Fable - Ask On the Run

[Vaezhasar Drakspae]

Vaezhasar watched the white sheet wriggle and wheedle with the indulgent patience of a naturalist observing a curious but unlovely grub. With careful leisure he angled the horn of his staff beneath the hem, gave a deft upward flick, and hoisted the drapery like a theater curtain.

“Observe, Jack—nary a pock nor patch in sight,” he announced, the amusement in his voice as poorly veiled as Pomrick now was.

Then, with the air of a man about to puncture an overripe melon, he extended a gauntleted finger and pressed it lightly into Pomrick’s cheek—testing the texture, as though confirming that the man before him was indeed flesh, and not some errant illusion wrapped in damp laundry.

“And you, my moon-calf in motley, fair crackle with sorcerous mote—petty ones, true, but present nonetheless.”

"Now. Tell me plainly who you are and what you want. Be honest. Painfully so, if you must. If you lie, or stammer, or hedge—" here he lifted the staff a hair’s breadth higher, as if to illustrate the point, "—I’ll see to it you spend the remainder of your day, your last day, that is, hovering upside-down while my friend over there performs a hasty castration with whatever blade is closest to hand. Possibly rusty."

He paused, then added in a tone of polite detachment, "You’ll be quite surprised how quickly the body empties through such a small aperture."

 

[Pomrick Bloomsfield]

His prayer resulted in the sail lifting off from him, unloading all the bustle, sights and smells of Grayshore once again with renewed vigour.

For a long, agonising pause, Pomrick stood stock still - a deer caught by hunters, hoping not to be seen. The clawed finger poking his cheek caused animation in him again, a single line of blood drippling from where steel claw had punctured his flesh, making him reel back his head and painfully squint one eye open. When he saw the two figures towering above him, he felt as if plummeting into a great, deep abyss.

"Pomrick, what's going on? Who are you talking to? Did you hear a word I said about the strategies of subterfuge and concealment . . ."

The voice muffled by his satchel drowned out as Pomrick instinctually closed and tightened its strap, swinging it behind him. His eyes had fully opened by now, taking in Vaezhasar Drakspae in all his terrible glory. With all that infernal ornamentation and horns that could probably spear a fully-grown man, Pomrick's eyes didn't even know where to look, darting furtively across it all, until they eventually found the slit to his helmet, from where his metallic voice droned. The erudite denigration and demands coming from that voice washed over him like incomprehensible tidal waves, gradually pulling him into an ocean of unspeakable magick. Within all that armour lurked someone, a dark presence . . . And somehow, it felt as if seeing this person would be even worse than witnessing his decorated shell. Perhaps, the armour was not so much meant to terrorise people around it, but rather to contain the unholy force within it, a protective membrane granted for the courtesy of the mortals he encountered, and not vice versa.

Faced with such a malignant presence, only one possible avenue of salvation sprung to Pomrick's paralysed brain.

Both of his knees splatted into the mud, and his hands folded before him, lifted in benediction, as if in worship of the two dark deities before him, drawing more than a few idle eyes in the street, curious at this display. Though his eyes and body begged for mercy, fear had tightened his throat and hardly allowed a croak to escape, the words that should have come seeming to bulge behind his eye-sockets, engorging his eyes like desperate saucers.

A spark of lightning, gone again so quickly the eye might not catch it, flitted down from his shoulder, skittering off like a rapid eel to die in the ground. In its half-second life, it burned a small hole in the satchel, from which the orb of his master escaped and plopped into the mud. The sapphire orb glowed for a spell, besmirched by Grayshore's elements, a mutter of a crackled incantation hanging in the air, before it darkened with the fleeting presence of his master.

Pomrick gawped, staring down at the orb, then back up at them. He didn't even dare pick it up.

Gradually, the colour of his right eye slowly transmuted into a liquid gold, beginning from the centre of the pupil and spreading to consume his pale-blue iris, ever so slowly and subtly throughout this exchange.

Vaezhasar Drakspae​

Jack Thacker​

 

[Jack Thacker]

Whether it was the lack of sleep, the ale from the night before, or the aches and pains from rowing for days on end, it took a moment before Jack registered the red-head…the one he’d seen in the Gudgeon the previous night, now splayed before he and Vaezhasar in some strange spluttering half plea for mercy half trite concocted story.

“Now wait a minute,” he growled at his sorcerer companion, as the revelation that he’d seen this character before dawned on him. “Somehap ain’t addin’ up here, Guvnah. I seen this same boy in the Gudgeon with us last night, on me mother’s grave.”

Had Jack been followed from Alliria? What in the seven hells was going on here?

But the morning just got weirder and weirder. Suddenly there was a glowing orb in the mud, a flash of lightning, and the unfortunate ginger’s eyes began to change colors right before Thacker’s own. The criminal fugitive had seen enough.

Without a moment’s hesitation he loosed his bastard sword from its scabbard, the unmistakable sound of steel being unsheathed further deteriorating the situation. Oi, sorcerer spells and magic orbs and thundering helms, Thacker cursed as he lurched forward, preparing to cut whatever was happening in front of him down.

Best meet your problems with blade in hand, Jack rationalized.

 

[Vaezhasar Drakspae]

Vaezhasar’s shoulders stiffened a hairbreadth as the rag-clad fellow succumbed to his curiously theatrical display. When the melodramatics eased down and nothing in the immediate vicinity ignited, he allowed a breath of relief to hiss through the slits of his visor. His gaze dropped to the sapphire orb now lodged in the roadway’s mire, its facets winking balefully through a sheen of rainwater.

[Blue fire rises, sinks, repeats—no thaumic discharge, no buildup of destructive charge. Not a bomb. A beacon, then?]

“He is, alas, not about to detonate—so far as I can judge,” he remarked, tone dry as cellar dust. With languid precision he lowered his staff and tapped the bauble with one curving horn, the way a jeweller might assay an uncut stone. A hollow chime answered.

[Crystalline lattice intact, receptive. Someone, somewhere, is listening.]

“An educated surmise, Jack: our bedraggled acquaintance has been piping intelligence through this gewgaw to parties elsewhere. Some etheric relay, no doubt—talking crystal, whisper-stone, whatever appellation the hedge-wizards favour.”

He straightened, flicking muck from the staff’s point. “Whoever sits at the far end of the channel lacks the stomach to soil his own hands; instead he dispatches a thrall with more enthusiasm than competence. A coward’s stratagem—and, happily, a clumsy one we can trace at leisure.”

 

[Pomrick Bloomsfield]

With sword and staff pointed both in his direction, some deeper part of Pomrick revived his ability to speak. He scrambled to pick up the orb, about to put it back into its satchel - but realised it wouldn't work much as a container any longer.

Instead, he held the orb up before them. Fear may have clouded much of his understanding, but he did get the gist of Vaezhashar's analysis. They knew. They knew now why he had walked up to them and gotten into this mess in the first place. They knew his master could be listening and watching at the other end.

Be honest. Painfully so, if you must. If you lie, or stammer, or hedge . . .

The words of the sorcerer rattled around in his skull, until they finally found purchase. He could be honest without mentioning his master by name, coudn't he? Maybe there was a way out of this.

He looked to Jack - or rather, below his eyeline, at his tabard.

"I, um, yes. I was sent there, to the Gudgeon that is, by my master, but . . . but I didn't know why! He never told me! In fact, he never tells me anything. But after everyone fell asleep, and I, well, I told him what had happened afterwards, he ordered me to follow you. But I swear, I don't know what he wants from you!"

Clutching the crystal closer to his chest, he next addressed Vaezhasar, swallowing first.

"That's right. I'm just a, ah, thrall. That's it. I didn't want any part in this." He looked around him, a futile attempt of escape, before daring to raise his gaze to the helmet. "Maybe - maybe if you let me go, I'll . . . I'll tell him I couldn't get to you. You vanished before I could eavesdrop - or - or something! You know?"

A deathly silence hovered before an immediate answer. His voice piped out in a weaker squeak.

"Maybe . . ?"