Private Tales Dust in the Wind

[Thane Jackdaw]

Mythorp's Junction,
West of Alliria

Birds chirped, cows mooed and the sun lazily perched in its zenith roasted the village on the junction. Maybe once it had been busier, before the new highway to Alliria was paved. There was hardly anyone in the streets. Most were either working on the farms which spread out flatly across the horizon with no visible hill to bother their equilibrium. An old man smoking a pipe hissed when he saw the black leather armored man with silver hair and a sword on his back rushed with a child in his hands. Blood in their trail. He had hissed when he saw the mutant the moment he entered town and he'd probably hiss when he left. Monsters cannot be monster hunters, he had said then. He probably said it now too but the hunter was busy with the mortally wounded boy he carried in his arms. Not older than ten.

The door to the inn slammed open startling the patrons and the innkeeper. Someone was about to complain and curse but the sight of Thane and the dying boy kept his mouth shut.

"Is there a fucking physician in this village?!" he roared as he had roared numerously the same question passing down the empty streets of the village.

The inn was his last hope.

Amelia

 

[Amelia]

The inn was lively for what it was. The smell of mildew and second-rate ale was hard to miss, as was the smell that practically reeked from the workers that had just come out of the fields to unwind before their next shift. Veinbrough had once been a rest stop on the road between Alliria and the Falwoods, one of many stops that the highway had made irrelevant by most means. While many towns had gone under or seen a decrease of population, Veinbrough was unique in that it had managed to maintain its rather small population by shifting away from its reliance on visitors.

Veinbrough yarn had turned into a favored brand amongst the lower classes for its oddly insulating attributes. Amelia’s mother said it was some form of magic that had seeped into the dirt after a battle there centuries ago. It was for this reason that Amelia was here. Though pricey, her mother had arranged for a small jar of the cotton to be fetched by her daughter, payment upon arrival.

That was now roughly three hours ago. While the trip back would undoubtedly be safe there was never the guarantee that she walked from any potential encounter she had on the road. Besides that the rates at the inn were fine and so was the company she had been offered so far. A bit older than her, but when an ever-so-rare half-elven man about your age starts talking to you it is hard not to let yourself get blinded by the chance to finally speak to someone who understands the pain of not belonging with either humans or elves.

They were two very different worlds apart, but that didn’t make the conversation any less interesting. But interesting or not, fate would seem to come knocking the door down for Amelia yet again. The entire bar turned to look at the white-haired intruder as he barged in and called out for a doctor. The whisper of people trying to figure out who this stranger was spread across the room before finally the half-elven man poked Amelia’s foot with his own as if to motion at her to go.

The girl let in a deep breath and then stepped up.

“I am a physician’s apprentice.” She said and stood up in her seat, and only then did she see the kid. Her eyes went wide. “Oh shit.”

She approached the man as he held the child. “What the hell has happened?”

Thane Jackdaw

 

[Thane Jackdaw]

It was the frozen stares first, then the awes and then the whispers and mutters. Meanwhile, blood ran down the boy's stomach like a stream.

"It's that snot-nosed brat - Roge's kid, the damn drunkard." someone self-important spat.

"Pox! Let that little shit die. Stole a sausage last winter from me fireplace." another toothless prick hawked.

"Leave him to d-" someone else began but the coldest glare of the hunter's cat-like eyes made him choke on his words.

“I am a physician’s apprentice.” a female stood up from her seat and approached them “Oh shit.”

“What the hell has happened?”

"What does it look like?! Fuck!" Thane barked and showed his teeth, aggravated from the patrons' attitude. He shut his mouth when he backtracked to what the woman had just stated before her question.

"Ghouls." he coldly said. The wretched monsters were on to feast on a corpse in front of which the kid was crying. He assumed it was Roge, the boy's father. "My potions won't help him."

Unless helping him meant dying quicker. Enhanced and mutated through the cursed dark magician's ritual, the potions were his blessing. Others died from them.

"Get on with it!"

Amelia

 

[Amelia]

Thane Jackdaw

People seemed content to let the kid die. Amelia threw a bitter glance around the room before she motioned for the mercenary to follow her back to her table. She let her arm sweep against the table to wipe what little dirt it could from its top before she asked the mutant to put the child down upon it.

The child was far too delirious to register anything. Amelia held her hand to the kid’s forehead, her tan skin being a morbid contrast to his sickly pale and green. The kid was drenched in cold sweats. Amelia let in a deep breath as she carefully picked her satchel up from the ground and put it on the table by the kid’s side. She shuffled about within her bag and struggled to find what she needed.

“How long ago was this?” She asked Thane to buy herself time. Pulling out a set of dried leaves and a small pink-purple fruit she put it into a mortar and began to mash it with a pestle. There was a wound in the kid’s stomach that needed tending to, and if this was anything like the time Amelia had treated one of the elven commanders in the Falwoods, the root of all this was not so much the cut but what it left behind.

She needed something that would quite literally suck the worst of it out of him. Quacks would have used leeches and oils, a trained professional knew better. From within her satchel Amelia would withdraw a trio of small sphere-shaped peppers. The Falwood held a bounty of natural resources that were far too dangerous for Amelia herself to retrieve. This was one of those. The peppers were unusable in cooking but almost invaluable in medical situations such as this. The smell they produced was almost heavenly, but the taste was far from it.

“If we inflame the cut, we can trick his body into expunging whatever that cut left behind.” The girl said and continued to mash the peppers with her pestle. “Where did you find him?”

 

[Thane Jackdaw]

"Forty minutes, at most." Thane said. He wasn't completely certain but he was close.

The physician took her sweet time preparing the healing ingredients, while the inn grew silent in anticipation. Or dread. A few whispers, here and there, which hoped the boy did not survive were caught by his enhanced hearing but he ignored them for the sake of the boy. Instead, he focused on keeping the wound pressured and observing what the physician was going to use.

Falwood quartz pepper.

Elf?

He inspected the woman carefully and noticed the slightly protruding from locks of hair elven ears. Nonetheless, she stuck him more as a human. Half-elf. What was it with Thane lately ending up in the company of half-elves? At least, this one did not seem as irritating as the know-it-all Ceridwen Laidyn.

The monster hunter looked her from top to bottom and did not find any striking features of an elven ranger, or someone really capable of traversing the dangers of Falwood alone to get the quartz pepper. He didn't see her in the company of someone like that, either, and traders usually sold it at a price only a few could afford. Who the hell was this person?

"Near a spring, edge of the farmlands, east from here." Thane answered before putting his palm before her gesturing to her to pause.

"He's no elf." the monster hunter said with a low tone. "That pepper can kill a human."

With different races, came different organisms. Falwood quartz pepper was an incredible healing ingredient for elves, or to battle hardened human adults with strong constitution. A human child? This was risky.

Amelia

 

[Amelia]

Hurried as she was Amelia stopped as the hunter motioned with his hand. She put two of the corns back in their little pouch before she grabbed a knife out of a small compartment in her bag. She took the sheath off and immediately began to shred a small piece of the pepper off. A third of a dose would be enough to cause the kid more pain and perhaps get a reaction out of his immune system, but this was also the only choice they had.

“It’s either the pepper or he dies.” Amelia said and put the pepper down in the the mortar. “So way I see it, we give him a fighting chance at the very least.”

With several thorough pushes of the pestle she ground the rest of the ingredients down into a fine paste. It was all about consistency. Too thin and they’d run the risk of the corruption not taking to it, leaving the wound with a burn and nothing else. Too thick however and there was no telling how much of it had been expunged from the kid’s veins. In the end they needed to act fast and Amelia was nothing if not diligent in these practices.

A minute passed before she dug her fingers into the paste and held it up by her face. It had taken to a green-red color not too unlike poison ivy. A few of the members of the small crowd began to question what she was doing, but without much of a knowledge on the field they were left with their questions unanswered. Amelia did not have the time or care for it.

The kid shrieked as she applied the salve along the sides of his wound. The crowd stepped back but Amelia seemed, despite all that was happening, rather calm. She held up three fingers and for each second that passed she mouthed a countdown as she lowered a digit. Almost as if on command the veins near the kid’s wound began to enlarge, grow visible under his skin as the blood flow increased drastically.

With a swift hand she dug for a vial in her bag, put it on the table and took her knife. Using the knife she gently scraped the salve off the boy’s skin, careful not to puncture the wound any further. She knew what came now. She had seen it once before and that was all she needed, or so she figured. Her nose scrunched in preparation for something nasty.

And nasty it was, as a thick green liquid began to pour into the wound. Using her knife Amelia would reach on with even greater care to poke at it, get a hook and pull the entire thing out of the kid’s wound. There it clung to her knife like a piece of seaweed and she deposited it into her jar and closed the lid.

For the moment she let in a deep breath and look at the kid that was already unconscious. It wasn’t right that someone so small had to go through this, but at the very least he had been granted a fighting chance.

Thane Jackdaw

 

[Thane Jackdaw]

“It’s either the pepper or he dies.” Amelia said and put the pepper down in the the mortar. “So way I see it, we give him a fighting chance at the very least.”

Thane snarled but said nothing. She had a point. He held the boy tight as the physician proceeded with the process. For most, judging by their reaction, it was the most obnoxious thing they had seen. The monster hunter did not flinch but kept the boy steady when he shrieked and convulsed. Roge's kid fell unconscious and someone brought a healing balm and bandages with which the physician covered the wound.

All that they could do now was hope the boy had the will and constitution to survive.

*

Thane took a seat on the table where the physician was previously seated, a table away from where the boy now lied in unconsciousness. A mug of light ale before him. He had his attention completely on the child, unable to enjoy the fine taste of ale Veinbrough offered. The hunter reluctantly attempted to sway his attention elsewhere by trying a conversation with the doctor.

"Falwood quartz pepper - they don't really give it voluntarily. Half-elf or not." the statement was more of a question.

Amelia

 

[Amelia]

They sat and watched as the kid’s chest sunk and rose with deep rapid breaths. It was clear he was in pain and struggling. This was always the most frustrating part of treatment. The kid had been bandaged up as best could be done, now all they could do was wait and see how things played out. Amelia had been offered a drink by one of the more concerned patrons but she had declined. She needed a sharp mind and be ready for whatever happened next.

“My mother is Ariawyn Elsatra.” Amelia said, hoping that he would have heard of her. She was a big name in Alliria, but this man didn’t exactly strike her as much of a city-dweller. He seemed to be the exact opposite if anything. He had that rugged air to him. “She is an elven physician in Alliria.”

The kid continued to squirm ever so gently on the table, like they were stuck in an unwaking nightmare. Amelia’s eyebrows dropped in concern for the kid.

“The pepper was the only ingredient I had at hand. Mother makes sure I bring a small amount.” Amelia looked back at the monster hunter again. “Mostly for situations like these, albeit for my own usage.”

“... Looks like the kid is doing well, all things considered.”

Thane Jackdaw

 

[Thane Jackdaw]

“My mother is Ariawyn Elsatra.”

Thane nearly spat the ale he had not touched. Eyes widened briefly and nothing after what Amelia Eastwater, daughter to Morgan Eastwater and Ariawyn Elsatra, said was heard by the monster hunter. Except the comment for the kid. He flashed a glance at the child where the process was still going on. But instead of only hope, now, he had belief because this half-elf turned out to be the child of one of the most renown doctors in the land.

"Aha..." he finally managed and then gathered himself. "I know your parents and you. But you were far smaller back then." Thane smirked at the memory of escorting Ariawyn and the way she had twisted the story after. So he decided to nudge that funny memory into the conversation with his own recollection of the event.

"Your father saved me once. I saved your mother in return." the smirk didn't fade. Surprisingly for the aloof man.

Amelia

 

[Amelia]

Thane Jackdaw

A shot of worry shot through Amelia as the man seemingly started to choke. In reality it was something she had said. The kid looked at the hunter as he calmed down and chuckled fondly. The last few words off her tongue had slowed down to a crawl, her eyes blinking in confusion as each word that parted her lips seemed to twist and turn her entire face into a very confused grimace.

The man finally shed light on the situation and it did nothing to help Amelia feel any less confused. She was very good with faces, and she was very certain that she had never met this man before. With eyes like his he stood out from anyone else she had ever met, and the way he carried himself with the sway of a caring brute it seemed impossible that she wouldn’t remember him.

Yet as he went on to talk about her parents the dots connected. A gasp passed through her lips as the girl placed her hands against the table and pushed herself out of her seat to lean over the table with excitement.

“You’re Thane Dawson!” She whispered under her breath before she sat back down again. “You ruined my mother’s favorite dress over nothing, and my father saved you from a-...” Her brows sunk as she had to think back on the stories she was told before bed. It was undoubtedly a while ago since the last one, and the validity of them had always been questionable at best. “Dragon! I think. He said.”

“I grew up with stories about you!”

 

[Thane Jackdaw]

"Thane Jackdaw." he corrected her once and then he corrected her twice. "Basilisk in heat."

Thane finally managed a sip from the ale and sat his back comfortably on the uncomfortable chair. The young girl he remembered had changed radically but when he looked closer, he could see the imprints of her mother and father in both her features, attire and even body language. As different as she was the same.

It looked like she had taken more to the traversing ways of her father. The man would jump from the highest of heights and venture into the darkest of caverns to patch up a poor ol' drunken sod. The monster hunter wondered whether her mother approved much of this.

"I see your mother's been telling you her version of the story." he smirked behind a raised mug. "She lets you go off this far from Alliria alone? Surprising."

She did not seem to be in someone's company.

Amelia

 

[Amelia]

Basilisk did not sound like anything that Amelia was familiar with or could remember hearing. Her father had definitely mentioned fire and spitting acid which perhaps said more about what kind of storyteller he was. After all, this was the Thane Jackdaw and Amelia would simply take his word for it. Especially given that a basilisk was far less interesting than a dragon. In comparison, that is. Basilisks were still understandably scary.

“I travel by buying my way into a caravan.” Amelia said and motioned in the direction of the bigger group in one corner of the room. “If they leave tomorrow the plan was to go with them.”

The girl shuffled in her seat, spun her drink in her tankard before she looked back up at the hunter again.

“Besides, it’s not really mother’s idea as much as father’s. He says that travel is good for the mind and body. The more of the world you see, the bigger your box gets, and the better your understanding of people will be.” She chuckled at the thought. “Mother has me fetching books and ingredients for use at the clinic. We would hire a courier, but if we send me we save money to some extent. Not that money is too big of an issue.”

Her eyes met Thane’s.

“How long did you say you knew my father?”

 

[Thane Jackdaw]

Thane gave the caravan group of the inn a glance. A mix-match of dwarves, gnomes and humans. There was nothing exceptionally noticeable about the troupe but perhaps that was better for Amelia - stay low profile; roads were generally becoming more and more dangerous lately.

"Ten years, or so. Last saw him about eight years ago." the monster hunter replied. He had a reason to stay clear from Alliria. There was always trouble for him in Alliria, for one or another reason. "That's when I escorted your mother to the Circle of Healers' meeting." Despite the mortal circumstances surrounding that, Thane recalled the the memory with a certain degree of nostalgia. Amelia's parents were good people among a world full of cut-throat monsters.

"If you are headed east, I will take the caravan with you." he said. Thane kept the fact that there was an increased monster and bandit presence east from the physician. It was best she did not worry, she already had the boy on her plate. "Soon as the bailiff pays me for the ghouls."

He looked at the boy who had gone static. There was a steadier rate of breathing.

"How is he?"

Amelia

 

[Amelia]

“Stable.” Amelia said with a relieved smile as she looked over at the boy. “Given that he just survived both a ghoul attack as well as exposure to elven quartz pepper, I’d say he is far stronger than anyone in this room gives him credit for.”

The girl had made sure to raise her voice at the last part as if to chide those that had told the monster hunter to let the kid die. Death was a cold reality, this was true, but to allow a child to die simply because of who his father had been was a step too far beyond a line that nobody should ever have crossed.

“And, I imagine we could use the company.” Amelia said and looked back at Thane. “Monsters and bandits have grown more bold in recent months.”

Naturally they were always bold, but it would seem that at this point they had grown almost even bolder. Settlements were attacked, some on the outskirts of civilization had already been lost. Less caravans passed through the lands unguarded, and even then the caravans seemed to grow larger overall. People sought bigger groups, forming almost nomad-like bands going from town to town to peddle goods. In many ways it was a good thing. Cultural exchange had been on the up with it, but at the same time so had the amount of wagon sackings as well.

As if on cue, a man entered through the door of the small inn. His rosy pocked skin clung to his chin with the hang of an abundant overexposure to fatty foods to the point where it was hard to tell where his chin ended and his neck began. Lumbering through the crowd, his fat body jiggled its way over towards the monster hunter as he twirled the smallest of moustaches on his otherwise stubbled face.

Stubby fingers pushed against his non-existent waistline as he stared down at the white-haired freak before him. He opened his mouth as if to speak. A long, wet inhale passed through his lips that spoke of his indifference or even outright disdain for the man.

A bothered exhale sent small spittles hurling around him before he spoke…

 

[Thane Jackdaw]

The bailiff and Thane did not reach any agreement for payment, despite the latter's help of cleansing the ghoul pests at the edge of their farmlands. Yet, a few stern and commanding words from Amelia, not unlike her mother, had bent the rest of the villagers to press the fat man. Dreading a full-blown mutiny and intimidated by the half-elf's visibly noble upbringing, he caved in and left Thane a purse of coins.

Later on, when the boy woke up, he sobbingly revealed to Amelia and Thane had an aunt east from here in a small village. They brought it up to the caravan and they found no issue of dropping off the boy in return for Thane's services. The ripping off of monster hunters was not something new to Thane and so he accepted.

A day had passed after they had dropped off the boy at her aunt with Amelia opening her purse to leave the aunt some coin for the care of the boy. Noble like her mother, kindhearted like her father.

With that behind them, the caravan continued further east into the wilder parts of their route.

The turn on the junction had led them into a less traversed road among willow trees, thick grass and moss, along with the softer ground, implied the existence of a swamp along the road. The rotten smell of decaying plants and poor drainage filled the troupe's noses.

Thane sat at the back of one of the caravans at the rear and carefully polished his blade with an oil-soaked piece of cloth. Amelia had gone back inside the caravan for something and had left behind whatever she was reading right next to him. He gave it one glance but found it uninteresting. A short moment later he glanced back at it again carefully reading the actual handwriting on it.

"You write poetry?" he asked.

Amelia

 

[Amelia]

For a good part of the initial journey Amelia had been on foot. Sometimes to pick up the occasional flower or seemingly unimportant grass blade, other times to simply stretch her legs. Yet she never seemed to let her guard down. She was calm as she sauntered through the landscape without a seeming care in the world, yet at the same time it was hard not to notice the way her eyes kept themselves focused on the treelines and horizon.

She might not have seemed much like a combatant, but she certainly wasn't as blind to danger as one could have thought either. All it took was the one encounter and you would be put on high alert for the rest of your life. At least while on the road. Amelia’s most recent and most unfortunate attack had left her at the mercy of a shadow, yet she had been rescued by a kind soul on the road.

Coincidence and Luck had walked hand in hand that day, but it was fair to assume that they wouldn’t be the next time it happened. As the day had started to unwind Amelia found herself at the back of the wagon staring out across the fields and increasingly dense marshlands.

The smell of disease caused her nose to wrinkle in disgust. Usually on her own she would have given the marshes a wide berth. The inhabitants therein were about as hospitable as their environments. The air was putrid with the sulphur-like smell almost lingering on your tongue for each breath you took. Amelia had gone back into her wagon to get a rag to wipe the humidity off of her with.

“So,” She began. Yet the monster hunter cut her off with a question that cut deep into her heart. The jovial smile on her lips faded into a look of sheer horror as she reached over and tore the book out of the man’s grasp and held it to her chest with an awkward chuckle.

An ungraceful and utterly awkward whine of chuckle pushed its way past Amelia’s gritted teeth. “Whaaat?” Her voice practically squeaked under her confusion and embarrassment. “Me? A writer? No way, nuh uh, I uh-”

Her face turned from tan to almost straight up red, much like her mother’s had on the day that she understood that Thane had in fact saved her life.

A mock scoff parted Amelia’s lips as she struggled to find an excuse. “I am just holding on to this,” Her eyes shifted to the side. “For, uh- a friend!” She said and quickly nodded her head. “Yeah, that’s right. A- a friend who is really into awful… Really specific poetry about my journeys and-”

The girl shoved the book into her satchel and crossed her arms to get a grip on her nerves.

“Stuff. It’s not me, no. Never.”

 

[Thane Jackdaw]

A shit-eating smirk curved on his face and Thane wasn't giving up that easily.

"Interesting." he said and looked away nowhere for a few moments as if he had absolutely believed her. Case closed. Frogs chirped. An opossum shuffled through the thicket.

"Yet, you did say you travel alone..." he let his sentence finish itself. A nasty shit-eating monster hunter's smirk.

Amelia

 

[Amelia]

Wait, was he enjoying this?! Amelia gave the man a look that once more perfectly mirrored the one that her mother would have given the hunter when he insisted he had saved her life.

“I uh- Nope, no. I’ve never said anything like that.” Amelia lied to defend herself. “I… Always travel in groups, I make many friends.”

The inner elf came out.

“You must have heard me wrong.”

 

[Thane Jackdaw]

"If I didn't hear well, I would've been long dead." Thane said still with a twisted smirk. "That said, does your mother know of your musical ambitions?"

If she hadn't, Thane wished to be there to see Ariawyn's reaction to such news.

 

[Amelia]

"She knows nothing!" Amelia kept going at the high pitch that her previous voice had left off at. With a deep breath she stilled her nerves. "Whoever wrote this must have done it on the road to pass time."

"And... Well, yes, that someone is me."

"... Father knows though. Much more thrilled than mother would be."