The Flame of Anthropos

[Darigaaz]

Since the youngest days of this world, there have been tales of creation and theories of how it began. Living, functioning entities that encapsulated human conceptualizations of perfection assumed the guise of godhood and lorded over inferior beings, which gave rise to the popular religion of the Thayne.

Divinity is far more elemental, like the darkness that preceded time. These child-gods were petulant and self-righteous, and they scoured the world with their undeveloped notions of benevolence. They gifted the unpredictable, fledgling race of man with a semblance of greater power, blind to the corruption that would follow.

We can see the evidence of their grievous error in every corner of Althanas today.

-E.S., Historian of Althanas, c.1595

[Darigaaz]

"It's there in the mountains," the excited Dwarf announced emphatically, "I saw it with my own eyes." The stout, short man stood at odds with a lithe, buxom beauty of an Elf. Her gilded hair shimmered like spun sunlight as she twirled it absently about her finger.

"A fire that burns, even through wind and rain?" She scoffed, skepticism in her scathing voice. "I have heard stupidity is a Dwarven trait, but you are simply delusional. That sort of magic requires constant care from a skilled mage. Those mountains are impassible. There are no mages there."

The two stood with palpable friction between them, both staring up at the jagged peaks that sheltered Raiaera from the rampaging winter of Salvar. One singular civilization existed there, made up of xenophobic Dwarves who were the only keepers of the range's secrets for over an Age. "I know what I saw," he grunted.

At their back, a looming shadow shifted. Darigaaz watched the mountains with vague interest. The malcontent between his two companions seemed to brush past him with little effect. "I sense it." His throaty and guttural voice was still tattered from many lifetimes of disuse, but it held authority that hushed the others. Their gaze moved to him.

"So he does speak," the woman murmured as she shifted in discomfort. She felt inhumanly cold as those ancient orange eyes moved over her, but gave silent thanks when he did not press the issue. "When I found you on the fringes of Alerar, I thought you may have been a Dark Elf. That is clearly not the case."

"I have seen these Dark Elves," the shade rattled, notes of amusement underlying his words. "A frail race obsessed with glory. Is that what you consider me, Myra of the High Elves?" She shivered at his question, uncertain of what an honest answer might cause.

It occurred to her that she did not have one to begin with. "N-no," she stammered softly. Her eyes shifted to the Dwarf and quietly plead with him to intervene. The hearty half-pint bellowed a deep laugh.

"To see you unnerved gives me no end of pleasure," he jeered. Baudin crossed his arms and looked to the hulking wraith. "But the lass has a point. We know nothing of you, and I do not trust you."

Darigaaz turned his gaze to the Dwarf, his hooded head tilted slightly. "Trust is a fragile thing," Darigaaz took two sweeping steps toward the mountains and held up a pale hand. "Better that we do not let our dealings hinge on such things."

Baudin and Myra exchanged glances. "In every culture, trust is necessary for any kind if dealings."

He rounded on them slowly, both eyes narrowed to slits. "If that is so, then we have no business,"he groweled, "because the children of this world cannot be trusted." His mind raced with disjointed images of fire, of angered faces and betrayal. Darigaaz shook his head and let out a ragged, audible breath. Baudin and Myra had both faltered backward a pace.

They were staring at his hand; a wreath of hot flames danced around his pallid fist. Darigaaz lifted his arm and studied the blaze. With a slight movement of his fingers, the fire was quenched. "A mage," Baudin whispered. "A fire mage, at that." Darigaaz let his arm fall.

"The pyre you found, Dwarf," he rasped. "Take me to it."

Baudin gulped, but did not hesitate to nod.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

His name was Javic. They called him ‘cleft-runner’ when they felt charitable, or ‘manwhore in bed with the many-teated Paps’ after a couple of stiff drinks in the tavern. More often than not, they simply called him ‘cretin and fool’. They didn’t care that only he knew the secret trails through the ice and snow, passed down to him from his father and his father’s father before that. They didn’t care that he’d smuggled more than one ancient artefact out of Raiaera during the Corpse War – the elves had sought to protect their heritage, and the cartels had fought for the prestige of owning it – and more than one priceless parcel of healing herbs and medicines from the far north back in.

After all, a man had to be a particular type of crazy to brave the Dagger Peaks time and again. The dwarves of Gunnbad did not take kindly to those who trespassed on their domain, as righteous and as wise as they could be in the defence of other realms. And that said nothing of the constant stormy blizzards plaguing the jagged summits that neither weather nor time could wear down. A man could freeze himself to death ten times over in the time it took him to pick a path through icy boulder-fields and whitewashed plateaus. And the Paps forever spewed forth enough snow to bury his corpse where it stood, leaving it to a stray avalanche to reveal his mummified flesh to a world centuries in the future.

Tough climes bred tough men, and the cleft-runner was no exception. He stood two metres tall, clad in enough fur to make a pack of wolves envious, his features obscured by a humongous bearskin hood and an ice-caked mess of facial hair. His glare could grind grit from gravel, and his voice could shatter rock at a hundred paces.

He didn’t feel particularly tough, however, on this winter afternoon. The reason for his problems towered over the Salvic smuggler, if only because she sat perched on the shoulder of a titanic black iron golem and he had fallen on his backside in the swirling snow.

Her name was Sigrun. A dwarf of petite stature, her innate endurance allowed her to get away with one layer of furs instead of the human’s three. Her hood, open to the biting wind, exposed unkempt coal-black hair and eyes of polished rock. She slung the latest in dwarven firearm technology over her slender shoulders, its barrel aimed at Javic’s face.

After all, a dwarf had to be a particular type of mad to climb the Snowbound Spires on nothing more than a rumour. Surface-dwelling humans and elves knew little of the dangers that lurked beneath the thousands of tonnes of rock, of the daggers in the dark and the swarms of blind fangs. They knew even less of the tectonic instability that relegated to the realm of impracticality a direct tunnel from Raiaera to Salvar. Which left her mad endeavour only the hope of a path over the heights, and according to those she had ‘asked’ in the nearby village, Javic was the only one crazy enough to know of such matters.

So, with only the best of intentions, she’d hunted the man down and ambushed him in the foothills. It boded well for her endeavour that he’d already known of the rumour himself.

“See what I mean?” she asked, her ‘boomstick’ never once wavering from its target. The remains of Javic’s wooden pack frame smouldered between them, its priceless cargo – a set of statuettes of the Star Pantheon, carved from deep purple trakym liviol harvested from the Timbrethenil long before the Corpse War – so much fodder for the flame. Already the heat spluttered and died beneath wind and chill. “You can’t just keep a fire going up here. The wind’s too strong. When it’s not snowing, it’s raining. I don’t suppose you know enough about weather patterns to realise what these mountains do to the trade winds...” – a disdainful sniff here at the peasant’s obvious lack of culture – “… but you’ve lived here long enough to at least realise that all your green stuff is either on the other side of these mountains or further north towards the riverlands.”

Somewhere beneath beard and moustache, Javic stifled an angry oath to the old gods. He wasn’t so dumb as not to recognise a gun, or not to know what the barrel tracking his every movement could do to his day. But the dwarf and her toy didn’t scare him half as much as the automaton she sat upon, taller than even he and almost twice as broad across the shoulder. Squiggly lines in an unfamiliar script glowed across its chest, casting a wan light into the early onset of night. They only emphasised the utter lack of expression in the metal mask that passed as its face, and the promise of extreme violence should matters degenerate into a brawl.

For all his cunning and toughness, Javic the cleft-runner was by nature a coward. Said cowardice had served him well in the past, spawning a cautious patience that kept him safe from dwarven patrols and winter storms alike. Said cowardice told him now that it was best to obey the strange dwarf with her big gun, to smile and nod and try not to provoke her into doing anything dangerous.

But for all his lack of education, Javic was also an intelligent man. And he knew that his best chance of getting out of this alive lay in guiding his ambusher further into his realm. Only he could safely negotiate the treacherous mountain trails. Only he knew the pitfalls and cliff edges like the back of his hand.

“Yer right, of course,” he growled through clenched throat. “It should not been burning. But it was. I seen it with my own two eyes.”

“So it does exist,” Sigrun breathed, rosy cheeks alight with eager hunger. Her fingers danced a jig of joy upon the trigger-guard. “Take me there. Take me there now.”

Javic took one last look at the fitful flames licking at his pack frame. They would die within the half-hour, he judged. None of the other villagers ever ventured this close to the Paps; they would neither think twice of his absence nor care to come looking for him. His wares would still be here when he returned, and his buyers would not hassle him over the delay. He and his reputation for reliability were too valuable to them for that. His immediate concern had to be the dwarf and her golem.

Best to take his time, then, and to dispose of them without leaving any trace.

“Follow me.” He spat precious spittle into the lee of the biting gale, gesturing towards the soaring heights behind him. “Two days walk. Hope ye don’t mind the cold.”