View Full Version : Daughters for the Raven God (Part II)
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The sun was an hour over the yardarm and the crew of the Howard’s Pyle was weary from a day of hard sailing and scant gain. Istraloth’s muggy dusk fell over the ship’s deck like blue velvet, and the maddeningly consistent cries of jungle beasts – audible miles from shore – at last hushed. Panthers stirred in the underbrush now, sharing their nightly domain with other stark predators and nameless things best left unseen.
As Ori took to the deck, heeding a summons from his captain, he was struck by the sparse number of crewmen at work. It set him immediately on edge, and he unconsciously rested his fingertips across the dagger tucked into the scarlet sash worn around his waist, both recent gifts from his seagoing benefactors. The reason for his discomfort was not apparent but for a sailing man familiar with Istraloth’s lagoons and the sea’s habits there: the currents had a strong tendency to roll a large ship like the Pyle broadside through the reefs unless an attentive man was hard at the sweep and the sails were professionally ordered.
As it was now, a band of four was packing the jib sail, a single youth swabbed the deck near them miserably, and three shadows stood waiting on the poop deck. Origrue mounted the stairs to the poop with some reservation, though he was careful not to show it. The three figures concealed in gloom were familiar to him: Lupus, the dark elf captain of the Howard’s Pyle, and two of his most loyal sailors, one a towering Salvaran ex-militiaman and the other a shrewd Akashiman.
Boone, the Salvaran, was at the helm and ignorantly nonchalant, and the Akashiman, who was called simply One-Eye for the patch he habitually wore, stood aside with equal detachment. It was clear to Ori that the ordinary helmsman and the majority of the deck crew had been temporarily dismissed for this meeting, which did not bode well for the valley-man-turned-Freebooter. Boone and One-Eye were woefully inadequate seamen, and regularly served as loyal bodyguards to the Pyle’s captain.
Lupus stood facing astern, looking out over the sea and toward the shore. “Ori,” said he, and without looking at him motioned for the man to come closer. Ori did so, passing Boone and One-Eye with a sideways glance, and both in turn stared at him openly.
Ori stepped in beside Lupus and surveyed the coastline with a keen eye, seeking out what so interested his captain. His gaze ran over ominous shadows rising from sunken mire a short distance inland, and he knew these were the famed ruins on Istraloth’s outside northwestern coast – the local isles and coastline were littered with them. Though his eyes searched the space outside the ship, the valley man’s ears were tuned to the space behind him.
“Here,” Lupus said in Tradespeak, and handed Ori his spyglass. “Look there, past the copse of trees to the south. Do you see?”
“Aye, a tower hidden a ways inland,” he said, and then paused a moment. “There are lights in the windows. Torches?”
“I think so,” Lupus said, accepting his spyglass as it was returned to him. “Either someone beat us to whatever treasures are there, or the spire is inhabited. Either way, it’s of interest to me.”
“It would take a band of fifteen men two hours to reach it. Shall I get a crew together to set out in the morning?”
“How long,” the captain said, “would it take you to reach it tonight?”
“With a crew? An hour more in the dark, and it’d be harder to get them all there alive,” Ori said.
“What if you went alone?”
Origrue glanced at the Aleraran from the corner of his eye, but did not otherwise express his surprise. “If I went soon, I could reach the spire in half an hour. The only real challenge is getting through the copse of trees – there may be predators.”
“Good,” Lupus said. “You will leave immediately with Tyler and Malek. Get inside the tower and find out who and what is inside, and then return with whatever treasures you find before dawn.”
Ori turned to face his captain, hand upon the hilt of his dagger and a silent, smoldering fire in his eyes. Without looking at the valley man, Lupus reached down and tucked the open edge of his elaborate officer’s jacket behind a wooden object protruding from his belt. Ori recognized well one of the captain’s pistols, and the extreme threat it represented. “If you three don’t return by dawn weighed down by treasures,” the elf said casually, “I’m afraid the crew might think you abandoned us with an undue cut of our earnings and then, well, I just can’t be held responsible for what they might want to do.”
“I’ll be back,” Origrue said after a moment, and then he turned and left. One-Eye and Boone watched him go, well aware that if ever again they saw the man, they would be expected to kill him.
A stiff breeze played over the water’s surface, rippling the moon’s reflection and tossing the old rowboat and her inhabitants. One man rowed, the other two went through silent preparations, one sharpening a dagger and the other testing segments on a long length of rope.
Ori, who rowed, ruminated in the meantime. Lupus was not a stupid man by any stretch, and clearly intended to be done with Istraloth’s native as soon as possible and probably for good reason. Ori had come aboard the Howard’s Pyle nearly six months ago, after leading her pirates on a wild chase through the jungle – a chase that ended with a majority of them dead and Lupus with a half-empty boat and a lot of work left to do. When Ori boarded and demanded a place in the crew, holding Lupus’s nephew by the throat in a fortuitous twist of circumstance, the astute elf made a place for him.
After that, Origrue become a model pirate and sailor. He learned fast and established himself with the crew as a hard worker and dependable ally. The sea dogs began to rely on him for his incredible strength, because he was always the first to step forward and accept dangerous and challenging tasks, and because he could be trusted - as much as a pirate can be - but was too incisive and deadly to betray. He was hard to mirth and hard to work, and in all his time made no enemies.
Two months after he was accepted as one of the crew, the Pyle encountered another pirate vessel off the eastern coast of Istraloth and made quick work of it, thanks in no small part to Origrue’s feral swordplay and cruel skill. Those who survived the attack were invited to join the Pyle’s crew, and most did, which brought the crew back to a respectable number again and made shoreline raids possible. By this time, Ori was so well-liked by the original crew that the newcomers took an immediate liking to him as well, and respect soon followed. Lupus was too smart to miss the implications: the crew was beginning to compare the two men, and should Lupus send them on another ruinous chase through the jungle they’d have a new captain lined up in a hurry.
The Aleraran captain was determined to plunder Istraloth’s ruins, despite rather skimpy profits so far, and even the dullest noticed that Lupus began sending Origrue into the ruins first no matter the danger. Still, the wild man returned time after time despite the odds levied against him, and it became clear that the captain was only helping to create a living legend out of his adversary.
So, Ori saw this day coming for awhile now. Still, it didn’t do much for his mood now that it was here.
Lupus had sprung his trap expertly, in the end. The captain had the crew’s support and loyalty for now, and if he told them that Ori had made off with a substantial bit of the crew’s communal plunder they were likely to believe him. Killing the damnable elf was a viable option – it would create a rift among the crew and probably lead to infighting at first, but Ori was confident he could get things under control again. However, Lupus was never seen without his deadly pistols, which would make quick and short work of even Origrue of the Jungle, and an unexpected strike was impossible as long as One-Eye and Boone were around – and they always were, especially lately.
Though the valley man knew his captain’s trap would be a wily one, he was still surprised by pieces of it. Sending Tyler to the tower with him was only mildly unexpected. Tyler was the quartermaster aboard the Pyle, and had taken an immediate liking to Ori, and their camaraderie was only enhanced by their spending so much time together as Tyler taught the valley man Tradespeak and the ways of a sailor. There was little doubt that in choosing between the captain and his rival, Tyler would choose Ori.
However, why Lupus would send this other man was perplexing and seemingly nonsensical. Malek was a young half-elf and, as it was, Lupus’ nephew, the very same man who Ori held captive on the day he first step foot aboard the ship. Malek was a rodent, wiry and lithe and quick to betray for the smallest gain, and sometimes only for amusement. There was some suggestion that Malek favored Ori over Lupus, but this was likely only because Lupus was currently in control and thus could be betrayed in this way. Tyler was a threat with or without Ori alive, but without the valley man in the picture, Malek was a roach Lupus could flick aside on a whim. That the Aleraran would send his nephew away to die – especially given that before now he seemed keen on protecting the weasel – was mysterious and troubling.
Perhaps he expects Malek to betray me, Origrue thought to himself, and contribute to my death in the tower. Or perhaps he sent him to add legitimacy to his claims – if the crew disbelieves him when he says that I abandoned ship with a cut of the plunder at night, his argument will be stronger when he ‘reluctantly’ gives the order to kill me and his beloved nephew.
The valley man sighed – it didn’t matter either way. It would be safer to kill the boy now, but Tyler would frown on it and Ori worried that Lupus expected him to act so rashly.
“Damn him,” Ori muttered. “He has me thinking in circles.”
Tyler and Malek soundlessly slipped over the edge of the boat and into the murky sea as Ori removed the oars from their locks and tucked them carefully away beneath the narrow benches. Once the boat was ashore, the three men hid it amidst tall grasses and stacked fresh branches over and across it. It was doubtful that it was other pirates in the tower, but there was no reason not to be safe about things.
The moon suddenly faded from overhead, and not a second after that the rain began falling in sheets that shimmered and danced over the three Freebooters. Ori cursed and untied the sash from around his waist, tying it instead about his forehead and strapping his dagger against his left thigh. “This rain will make the jungle a thousand times deadlier,” said the native, “so stick close to me and be quieter than you’ve ever been in your life.
“And if I tell you to run, for Am’aleh’s sake, do so and don’t stop until you break the tree line.”
Forty-five minutes after their rowboat struck sand, the pirates stealthily emerged from the jungle on the opposite side. The spire loomed overhead, its tallest windows aglow with torchlight. It was a black stone structure, and in fine shape compared to the surrounding architecture. It overlooked the drowned ruins of what must have been an impressive city on the coast, and aside from the anemic light issuing from the tower there was no sign of life or activity of any sort.
Ori motioned for his fellows to stay low and quiet, trusting the pouring rain to mask their approach from any watchmen in the tower. Still, he went at a crouching gait with his head thrust forward, every muscle tense like a big cat on the hunt, and his hand was raised over his right shoulder to clench the hilt of the sword strapped to his broad back. Malek and Tyler, while not as lissome as their leader, followed his suit with their hands on their respective weapons.
They passed through a strip of rubble that lined the tower grounds, which was probably once a sturdy wall felled by time, and at last the three men crouched at the base of the black spire. “Hand me the rope,” Ori said. “I’ll climb the tower to the third row of windows, which is as far as the rope is long. Once there I’ll lower it, and pull Malek up. Tyler, with your old back and trick knee, it’d be best if you stayed down here as lookout – we may need to make a quick escape.”
“I didn’t want to go climbing a damn wall anyway,” Tyler grumbled, “I’m too old for this shit.”
Ori smiled and slapped the husky old man heavily on the back, and then turned and sprung up onto the rain-slick tower wall like a monkey. Up he went, his strong fingers expertly seeking out the tiniest ridges between bricks and sunken mortar, and he paused briefly at the first window he passed on the way up to peer inside. He could discern nothing in the unlit gloom, so he continued up to the second row of windows.
It seemed, at first, that the son of Kull saw nothing of interest in this second window either, until he lashed out suddenly into the breach. Tyler cursed under his breath and Malek drew his daggers ineffectually, and the two pirates watched as their fellow struggled with an unseen foe while precariously clinging to a sheer wall by his fingertips. Soundlessly, Ori yanked this hidden combatant forth from the tower and through the window, and tossed the mute black shadow out into the rain and the night sky. Down the figure fell, kicking and lashing at the empty air, until its body struck the ground brutally near to where Tyler and Malek stood.
They hurried to the body and surveyed it closely as it lie still, and saw that it resembled some form of man. It was very tall – seven feet at least – and its hairless skin was an unnatural, obsidian black, stretched thin over narrow bones. Indeed, its limbs were so impossibly thin that veins and sinews were visible wrapped around bone, and its spine was very nearly touched by its stomach. Its fingers and toes were abnormally long and skeletally thin, ending in flimsy, curled, dead-yellow talons in place of nails. Its skull-face was horrible to lay eyes on, with deep eye sockets and the mouth ritualistically carved open from the corners of the lips to a point just under the cheek bones to form a wide and fearsome smile, and then the wounds sewn shut again and the stitches left in the skin. It – he – was entirely naked. Though neither Malek nor Tyler had gone into the jungle after the fleeing Origrue months ago, they had heard stories from those who were part of the hunting party. They recognized well a witch-man of the ruins.
The witch-man suddenly threw open his small, sunken eyes and filled his narrow chest with air, and Malek leapt upon him and drove his daggers between the protruding, black-clad ribs until the obsidian giant fell still again. In the cursed night, the monster’s blood looked as black as its skin.
Malek turned his gaze slowly up to Tyler’s, both men visibly shaken by their encounter with a nightmare from their fellows’ fevered stories made flesh, and as they silently regarded one another the end of a rope snaked its way cheerily down along the wall behind them.
Ori hissed sharply down at them from his window, and the pirates quickly composed themselves, clearing their throats and loosing the tension from their shoulders to take nonchalant poses. “Better, get up there,” Tyler grunted.
“Yeah,” Malek agreed, and after an awkward pause said, “Yeah.”
With that, the thinner pirate wrapped the end of the rope around his forearm and hoisted himself up, and as he climbed Origrue retracted the rope so that Malek veritably glided his way up along the tower wall.
Once Malek was through the window, Ori gathered the rope up again and wrapped the coil around one shoulder and across his chest. At this point, the valley man had to relinquish the lead to Malek, whose half-elven eyes could pierce the tower’s veil of night. Ori wasn’t comfortable trusting Malek to lead him true, but it was some consolation to be at the man’s back rather than to have their positions reversed while alone in a dark hallway.
They crept into the inky obscurity with their hands on the hilts of their weapons, their various senses sharply attuned as they crept along. Ori could only basically make out Malek’s white-clad back in the impenetrable blackness, and glances away from that one point of reference were disconcerting and fruitless. “The walls have symbols on them,” Malek whispered.
“Men with huge, evil smiles, and birds everywhere, I’ll bet,” Ori responded.
“Can you see?”
“No,” Origrue admitted. “I have been in ruins and seen the witch-men before. In a sinking temple on the lake-side of Istraloth, I saw walls that told stories about bird-gods and the evil men who worshipped them. I didn’t understand the dark rituals depicted on those walls until I witnessed one. By all the gods, I loved my eyes when I saw that devil in the window. I’ve dreamed of taking my revenge on them for six months.”
“We’ll be sure and thank my uncle when we return with their blood on our hands and their treasures on our backs,” Malek responded. “Better primitive witch-men guarding the loot than another band of jealous pirates.”
“Aye,” said Ori, “except that the witch-men are liable to know these halls very well, and are much more likely to overwhelm us in the darkness.”
“You can trust my eyes. I’ll lead you true,” Malek said.
Ori wasn’t reassured.
The pair of pirates stole into a narrow archway and down its hallway, having searched the tower for a quarter of an hour already and discovered nothing but damp, empty rooms, eldritch carvings on ancient stone, and thick swatches of cobweb.
“I hate spiders,” Ori had muttered.
Malek responded, saying, “My uncle told me that admitting you hate something is the same as admitting you fear it.”
“It is not,” Ori countered. “Hate is manlier. And besides, I hate the witch-men too, and fear them not at all.”
“But you do fear spiders,” Malek said.
“Gods, yes. They’re rare in the valley for whatever reason, and never at the size found in the jungle. Did you hear that?”
Malek grunted, crouching against a wall and peering cautiously around the corner. He withdrew his head swiftly and pressed his back to the wall, holding his breath and growing tense before shooing Ori back the way they came. They went a short distance, and then the half-elf spoke in a whisper.
“There are two of those witch-men fifty feet down this hallway, guarding a door with spears. The door is wooden, so it must have been recently installed – the original doors have all rotted away. If there was ever a room more likely to have a priceless treasure within, I haven’t seen it,” he said.
“There’s no way we can charge them from fifty feet and kill them before they call for help,” Ori said. “We’ll have to find a way to kill them silently.”
Malek nodded his agreement, thought a moment, and then said, “There was a hallway running across the door they’re guarding, and I believe halls to either side as well. Let’s go back, and then farther in their direction from another way. Perhaps we can get around behind them.”
The pirates did just that, though with a new, eager speed born from the promise of bloodshed and loot. Slipping down narrow ways and through empty chambers, they found themselves in a hallway which ran perpendicular to the hallway the guards resided in. Malek left Ori there, scouting farther down that hallway until it branched to the right once, and then twice, and brought him back to where the guards were, but on the opposite side.
Once there, the half-elf drew his dagger and tapped its blade against the stones, and then darted into a niche on the opposite side of the hall. Origrue watched, thankful for the small bit of moonlight that beamed through a nearby chamber, as the guards turned toward the sound, and then looked to one another. One guard nodded to his fellow, who stalked off after Malek, and the remaining guard shuffled a step to the left so that he blocked the doorway entirely. He held his spear loosely in his right hand and, while not incompetent, the guard gave the impression of being disinterested in his task. Ori considered this a moment, troubled that the guard seemed less worried about something getting in…
…but it was no matter. Time was of the essence, and so the son of Kull pressed his back to the wall, steeling himself for the rush to come. He pounced soundlessly, leaping around the corner and punching the witch-man in the throat before he could lift up his spear. Ori then shoved the spear aside and grabbed his taller victim, summoning up his exceptional strength to lift him off of his feet, turn him horizontal, and then swing him head-first in a circle, around the corner and directly into the wall. The witch-man’s head collided sickeningly with the stones, his neck snapped, and his smashed face left a glistening smear of blood on the wall.
Ori dragged the battered corpse back around the corner again by an ankle, just as Malek appeared, dragging the second guard along with his arms hooked under its armpits. His dagger stood out hilt-deep in the black chest. The valley man quietly opened the sturdy wooden door, which was indeed quite new, and the two men dragged the guards into the room beyond before shutting themselves in. Malek retrieved his dagger while the two surveyed their surroundings.
At first all there was to see was the glow of a fire through hanging veils of plum-colored silk, as thin and glamorous as gossamer. The pirates brushed these veils aside as they crept into the room, and passed quickly through the luxurious hangings into the room proper, which was as if stepping back in time to when the tower was originally occupied. The stones were warmed by firelight, which burned in an ancient fireplace, and decadent finery lined the walls and the floor in the form of exotic rugs and tapestries. The room’s central piece, however, drew the attention of the men quickly from whatever else the chamber boasted.
Beneath a massive painting of a beautiful moonlit vale was a gilded, cushioned bench, and upon that bench lounged a young woman in the throes of severe boredom, laid with her hip against the cushions and her torso flung out along the bench with her arms hanging over its edge. She turned on her stomach disinterestedly when she noticed the pirates in her chamber, lifting herself up on her forearms like a sphinx and tucking her legs to display her every voluptuous swell to full advantage.
Ori very nearly stumbled, and before he could collect himself he gasped, “Desdemesne!”
He recovered swiftly after this initial shock, seeing that this woman did resemble the girl Desdemesne, but there were stark differences between the dweller of this boudoir and the woman Ori had failed. Desdemesne had been dark-skinned, with hair the color of chestnuts and mahogany-colored, intensely curious eyes, modest to a fault and wrought with timorous charm. That girl’s living double lounging here was of the palest skin, with straight hair like three in the morning made liquid and startlingly bright steel-grey eyes. This woman’s every movement, no matter how truly innocent or slight, was furtively suggestive, and one could not imagine her wearing anything more humble than the sheer scarlet kirtle that clung to her contours now – delivering so much to the eyes yet promising just enough more.
At hearing the name that passed through Origrue’s lips, the girl recoiled wide-eyed, rising to her knees. “How do you know that name?” said she. “How do you know my sister?”
“Stop,” the woman said, and there was a peculiar, dangerous edge to her voice. “Start again, from the very beginning. How is it you came to meet Desdemesne, my sister?”
“Eight months ago I left my home, which is in the valley of Mount Cruach, east of here,” Origrue said. “After hearing stories about distant lands, I decided to earn myself a place aboard a Freebooter ship that had been terrorizing the coasts of Istraloth for some time, and ride with its crew to the north lands of Althanas. To do this, I killed straggling pirates as they strayed and scavenging parties when they were left behind.
“Well, on one trip six months ago, I happened upon a girl beside a burned village and killed some Freebooters that might have had ways with her. She said her name was Desdemesne, and asked my protection from the pirates as they returned. So, with the girl in tow, I ran from the Freebooters into the jungle for a day. She was a strange girl, and she told me about her father and the many lessons he gave her – lessons about philosophy and morals and religion, but never about fishing or other practical things, and he wouldn’t allow her to marry or even socialize with men. It didn’t matter much to me at the time because the man was dead, but it seemed to me as though the whole point of Desdemesne’s education was to distract her from the world. She was innocent and naïve, but bold and intelligent too. I considered her my friend, and it was an honor to protect her.
“In any case, we would have escaped from the pirates easily, but that night we made camp. As we slept, a war party of witch-men attacked us, poisoned me, and made off with the girl. I slaughtered as many of them as I could, and gave chase, but they escaped into the ruins on the lake side of the mountains. I couldn’t get into the ruins by myself, so I tricked the pirates – who were still searching for us – into attacking the witch-men. In the chaos I slipped into a sunken temple, and there inside I found Desdemesne suspended above a black pool.
“There was no way to save her by the time I arrived, and she told me to kill her. I didn’t want to, but it became clear to me that she was suffering a slow death and it would be a mercy, so I did it. I cut the rope, and she fell into the pool and didn’t come back up. Then, a tall bastard of a witch-man came, wearing a headdress and carrying a staff, which he used to fish her skull out of the pool. I managed to chase after him, but he disappeared down some secret tunnel and I never caught him.”
“Nergal,” the girl said. “The witchdoctor you saw carry my sister’s skull away is called Nergal. He’s the reason for all of this.”
“I’d like to rip his throat out,” Ori said. “I appreciate knowing his name, but it might be more useful to know yours.”
“My name is Athella,” she said. “Let me explain as much of this as I can, quickly. Nergal and the witch-men who follow him worship the Raven God, which is a being as old as Althanas itself, and is said to sleep at the bottom of the lagoon. Nergal thinks that if he wakes the Raven God up he’ll gain its favor, and when it sweeps all the other races from Althanas it will teach him to fly and make the witch-men kings.
“To this end, he has spent decades preparing for a huge ritual. More than a quarter of a century ago he approached a lonely, poor fisherman, who was exiled from his village for the crimes of his father. Nergal offered the fisherman riches and power, and the fisherman accepted without asking the price. Nergal kept his end of the bargain, and with the riches the fisherman bought boats and supplies, and went around bringing small, loose clans together, until he was the rich, successful chief of a fishing tribe.
“The fisherman fell deeply in love with the most pure, beautiful girl of his village, who had been a princess in one of the older clans that made up the tribe. On the day after they were married, though, Nergal returned and demanded that the fisherman keep his end of the bargain. The price was that the fisherman must father a girl with a wretched sea-hag, who lived alone in a cave and was said to have the blood of the witch-people in her veins. The fisherman refused at first, both because the idea was repulsive and because he wouldn’t be unfaithful to his lovely wife, but when Nergal threatened his family with curses the fisherman knew he had no choice.
“The fisherman might have forgotten about his loathsome deed, but a year later his wife died in childbirth, and a week after that the sea-hag came to the village carrying a baby. The fisherman’s daughters had been born at the very same time, and now that his wife was dead and he was alone with a baby, the sea-hag demanded that he marry her, and she would raise the babies as his new wife.
“The fisherman couldn’t bear the thought of his people finding out that he was false to his wife with a sea-hag, so he killed her before she was seen or heard and threw her body into the ocean. He was prepared to throw the second child into the sea after her, not because he hated the infant but because he wouldn’t be able to explain its presence.
“Nergal came to the fisherman, though, and said that his night of indiscretion wasn’t the price of their arrangement – it was the result Nergal wanted. The witchdoctor demanded one of the daughters, and with great regret, the fisherman handed the baby over. Then Nergal explained, in great detail, how the remaining daughter was to be raised.”
“The fisherman was your father,” Malek interjected. “So you were the daughter born from the sea-hag, and Desdemesne was the daughter born from the wife who died in childbirth?”
“You have it backwards,” Athella said with a wry smile. “Only after Nergal was gone did the fisherman realize that he’d been tricked, and the witchdoctor had escaped with his wife’s daughter, and he was left with the spawn of the sea-hag. Still he loved her, named her Desdemesne, and raised her exactly as Nergal wished – he kept her happy and pure and innocent and naïve, taught her all the ‘good’ things in life, made her cultured, a pious, well-read virgin.
“Meanwhile, Nergal and the witch-people raised me with hate in their eyes. Instead of religion and philosophy and spiritualism, I was taught the Black Arts, and I was forced to listen to demons whisper forbidden secrets to me from scrying pools as a lullaby. I was taught to lie in order not to be beaten, exposed to unspeakable acts, left to starve in muddy holes, humiliated and tortured and mocked for my suffering. If ever I was allowed to love something, I was later forced to kill it or watch it die.”
All these things Athella said evenly and without emotion, as if she were telling a common fairy tale. She adjusted herself on the bench, and then slid to her bare feet and stepped closer to Origrue, staring into his eyes impassively. “But Desdemesne’s death changes things. I will no longer remain among the witch-men. You will help me escape this tower, and take me back to your ship. I would leave Istraloth forever.”
“The hell we will!” Malek spat. “We were sent for treasure, and if we returned with nothing but a pale tart Lupus would rightly cut our throats and leave us to the sharks.”
Athella smiled at the unwavering intensity of Ori’s gaze, knowing that he faltered neither to the girl’s will nor to Malek’s. He cared little for treasure or the threat of his captain’s displeasure, and yet he did not feel the immediate need to bow to an intractable, albeit beautiful, woman’s whim. She detected a kindred soul behind those hard green eyes, and it both intrigued and frustrated the girl – an amusing puzzle for one such as her.
“Treasure?” Athella cooed at last. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I know of a roomful not too far from this chamber. The witch-men care little for gold and trinkets, except to decorate me in shiny things. Follow me.”
Athella padded through the blackness with no sign of thought or discomfort, as if she could see into the gloomy corners even better than Malek and thought nothing of the horrific symbolism etched into every wall. She was a bit easier for Ori to track through the veil of night, her white skin practically shimmering, reflecting blue the barest caress of moonlight. If not for the amusement he recognized in her eyes whenever she glanced at him, the valley man would fear her for being a sorceress – whether or not it was her choice to master the Black Arts, she embraced them now.
The girl rounded a corner, seemingly heedless to the threat of lurking witch-men, and Ori followed immediately behind her. Malek lagged to the back, for he had never known Desdemesne and trusted sorcerous women not at all. The half-elf suspected that they were being led into a trap, and while he respected Origrue’s skill and judgment normally, he was not so quick to accept mysterious witches as friends.
When the half-elf glimpsed the shimmer of gold from over the valley man’s meaty shoulder, though, he shoved himself forward eagerly. “Look at it!” he said.
It was a room only slightly smaller than Athella’s boudoir and it had a small window on the far wall, through which moonlight streamed in abundance and illuminated the room’s treasures. Populating every corner and spilling out untidily from cracked chests was gold coinage, trinkets, jewelry, and other valuable artistry. It was a sizeable ransom, and could easily purchase and crew a modest fleet of three or four warships.
Unfortunately, these treasures were literally barred from the pirates and their fair guide. A door of leaden bars descended from the upper frame of the room’s portal, and they would not budge no matter how fiercely Malek shook at them. “Damn you!” the half-breed spat. “You brought us to treasure, but we have no hope of claiming it! We never should have trusted her.”
“There’s something funny about that stone there,” Ori said, ignoring Malek’s vehement curses.
“You have an excellent eye,” Athella said, while reaching up and pulling the aforesaid stone face out of the wall. The space behind it was hollow, and she dropped the face to the ground and reached into the hole. Inside was a lever, and once pulled, some hidden mechanical apparatus swiftly pulled the bars up and out of sight. The treasure room was open.
Malek very nearly squealed as he charged through the piles of gold toward the farthest wall, and in fact did squeal when death snatched at him. Lucky for him, Ori caught him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him back from the middle of the room, which was hidden from sight by tall piles of shimmering wealth. There was a hole in the floor, large enough for a man to slip through and fall into the inky black depths of the tower.
“That’s not a very honest trap at all,” Malek grumbled, peering over the edge. “There’s no telling how deep it goes. Did you know about this, you witch?”
Athella shrugged, admiring herself wearing a necklace of pearls in a gold-framed mirror.
“No matter,” Ori said. “We should empty out two of these chests and then fill them again with the most valuable pieces we can fit. We’ll bring them back to the Pyle as proof, and then return with a proper crew to clean out the rest.”
“Aye,” Malek muttered, and then pounced upon a small chest and dumped its contents out in a glimmering pile. Ori meanwhile chose a larger vessel, and then the two began pawing through the loot, filling their respective chests. Every so often Athella would intercept a man and pluck some piece of jewelry from his load, or point at a piece she thought should be taken along, but otherwise she ignored the pirates in their work and contributed little.
It was a half-hour’s work to lug the chests out of the room and out into the hallway again, and once it was done the pirates briefly discussed the burdens allotted to them. Malek surveyed his chest, which was of a modest size, and after a moment’s thought said, “I can carry another. I’m going to be sure these are properly latched, you go find me another small chest.”
Ori shrugged and, thinking Malek was too distracted with gold for any sort of betrayal, returned to the treasure chamber. He glanced over the room once, and sighed heavily when he heard the half-elf dart across the stones outside the room and the mechanical grind of the doorway apparatus as the bars slammed back into place. The valley man and Athella were locked in the room with the treasure, and Malek was outside, grinning through the bars.
Ori grabbed up a handful of coins and threw them at Malek through the bars, and the half-elf yelped and cowered back into the shadows with his arms over his head. “How immature,” he said. “You can’t tell me you didn’t see this coming.”
“No,” the son of Kull said, “I suppose not. I don’t think you planned this out very well, though. The rest of the treasure is in here, and your cut of the smaller chest isn’t going to be very significant once Lupus and the crew gets hold of it.”
“This is gambling,” Malek explained, “and I’m playing it safe. My greed got me sent into this deathtrap in the first place. So, I’ll return to the ship with the smaller chest, and then tell my uncle about the rest of the treasure and the witch-men. I’d wager that by the time we return, the two of you will be dead and the treasure will be ours for the taking.”
Ori chuckled darkly. “Malek, you stopped playing it safe the moment you left my side. I’ll wager that you won’t make it out of the tower alive, especially not carrying that chest.”
“Well, we’ll see, won’t we?”
And with that, the half elf spun about and snatched up the smaller of the two packed coffers, and hurried down the hall and out of sight.
Ori turned to Athella, who was systematically removing her accoutrements. Seeing no help from her, and beginning to suspect that she was half-mad from what she suffered at the hands of the witch-men, Ori began to pace the room looking for an escape. He put pressure on the bars of the door one by one, and declared it a lost cause to try and escape that way. The window opposite the door was unbarred, but was too small for him to escape through – Athella’s lithe frame would slip easily through, but they were too high in the tower for the rope to be of any use and she wouldn’t be able to climb down the stones on her own.
“That leaves one way out,” she said suddenly, and glanced at the pit in the center of the room. “But first, stop your pacing and listen closely.”
Ori did so, and was troubled by the distant sounds of pattering feet echoing from the black hallways. “Children?” he whispered.
“No, pygmies. The race from which the witch-men come is divided into three castes based on personal attributes at birth. The witch-men themselves are the highest caste, and there are relatively few of them left. The majority of the race is made up of the pygmies. They are the opposite of the witch-men in every single way save one,” Athella said.
“They die when you stick a sword in them?”
“I meant that both the witch-men and the pygmies were completely evil, but okay, I guess they have two things in common. Now, how are we going to get down there without killing ourselves?”
Ori waded calf-deep through a heap of gold coins and hoisted a tremendous box out – quite possibly the largest container in the room and most certainly the heaviest. This he tossed down a short distance from the gap, and he packed as much gold into it as he possibly could before nothing more could be stacked upon it. Then he began wedging things at the base of it and piling wealth up between it and the hole. Once he was satisfied, he took the rope still coiled around his shoulder and tied one end of it around the chest, and dropped the other end into the blackness.
Athella glanced over his work critically, and then glanced at his face, and then back to the hole again. “You go first,” she said.
The valley man took one glance at her kirtle and the nakedness of her legs beneath, then immediately and swiftly agreed and crawled down and into the abyss along the rope, descending hand-under-hand. The girl, apparently unmindful to the man’s eager acceptance to drop into a black hole which likely housed unknown horrors and bloody death, went down shortly after him. Ori would only later note that Athella carried more athletic prowess than her sister had, and needed no coaching on how to hold the rope or the best method of descent.
In all actuality, the hole was not excessively deep, though falling through it would doubtlessly end in broken bones at the least. Once again, however, the valley man was plunged into blindness, until a sudden light flared, and once the shock of its appearance faded the son of Kull saw that it was a luminous blue mist, which hovered about Athella’s dainty shoulder like an overeager sprite. “I’m full of surprises,” said she in perfect deadpan.
Now that he was able to see, Ori surveyed his surroundings. It was a chamber of identical size to the one above it, complete with a barred door but lacking a hole in the floor. Judging by the rubble haphazardly shoved against the walls, the treasure room hadn’t been originally designed with a pit at its center. Thankfully, the bars on the door here were already bent out of shape, wide enough to accommodate even a man of Ori’s width.
Athella stepped aside obediently when Ori pointed to one of the walls adjacent to the door. “We need to be careful here,” she said, “this hallway leads into a massive network of underground tunnels, which are the real home of the witch-men.”
At that moment, the valley man pulled the rope with all of his might, until it suddenly went slack in his hands and he leapt aside as a rain of golden trinkets and coins crashed upon the stone floor, followed by the chest, which exploded in a terrific show of glittering splendor and thunderous noise.
“Did you not hear what I just said?” Athella hissed furiously.
Ori shrugged, holding up the end of rope he’d just untied from around the coffer-turned-dented-ruin. “I needed my rope back.”
For a moment, the alluring sorceress was the mirror image of her sister, gaping disbelievingly at her companion. Then, unexpectedly, she threw her head back and laughed richly, and her voice echoed defiantly all through the catacombs.
Athella hadn’t lied about the hallway beyond that first dark room beneath the treasure vault: immediately upon opening up into the next hallway, the ceiling sloped dramatically down, and the floor went parallel with equal readiness. That corridor was less a hall and more a steep ramp, and a fierce chill rushed persistently up past them from the earthy depths. If not for Athella’s arcane torch - which bobbed along merrily just above and behind her right shoulder, trailing wisps of dissipating blue fog – the way would be blind and treacherous.
Soon, the ornate stone architecture of the tower gave way to simpler artistry and then into moist earthen walls decorated with skulls of man and beast and macabre shapes beyond human recognition. These primitive tunnels began to split randomly and nonsensically, forming a warren of dead ends and ways that wound back upon themselves without logic or purpose. Athella conceded the lead to Ori here and lost her haughty comportment – the tower ruins she knew well, but the tunnels were as unfamiliar to her as to the valley man.
“You said that these tunnels were the home of the witch-men,” Ori whispered. “Did they build the ruins above?”
Athella shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think they would be capable of building anything like that as they are now – either they moved in after the original builders left or died off, or the builders have fallen and taken an evolutionary step backwards. The witch-men probably did carve out these tunnels, though.”
“I believe that,” he responded. “In some ways they are cunning and resemble men, but in others they seem to lack sentience.”
“I think their more human features are forced on them,” Athella said reflectively. “From what I’ve observed of them, it doesn’t come naturally for them to live with even an iota of civilization. Nergal is the exception. He has the mind of a man in the body of a fiend, and the fiend’s simple compulsions dictate the ends his mind works toward. I suspect that without him, the witch-men would fight amongst themselves over the dumbest things, especially the…”
And at that moment, a thin, short, wicked spear embedded itself into the wall not an inch in front of Ori’s nose.
“…pygmies!”
The two whirled to peer down a narrow, low-ceilinged burrow, from which came screaming their attacker. It darted through the air in a nightmare rush of large, snapping, snag-toothed jaws and flailing limbs, and only the sharp reflexes of the valley man saved him from being mangled. He caught the blur and, on practiced impulse, gave it a brutal shake and twist. A soft snap sounded, and then the lashing body fell still, and Origrue tossed it to the ground.
Now that it was still and in the light, Ori observed his attacker. In bodily habit and structure it resembled the witch-men, being skeletally thin and humanoid. Unlike the witch-men, however, it was ashen-skinned and smeared, sporadically, with paint of various dark colors, and quite unlike the witch-men, it was very short. The name Athella gave to them – pygmy – was suitable: this one was a little over two feet tall and might be mistaken for a half-starved child with its swollen belly and tiny limbs. Its head, however, was oversized, and its face was horrible to behold, with a massive mouth full of uneven teeth and small, sunken eyes, and a nose of narrow slits.
“Even the children of the witch-men are mad,” Ori growled.
“That’s no child,” Athella said. “He’s a full-grown pygmy. They are born the size of rats and typically grow about this size, give or take a foot or two. Come on, we have to get out of here.”
“Calm down,” the valley man said, “he’s dead and didn’t have a chance to get off a warning cry.”
“No, you don’t understand, I’ve told you already – the pygmies are the opposite of the witch-men. Witch-men travel alone or in very small bands, but pygmies travel in small armies.”
The color drained slightly, but visibly, from Ori’s face as a second pygmy appeared at that moment in the tunnel behind them, followed by a third, and then – with nary a second in between – no less than six more.
With a harsh, short cry, Ori snatched Athella up in his arms and sprinted down through the tunnel, followed closely behind by their magic torch. The pygmies echoed his cry, and were in turn echoed by a chorus of similar cries from out of sight, and then gave chase, their stunted legs carrying them with astonishing speed. The catacombs reached out before the fleeing valley man in a madman’s design of illogical turns and sudden shifts in direction and slope, but no matter how swiftly Ori changed directions, he instinctively knew that the pygmies were gaining ground fast. How they carried on at this speed on their twig-legs he could not fathom – his own nearly-superhuman endurance and muscular ability was pushed to its limit.
At long last, respite came, and none too soon. Two hallways converged at a right angle – the mathematical orderliness oddly out of place – and emerging into that corner was an angular slab of stone: a wall, built in the style of the ruins above. Blessedly, this wall was complete with a heavy stone door, which was slightly ajar. There were no other options, for Ori could hear a second group of pygmies charging from the other tunnel, intent on cutting them off.
They skid to a stop and the son of Kull set Athella down on her feet, and then pushed her through the gap in the stone doorway. She peered back out at him wide-eyed, and as he shoved the weighty stone door closed he shouted, “Run, and don’t stop until you can’t run anymore!”
And with that, the stone door was closed and became indiscernible from the rest of the wall, and Ori reached and drew his sword from its place on his back. Holding the blade in front of him, he pressed himself to the cool stone and smiled with feral abandon.
Finally, he said without words, something to sink my sword into, and no lives but my own to lose!
Then, without pause, the pygmies were on him in the dark, and the sound of snapping bones and rending flesh and fierce cries reached from the catacombs and, hauntingly, into the empty tower above.
Athella lingered on the opposite side of the stone door, expressing more anxiety than she wanted to admit she felt. She heard muffled cries from beyond, many of them the death-screams of pygmies, but mingled also within were the agonized shouts and desperate curses of an ardent warrior on the tail end of his last stand. At one particularly fierce sound she started, desperately pushing and pulling at the door, but it would be too heavy for her to budge even if Ori didn’t have his back pushed to the other side, holding it in place.
She beat her palms flatly against the stone, her mystic torch bobbing drunkenly in response, and then with a final, choked grunt of frustration, she whirled around and ran down the darksome hallway. She did not glance at the mosaics, but if she had, she would have been privy to horrific scenes. Those stones told the story of a creature which dwelled beneath the lake of Istraloth, peering up at the peoples who lived above and, in the final collection, devouring those people and their cities.
The people that the bird-god consumed were not human beings, though – no, the art was quite clear on this point. The bird-god ate its worshippers first: the tall, spindly witch-men of the ruins. Nergal wasn’t seeking the bird-god’s favor, as Athella had surmised, but was trying to appease it, to protect himself by keeping it asleep. Like all the coarse gods of Istraloth it was best not to attract the attention of the fickle, ravenous Raven God, who dispensed death and misery more often than fortune.
This hallway of revelations, which would remain unexamined by human eyes, was short, and gave way to a large, jarringly torch-lit chamber. In the face of greater illumination, the arcane torch faded away to nothing as Athella observed her surroundings.
The chamber was ornate and unlike anything either Ori or Athella had seen of the ruins. Rather than the low, flat ceilings typical to the ruins, this chamber had a high, vaulted ceiling, with broad pillars set in the walls and valuable artifacts placed randomly upon stone pedestals. All of this was gleaming and fresh, without the suggestion of the endless centuries that must have passed since its construction – there were no cobwebs, no chipped stones, no thick layer of dust and strewn debris. It was a shrine, a vile temple, and it was in frequent use.
The focal point in the underground temple was a massive brickwork throne, which overlooked an elongated, rectangular pit in the temple floor, running from a few feet beyond the throne to a point perhaps thirty feet away from it. Athella padded breathlessly closer, the unfamiliar feel of fear mingling with an intense wonder and curiosity in her wide-eyed stare – the throne was not empty. In it sat a cyclopean, solid gold statue of a corpulent man, the heaping rolls of his midsection drooping across his metallic legs. Its limbs were stout and thick and finely detailed with wrinkles and blubbery curves, but its face was mostly featureless, with dark holes for eyes and scant else. Shimmering metal rings pierced its heavy, costly flesh everywhere, and from those rings hung gilded chains, chains that ended in gems of various kinds and unthinkable size. The girl gawked at the lurid image and then, when she stood at the base of its tremendous throne, she looked down into the pit.
The pit was at least as deep as it was long, but its true depth could only be guessed at. A gruesome layer of bloodied corpses filled that grisly well, sacrifices made of whatever animals or men the witch-men could catch, though the most common sort of corpse was pygmy, followed closely by their taller, spindlier masters. Athella was only mildly disturbed by this, as she had witnessed a great many atrocities in her time raised by the witch-men, but no amount of experience could prepare her for the smell of rot and decay emanating from that sacrificial pit. By some clever trick of architectural design, the air from the pit was carried straight up and out by a constant stream from vents in the pit itself to openings in the ceiling, but Athella had the poor foresight to lean over the edge and into that nauseating breeze.
She turned away as if struck, fell to her knees, and wretched profusely. An unrelenting fire seared its way from her nose down her throat to her lungs, and she breathed heavily in the struggle to remove the smell from her body and its painful effects on her. It took some time before the coughing and gagging subsided, and only then did she notice that she knelt in a deep shadow.
She raised her head curiously, but did not fear what she beheld there because her mind couldn’t grasp it. Standing over her, and indeed looking down at her, was the golden statue. Only when it reached down for her did she gasp and scramble away from its hand.
This only enraged the living idol, and it lurched forward after her with thunderous steps. It was a little over twelve feet tall, and despite being made of inflexible metal it did not groan at these exertions, as if its joints were softened to move as quickly as the fleshy limbs they emulated. Its short, thick fingers worked spasmodically, voicing soundless and iniquitous desires, and it reached after her persistently.
Athella turned and ran, shocked by a rush of adrenaline when she heard the pounding thunder of the idol’s chase behind her, and before she got far it caught her by the straight, dark locks of her hair. She screamed more with rage than pain or fear, and wheeled on her attacker, but the immovable titan caught her by the wrist and lifted her entire body from the floor effortlessly. It caught her in an oddly lascivious hug, and might have crushed the life from her in short order hadn’t she slipped free and darted from between its legs, running back toward the throne.
The colossus turned with some effort, expertly rocking itself from side to side to use its weight to build the momentum necessary to spin about on the pads of its metal feet. It advanced on her inexorably, and she saw that there was no escape from the temple except by the way she had entered. She was trapped, with only the most intolerable options left to her: leap into the sacrificial pit, try to make it past the marching idol, or wait for whatever ghastly end it planned for her.
The giant began to slow in its march, however, and it leaned forward as if walking into a forceful wind that came from behind her. Its flesh began to groan with the effort of advancing on her, and its feet cracked the stone floor wherever it dreadfully stomped. As it leaned forward, nearly touching the floor with its hands to drag itself after her, she caught sight of the space behind it. One of the chains attached to its back was stretched out straight behind it, every link trembling and bending with the opposing forces applied to it, and the far end of that chain was wrapped around a forearm thick as the trunk of a juvenile sapling.
There stood Origrue out of Tauvyk by Kull, every ounce of nerve and sinew applied on the chain in his grasp, the veins standing out in his chest and his arms and his shoulders, a thin, glistening layer of sweat mingling with the blood of a thousand shallow wounds and running down his limbs. He adjusted his feet, setting his heels firmly in the space between two stones, and with a final deafening roar he pulled the idol upright again, and then it stumbled backward, flailing its arms.
Realizing the futility of its original chase, the colossus turned itself around again with some effort, and marched on Ori. So long was its stride that the valley man hardly had time to draw his sword, which was still stained with blood that crusted around its hilt and on the scabbard. The living statue threw a slow but devastating punch, and Ori ducked under its swing and brought his sword straight up, seeking to drive it into the monster’s prodigious belly.
The crude iron sword drew a scratch in the golden mound, and then promptly snapped a quarter of the way up the blade. The idol stepped back, turning its faceless head down as if to survey the damage – which it couldn’t see over its bulk – while Ori regarded the remains of his sword. In the end, the idol recovered quicker, shoving the warrior backward and through the air.
The colossus turned itself around a third time, and it was no less impressive to witness. This time, however, Athella was ready for it, and just as it began to advance on her she threw her hands forward. A burst of sparks and smoke filled the air, and a sizable ball of fire barreled from the girl’s outstretched hands and collided with the idol’s head. It stepped through the mass of resulting smoke as if oblivious to her attack, once again reaching out to her and catching her by the neck.
The idol threw Athella down to the stone floor, where she slid a short distance toward the edge of the sacrificial pit. She frantically stopped herself before slipping over the side, and did well to hold her breath and yank her head back before catching another whiff of the noxious fumes that rose from that evil place, readily choosing death at the idol’s hands rather than down there.
When she rolled onto her back, she found herself looking straight up at her chosen fate. The colossus leaned back enough to peer down at her, and then lifted one of its legs high, intending to bring all of its weight down on her head. Before it could stomp at her, though, Ori intervened for a second time, hooking both his hands beneath the instep of the titan’s foot. With herculean effort, with every muscle strained to its considerable limit, the warrior pulled, until the giant golden statue began to topple over the edge of the pit.
As it fell, Athella screamed. “Ori, its eyes! There’s someone alive in there!”
Just before the metallic giant might have fallen, teetering on one foot and hanging over the gaping pit, Ori lashed out and caught one of the chains dangling from its gold flesh. Athella stepped in behind him, and together they looked up into the giant’s eyes, and saw that indeed, human eyes looked through narrow holes back out at them. Somewhere inside that huge shell of gold was a living man, and he was afraid. It was in his eyes, and a low moan echoed inside the near-hollow idol.
The two stared for a moment in mute shock, and then Athella spat into those eyes and Ori lifted what was left of his sword and brought the edge down on the chain, which snapped. The colossus hung in midair for a moment longer, and then toppled end-over-end into the sacrificial pit and landed with a sickening chorus of broken bones amidst the viscera.
The valley man and the sorceress watched mutely as the idol lay on its back, buried in what had been given to it. It lashed its short limbs as if it could swim out of the vile mass it sank into, and it clawed at its metal throat feebly for pure air, until at last it was as still and dead as any other idol.
“You look terrible. How did you get away from the pygmies?”
“I didn’t,” Ori said. He was fiddling with the chain he’d cut from the idol, as there was a tremendous ruby attached to the other end of it. The chain was fastened to the gem by a thin gold ring, which he bent out of shape by wedging the hilt of his broken sword between the metal and the stone. “I waited until they jumped on me, and then cut them down. Thankfully one carried a torch, and then it was easier to kill them in droves. Eventually I had a little wall of bodies going knee-deep, and it must have scared them because they retreated. I suspect they’ll be back with even greater numbers.”
The metal ring snapped, and slid out of a hole in the giant ruby – its single flaw. The stone was easily as long and as thick around as Ori’s bicep. He handled the gem briskly, examining it from every angle. “This is probably big enough to pay for a fleet of ships and a castle,” he said. “Lupus will have a hard time turning me away if I’m carrying this. Of course, first we have to…”
And then the valley man stood at the ready and raised his broken sword defensively, because a stream of hooting pygmies charged into the temple brandishing spears and blowguns. They flowed around the outside walls, skirting the sacrificial pit and clambering over the throne, screeching threats in their hateful tongue. The adventurers were surrounded, but the pygmies did not advance.
“Get behind me,” Ori said. “I’m great in a fight until something gets behind me, you’ll have to do what you can to keep them away from me. We’ll back toward the nearest corner, and then you stay between me and the wall.”
The warrior slashed at the nearest pygmy, who danced away tittering, and then two of his fellows filled the space he left behind. Still, the child-sized army didn’t attack. Instead, it grew hushed, and parted to make way for a group of witch-men, who now entered the temple. They stepped among the pygmies like storks in pond, striding long from the doorway to the edge of the pit, where they seemed wordlessly distressed to find their idol fallen and unmoving.
Then another witch-man appeared by himself, carrying a long gnarled staff and wearing an obtrusive headdress of black feathers and tiny, hollow bones. A bird was painted across his skeletal chest in white paint, its wings spread like gripping fingers. At the first glimpse of Nergal, Athella whipped around and gripped Ori by the back of the neck, drawing him fiercely to her, and she whispered against his ear, her lips moving feverishly.
He drew back with a snarl and said, “Why didn’t you tell me that sooner!”
And before she could answer, Nergal lifted his right hand and the pygmies raised their blowguns to their lips and began to launch their projectiles: darts, which leapt into Ori’s back and arms and chest, and no matter where he turned to escape them there were more. They dribbled viscous green poison from their tips and into his blood, and in short time the valley man fell to his knees heavily, too lethargic to continue pulling the darts out of his hide. He was aware of Athella stepping defiantly between him and Nergal, and then the world faded to black.
Origrue raised his throbbing head and, with some effort, cracked swollen eyes open to look at his wrist. He was not surprised to see it shackled, and he didn’t despair at the chains running from those shackles to their moorings on the stone floor. He was on his knees, and there was just enough slack in the chains to raise his arms just below shoulder level – no higher.
He was imprisoned off to the side on a broad dais, which overlooked a temple similar in design to the one that housed the idol, only this chamber was much larger and devoid of pomp and decoration. In the center of the room was an enormous fire, belching rolls of black smoke toward the invisible ceiling. Wood was used to start and maintain the fire, but blackened skeletons lay across the pyre now as well. It was the sole source of illumination.
All around the celebratory fire, kneeling in orderly rows from the fire’s edge to the shadowy, unseen walls of the temple were the witch-men and their pygmy armies, all facing the dais. Aside from Ori, the dais was empty but for a stone altar and a pair of pedestals to either side of it. He could not guess at how many of his foe he could see, but had a sense that a great many more watched from the shadows of that cavernous temple.
The horde of witch-men watched as a limp figure was dragged from a place behind Ori to the altar, and tossed onto the slab. There were short ropes stretching from the sides of the altar, which were used to tie the victim’s wrists and ankles together. When the witch-men had firmly fastened their prey to the altar, they stepped aside, and Ori was able to get a better look at him.
It was Malek.
Next, Nergal appeared, walking silently to his place behind the altar. Origrue watched as Malek looked up at the medicine man, who looked back upon him without expression.
“Is that fear in your eyes, Malek?” Ori shouted.
Malek smirked, looking around Nergal to where his fellow pirate knelt. “The hell it is,” said he. “It’s hate!”
The half-elf turned his eyes back up to Nergal, who slid the man’s dagger from its sheath and closely considered its blade between his spidery fingers. “Hate,” Malek whispered shakily, “is manlier.”
True to his last words, Malek glared venomously into Nergal’s eyes, struggling against pain and the fear of death as his own cold blade slowly pierced his heart. He died, and a low murmur went through the witch-men. Ori realized that he was hearing them speak for the first time. They chanted – not in unison, but in a sporadic cacophony, no two men speaking the same part of the same word at the same time, and their whispery voices were indescribably horrible.
Their chanting reached a deafening, soul-chilling crescendo as Nergal’s aides untied Malek’s wrists and ankles and lifted his body. They carried it down off of the dais and across the temple to the fire, where it was tossed to burn. The heinous congregation began slapping its palms on the floor, screaming in hectic ecstasy as the Freebooter burned.
And then, as one, they stopped, and the sudden silence was almost as torturous as the preceding noise. The aides had returned, this time escorting a slender white figure to the altar. It was Athella, and as they lifted her and laid her out on the slab and bound her wrists and ankles, she did not struggle.
Ori set his jaw, struggling to control his breathing and the hot sweat that started out on his hide.
When Nergal appeared again, he carried in his hand a bleached-white human skull, and set it upon one of the pedestals, and the chains stretched in agonizing tension between Ori’s wrists and their moorings in the floor. Still, he remained silent, and said nothing.
If the medicine man was aware of how close he brushed to death when he approached Origrue, he did not express it. The black giant bent low and slipped the valley man’s dagger out of its sheath on his thigh and examined the gleaming blade, ignoring the low growl that rumbled in the warrior’s chest.
Nergal returned to the altar, and looked out at the assembled army before him. They stared back at him, but when he lifted the dagger over the girl’s supine shape they lowered their foreheads to the cool stone floor and did not raise their heads again. Ori watched, unable to control his deepening breath or the red rage boiling on his face, as Athella whispered something to Nergal.
The knife descended, and Athella closed her eyes, wincing only slightly when the steel bit her flesh and sank into her heart. She died with a slight parting of the lips and a gentle sigh.
“Don’t miss,” she had whispered in that brief second before death, and only Nergal heard her. Now he stared down at her ashy cheeks with almost fatherly affection, and none but the witch-man knew what thoughts played through that inhuman mind. Had he loved her as she was, an adoptive daughter that he tormented from birth, or did he love what her death represented – a final end to more than twenty-five years of preparation?
He reached out and tenderly undid the ropes binding her wrists and her ankles, and stared at her for another long moment before he stooped to lift her into his arms.
Before he reached her, though, he wheezed and nearly toppled as a strong arm wrapped around him from behind, and five strong fingers closed around his throat. He bent backward as the shorter warrior clenched him, clawing at the valley man’s unyielding forearm. The shackle was still fastened to his wrist and the chain dangled from it, the image of its snapped links burning into the medicine man’s eyes. The iron thews of Ori’s forearm grew progressively tenser, until blood oozed from between his fingers and a crackling sound filled the silence. Nergal’s windpipe was being crushed; ground down to so much meat, and once it was utterly and completely compacted, Ori yanked.
The valley man tossed a handful of gore to the stones beside Nergal as he fell gagging, working his savaged lips silently. “I know you heard me before, you devil, when I screamed ‘never again’ in that sinking temple,” Ori said, “and I meant it. Neither you nor any other thing, man or beast or devil, will ever take something from my protection again.” The witch-man stared up at his murderer in disbelieving agony, which would soon fade to fear at what he saw next. Ori did not stare down at him alone for long – in a short moment he was joined.
Athella smiled saccharine-sweet down at her murderer, holding the instrument of her death in her right hand. Her kirtle was sliced above the breast and soaked in fresh blood, and yet the skin beneath was unblemished. She sighed, sliding down to her knees beside Nergal – careful to avoid the remains of his throat – and she leaned down to speak to him.
“You underestimated me,” she said, stroking his scarred cheek. “Did you think I didn’t know about the ritual? The dark sister rendered down to white bone in the acid pools, the white sister charred black by flames, their skulls the first course in the Raven God’s great meal. I’ve known what was coming since I was a child, you fool, and you gave me the tools to prepare for it. Did you think you could teach me the Black Arts and stop me from learning something?
“So I trafficked in demons and made pacts until I devised a spell in necromancy, one I would cast upon myself before I was to die, one that would activate upon death and restore life and heal the mortal wound. I knew that if you could never kill me, no matter how many times you stabbed or burned me, your ritual would always go incomplete. But fate sent me this man, and I’ll never suffer another death at your hands. Goodbye, Nergal.”
And with that, Athella plunged the dagger into the witch-man’s heart, and he fell still.
Athella rose from beside Nergal’s corpse and stared down at it unfeelingly for a time, and then she turned around to face Origrue. He turned his eyes up to meet hers, and then she stepped forward and ripped the scarlet sash from his forehead and tossed it to the floor, tangling her fingers in his hair and crushing her lips fiercely to his. He growled and drew her tight to him by the hips, and when their kiss parted she was panting.
“I knew you were mad,” Ori said grinning.
“No, I’m a woman,” she said, “and I was dead. I think it’s only natural to want life, to feel it, maybe to conceive it, when you brush close to death.”
The warrior grunted and nodded his agreement, seeing – perhaps feeling – the logic of what she said, and for some time she caressed his cheeks and his lower lip before sliding away from him.
Ori then searched the small chamber behind the altar until he found the tremendous ruby he’d won in the room of the idol, and then his coil of rope, and then he went around the front of the altar and swept the bleach white skull off of its pedestal and into the crook of his arm.
“Is that…?”
“Desdemesne’s skull,” Origrue confirmed. “I won’t leave her down here. What about them?”
He nodded out toward the congregation, still utterly silent and knelt with their foreheads to the stones.
“They dare not move until the ceremony is complete, or until sunrise. It would be forbidden to look upon my corpse, no matter what they hear; they fear above all that the Raven God will be angry if they break a commandment. Besides, once they find Nergal dead they’ll probably turn on one another. By this time tomorrow, this temple will have witnessed a massacre,” Athella said.
“I’m sure it’s not the first massacre here, and I doubt it’ll be the last,” Ori muttered. “Let’s get out of here before we’re stuck in the middle of it.”
Athella nodded her agreement, and the two turned to go. Before a step could be taken, though, Nergal’s freakishly long fingers lashed out and wrapped themselves around Ori’s ankle. He spun around with a startled growl, and the medicine man looked up at him and spoke, despite being obviously dead, despite having no throat with which to draw air or make the sounds.
“Ei shikitai shinek atenyev Natanya, zepaiu,” quoth the witch-man in a strong, harsh whisper, which filled the air as if screamed from mountaintops.
Ori drove his foot down into Nergal’s face until the corpse’s fingers loosened around his ankle, and then he stumbled away without blood in his cheeks.
“What language was that?” Athella whispered in wonder.
“My language, the language of the valley people,” Ori murmured. “Nobody knows that language outside the valley. Nobody. That may be the one law all the clans adhere to.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that that there are eyes on me,” Origrue said.
“He said the Raven God favors me.”
“I thought you said he was dead,” Tyler said as they walked an hour later, the black spire sinking into the distance behind them. The promise of sunrise smoldered on the horizon, and the daytime jungle creatures were already awake in the dark and taking up their customary racket of chirps and songs and hooting shouts.
“He was,” Ori insisted. “He spoke anyway, in a language he couldn’t know.”
“That’s the creepiest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. And you say this girl has been living in the tower all this time?”
“Yes,” Athella interjected. “And stop calling me ‘girl,’ I have a name.”
“Apologies, miss,” Tyler said, “but I’m still confused on the finer points. How is it you know Tradespeak, for example? You said you were raised by witch-men.”
“I know Tradespeak for the very same reason that I know your name, Brian Tyler,” she responded, and reached down the front of her kirtle. When her hand emerged again, it had the full attention of both men, but only Tyler gasped at what she held.
It was a ring, inlaid with a shining emerald and marked with an ornate symbol. Ori recognized the symbol, but couldn’t place it.
“How the hell did you come by that ring?” Tyler said.
“Calm down and let me explain,” said Athella. “Some ten years ago the witch-men captured a band of treasure hunters. They brought the leader of the band to me and commanded him to teach me Tradespeak, for what reason I’ll never know. He did so, but he also told me stories about his ship and the treasures he’d found and the wonders he had witnessed. His name was Jon Howard, and he was captain of the Howard’s Pyle.
“When it became clear to him that he would never escape the witch-men with his life, Jon gave me this ring and told me to keep it safe. He told me that his crew would come looking for him, and that I should give this ring to Brian Tyler when they saved me. I don’t know any more than that.”
“I’ll be damned,” Tyler murmured at last.
“I’m lost,” Ori said. “Explain.”
“Jon Howard certainly was the first captain of the Pyle,” Tyler said, “and the best treasure hunter who ever sailed. Twelve years ago we knocked over a fleet of merchant barges from Corone and sank a navy ship. We were heavy with loot and the whole Corone armada was on our tail, so we set a course for Istraloth. Once we got there, the captain took a small group of men into the jungle to bury the loot, and he came back alone with a map and sealed it up in an enchanted chest he kept in his quarters. From then on we hunted treasure up and down the coasts of Istraloth, delving into ruins and hitting other pirate ships that were hiding out.
“In any case, Howard had a ring, which was the key to the chest in which he kept his maps, and you couldn’t hope to open the chest without the ring unless you burned the whole ship to a crisp. The idea was that he’d pass the ring on to the next captain when he retired or died. Well, one day he goes into the jungle with half the crew and never comes back out. We looked for him but couldn’t find a sign of him, so we naturally elected a new captain and went on our way.”
“You elected Lupus,” Ori offered.
“Aye, the crew did. He was old and wily and promised a lot of money to a lot of cruel people, so it wasn’t hard for him to take the ship. He was just a swabbie in those days.”
“And you were the first mate,” Athella said. “It was Howard’s intention that you become captain. With the ring, you have a claim to the ship.”
“Yes, well,” Tyler said, “Lupus isn’t likely to give it up without a fight. And even with that giant ruby you’ve got there, he’s not going to let you back on his boat, my boy. In all likelihood, he’s going to shoot the two of us, take the girl, the gem, the ring, and Howard’s treasure. He’ll sail back to Alerar and restore his family’s honor.”
“So we’ll kill him first,” Athella said.
“Agreed, but that’s easier said than done,” Origrue said. “He’s got pistols, and his engineering is almost as devious as any black magic. I’m going to have to get close to him to kill him, closer now that my sword is broken, and he can put a bullet through my heart in the blink of an eye from one hundred yards.”
“Don’t concern yourself about the dark elf’s engineering,” Athella said. “He might be formidable, but he never met me.”
“Gods, what are the chances?” Tyler muttered. “You with the ring, Ori to save you on the very night you were to be executed – meeting your sister even before that! It’s clear that Lupus has been scouring the coasts in search of the ring all this time, but it doesn’t account for the rest of our luck here.”
The three went on in silence, each troubled by the same thought – the very same answer, which occurred to them the moment Tyler finished speaking.
They were all thinking about Nergal’s last words.
The sun was freshly over the horizon when Ori, Athella, and Tyler stood on the deck of the Howard’s Pyle, surrounded by her crew. Lupus stepped forward, eyeing the three of them critically.
“And you say there are more gems of this size in the tower, and piles of treasure otherwise?” he said.
“Aye,” Ori said.
“And do they have more of her as well?” he crooned, grinning at Athella.
“Only one of her, unfortunately,” Ori said.
“And what of my nephew?
“Dead,” Ori said. “He died bravely, staring the witch-men straight in the face.”
“Hmm.” Lupus paced for a long moment, and then nodded. “Good, then. Hand over the ruby, and let’s get the girl into my quarters for a warm drink while we decide what to do with her. You can keep the skull if you’d like…did you find that necklace in the tower, island man? I don’t recall you ever wearing that before.”
Ori reached up and fingered a bit of quartz tied to his neck on a thin string. “This?” said he. “It’s just a piece of mineral I found. You know me; I can’t resist a shiny thing.”
“Whatever,” Lupus said. “Why don’t you hand that over as well, and I’ll decide its worth.”
“Now hold on,” Tyler interjected, stopping One-Eye and Boone as they stepped forward to collect the ruby and Athella. “Before we go dividing the loot, there’s one more thing for us to discuss.”
The dark elf narrowed his eyes, glancing between Ori and Tyler. His patience was quickly stretching to its breaking point – he saw a plot, but could not unravel it. “What’s that?” he said tersely.
“There’s the matter of this ring,” Tyler said, holding it up, “which says that I’m the captain of this ship, and I’ll be deciding where the loot goes.”
A small murmur went through the crew – only a few of them remained from the original crew that might recognize it, but those few spread the tale in quick whispers, and soon the whole crew was on edge. They were torn between loyalty to and fear of Lupus, and the promise of untold wealth for betraying him.
“I was elected captain of this ship,” Lupus spat, “the ring is mine by right!”
“Jon Howard entrusted the ring to me,” Athella announced, “with instructions to give it only to Brian Tyler, the true captain of this ship!”
“A thousand gold pieces to the man who brings me that ring!” Lupus screamed, reaching into his jacket for his pistols.
The crew erupted into a roar and chaos broke out above decks as some men charged Tyler and others intercepted them. Tyler retreated as Ori stepped forward, catching One-Eye and spinning him about. The valley man then wrapped the chain still shackled to his wrist around the Akashiman’s throat and pulled, holding the pirate fast as Lupus fired his pistol. The bullet entered One-Eye’s body in a spray of blood and he went limp.
“Get him!” Lupus shouted at Boone, who charged. Ori was ready for him, though, swinging One-Eye’s thin, compact body around by the chain – he went in a circle, and the Akashiman collided with Boone, sending both to the deck.
Origrue yanked his chain away from One-Eye’s broken neck desperately, and then spun to charge Lupus. It was already too late, though: the captain drew, aimed, and fired his second pistol in an instant’s rush, and the resulting bullet barreled through Ori’s chest. It was a perfectly aimed shot, piercing his heart with enough force left to leave his body again, carrying him off of his feet and through the air before he landed heavily on the deck. He cringed in voiceless agony as his blood pooled beneath him and issued from behind his clenched teeth, and then he fell still.
Ori was dead.
Boone shoved One-Eye’s body off and away, and then crawled to his feet, eager to catch Ori before he could reach the captain – but by then, Ori was dead and Lupus was returning his pistols to his belt. All around him the crew continued to fight with itself, drawn sabers clashing overhead and spilling blue sparks to the deck. Tyler was nowhere to be seen.
Athella was watching the carnage from a hidden place between the lofty gunwales and the beams of the jib sail, but Lupus spotted her and slapped Boone upside the head and then pointed to her. “Get the girl,” the captain yelled over the mutinous din, “and lock her in my quarters, then find Tyler.”
Boone nodded his consent and began shoving and fighting his way across the deck to where Athella hid. She saw him coming but didn’t resist him when he snatched her up by the arm, dragging her forcibly back across the deck and to the door to the captain’s quarters. He shoved her in and slammed the door closed behind her.
Once inside, Athella sighed and smoothed her hands down over the front of her blood-stained kirtle, and examined her surroundings. Ignoring a flask of scotch that Lupus had unfairly confiscated from Ori not six months ago, she fetched a pitcher of wine from a fine cabinet, and a pair of elegant glasses, and poured two drinks. These she organized on a well-crafted oak table, and she sat herself down in a chair and waited.
Outside she could hear the shouts and screams of battle and heated argument, followed by shouts of awe and fear, and then, after a brief silence, an exultant cheer. A short instant more passed, and then the door to the captain’s quarters was kicked in.
…and in walked Origrue out of Tauvyk by Kull, as fit and healthy as ever, rubbing his wrists where the shackles were freshly removed.
He sat himself down at the table across from Athella and passed over the glasses of wine to pick up the pitcher, from which he drank deeply. Only when it was empty did he lower the vessel with a gasp.
“Gods, dying is thirsty business,” said he.
Athella smiled. “How did it work?”
Ori reached up and touched the quartz trinket on his neck, and smiled back at her. “Like a charm.”
“Well, it is a charm,” she said. “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure if it was possible to tie my resurrection spell to a trinket like that.”
“Well, I’m still here,” Ori responded, rubbing the unmarked skin of his chest. “Somehow it didn’t occur to me that the spell wouldn’t do anything for the pain, though.”
Next, and just as suddenly, Tyler burst into the captain’s quarters with a broad smile nestled in his beard. He grabbed up one of the glasses of wine still on the table and drank it down, and then slapped Ori on the shoulder gleefully. “It looked a little close there for a second,” he said, “but when Boone saw Lupus reloading his pistols he couldn’t resist the chance to betray him, so he broke the captain’s neck, and then the whole crew was on him. They ripped him limb-from-limb! I was almost afraid they’d do the same to me, but they got themselves under control in a hurry when I showed up again with the ring.”
“Aye, as we thought they would,” Ori said. “What now, then, Captain Tyler?”
Tyler clapped his hands together, then went across the room and cleared a pile of dusty rugs from atop an old chest, and tapped his ring lightly against the lid. It popped open with a gusty sigh, and from it Tyler collected a yellowed scroll. “Now,” he said, “we collect our due treasure, divide it amongst the crew, and sail north for civilized lands. Once there, we’ll sell that ruby of yours, and buy ourselves a fleet of ships. Maybe a castle or two – start our own legitimate shipping business, maybe!”
“Shall I tell the crew to raise anchor?”
“Aye, you’ll be saying that plenty, but not today. My first mate has earned himself a rest!”
Ori chuckled, and Tyler leapt to his feet in a spasm of uncontainable joy. “Take the bed and the quarters!” said the new captain. And then with a lusty chuckle and a wink he said, “You’ll get more use out of them than I will!”
And with that he hurried out of the room, closing the door behind him, and was immediately met with a cheer from the crew beyond. Once he was gone, Athella picked up the last glass of wine, went around the table, and sat herself down on Ori’s knee, wrapping her arms loosely around his neck.
“Somehow I doubt you’ll settle down and become a peaceful businessman, working from castles and dealing with merchants,” she said.
“No,” Origrue said. “I’m on my way to new lands, with new drinks and foods and languages and customs, where I’ll fight things weirder than witch-men and see things worse than an unholy temple. I’ll take enough of the ship’s profits to keep myself from starving in the city streets next to a cart of fruit, as I hear happens, but otherwise I have no interest in coins and luxury.”
“And what of your family?”
“I will remember them fondly, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be interested in going back to the valley of Cruach. My people made do before me and they’ll make do after me. I have a family of homicidal brothers all stuck together on a boat now, and you, for as long as I amuse you,” he said.
“Well,” Athella said. “I see an empty room and a bed in need of a good breaking-in, and I’m still chilly from the witch-man’s altar. It’s a perfect time for you to begin amusing me.”
Requested Spoils
Athella’s Charm: A quartz stone roughly the size of a man’s thumb, attached to a thin black length of rope. When activated by a necromantic spell, the stone enchants the wearer with a powerful spell formulated by the sorceress Athella.
The enchantment remains for the space of one post following its activation, and may only be cast once per topic. When the spell is spoken, the wearer of the charm is enchanted so that if said wearer dies, he or she will be resurrected moments later. The enchantment heals only the blows or effects which caused or contributed to death, and cannot be dispelled once cast. Unsellable, etc.
Also note: Ori's sword got borked :(
Ataraxis
06-22-08, 08:47 PM
Quest Judging
Daughters for the Raven God (part II)
Well I’m late again, and I apologize for that. My excuse is that the warden was an asshole on a stick and wouldn’t lend me his laptop. Moving on!
Your stories are ever the enjoyable read, though I have a few more comments than I did last time around. Well, not in terms of bulk (or maybe yes, actually), but there were a few more flaws. In any case, I’ll let the judgment speak for itself!
STORY
Continuity ~ 8/10. You did well in summarizing old characters and introducing new ones like Tyler, Boone and One-Eye (but those last two names are admittedly as cliché as can be!). I also got a clear recapitulation of the events from and since part I. What I’d like to comment on here, first off, is how the way you showed this wasn’t as seamless as it was in your first solo. Now, it’s obvious you had to give the reader a fair bit of information right off the bat in the introduction, and that’s quite fine. It’s when most of the past information given during the quest was practically fed to the reader. For one, there was the mention of Desdemesne and her demise by Ori to Athella. It was far from subtle, and all I could think of while reading it was ‘this is where loose ends in continuity are tied’. Before, you would spread out this kind of information over a few posts and accent key information at the right moments. Still, you did well here and I won’t penalize you a whole point for this.
I also quite enjoyed how many of the questions I had in the last quest were answered here (the matter of the Raven God, though I’m expecting the Daughter part to be answered in part III, if there is one), and that I can honestly dance around and say ‘I was right, I was right’! In any case, this evens things out a bit, though the minuscule drop was due to something that made very little sense to me: the golden idol that contained a human, who the witch-men apparently worshipped. I thought they worshipped the Raven God, and sacrificed people to it to appease it, but then I see this pudgy man in a twelve feet tall suit who seems to want a piece of Athella. It confused me, and I have to admit I’m unable to make sense of it. You probably have an explanation, but the characters didn’t seem to find his presence quizzical in the least bit either. Athella definitely didn’t seem to know what it was, while she was privy to even the specifics of the ritual for the Raven God, yet it sounded like they both assumed the witch-men worshipped it.
Setting ~ 7.5/10. My opinion on the setting is bit divided here. On one side, your descriptions were amazing and you did take my comments from the last judgment into account by making things clearer. I could instantly visualize the setting as you imagined it, without you having to pull me along by the hand, since you also gave some measure of leeway for the reader’s imagination. On the other side, however, the amount of such descriptions was decidedly meager compared to your previous solo. Yes, each time a new piece of scenery was introduced, you described it sweetly and accurately, but there were a lot of descriptive doldrums in between. There were fewer of the small details that breathed life into the setting. An example would be the moment they entered the underground tunnels: it felt more like a change of décor than of milieu. Were they assailed by that ancient scent of staleness, the dankness of moist earth? Any kind of heaviness in the air they breathed? Its little details like these, after each two to three paragraphs, that keeps the reader on his feet. There was also the instance when they were perusing the treasure room: I got a lot of ‘shiny trinkets’ coinage and artistry, but my mind had to fill in the blanks with the cover of ‘The Hobbit’, sans Smaug. I have to say, though, that my favorite parts for the setting were, of course, the battle against the idol in the sacrificial pit. It was, for the lack of any fanciful wording, bitchin’.
Also, about all of those nautical terms… good lord, you reminded me why I hate boats and the sea.
Pacing ~ 7/10. I was a bit surprised to see that your performance in pacing was uneven this time around. I had to slow down considerably at the beginning with all the seafaring lingo that I’ve always loathed to learn (though I know it’s inevitable for writers), and I found myself taking more pauses than I did in part I. For example, right around the time they met Athella and filled her in with all the happenings, which felt a bit… plastic to me. It was hard to swallow, since you wrote everything in immense chunks of dialogue. That slowed me down a bit. It was amazing during the battle against the idol and the ensuing arrival of Nergal and his cohort, but it dropped again after the climax and Athella revealed to Tyler what happened ten years ago with the previous captain of the Pyle. It was just all too fast and hard for me to suspend my disbelief, and even hanging the lantern on the fact that all of this sounded contrived for even the characters themselves wasn’t enough to make me shake off that feeling.
I also didn’t feel any sort of tension during the battle aboard the Pyle, since I knew exactly what was going to happen, from the transfer of Athella’s charm to Ori, to their retiring in the quarters, having a drink and doing the horizontal dance. It was a very Hollywood ending, where the main character says: ‘This ain’t the life for me, baby – I’ll take my cut and live my life how I see it fit, and at your side for as long as you’ll have me’. It was wrapped up in that neat trademark paper of a feel-good Pollyanna ending. It wasn’t bad, though: I do realize that Ori needs to have something good happen to him, after all this debacle, and there’s always more room for tragedy in the real finale.
CHARACTER
Dialogue ~ 7/10. The lines felt more commercial and I had a clearer sense of déj* vu. I liked that you used the Ironic Echo again, with Malek’s death and all, though the premise of the traitor failing in his escape after the hero told him he just made a mistake was something I’ve seen far too often, and to that was added the fact that he somewhat redeems himself as a man in the hero’s eyes by dying with MANLY GUTS, using the very line Ori used when he talked about the nuances between fear and hate. It was enjoyable, don’t take me wrong, but I can’t ignore that it wasn’t a rare sight in literature and a number of other media. Ori seems to have slightly changed since part I, which is to be expected, though his dialogue remains true to his noble core. As a counterpoint, his lines were not as memorable as they could have been (though I thoroughly enjoyed his revenge speech), and his interaction with Athella wasn’t nearly as deep as it had been with Desdemesne. I do understand he got the girl this time because the girl actually knew the meaning of ‘getting the girl’, but still I had my reservations about how they got to be where they are now since they didn’t exactly get to know each other. Granted, people have gotten together for worse reasons, so I won’t be too picky. Athella herself leaves me curious. She’s supposedly seen so many atrocities that she’d give Hannibal Lecter a family rating, but that didn’t particularly show in her dialogue save for the times you had her say abominable things in a deadpan tone. I did like how, even with all the differences, she was still a bit like her sister, and that part did show more. I told it before, however, the dialogue in the end was slightly off-putting, since I could have called Ori 007 or Robert Langdon, while Athella could have been Jinx or Vittoria Vetra (if she knew Yoga, that is).
Action ~ 7/10. There were some things that made little sense to me. The little switch trick Nergal did to the fisherman, for one: I was a bit surprised that he had been so easily gypped. Athella is the daughter of his real wife, while Desdemesne is the daughter of the sea hag, who has witch-people blood. Considering Desdemesne has dark skin, I’m guessing the sea-hag had dark skin too, and considering Athella has stark white skin, both her parents were fair skinned as well. As such, I have a hard time seeing how he could have not realized that Nergal left with the fair-skinned baby, thus the baby of his wife, the one he wanted to keep in the first place. The situation was literally in black and white.
What is more, I still don’t understand why Nergal taught her the Black Arts. If this was all some ploy to get himself killed and let Athella survive the sacrifice without arousing suspicion, then alright, but otherwise it appears as if he shot himself in the foot.
Malek puzzled me. How could he even think he’d be able to return to the Pyle alive? If by some miracle he managed to elude an unknown number of patrolling witch-men while schlepping a small albeit still heavy treasure chest, then climb down the window of the tower without the rope that Ori still has slung around him, and explaining to Tyler why Ori wasn’t there with him (if he of all people could run away with a treasure chest in a tower full of enemies and still survive, he sure as hell could have saved Ori from whatever trouble he was in, or Ori could have saved himself) and then surviving the trip back through the jungle with his callow survival skills… If he had escaped with Ori, Lupus would still have offed with the valley man and might have reconsidered letting his nephew die because let’s face it, a bastard only kills family when there’s a moderately good reason, and as annoying as he might have been, Malek would look like a pretty good guy to have around the ship after that exploit, especially with Ori dead (since without him, he would have no reason to continue his recent insubordination and the like).
I know this is a lot of critiquing, but that set aside I liked everything else. How Ori was looking for a way to get Athella out of the way so that he could start his cathartic massacre was on a high scale of ‘badass’, and I was surprised by the twist. While I did know that, considering how Ori yelled ‘never again’ in the last episode, he couldn’t have let Athella die. I didn’t expect that she would actually die, but then pull an instant Back from the Dead. That explained why Ori grit his teeth but didn’t scream out in outrage or despair.
Persona ~ 7.5/10. I covered Persona in both Dialogue and a bit in Action, but I’ll still expound a bit more, here. Now Ori was a lot more expressive than he was, and that’s an improvement. My only qualm (and it’s a small one) is that the changes are sometimes translated as cliché. Even so, he’s still not the mindless bloodthirsty ruffian, thank god. Just be wary of giving him two-dimensional, B-movie protagonist emotions. You didn’t actually do that, but I did feel you leaning toward that tendency the slightest bit, so I’d rather warn you to avoid that now. Of course, cliché can always be made to work and sometimes those emotions are inevitable or actually are within the realm of sensible, so it’s all a matter of seeing where the line is drawn in any given context and not to cross it. I liked Athella less than I did Desdemesne, though I still think she was a good character, and a good contrast to her sister. It showed that she had none of that innocence and wasn’t naïve, though she still retained a pleasant light to her personality. Malek, well, I knew what kind of person he’d turn out to be the moment I knew he was tagging along, but I still did like reading about him. Tyler wasn’t present a lot, but I was impressed by how much of his character he could express by the things he said and the way he spoke (something I forgot to add in Dialogue).
WRITING STYLE
Technique ~ 7.5/10. This is basically the same as I said in the last judgment, save for a few differences: you did take into account my comments and gave it that bonus flair of color. It can still improve, of course, so keep writing these gems. Also, as I said before, your descriptions are a lot clearer and direct, without losing any of their appeal. In contrast, however, you focused a bit less on being consistent with your technique, and it lacked detail and allure at times. I’ve written down some of those points in the notes annexed to this judgment, so you can look out for them there.
Mechanics ~ 7.5/10. Whereas it was almost flawless last time, I’ve seen quite more frequent instances of awkward syntax, as well as what I believe are typos. They’re also all in the notes. Otherwise, you still have that amazing way with words, so congratulations!
Clarity ~ 7.5/10. Tug on the luff and pack the jib sail? Is the fore-and-aft along or perpendicular to the keel? I’m saying along. Which is the sail attached to the bowsprit? That god-forsaken nautical lingo aside, I think things were clear enough. I had to reread a bit when Ori filled a treasure chest to the brink and used it as a base to tie his rope, and the part about the baby-switch confounded me for about fifteen seconds, though I admittedly read that late at night just before crashing from exhaustion on my keyboard (exhaustion unrelated to your quest, just to clear things out).
MISCELLANEOUS
Wild Card ~ 6.5/10. I liked reading this too, and to explain the slight drop in score here, it was due to the various reasons already mentioned above. If you had kept consistent while still showing improvement in certain areas, I would have given you a 7.5 here, easily.
Also, I laughed when you mentioned the bottle of scotch that I gave you in the last judgment as a reward as having been confiscated by Lupus - and for that comment about prologues!
TOTAL ~ 73/100.
EXP Rewards
Origrue out of Tauvyk by Kull gains: 980 XP + 100 XP (because I would otherwise be incredibly mean for leaving you at 1900 XP) = 1080 XP!
GP Rewards
Origrue out of Tauvyk by Kull gains: 224 GP - 200 GP (because I would otherwise be incredibly unfair for giving you that bonus XP) = 24 GP!
Other Rewards
For now, Athella’s Charm is approved as a spoil, as long as you respect these conditions:
Because Athella transferred her charm onto the trinket, its potency was slightly decreased: either it doesn’t have a 100% chance of working, or it will eventually break after an indeterminate number of uses. If this goes against some sub-plot you have planned, then you must yourself apply hard conditions to keep the charm functional indefinitely, lest it be rendered inoperative. You may include your choice in your convenient level update, where an RoG moderator will have the final say on whether or not this rather powerful item flies or not.
You may not use this in battle, unless your opponent clearly states that he or she approves of it. As note, even in a Citadel Battle where everyone is resurrected, this Charm gives you an undeniable edge since Ori return to life shortly after he is killed.
You must note that there are limits to the types of death that can be reversed by the charm. Atomization, for one. For things such as being burnt alive, you will have to see with the RoG moderator.
Lastly, even with all these conditions, the RoG may come to the decision that this charm is too powerful, and has the right to do so, for their decision would naturally supercede mine as a judge.
Also, Ori got: his sword borked! “ ): ”
Lastly, Ori got: lucky!
FINAL NOTES
I have the clear feeling you have the skills to write a Judge’s Choice. I’m crossing my fingers so that part III will rise to claim the throne. And, after all, third time’s the charm!
The reason for his discomfort was not apparent but for a sailing man familiar with Istraloth’s lagoons and the sea’s habits there: the currents had a strong tendency to roll a large ship like the Pyle broadside through the reefs unless an attentive man was hard at the sweep and the sails were professionally ordered. (1) I’m guessing you meant that someone would only know the reason if they were familiar with the place, but even the sentence was very awkward to read. ‘Only a sailing man familiar with (…) would know the reason for his discomfort’ is shorter to read and feels less circumvoluted, though that’s only my opinion.
He was hard to mirth and hard to work (2) The use of ‘to’ doesn’t stem from any known idiom, so I suggest ‘at’ for both instances. It’d be easier to understand, too, since at first it sounded like it was hard to make him merry and hard to work with him.
on the day he first step foot aboard the ship (2) stepped foot
They hurried to the body and surveyed it closely as it lie still (3) I believe the imperfect of ‘to lie’ is ‘lay’.
They recognized well a witch-man of the ruins. (3) Though not a mistake, this reads awkwardly to me. ‘well recognized’ or ‘knew how to recognize’ might have worked better.
with straight hair like three in the morning made liquid – This simile sounded… contemporary, for the lack of a better term. Something southern, similarly to ‘like a bronco down the chute’ or ‘spank my bottom and call me Rosy’. I know this is real nitpicking, but it somehow didn’t fit with the usual imagery of your style. I would’ve expected a comparison with the ‘skies a few hours past midgnight’ or something akin to that, rather than ‘three in the morning’.
The recaps in the fifth post sounded unnaturally… accurate, for me. Ori, first of all, said everything straight out, without any hint to changes in facial expression, demeanor, gestures, etc. The situation (telling Athella that her sister is dead, remembering painful events and the like) would have warranted that. He didn’t even stop to wonder why Athella was so impassive when he just told her her sister was dead – that he killed her himself, mercy or not. Obviously she has reasons, but he’s not aware of them yet as far as I know. Also, that set aside, I imagine myself listening to a man telling me this story, and I honestly wouldn’t be able to… take him seriously. It felt too linear, too even. I know he’s composed, but I didn’t get any real feeling from the way he told the story. ‘I considered her my friend, and it was an honor to protect her.’ I’m also assuming he’s speaking Tradespeak, which he’s been practicing for six months tops, so it really sounds like a stretch. After he said that she was innocent and naïve, bold and intelligent, I’d have inserted a short piece of narrative to mark some sort of pause, and resumed with: ‘She was my friend. It was an honor to protect to her.’ It adds a bit more pathos, and makes his whole monologue sound less like mechanical recap.
Chapter Siiiix (6) My initial thought was ‘Was he drunk?’ Then I realized your ‘I’ key might have jammed and you hadn’t noticed. Or that you were making a joke. Or that you really were drunk, in which case bravo for still being able to write an intelligible post! Oh, and then I read the penultimate post (excluding your spoils) and I realized you weren’t drunk, but high. Even better props for writing this properly while in the groove!
while he respected Origrue’s skill and judgment normally (6) I’m noticing that you have a proclivity toward putting the adverb after – sometimes even way after – the verb. In some cases it’s good, but I don’t think this was one of those.
Athella glanced over his work critically, and then glanced at his face, and then back to the hole again. (7) ‘glanced’ x 2, ‘and then’ x 2. Off the top of my head, you could try: ‘Athella glanced over his work critically, then at his face before looking back to the hole again.’ Still, changing the way you write this sentence completely could make it a great deal better.
The warrior slashed at the nearest pygmy, who danced away tittering (10) Either the pygmy’s a masochist, or you meant tottering – works too, since the keys are right next to each other. It probably makes more sense as well!
Nergal’s freakishly long fingers lashed (13) freakishly also sounds like modern-slang and in my head, sounded only slightly more appropriate than ‘frigging’
Zook Murnig
06-22-08, 11:49 PM
EXP/GP ADDED!
ORI LEVELS UP!
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