Osiris Open 2020: Round One (Philomel vs Gum do Mugu)

[Gum do Mugu]

An elusive trickster, with arms twice the length of his body, swept through the city's arboretum, swinging from branch to bough. He was charging for the city's rubble-strewn southern district, buoyed by the dawn's cool light. The shapeshifter felt refreshed, washed clean by the virtue of a reborn day. The night's trials, burdensome though they were, faded as he raced to the park's boundary. Ravaged by gods and war, verdant trees gradually gave way to broken trunks and burnt stumps. At its edge, the arboretum met the abandoned wreck of the south side: it was deemed unworthy of reconstruction, while its dead had been judged unworthy of burial.

The night before, cultured in the darkest hours of the night, precious information had loosened. Gossip, the milky sap of a choking vine, consumed the concerns of a privileged few. Do Mugu, the shaman shapeshifer of the Xangu Nation, had received a mild dose of their poisonous words; it was via the halls of power that he came into contact with this noxious chatter; dangerous players toyed with a nation, gleefully proud of their canny stratagem. While acting as a diplomatic champion for his people, he had found himself before this uncomfortable rash of Radasanth's nefarious powerbrokers.

Assassination for military favours?

One life represented a small payment for a signed guarantee of his nation's survival.

And so, fueled by the night's task, he found himself coursing towards a violent dawn. Philomel's battle with the Castigars left little to the imagination; Gum do Mugu knew he was small compared to the rising shadow of her potent majesty. Yet, he came with confidence, anchored to an unshakable core of equanimity. Moreover, to the shaman, death was harmless; a servant of his death god, Gum felt at ease with brittle mortality. After all, he had travelled the blood rivers of the Underworld many times. So, the shaman's thoughts were, instead, with what fear his haunting talents could inflict on Van der Aart.

The night before, Do Mugu's conniving taskmasters had presented a patchy, but useful dossier. "Stay away from the ground," they had warned him. So naturally, their advice informed the shaman's choices.

Despite leaving the trees behind, the shaman stayed in the form of a forest trickster. While in that transformed state, his body was best-suited to swinging through the trees. Swapping branches for eaves and trunks for towers, the adaptable shaman repurposed his monkey-like body and began to climb the perilous remains of a crumbling cathedral.

As he scaled the steeple, a murder of black-feathered squawkers pierced the morning's calm, drawing unwanted attention to his position. Those crows took flight, circling the cathedral's jagged spire, while its wretched gargoyles mocked the lively birds with a mute vigil. A cerulean dawn was swept aside by a flourishing squall and its blanket of gloomy clouds. Rain was on the way, and its arrival would make slick his precarious perch.