and the morning storms,” he said.

Desdemesne begrudgingly accepted this for awhile, but in time once again murmured from within her shelter. “It’ll mean very little to escape the pirates if I freeze to death in the process,” said she.

He hushed her sharply, too sharply to be merely annoyed, and after a short eternity he spoke again, in carefully evened tones, saying, “Keep talking. Complain about how cold you are. Don’t ask questions, do it, and don’t come out of there.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, at first not detecting the suggestion of threat in his voice. She called his name a few times when he did not respond, and then began to grow uncomfortable, beginning to whisper and yet call his name all the more harshly into the gloom. At last she peered out of her shelter, and the stream of curses she had planned for the valley man caught in her throat with the rest of her breath. Gleaming in the dark was a pair of eyes set against a deeper shadow, eagerly close to the ground yet advancing with horrible patience. She was being stalked.

Desdemesne lay frozen in mute panic as the liquid shadow advanced, eyes glinting yellow in the rising moonlight, until in a last desperate bid for life she scrambled back into the nook where the broad roots rose from the earth to meet the tree. Her predator reacted to this sudden movement in kind, plunging forward, and for an instant she saw the glistening sabers of its fangs before a second shadow pounced from out of sight, intercepting the first and sending both tumbling into the brush.

The island girl struggled deeper into her nook as she listened to the lashing battle outside, shadows wrestling furiously in the dark but never voicing their efforts. At last a shrill feline cry pierced the night, and the lashing brush went still again. The silence created a tension more horrible even than the sounds of animalistic battle, a nervous pressure that burned Desdemesne’s body from within just as if she were physically struggling for her life. The adrenaline drove her heart to beat viciously in her ears and her hands to tremble, and at last she was driven mad to desperation and scrambled from her shelter and into the clearing.

At that very moment, a silhouette passed from the jungle into a column of silvery moonlight, a misshapen hulk in the blackness. She might have driven herself insane with anxiety had Desdemesne not taken the time to examine that silhouette, at last making out the shape of Origrue amidst the mass.

“Is that you, girl?” he grumbled. “Gods, it’s dark, I couldn’t find my way back to the camp.”

“What is that?” she managed to flatly say, when she realized what so distorted his shape was some second, hulking outline draped limply over his shoulders.

“A leopard,” said he, “the old monster followed us from the creek, and probably intended to wait until we fell to sleep to make a meal out of one or both of us. When I slipped away, though, she couldn’t pass up the chance to try and take you.”

“You used me as bait,” Desdemesne said.

“I suppose I did,” Ori answered. “Now, stop staring at me and get back under there.”

The girl did as she was told, if only because the rush of adrenaline was abandoning her and the void it left nearly caused her to collapse in exhaustion. She had enough left in her to squeal, though, when Ori suddenly shoved the leopard into her shelter beside her.

“Press close to her,” he said. “She’ll stay warm for a few more hours. No, not that side, you’ll get blood all over yourself.”

[Ori]

It was at the stillest, quietest hour of profound night when the darkness began to splinter into skulking shapes that danced around the revealing pillars of moonlight. They went on long, thin limbs, those shapes, swaying like supple saplings in the barest breeze so that at a glance they were indistinguishable from anything around them. Where a stalking leopard had failed, they excelled.

Origrue sat slouching against the ancient tree with his chin on his chest and his hair over his face. His sword was naked and rested across his thighs, his fingers rested neatly across its hilt. His ears twitched at the barest sound – the rustle of a monkey asleep on the highest branch, clenching to its fellows a little tighter in the midst of a bad dream. But the valley man did not hear the spindly shadows as they loomed ever-closer on their twig-limbs, pointing skeletal fingers and silently brandishing wicked spears.

They pounced at once, a sudden flurry initiated by some unknown signal. A small army of them crowded into the camp, spears hoisted high, others lifting long tubes to invisible lips. Ori awoke, instantly alert at the whistle of a launched blow dart, which imbedded itself in the bark where the man’s upper back rested not an instant before. In a furious rush of activity he slashed two-handed, beheading a spear and then the man who wielded it, and with the same momentum he shouldered the headless body into another advancing figure.

His blade went bloody from one shape to the next, taking limbs and cleaving flesh, cracking ribs, and with its hilt he broke skulls. A second blow dart was launched, and met a black figure instead of its mark, and a third uselessly careened into the forest. The fourth might have met the valley man’s temple hadn’t he lifted his upper arm, and instead it plunged into his bicep and dribbled its deadly payload into his blood.

Feeling the dart’s poison taking its effect already, Ori desperately rent the flesh of one last eerily silent attacker, and then lunged drunkenly at another. He brutally beat aside a hoisted spear and clenched the skeletal figure to himself, turning and throwing his back between a set of split roots not unlike the trunks of lesser trees. He pulled his captive along with him, so that the vile shadow-man was trapped between his fellows and Origrue’s body. As the others struggled to stab at the valley man, they plunged their spears instead into their comrade, who suffered his murder voicelessly.

Origrue collapsed against the roots in a half-faint, clenching the root-walls that surrounded him in a wild and defiant bid to stand though his limbs felt as if the weight of whole oceans dragged them down. The night closed around his vision, and through the deepening veil of unconsciousness he gathered that his attackers were yanking the corpse of their fallen comrade away from him, and another stepped close in the dead man’s place. Somewhere, a harsh shrieking rattled the jungle, awakening the monkeys overhead who each echoed the wild cry in paroxysms of nameless fear.

The long-limbed shadow stood over Ori, and through a shrinking tunnel of vision he watched has it raised a blowgun to its lips and filled its narrow chest with air. The night closed in at last and with complete finality.

And then Origrue roared, and the sound was nearly the same as that heard ringing and echoing in the caves of the mist bears after which the man was named. The valley man rose from his swoon in full frenzy, snatching the blow gun away from its wielder and then forcing it brutally into the ring of the shadow’s eye socket. He shoved the twitching corpse aside and lurched into the clearing, blinking frenetically, and he collapsed to one knee and plunged his blade into the earth at what he beheld.

The camp was strewn with lengthy black corpses, but it did little to soften the sight of Desdemesne’s shelter, which was torn open and empty save for the hours-dead carcass of a jungle cat. Ori bellowed toward the darkened canopy above, and then paced the grounds of his camp, brutalizing corpses and tree trunks and disembodied limbs with wild hacks and thrusts of his sword until he fell to his hands and knees and wretched up the poison from the blow dart in his bicep, which he only now ripped free.

He lifted his head, panting, and in the distance heard strident cries carried on the wind – either of kidnapped woman or startled monkey. Clenching his bloodied sword with white knuckles, Ori plunged into the forest on the trail of those cries, with such speed and ferocity that one might easily expect him to tear up whole trees should they block his path.

[Ori]

The sun cast its glow across the horizon long before rising; a harbinger’s song played glistening over and across the sea. The first shafts of light reached for the sky but met heavy cloud cover – there would be a brief hour of sunlight as it ascended, and then it would sheath itself in the dark clouds and heavy rains would fall on Istraloth throughout the early morning. It was an endless and predicable cycle for this time of the year, known well even in the isolated valley of Cruach.

The morning reached across and through the jungle-choked ruins on the northwest corner of Istraloth’s lake. What society built those once-formidable structures nobody knew, and the people of the lagoon continent didn’t care to know. They avoided this eldritch quagmire for the ghosts rumored to haunt its flooded streets and drowned sanctuaries, and warned away treasure-seekers not to protect ancient secrets but for fear of what might come forth seeking revenge.

Origrue out of Tauvyk by Kull stood against a dead tree at the edge of a forested cliff, which overlooked the ruins. In his right hand he held a bloody and well-notched sword, and the morning breeze stoked the wrath behind his eyes just as it might enliven a smoldering fire. He watched the ruins closely, picking out long shapes that strode from shadow to shadow, carrying long spears. In the dawning light he could better discern their features.

He had never seen people of their ilk, and only basically did they resemble humans in that they walked upright and were of the same design. Their skin was of an abnormally dark tone, sharing more in common with obsidian snakes than sun-darkened men. They reached seven feet tall at an average, but were nigh-skeletal, striding about on legs like spidery stilts, and their bellies very nearly touched their spines. They had small heads with too-large, too-deep eye sockets, which held dumb, sullen eyes, and their noses were flat tapered slits. Their mouths were the most horrible feature they could boast, though, as it seemed they naturally had very small, narrow lips, yet these were gashed open to make wide, wicked, raw smiles of their faces. These gashes were sewn shut again, save for the natural width of the mouth, and it seemed the stitches were never again removed. They were universally hairless and unclothed.

Origrue might normally surrender to superstition and avoid these witch-men of the ruins, had they not kidnapped a woman under his protection, and thus proven themselves mortal when he killed no less than six of them. Monstrous they might have been, but they drew breath and bled, and so the valley man feared them not at all. Instead, a growing hate boiled in his heart, and would only be satiated by mayhem.

Still, he reigned himself in well. He knew that if he went into the ruins alone he would be quickly discovered and set upon, for he counted twelve of the black witch-men creeping about and assumed there would be many more at the first sign of a threat. As long as the ruins were so well-patrolled by forces which knew them intimately and acted with such military precision, they promised only a watery grave even for someone as bold as Origrue.

He turned, and plunged back into the jungle.

---

Twenty men in motley dress stomped through the underbrush, each cursing bitterly and covered in heavy mire. Some sported bloody wounds poorly treated, which assured quick infection in the sultry forest air, and it was easy to guess by their carriage that their number had been at least five men more before that muddy pit and the miles of snakes and alligators lurking in jungle pools. Dissent was already growing amongst them, and calls to return to the ship – no single man could survive this wild place, they argued, and certainly not with a woman in his care.

And then the foliage belched forth a muscular man in tattered black breeks, carrying a bloody sword, who promptly kicked the nearest Freebooter in the crotch and slapped another resoundingly in the face, and then whirled around and plunged back into the forest. A ravenous cry for blood went up amongst the brigands, and they charged after him with drawn sabers.

They were on his heels, each frothing at the mouth and screaming with every ounce of breath not used to fuel the chase, and whenever they grew exhausted they caught a glimpse of him through the trees and the charge was renewed. Without warning the tree line broke and the wave of sword-wielding, hysterical seamen crashed over the beach line and into the edge of the ancient ruins. They immediately came across a single man of uncommonly black skin, preposterously tall, who gaped at them stupidly.

The man of the ruins wasn’t the man they’d been chasing, but they rushed him all the same when he tried to flee from them, and they tore him limb from limb long before his fellows could charge forth from the dark, dank corners of their abode. The pirates cared little who their foe was, and joined battle cheerfully.

[Ori]

Ori descended into the largest sunken temple, which he surmised to be the likeliest place for the witch-men to carry their captive. He stealthily descended staircases older than imagination, brushing aside hanging vines bespeckled with red blossoms in miniature and dodging masses of antediluvian cobweb. The temple had once lain flat across the land, but the soft earth beneath the center of it had collapsed and swallowed it up, causing the dismal hallways to splinter and descend into the smothering earth. The valley man crept silently through one such hall, the ornate stones of its making overgrown with moss and lichen that further muffled his footfalls. Outside the morning rain began, and the walls sweated rivulets except in the places where the ceiling had collapsed, and there the rain poured in directly.

In time the hallway branched in two directions. One way descended farther into the earth, and the hallway was dark and deeply flooded. The second way curved off from the first and was in a more acceptable state of disrepair – perhaps at one time it had ascended, but now it only seemed to take a more level bearing with the rest of the ruin. Ori chose the second path, unsure of what dangers might lurk in the pools, and of his ability to move quietly through the water without injuring his bare feet on whatever might be hidden beneath the inky surface.

The way he chose was in a sounder part of the sinking temple, where cracks in the structure were few and less sunlight filtered in, and the darkness was nearly absolute. In one place, however, a slight rend in the ceiling allowed but a thin stream of water and light to enter, and Ori could make out the symbols carved into the stones an age ago, depicting tall men who worshipped a great bird that plunged into the sea, and everywhere were images of faces with monstrous slashes across the mouth forming huge, evil grins.

Deeper the warrior went, every muscle tense to spring, half-bent with his head thrust forward and his right hand raised to clench the hilt of his sword, which was sheathed for fear of light glinting off the blade and betraying him. He was as silent as the leopard, as silent as the witch-men themselves, and he knew they would not hear him coming until his blade sang on its way into the first heart.

The hall split again, and this time Origrue chose one way because he could discern the dancing glow of a torch against a corner. In short order he discovered a hallway much like the others, but along the left wall were descending stairways he might have missed if not for the glow issuing from them. He chose the nearest one and descended a short way before he found himself on a small enclosed balcony, which was divided from the vast chamber it overlooked by a cage of thick lead bars.

Ori peered carefully through the bars, scanning first the corners of the chamber below, and then the rest, and its centerpiece nearly drew a gasp from him, which was stifled, and it began to broil in his throat. In the center of the chamber was a vast pool of syrupy black ooze, which bubbled nauseatingly and exhaled wisps of noxious steam. Suspended over this pool, and indeed being lowered into it, was a slender figure hanging from a rope by the wrists. It was Desdemesne.

Casting one last glance over the chamber to be sure it was otherwise empty, Ori hissed the girl’s name through the bars. At first she did not move, but twice more he called her name, louder each time, until with great effort she lifted her head and looked dazedly around the chamber. At last she caught sight of him, and murmured his name through cracked lips.

“Are they gone?” he asked.

“For the moment,” she answered with great effort. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“You’re a pain in the ass. Now, I’m going to sneak back around and see if I…”

“No,” she interrupted, and with such firmness that even Ori was completely silenced. “Look at me.”

He did, noticing now that she was submerged in the pool up to her knees, and that she was uncharacteristically pale and flush with a cold sweat, her eyes surrounded by dark, unhealthy rings. “Don’t waste time by coming down here,” Desdemesne said. “This pool eats flesh from bone instantly. I’m already dead.”

Ori stared at her helplessly, wrapping his hands around the bars dividing them. He was a man of action, utterly unaccustomed to despair, and even now he searched his surroundings and his mind for a solution. “I can get you out,” he insisted dully. “There, you see? The rope stretches here just outside the bars. I can reach through them and cut it, and pull you out of the pool, and tie the rope around one of these bars until I can make it back down into the chamber and cut you free. I can get you out of here.”

“The rope is attached to a mechanism in the wall,” Desdemesne said. “Every half-hour it turns, dropping me a little deeper into the pool. If you cut it, I’ll just slip in all at once.”

“Enough talk!” Ori insisted. “We’re wasting time I could be using to get you out.”

“You’re a stupid man,” she sighed painfully, “but you were right about my father and his lessons. You were right about safety. I was never really safe until I was with you in the wild running from bloodthirsty pirates. Before that I was alone, and scarcely knew what it was to be alive. I wish all of this had happened sooner. Thank you for giving me your protection.”

“I can still give you that,” he said.

“There’s only one thing I can think to ask of you now,” Desdemesne said. “Someone wiser than my father said that there are some things nobody deserves, and that sometimes death becomes a gift.”

“No.”

“Cut the rope, Ori,” Desdemesne pleaded. “It’s the only human thing to do.”

Origrue turned in a rush of rage, thinking to trace his steps back to the hallways he had passed over, knowing that one surely lead to the chamber below, and once there he would find a way to get the girl down from there. He had no doubt that she had been telling the truth about that evil pool beneath her but, he mentally argued, he could carry her out and bind her wounds, deadly as they may be. He sensed strength in her, a soul comparative to his own, which would stave off death like a cornered snake. With his help, she would live yet, and well – a cripple, but by the gods, the fiercest cripple ever born.

He was ascending the stairs when metallic thunder sounded within the stone walls surrounding the chamber, and then Desdemesne cried out in heart-rending agony as the rope grew longer and dipped her ever-deeper in the black pool beneath. Ori rushed back to the bars and wrenched at them madly, but they weathered his might easily. The girl was now submerged in the pool midway along her thighs, and the smell of burning flesh reached the warrior even from his vantage point.

Ori growled a sound from so deep an animal place within him that his throat was scratched raw by the ensuing noise, and his voice rumbled out and mingled with Desdemesne’s agony. He drew his sword in a bestial fury and crashed against the bars brutally, and with a lightning-swift dart of his sword-arm the rope snapped and Desdemesne slipped gracefully into the black pool and disappeared. Their married voices faded from the stone walls and left the chamber all but empty – a tomb.

Closing his eyes and pressing his forehead to the cool, heavy bars, Origrue sighed and let the wrath slip away. It danced from his every pore like steam, hanging oppressively about him, and it waited patiently with frustration and self-loathing as grief took their place. The temple was silent, promising no black, spider-limbed bodies to break in search of revenge, though he wanted nothing no more than to crush and maim and abandon himself to bloodshed and drink and dreamless sleep.

A rustling in the chamber below called him back from his dearest wishes, and he breathed the intoxicating cloud of wrath back in as a black figure stepped briskly near the pool. It was a witch-man, taller even than the rest, with a massive and ornate headdress of black feathers, and he carried a gnarled staff in his right hand. This man, who seemed a medicine man and a chief all at once, peered up at Ori as he went, and tore his evil eyes away only long enough to dip the end of his staff into the pool. When the staff emerged again, from its end hung a bare, dainty human skull by its eye socket.

Origrue began to weave a tapestry of black curses in the tongue of his people, spitting every forbidden thing at the top of his ravaged lungs and beating himself against the lead bars. The medicine man peered up at him and collected Desdemesne’s skull from the end of his staff, and looking into its empty eyes thoughtfully he went on his way, walking around the pool and disappearing into a dark doorway. The closer the medicine man got to escaping, the louder Ori screamed and the more violently he beat against his prison, until stones began to crumble away and the bars began to groan, and at last the whole front end of the balcony gave way in a rain of stones and heavy metal.

Ori dropped into the chamber and charged into the black doorway and down the connecting tunnel, sword overhead and gruesome cries on his lips, until the way ended. There was no visible escape, and the valley man beat his sword against the walls in search of secret passageways.

“Never again!” he screamed after the witch-man. “Never again!”

[Ori]

An ebon ship was anchored at the distant edge of Istraloth’s lagoon a week later, her scarlet sails furled. She was manned by a skeleton crew, an arrangement that was supposed to be temporary. Evening was falling, and the crew was casting another corpse to the sharks – the sixth victim of jungle poison or infected wounds. The costly and ill-advised trek after a nameless island man was the ubiquitous subject of bitter murmurings, but the threat of mutiny was distant.

A grimy stripling swabbed the deck near the gunwales when a man emerged from over the edge, landing upon the deck and dribbling water. This man, who was muscular and clothed in soggy black breeks, swept back a mop of slick hair and then caught the youth up, heaved him overhead, and then tossed him overboard. The boarder then drew a sword and put it through the middle of the nearest Freebooter, and then grabbed a third while simultaneously yanking his sword free to hold the reddened edge to his captive’s throat.

There was a rush of activity on the deck as the Freebooters reacted, drawing their swords and forming a semicircle around Origrue and his captive, but they did not advance. Instead they looked nervously to one another, shifting indecisively, until at last their ranks parted and a man in an officer’s finery appeared. At first Ori thought him a lean human, but on closer inspection decided that he was the first dark elf the valley man had ever seen.

The elf barked in Tradespeak, a language Ori did not yet know, and when he did not reply a hard, heavyset man with a thick beard stepped forward. “I’m Tyler,” said he in the language of the island people, “the quartermaster aboard this boat, and the Aleraran there is called Lupus. He’s the captain, and the lad you’ve got by the throat there is his good-for-nothing nephew. It’s no secret that the captain’s sister is a shrew-bitch who’d gnaw a hole in his ear should something happen to the little bastard. So, what is it you want, boy?”

“A place among your crew, and a cut of the ship’s profits,” Ori answered.

Tyler translated this into the Tradespeak, and the captain sneered and spoke to his quartermaster with a begrudging, upward flick of his chin. “The captain has little choice,” the quartermaster said, “after the little chase you put us through in the jungle. We scarcely have enough men to sail, never mind doing any real work.”

“I can do the work of any three of your sea rats,” Ori spat. “Now, am I to trust your captain’s word? He’s a Freebooter.”

“You needn’t worry about the elf’s word. He gives it rarely, because should he go back on it he’ll get fifteen knives in the back before he can make it back to his cabin. If the men can’t trust the captain to steer them right, they’ll choose another,” Tyler said.

Origrue shrugged and shoved his captive away. A bloodthirsty cheer went up by the crew, pleased to have what was quickly becoming a legendary figure among them rather than in opposition. “Well,” said Tyler, “let’s get you a hammock, shall we?”

“Aye,” Ori agreed, glancing to the northwest. “And a stiff drink.”

[Ataraxis]

Quest Judging
Daughters for the Raven God (Part I)

Your judgment is here at last! I just want to say that this was a wonderful read. I had my reservations at the start of the first post, but after the first two paragraphs I never looked back, so to speak. In any case, numbers and feedback are forthcoming!

STORY

Continuity ~ 8.5/10. It’s not hard to do good here, when you’re writing an introductory quest that basically deals with showing who your character, where he comes from, what his goals are and of what he’s capable. That’s exactly what you did, but what I find impressive is how you seamlessly inserted this information throughout the quest, and not only for Ori but for Desdemesne as well. There was little information on the witch-men, though that was obviously done to keep a certain shroud of mystery about them, and you did mention them appearing on the walls of the ruins, which lends them this ‘ancient cult’ feel that I’ve just seen again in that new Indiana Jones movie. I would have wanted more information about this Raven God, because the most revealing mention you had of it was ‘a great bird that plunged into the sea’. I know this is only part I, but the link between the title and what happened in this story is still too tenuous. I can guess what’s the link and guess going to happen next, but only because I’m inured to the usual progression of these stories. If you’d shown the witch-men worshipped some figure reminiscent of a raven, that would’ve been enough foreshadowing for me.

Setting ~ 8/10. I don’t know when was the last time I’ve seen someone so dedicated to describing the setting. I mean it, top notch job you did there. Most of the time, you managed descriptions that guided the reader into recreating the exact picture you had in mind, and those parts impressed me. I could follow the time of the day when it was relevant, and time just seemed to stretch in the dense forest, as it should. The part where they crossed the tract of mud was also very rich in describing the things they smelled, felt, heard and the like. Only, there were quite a few parts where you tried too hard to write what you imagined, which made things quite unclear. An example would be the first paragraph, which is so heavy with adjectives and kind of beats around the bush as well. Another part would be when you described the rocky perch surrounded by a semicircle (or rather, the part following it). This also played in Clarity. Lastly, your early descriptions of the ruins were particularly evocative, but the part where he went from forking hallway to forking hallway would have been bland if not for the things Ori saw on the walls. Good job on describing the black pool, though.

Pacing ~ 8/10. As I said, I was a bit reticent when I began reading this, because it started rather heavy (considering you took that long to describe clouds so as to make a link with the things that were happening beneath it). Still, I tiptoed a bit less through the first post, and by the end of it I could ay that I was hooked. At some points during the reading, I disconnected a bit, but then you kept my attention from the time they crossed the swamp to Desdemesne’s ‘demise’, quoted because I have a feeling her story isn’t over, though I doubt this is a case of Only Mostly Dead. I could be wrong, though. Also, I felt that the climax before ‘prologue’ (though shouldn’t it be epilogue, unless you plan on reusing it in Part II?) was good, but ended a bit too fast. I didn’t have the clear feel of despair from Ori when he couldn’t get to the Medecine-Witch-Leader-Man. Yes, he burst through the bars because of it, but the chase ended three lines after that. I wanted to feel out of breath by the time he hit a wall, but I barely had the time to inhale before it was all over. This didn’t heavily affect the score, but it brought it slightly down nonetheless.

CHARACTER

Dialogue ~ 7/10. I wouldn’t say that their dialogue was cliché. Ori and Desmesne both had that uniqueness that made them living, breathing people. For one, Ori wasn’t a dumb ruffian that clubbed everything in sight, something I’ve seen a lot in characters that had a similar type of background. Like Desmesne said, he was a wise man, in the ways of life rather than idealistic philosophies. Desmesne was for the most part the rescued damsel that dislikes the savior for his tactless ways and being rough around the corner, but warms up to him in times of danger. I could see the template, but I still didn’t think of her as ‘the stereotype’ because of the things she said and how real they felt. The part where he realizes she knows nothing about rape was also a big wow. The Ironic Echo, though, I could see a mile away: when Ori said that putting people down was sometimes the most human thing to do, I knew I’d wind up hearing it in the end, in a way that will make Ori want to eat his words. The reason you didn’t get eight or over was because, thoughI liked the dialogue, I knew all too well the type of lines they were going to say, and their general progression throughout the story.

Action ~ 8/10. Ori showed every aspect of being a survivalist through his actions. Everything he did fit him, and I particularly liked how he made use of the pirates repeatedly. You also weren’t afraid to have him miscalculate things, such as when they reached the shores and were instantly assaulted by a rain of arrows. I did wonder why the pirates didn’t shoot them while they were on the dinghy though. Yes, he rowed fast, but he did in a straight line, and there was also that time when they chose to swim and were, for a moment, stationary. And I was a bit surprised that the second pirate stabbed the first just to get Desmesne all for himself. Seemed like a big risk for five (I’m guessing that’s how long he’d last) minutes of pleasure. Killing the leopard was nice. Stabbing a witch-man in the eye with his blowgun was nice. Screaming as he mercy-killed Desmesne was… not nice, but in a good way. I mean, it almost got me tearing.


Persona ~ 7/10. Ori was an interesting character in the way he had contrasted ways of killing. Calm and composed when killing a suffering pirate (or his rapist, treacherous comrade). Enraged when fighting the witch men. Dejected when putting Desmesne out of her misery. I got the most personality out of him when he was killing. I could say that he was too in control of himself during this quest, except for the key times he poked fun at Desmesne. Speaking of her, she was decently expressive, though a bit too ‘reluctant damsel’ to my tastes. Still, you did steer away from that by having her realize the shortcomings of her upbringing, and also when she died. All in all, this was more than adequate, though still lacking at certain times. For example, Ori explained his wanderlust rather tamely, when you’d think he might get carried away speaking of blue skies and the different sahdes of a setting sun (and you could have elaborated when you wrote Ori was more surprised about that than Desmesne, just so the reader can get a clearer feel of how surprised he was).

WRITING STYLE

Technique ~ 7.5/10. Your style began as heavily-descriptive and somewhat flowery, but you quickly dispelled my first opinion later on. It’s not vomiting beautiful words and going overboard with descriptions to hope that someone catches the gist of it. It’s very controlled, accurate and tastefully subtle. I only wish it was sometimes a bit more colorful, because it had a very ‘tones of grey’ feel to it. To be clearer, your style is fit for short stories, but it needs a bit more diversity if you want to, let’s say, write a brick of a book. Your rhetorical devices had a distant feel to them and didn’t exactly reach out to grab me, for one. You guide the reader through the description, but rather than pulling him along, you walk ahead and sometimes look back to make sure he’s following. I don’t suggest that you constantly take the reader by the hand, of course, since that’s a recipe for burnout. Still, a little variety goes a long way.

Mechanics ~ 9/10. This was almost spic and span. So few that I actually don’t have to annex my notes to this judgment and that I can just copy-paste them here:


claws of some huge alien best (3) claws of some huge alien beast
indefatigably (4) Though it’s a real word, it reads pretty horrible. Tirelessly could work better, or a slightly, slightly fancier word would be inexhaustibly.
He lifted her up off of the ground (5) simply ‘lifted her off the ground’ would have been better.

Basically, you really do know how to choose the right words, and your sentence structure leaves nothing to be desired.

Clarity ~ 7.5/10. I mentioned this before. Some passages were hard to understand because you tried to write some scenes exactly as how you saw them. I sometimes had to backtrack and reread a sentence because there was so much information in it (some parts really could have used commas, though those weren’t punctuation mistakes and thus weren’t counted in Mechanics). I also wasn’t sure what he tried to convey with ‘Never again’. I’ll never let you sacrifice one of my friends again? I’ll never let myself be befriended again? I’ll never kill one of my friends again? I’ll never let you get away again? I’m sure it was something simple, but it wasn’t clear to me.

MISCELLANEOUS

Wild Card ~ 7/10. I liked this. I wish there was more, but it was still a very enjoyable read.

TOTAL ~ 77.5/100.

EXP Rewards

Origrue out of Tauvyk by Kull gains: 920 XP!

GP Rewards

Origrue out of Tauvyk by Kull gains: 170 GP!

Other Rewards

My condolences. Since he’s got two stages to grieving – anger and drinking – he also gets a flask of scotch from the Freebooters.

FINAL NOTES

Amazing job. I hope to read more of your writing, and soon at that!

[Zook Murnig]

EXP/GP ADDED!