Fable - Ask Journey to Firerun Gorge

[Jhinn]

Storms presided over the Jagged Teeth ranges to the south, clouds of blue and black coming alight with the pulsing of silent lightning, and this sight and sights like it joining Jhinn at the onset of his journey east. Dusk descended and the westering sun fell as if into a chasm of clouds such that its orange blaze sat like an evil eye ringed all the way round by dark and smoky obscura, narrow light from the finality of day cast in a thin blade across the badland. Jhinn rose along the slow incline of a ridge and walked silhouetted against the lightning of the south and the baleful sunset of the west. Along that spine he walked, boots treading the dust and the scrub, and the smell of rain came then flowing with the wind. All that night he trekked through the downpour.

When came the morning and the gray light of the new dawn all the sky overhead hosted the ceaseless march of clouds from the south and the east, the Jagged Teeth not enough to dissuade their advance. Jhinn made a fire and dried himself as best he could and he smothered his fire and moved on.

And it was then, after the night of heavy rain and in the gray morning, did he notice his pursuer. A dark shape, made so by the distance, trailing in his wake. The pursuer so far as he could tell had the form of a tiefling, yet he remained uncertain.

He continued all that day with the resolve in mind to find a suitable place to confront his pursuer. Come the night he sat against the sheer wall of a cleft in the earth, its height not outside the upper reach of his outstretched arms. Rest would not come easy, and only in brief episodes. Yet with the cleft to his back and a sharp decline to his front, full of scree waiting to be disturbed, he was only truly approachable from the path by which he had come.

The next morning saw pockets of blue and sparse shafts of sun piercing through the cloud cover, though these respites came and went and still the overcast skies rolled over the Jagged Teeth mountains and spread widely throughout the badlands. Jhinn traveled this day down from the rough ridges and saddles and draws and came to flatter land were the dust blew not so freely and ahead lay denser scrub and even Malarn trees in their rugged, crooked statures, and further on he heard the bubbling of a stream and came to it, and he drank and refilled his water and crossed the stream and moved on.

Passing through the strip of Malarn trees he would ascend a small rise and there at the top come across a ruined waystation from the Second Potentate, its broken walls like an ancient and dilapidated crown upon that rise. Here he would meet his pursuer, blade in hand, and it would be known if his weapon would cross with another.

Jhinn hid, for there were many old buildings, even if barely standing, and waited.

Night would come again, and again his rest only punctuated long periods of vigilance. Dawn saw the true light of the sun, for in the east a great clearing of the clouds allowed its radiance through in fullness, and the long shadows of the waystation obeyed the ascending sun until it passed into the gray blanket claiming all else above and there it would remain hidden and obscure as in the days previous. By reckoning of afternoon did Jhinn at last hear the approach of his pursuer, footsteps among the bygone settlement.

Greatsword in hand he swung around from the corner of stone wall, leveling his blade and his stance into readiness. His pursuer was indeed a tiefling, but none he quite expected.

"Oh!" said she. "There you are!"

 

[Jhinn]

And now before him stood a tiefling who, though armored, was not in stance nor demeanor committed to a fight, and what was more even discounted Jhinn's own readiness, his own raised weapon, for no fear, apprehension, nothing of the sort dissuaded the relieved smile of her countenance. Light purple was her skin, white her hair, bright her eyes, youthful her mien, and her horns, sitting large upon her head, curved down and then up in similar fashion to Jhinn's own, if more pronounced. She'd a blue cloak and a thick pack on her back, and fastened through a loop in the pack's side she carried a warhammer as her weapon.

No lackey of Zeuraad's, this. But he'd yet to discern her intentions.

"I heard you were going this way," she said, cheery.

"Heard from whom?"

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "From the fat purple-skinned tender of that wastrel bar in Longwatch you passed through! Big lips, big mouth, that one! I didn't catch his name, didn't care to, but he'll tell anybody anything for a little bit of coin. And what luck, he didn't lie to me!" And she laughed.

Jhinn kept his stance, "And why do you seek me?"

"You're the big red tiefling with the big sword. The vasheen."

"I am coincidentally those things."

She laughed again. "You don't have to be so cagey with me. We're friends!"

Jhinn blinked. Then he closed his eyes and kept them closed for a moment in disbelief and opened them and said flatly, "Draw your weapon."

"Why?"

"Because you do not know me. I could kill you."

"But you're not. And I do know you!"

And now this, despite the girl's demeanor, raised Jhinn's suspicion. "Is that so?"

"Yes!" she said emphatically. "You used to serve Master Mourne, didn't you? Ah! Ah hah, what was that? A little smile. I think I saw a little smile, you did serve Master Mourne!"

"I did not smile."

"Let's call it a twitch of the brow then. But I'm right. Aren't I?"

 

[Jhinn]

"Yes. I served Master Mourne." He spoke the truth, seeing no gain in fabrication.

"I knew it!" she said, pointing straight at him. "Sorry I don't know your name, but I know your...reputation? I guess."

"My name is Jhinn."

"Ysra!"

"And how is it that you know of me? I have never before seen you about Bladewrack."

"Well, I'm from the Commune of Dawn's Hope. And believe it or not, your favorite Master actually—"

Jhinn, visibly taken aback, for he blinked and shook his head and even allowed for his greatsword's point to be lowered to the ground, said then, "You're from the Hidden Communes? A follower of the Anointed One?"

"Surprise!" said Ysra in cheerful confirmation. "That's me. Anyway, I never met Master Mourne in person, but—"

Jhinn was shaking his head. "You shouldn't do that."

"Well I can't now, he's dead, and it's very sad."

"No. I mean that you should not go about saying openly that you are a follower of the Anointed One. It's—"

"Dangerous," said Ysra, and she gave a little exasperated sigh, but cheered again in a near instant. "I know, I know. All the young ones are taught that at an early age. And so was I. But it's not dangerous to say it to you, right? You were close to Master Mourne, right? Unless I found the wrong big red tiefling. That'd be awkward."

Jhinn now fully rested his sword in the ground, casually holding it straight by the pommel, and he asked, "What is it that you seek from me?"

 

[Jhinn]

"You want to kill Master Deimos. I want to kill Master Deimos. Let's go!"

And now Jhinn did laugh, and laugh heartily, before he pinched the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb and passed his hand down his face and said, "One cannot simply kill Master Deimos."

"Sure one can. There's no one so strong in the Tief they can't die!"

He dipped his head in momentary consideration and then raised it slightly and regarded the girl from beneath the shadow of his brow. "He is Master of all Infernis; the city boasts companies upon companies, armies all told, of capable warriors. He has sorcerers at his bidding, all strong in the Tief themselves, and Masters in his allegiance stronger in the Tief still. Every day he expands his influence, his power. Rumor born of many tongues all whisper the same thing, that he is like the Inheritors of old. All this he has done with frightening alacrity, as though favored by the Ascended King himself. This is not the Master Deimos of years past."

Jhinn tossed his sword up into the air and his command of the Tief took it and the sword neatly sheathed itself in his back scabbard. To Ysra he said, "Abandon your quest. Go back to Dawn's Hope."

And he turned, starting to walk away.

"But you are," Ysra said.

Jhinn stopped. Stood there paused for a long time, and then he slowly turned his trailing foot, and next his body, and next his head, glancing back at all with a grave and dire glower. "I am what."

"Going to try to kill Master Deimos," said Ysra. A small wind passed between them, purple and red tiefling, her hair and his hair each giving sign to it. "Despite all that stuff you said, you're still going to do it."

"What business of it is yours."

"You aren't the only one who opposes him, Jhinn."

"He has many enemies."

"And so do you," she said.

Silence.

"You presume much for a girl hidden away in the mountains all her life."

"You can't do this alone."

 

[Jhinn]

Jhinn stood his ground and above the clouds reclaimed much territory from the blue and wind from the south presaged yet more storms as had come the days prior. He started to walk toward her. Slow. Calm. The wind blew through the ruined waystation as a stream flowing gently along in its bed. Jhinn's boots as he walked would crunch and press small rocks and small detritus into the dirt. No sun shone in that gray day, no shadow to trail his approach nor to mark Ysra's standing. And she watched him until he stood before her, looking up at him and he down at her.

He said to her, low and firm but not without compassion. "Go home."

"I won't."

"Your mother and father will miss you."

"I'm an orphan." And her eyes flickered down and back up. "It's the truth."

Jhinn let settle a silence that no words could properly fill, and then he said, "Go anyway."

"Fine. I guess I'll just go to Infernis myself and—"

"Don't—" Jhinn whipped out a hand and caught her by the shoulder as she made to pass by, stopping her and forcing her to again look at him, "—do that. It would be foolish."

"I know. It'd be better if I went with you, huh?"

"You won't quit this path?"

"Will you?"

And now would come a long time, whose breadth neither Jhinn nor Ysra tracked, where both of them, tieflings from two different worlds, stood like odd-met travelers come together by different roads merging into one. At last Jhinn lowered his hand from her shoulder.

"Look," she said, "you don't need to tell me anything you don't want to tell me. I'll tell you anything you want to know about me though because I'm nice and I talk a lot—maybe too much sometimes." And she flashed a bright smile before returning to serious sincerity. "But I know enough about you, and I can guess at the rest. So you have many enemies; why not a friend for once?"

Consideration.

Much consideration.

But Jhinn looked at last to Ysra and her eyes reflected in his own, and he said, "Then come."

Ysra clapped her hands together and swished a foot in the dirt and said, "Great! Let's—"

"You will be disappointed. We aren't going anywhere near Infernis. Not for a long time."

"Aw, I'm not that disappointed. I know that'd be an unwise move to make right now. Soooo...where are we going, then?"

And Jhinn pointed to the east, where beyond the tumultuous horizon and broken land the Jagged Teeth ranges wrapped around in their slow curve and crawled northward, enclosing the wastes of the Cradle in their wide and ravenous maw.

"Firerun Gorge."

 

[Jhinn]

They did not leave the waystation that day, seeing the coming storms gathering in their strength over the southern Jagged Teeth and Jhinn figuring the rain would fall before the onset of night. They searched through the waystation's skeletal buildings, some thirteen of them, to select from among them the best to provide shelter. They spoke as they made their assessments.

"You may follow me as little or as far as you please," said Jhinn.

"If I get tired, will you carry me on your back?"

"No."

"I'm not even that heavy. I'm light, I promise. Big strong tiefling like you! It'd be easy," Ysra said, teasing.

"I would advise you not to make a burden of yourself, or you will rediscover the loneliness of the wastes."

"Ah, don't worry! You may not do it for me but I'll carry you if you get tired."

Out of buildings they surveyed, they chose one whose roof stood passably intact. A small square structure, its purpose long since effaced and eroded and any guess thereof as good as any other. In the center of its sole room a pile of rubble, formerly belonging to the roof, sat on the ground, and through the hole above a trunk of gray light came through; but the floor slanted toward the door, and what rainfall fell through would drain that way, leaving good enough shelter at the back of the room.

Jhinn and Ysra sat there along that back wall, each shedding their heavy packs, and they shared what rations they had.

"So why are you going to Firerun Gorge?"

"Has anyone from Dawn's Hope been there before?"

"Nope! First time I'm hearing of it, actually."

"But you know of Armadiles, do you not?"

"Oh! The big lizards!"

"Yes. The same. In our age they are difficult to come by, but even so they continue to serve as superior mounts for the harsh lands of Malakath—hardy, strong, bonded with the Tief. But they need to be broken and trained. Firerun Gorge hosts the most venerable trainers, and from them I will purchase an Armadile for myself."

Ysra giggled and elbowed Jhinn and looked at him with a big grin and said, "It'll carry you on its back when you're tired." He just stared at her. "What? That's not funny? I thought it was funny. A little funny."

They continued to eat, and before long the first roll of thunder came over the waystation.

 

[Jhinn]

Rain slashed down over the expansive wastes of the Cradle in the growing evening, as Jhinn predicted. The sun for a brief time escaped the choking grasp of the thunderheads and from the west cast a brilliant inferno and all the rain falling looked like embers with their violent orange reflections, kin to some great calamity. But the horizon swallowed whole the last remnants of day and darkness battled with lightning for supremacy. Jhinn and Ysra sat in their shelter and within it the pounding rain was amplified, its splashing and splattering contained and heightened inside as it fell through the hole in the roof and rushed outside in an everflowing river to join with the rest of its stormborn brethren saturating the ground. Ysra fell asleep, and though Jhinn concluded her story to be true, and that he faced no threat from her, still he kept vigilance through the night; he would watch the lightning sunder the clouded sky through the rooftop portal all the night long.

By the time morning came only a light drizzle remained. Jhinn and Ysra collected their packs and set out. Down the opposing side of the waystation's hill they went, and before them it seemed a thousand lakes had been birthed by the night's downpour; most of them would be gone before the next sun's rising, so thirsty was the Cradle and its parched wastes. Jhinn led them over rockier terrain, avoiding pits of mud in the lowlands. They crossed along the edge of a promontory shaped like the lost jawbone of some fabled giant, up along its spanning arch and down again.

In the height of noon the sun expelled the overcast and the gray, those tyrannical clouds made to scatter, those skies over the Jagged Teeth clear and blue and portending no further ill weather. They moved on across a flat plain studded with a legion of ancient, fallen rocks.

They continued into a grove of Malarn trees and shrubs, some unseen groundwater providing nourishment to deep roots, allowing for that sudden oasis that was no mirage born of the eye's despairing want. Wiry grasses even grew near the center of that improbable circle of verdure. Shadows and shade from the afternoon sun made for a sanctuary seldom seen in those adversarial parts of Malakath.

Ysra knelt down and brushed the grass with her hand, "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Jhinn, meanwhile, glanced about the grove. "We should refill our waterskins, and fill reserves. Look around."

 

[Phelaia Hope]

Phelaia Hope crouched low, eyes alert as she refilled her waterskins in the shadow of a boulder. Her hood and robe were still damp from the downpour she had sought shelter from last night, and she couldn't quite shake the humid, musty scent from her nose. The sound of a pair of voices gave her pause, even though one voice was so perky that it seemed nearly oblivious to the many, many hazards of the Malakath wastes that could very well be looking for a drink themselves at the moment, or worse still, a bite of someone or something looking for a drink. Re-corking her waterskin, she took her bow in hand and began a circling stalk, keeping low and to the shadows as she sought out the owners of the voices, an arrow nocked out of a sense of caution.

Jhinn

 

[Jhinn]

"Maybe we'll get lucky here," said Ysra, rising. "Find a bunch of Cuudruu here, sipping away at the watering hole, and we can have a nice fat dinner, and make jerky, and...ah, I'm making myself hungry again."

Cuudruu—the antelope of Malakath. Fast, agile, hardy against the elements and lack of water. Unruly so as to be poor animals to farm, they were a hunter's delight. Their herds, big and small, went trotting and hopping across the Cradle frequently enough, and this grove might well have drawn some.

"Can you kill one if you see it?"

"Ohhhh, I have my ways."

"Good. But let us find water first and foremost."

They split up. The grove wasn't overly expansive, but nor was it small. Jhinn felt the earth beneath his boots as he walked, and he followed a gentle downslope, tracing what once in centuries past could have been a riverbed. Indeed the downslope steepened and led to a small depression, and Jhinn stood atop what was in times past a waterfall, a thick face of rock overlooking it all. Below was a pond, the surface water renewed by the heavy rainfall, and beneath the pond's placid surface was a portal to the underground system wherein a greater reserve of water fueled the whole of the grove.

He had by scarce minutes just missed the sight of Phelaia there, the selfsame boulder sitting adjacent to the rockface.

Jhinn whistled sharply to catch Ysra's attention, wherever she was, and he reached back to produce a waterskin strapped to the side of his pack, and then did start to carefully descend into the depression and to the pond's tree-lined shore.

Phelaia Hope

 

[Phelaia Hope]

Following the echoes of the louder, more constant voice for a moment, Phelaia discovered that her ears had led her around some outcroppings in a complete circle: here was that same old pebbly stream track down to the waterfall-pool. She was pleasantly surprised at first glance to see one of her own kind, though she swiftly reminded herself that there were in fact all kinds of her kind in the world. Keeping an arrow nocked under a clawed fingertip, she silently stood, then whistled from her mouth-corners, just loud enough to draw the tiefling’s attention, grinning despite her better instincts warning her ‘not yet!’

“Now, what tricky mirage is this? A fine, juicy cuudruu, walking about like people?”

Jhinn

 

[Jhinn]

A whistle back, and for a brief moment Jhinn thought it to be Ysra. But a voice unguessed spoke new from his left, and he stopped on the steep path down into the depression and the pond therein. He turned his head to look, his regard upon a tiefling of bluish-gray, perched on a vantage, bow drawn, arrow aimed.

He could do nothing for it.

"A mirage indeed," he said. "There's prey elsewhere to better suit your arrow."





Phelaia Hope

 

[Phelaia Hope]

She clucked her tongue, forcing the Tief-twisted staves of her longbow to relax and lower. She didn't remember aiming and drawing Old Beazle back, only nocking the arrow. Well, that's weird...

"Well, I'm not likely to find any cuudruu here with your daughter there chirping so loudly... what brings you two out into the wastes anyway? Don't find many people outside of caravans and bandits... and you seem kinda light on goods and wagons to be a caravan."

Jhinn

 

[Jhinn]

"She is not my daughter..." he said curtly, before admitting, "...but she does chirp loudly."

Her words curved back onto herself, not necessarily for good or for ill, but as a measure of truth. She'd a certain skill with the Tief, so evidenced by the clucking of her tongue and her longbow dutifully answering. The wastes of Malakath did not suffer the weak. To travel a dangerous land, one needed to be dangerous, to harbor some notable capacity for violence, some assertion of power. What tiefling would be spared out here, if they had neglected the fostering of the Tief within them?

"We are on a journey east, I by choice and she by chance. And I surmise that you and we fall into that unnamed third, neither a caravan nor aiming for banditry—wastesteppers with purposes their own."


Phelaia Hope

 

[Phelaia Hope]

"Not your daughter? Then you two...?" She let her voice trail off. She hadn't after all seen the other woman yet. Her voice just sounded one heck of a lot younger than the tiefling in front of her.

"Me, yeah, I guess I'm that third type, too, at least now that I'm not holding you up with a bow anymore huh?! I was 'prenticed as a pathfinder, so yeah, guess I'm just... finding my path and that."

The tiefling scratched her head with her drawing-hand, considering his words.

"East, huh? East... I always heard that the only thing east of this oasis is that gorge, with lizards big as horses. Then the Teeth - more dragon nests than you can shake a stick at - and then the ass-end of the whole world."

She sidled closer, still minding the possible approaches. That chirpy voice had gotten awful quiet all of a sudden.

"Any-way... it's Phelaia. Phelaia Hope. Hey, shouldn't your... um, friend be back by now? She suddenly got awful quiet..."

Jhinn

 

[Jhinn]

Jhinn stared at the newcome tiefling as her voice trailed off, a slight irritation etched into the stone of his expression. And he answered the insinuation with a definite, "No."

A pathfinder, she said. A mention as curious as it was opportune. Still much ground lay between them and their destination, and Jhinn could claim no firm familiarity with it all.

"And I am Jhinn," he said, introducing himself after she had done so.

Then, timed to perfection, Ysra's voice came carrying toward them from some distance away, "Jhinn! No luck. Hope you did betterrrrrr~!"

He nodded his head in the direction of the distant voice. "And my companion is Ysra." But then he would speak to Phelaia directly, "Where have you come by your name? 'Hope'?"

Phelaia Hope

 

[Phelaia Hope]

The young tiefling flashed a toothy grin.

"I 'came by it' all by myself, Mister Jhinn, once my 'prenticeship was up in Thagretis. New life; new name. It seemed natural enough to me, I guess. I mean, what keeps you going in the wastes, right?"

She nearly winced at the distant shouting.

"Does... your companion Ysra know that there are beasts large enough to eat people out here?"

Jhinn

 

[Jhinn]

Thagretis. City of the dragon-worshippers. To Jhinn, differentiated from Thanasis—the other city of dragon-worshippers—only in that they would be less prone to butcher a tiefling on sight. Still it seemed no small feat to him that Phelaia had come away from that place with her life. Mayhap those Thagretians and their Archprophet thought tieflings to be a poor propitiation to their god-dragon.

Does your companion Ysra know...?

"If not, she will," he said. He knew not the full ways of the Communes, those secluded mountain tieflings, but he knew that no place on Malakath could claim immunity to her wrath.

And now Ysra came into view, standing where Jhinn himself had stood prior atop the dried waterfall, that face of rock overlooking the pond below, and she saw Jhinn first and then Phelaia and she gasped with delight. "Oh! I leave for a few minutes and you've already made a friend. Hi!" she said to the newcome tiefling directly, "Who are you?"

"Phelaia Hope. Of Thagretis."

Ysra gasped again, with even greater delight. "Hope? You have a surname? And it's Hope! My home is called Dawn's Hope. Isn't that neat?"

Phelaia Hope

 

[Phelaia Hope]

As the cheerful young warrior clanged and clattered into view, Phelaia nodded her head slowly, as though having just solved a riddle, whispering an aside to Jhinn. “Oh. They’d prolly rather not chip their fangs on the platemail.”

She flashed a toothy grin as Ysra came within earshot. Realizing the Tief-touched bow was seeming overly eager for the nocked arrow again, she gasped and hastily returned it to her quiver. Very weird...

"Well, I chose a surname, Miss Ysra... Dawn's Hope, you say? Never heard of it... far from here, I take it?"

Jhinn

 

[Jhinn]

Phelaia whispered, and Jhinn snickered, a rare display of indulgence in humor.

"It is far! How'd you know? Ah! Just kidding. About the 'how'd you know' part, not the far part, it really is far. I'm going to miss home before long, I feel."

"You elected to leave."

"I did, I did. But it's something I've got to do. Like you, Jhinn."

"Hmm." And he spoke no more on Deimos, Mourne, or his mission.

Instead he looked to Phelaia and said, "We intend to spend the night here. The three of us could perhaps spot and fell a Cuudruu with ease and divide the spoils, if such is to your liking."

Phelaia Hope

 

[Phelaia Hope]

Phelaia nodded in agreement with Jhinn's proposal, though her eyes flashed curious at the mention of something having needed to be done.

"I'll hop up 'top of the stack over there, and see if any might be nearby, or if they're already grown too shy of spirited girls in platemail. I'll whistle if I spot any, then point where to go to best flush them out my way."

She patted Old Beazle in time with the words 'my way.'

Jhinn