False Faces, Falsehoods, False Hopes
Kresh felt old. He was old, by the standards of his people, at about fifty years of age. Even with his exact age and birth unknown, he was one of the oldest Jundian humans alive. By the standards of humans across the multiverse, he wasn’t young, but he wasn’t considerably old either. Even in the rest of Alara, not counting the unfortunate souls of Grixis, the average human lifespan of non-Jundians was between sixty-five and seventy cycles, the Alaran term for years, of age. On most other planes, humans still rarely lived longer than a century, but that was about double Kresh’s current age. On Ravnica, it was said that humans often passed one century and some even made it to two, not counting some Orzhov who managed several centuries before shuffling off to eternal existence as a ghost. Still, he felt old. Older than almost fifty or slightly older than fifty. He didn’t know his exact age, he was found as a toddler in the ruins of a village by Tol Hera, and although it was clear he was between one and three cycles at that point, his exact age was unknown. His hair had only begun graying a few years ago, but the wear on his body far exceeded that of the average fifty year old human, even for one from Jund. There was maybe one or two patches of his skin that weren’t scar tissue, he was reasonably certain that he had some muscles near his spine that only hurt from age, yet nearly all of his gastric viscera was unmarred and thankfully, his eyes hadn’t suffered any permanent damage. But, you couldn’t tell most of that from looking at him. He wasn’t called Kresh the Thousand-Scarred as an exaggeration. He felt old most days, but he hadn’t felt weary just from hearing news since the Invasion. What Goro-Goro had called to tell him about broke that streak.
There was a clone of Durkrag, and it was on Jund, hunting for the killer of its creator, Dr. Zlovol. Turrak, the original Durkrag’s half-brother, was that killer. He was a formidable shaman and if it had been any other extra-planar assassin, Kresh would simply have warned them, posted a guard at their hut, and moved on. But, he knew that even if told about it ahead of time, he would hesitate to strike down someone who looked and sounded like their brother. Most of the clan would, Shregresha included. She also couldn’t be told about this, and might also be a target. That hesitation could be dangerous. He probably wouldn’t, provided he was sure it was the clone he was about to plunge Mage Slayer into, but that could be the tricky bit, being sure which one was the clone. Depending on how much information the clone had, it could disguise itself to look similar enough to Durkrag and confuse matters. Plus, he didn’t want to tell Shregresha or Durkrag, and Turrak was busy dealing with the viashino. They’d been through enough, and he didn’t want Shregresha charging off after the clone and potentially getting herself killed. And, finally, he wasn’t sure the clone deserved to die. Kresh didn’t know how cloning worked, but he was confident that the clone never asked to be created as a living weapon. Was the clone a fully thinking person? Did they count as a member of Tol Angata, and thus have a right to challenge Turrak to combat? They were supposedly an exact copy of Durkrag, but they were also only a few months old, accelerated to physical adulthood by science and sorcery. He would need answers to these questions to know what to do about it, and that would require taking the clone alive. This was not exactly a skill Jundian hunters or warriors had honed, and while some of the shamans could probably do it, he didn’t want word potentially getting out about the mission he would need to send them on. He also didn’t know what the nature of a clone’s soul would be, and would rather have the clone subdued before getting a shaman to answer that question.
He needed someone competent and discreet, who knew the terrain, was skilled enough to take the target alive, but wouldn't hesitate to kill if the situation required it. There was only one person in the multiverse he trusted to do the job, but they had disappeared about six months ago. Only one person fit the bill. One person and a hawk.
The hunter missed the hawk. The hunter hated that they missed the hawk. The hunter shouldn’t even remember the hawk. The hawk wasn’t their companion, it was… another person’s companion. A dead person’s. A person who the hunter had never met. But, if all of that was true, why did they still miss the hawk? They weren’t that person… they were… they couldn’t remember their Kaldheim name. All they could remember was the name of a dead man. A name that missed the hawk.
The hunter was snapped out of their fugue state by a noise from the device that they shouldn’t have kept. It was a device the hunter had abandoned, again and again, the last time just a sleep prior. But some part of them kept finding it, despite how easy it was to lose in the mists. The process wasn’t supposed to be this hard! They’d abandoned every shred of their lives half a dozen times over, but for some reason, here in the realm of shifting faces, where no one was identifiable, they couldn’t let go. The device screeched again, piercing through the mists like a hawk’s cry. The hunter reached down to unhook it from their belt, to leave it on the ground once more, but a traitorous part of their mind, a part that would not die, choose his moment.
Bromley Macpherson answered their communicator to the sound of Kresh the Thousand-Scarred’s voice.
Shregresha trudged through the jungle, still pondering why Kresh had been so insistent that Durkrag and her specifically go as the guards this moon’s trade convoy. She figured it was because Kresh wanted to ease Durkrag back into being more active in the clan, and that she was sent along to watch over him, but that didn’t explain why Kresh had been adamant that they and Shregresha’s war band be the ones to guard the convoy, rather than have Durkrag go hunting, or have them go follow up with Turrak to see how the pathway system was going. Shregresha had suggested both, and both were denied. If there was a specific danger Kresh was concerned about, why didn’t he tell her as much? If there was someone he wanted Durkrag and her to meet, he didn’t give a name or a description. Come to think of it, as far as she knew, Kresh hadn’t actually met the… merchants of the Brazen Coalition that they traded with. Was that it? He wanted to know what was going on from a highly trusted source, and didn’t say in case he was overheard by someone doing something crooked? Maybe it was some combination of everything? Maybe it was nothing specific? Shregresha sighed, took a deep breath, and tried to clear her head. She was overthinking it.
Then, it hit her! Kresh wanted her there to reinforce the terms of the Accord! Yes, it had been announced on the network, but making it clear in person was a better bet. And he insisted to bring Durkrag with her because he figured that was best for her and her son. But why not tell her?
Durkrag had spent the past four hours looking at an iguanar’s behind. Or more accurately, its tail. An iguanar’s long tail swept along the ground, helping provide extra stability and spacial awareness. The tail could also be used as a whip against attackers, although it was mainly a scare tactic, and it could also detach, allowing iguanars to escape even a dragon by leaving a writhing tail in the predator’s mouth. Durkrag knew all of this because he had spent every meal yesterday learning all sorts of iguanar facts from Jakagera, the youngest of the iguanar riders. Like him, she was on the younger side of those on this trip, just a year older than he was. Like him, she hadn’t earned a title yet. Unlike him, this was the first mission of bigger importance than just hunting or driving off goblins she was on. Unlike him, she was very bubbly and fascinated by giant iguanars. It wasn’t that Durkrag disliked the animals, but he didn’t share Jakagera’s enthusiasm about the behaviors and bodies of them. He didn’t need to know how long it took an iguanar to digest its food, nor how many teeth an adult could have, and while some information, like an iguanar’s speed or that it could bite through a medium-sized tree trunk were interesting, there were other things he didn’t need to know. Things that walking at the end of the tail gave him enough knowledge of, well before Jakagera added extra details.
Durkrag tuned out Jakagera as she talked about the dietary requirements of an adolescent iguanar, and focused instead on the bronze-headed ax he held. It didn’t feel right at all in his hand. His normal weapon, a long ax weighted with a stone hammer behind the blade, required two hands to wield effectively, so he’d been outfitted with a bronze ax, a sturdy weapon that was not made from one of his kills, but was still something he had ‘earned’. On his other arm, he had nothing. If he still had a forearm, he would’ve strapped a shield or maybe a blade to it, but with everything below the elbow gone, it was too awkward to weaponize.
Durkrag felt half-naked without a weapon that he was comfortable with, and slipped the ax back into the stiff leather holder on his belt. At least he had a bundle of javelins on his back. While it had taken some adjusting of his technique to get his balance right again, one only needed a single hand to effectively throw a javelin, and he was a good shot with them. In many ways, they were the more effective weapons he had, considering the duty to stay put and guard the convoy, the javelins would allow him to strike down animals or ward off raiders from a distance. Not that he hoped to fight, but it was reassuring that he wouldn’t be helpless if he had to.
It was late at night out on the prairie of Thunder Junction when a hooded figure walked by a Freestrider ranch. They made a single noise, a piercing bird call, and in response, a lone hawk awoke and flew from her perch, landing on the hunter’s left shoulder. The hunter tucked their hood behind their left ear, and a beak pecked at the stubble on their cheek. In response, they fished a piece of thrinax jerky out of a compartment on their belt. Despite being months-old, the smoking, salting, and spicing that Clan Tol Angata did to the meat meant that aside from being tough as boots, the jerky was wholly edible.
The hawk let out a sharp Caw! and pecked the hunter once again, this time hard enough to break the skin.
“Ow, that hurt, Greywind,” Bromley Macpherson said, rubbing his cheek, “But you don’t need to worry, I’m never going to disappear like that again.”
Greywind let out a softer, gentler screech, and nuzzled her head behind Bromley’s ear.
“Now, let’s go hunting.”
JH-3a didn’t know what they felt was regret. They understood regret in the abstract, the feeling that one had made the wrong choices, or hadn’t made the right ones, and they didn’t like where they currently were: wearing ill-fitting akki armor, sweating buckets in a muggy jungle, and being eaten alive by mosquitoes, but didn’t put together that their drive to find the person who killed their creator, the destroyer, was what had led them to this situation. They didn’t consciously. They couldn’t let themselves.
What they could let themselves think about was the fact that they were hopelessly lost. It had been days since they went through the Omenpath, and they were still no closer to their goal. They had maps of Kamigawa, they knew some of the terrain in Jund, the route from the Omenpath to the dragon cave, but they had no way of tracking the destroyer. The plan had not been well thought-out, and although they had some knowledge of tracking implanted in their brain, most of it was for a different environment, and much of it was tactics of how to use people to find people within a city. So, what it left them with was walking alongside a river, hoping they’d eventually find someone, show that person the face of the destroyer, and get pointed in the right direction. It was not much, and they knew it. But JH-3a had committed themselves to a course of action, and did not know how to stop until they were dead, other commands were issued by a superior, or the task at hand was done.
The weather around the Maelstrom always set Shregresha’s teeth on edge. The last two times she’d been near the relative center of Alara, she hadn’t had the luxury of being consciously aware of that. Both times she’d been exhausted and in pursuit of dangerous enemies, or, closer to the Maelstrom, in active combat against hordes of enemies. The first time, she, Kresh, and a war party who’d mostly passed on since then were hunting Sarkhan Vol, and in the company of Ajani Goldmane, who sought vengeance on Nicol Bolas, only to get caught up fighting the draconic planeswalker’s army of undead. The second time, all of Tol Angata, and most of the rest of the clans were waging a grueling campaign to push the Phyrexians out of Jund. She thought zombies were the most horrific things she had ever fought, up until she was knee-deep in blood and rust, putting her sword through the head of an iron-plated viashino, only to have it not die, and have to hack through the torso with a dull blade while keeping the snapping jaws at bay. So, the last couple of times, she hadn’t been paying much attention to the ever-shifting winds or the wild fluctuations in temperature or the miniature storms that formed and dissipated in seconds. Now, she had time to pay attention.
As the wind suddenly kicked up strong enough to force her braids up into the air and hold them parallel to the ground, she wondered how this would affect the Coalition ships. She knew that the giant sheets of fabric called sails somehow propelled the ships using the wind, but didn’t know how the fluctuations in the wind would impact the sails. She grunted as her braids and the shards of metal, bone, and scales bound in them slapped against her back, falling as the wind vanished just as sudden as it came. Shaking her head, she figured that if the Coalition had been coming for at least several months, they had a way, and whatever it was, she didn’t care enough to know. She had bigger issues, like finding something to tie her hair back and keep it down, so that it didn’t smack her again though.
After a few more hours of hiking, with Shregresha having used the first water break to tie her braids together with some spare twine, so that their combined weight was too much for the wind, the trade caravan emerged from the thinning treeline and sighted the Coalition ships, anchored several yards offshore of the inlet which fed the river that the Jundians had followed towards the Maelstrom. A few miles away, the glowing, churning ball of energy at the core of the Maelstrom back lit the ships, competing with the sun to illuminate the clearing. The merchants and pirates of the Coalition had landed smaller boats on the shoreline, and off-loaded some of the goods they were hoping to trade.
“Ahoy there!” an orc woman wearing a bicorn hat called as she sprung out of a hammock, and grabbed an ax that had been resting against one of the trees she’d been resting under. “I be Captain Tressa Laguna of The Tenacious, the toughest ship in the Parsec fleet, and the commander of this here merchant convoy. If y’all be the trading party we’re expecting, glad to see you! If you’re not, then ya better be on yer best behavior or just move along an’ save us the trouble!”
“Shregresha the Scale-breaker, senior war-leader of Clan Tol Angata,” she called out, “And we’re the trading party representing the human Clans. And, although there are no viashino currently present, our clans have struck an accord with several of the viashino thrashes, namely Manytooth, Pitch, Scorch, and Thorn thrashes. The terms of this agreement, the Accord of Hair & Scale, were announced on the communicator network a few weeks ago, but I am here to go over any specifics, and to grant you permission to do things like cut down trees for ship repairs.”
“Aye! Fortune smiles upon us, for the ships be in good repair, although who knows what tomorrow brings! Any goods you’d be wanting next time our ships pass by this way?” Captain Laguna asked.
“I’m not sure about next time, but the rest of the party might have requests. I personally am looking for something, potentially would need to ask for it to be made. I’ll ask about it after my people have set up camp. In private, if possible,” Shregresha said, having walked towards the captain, and lowering her voice significantly.
“Certainly! We can head back to me ship, anything specialty’s probably aboard, might even be able to show ya what yer lookin’ fer!” Captain Laguna said, looking up at Shregresha, a new experience for her, having to physically look up at a human.
Shregresha turned back towards the Jundians, who had begun to unload the iguanars and called out, “Not time to rest yet, gotta pitch camp, clear a fire pit, and set up a watch! C’mon, let’s get moving people!”
Durkrag felt out of place. As the rest of the trade caravan bustled about, unpacking iguanar saddlebags, tossing up tents, and swapping news with the pirates, he stood by the area they’d set aside for the iguanars, javelins ready, ostensibly keeping watch on the rear. He knew the only reason he’d been given this task was due to lacking a forearm, and not being able to carry or unpack things as easily as others. Jakagera was with him, but she was focusing on taking care of the iguanars, examining their feet and claws, and rubbing them down with rough brushes to clean their scales. She was still talking while she did it, mostly about iguanars, from what Durkrag was hearing. Or maybe she was talking to the iguanars, Durkrag wasn’t that focused on her. He was focusing on not focusing on the gnawing pain in the back of his head, the hunger that wanted to dive back into a peppermoss haze and have the warmth fill the hollowness. He wasn’t focusing on it. He was focusing on not focusing on it. But that didn’t seem to be helping.
He was snapped out of his brooding when he felt the light smack of a hard-bristled brush on his shoulder, and turned to see Jakagera holding it.
“Hey, I was asking you if you wanted to eat dinner with me! Did you not hear me the first three times?” Jakagera asked, her brows knitted together in a combination of concern and irritation.
“I, uh…” Durkrag cleared his throat, “I, sure. I have a feeling that my mom’s gonna be eating at the captain’s fire, so to speak, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Jakagera smiled wide, and Durkrag felt something flit through the hollow in his chest. He smiled back, his a bit lopsided and showing far fewer teeth, due to being several months out of practice.
Bromley had found the tracks of the clone pretty quickly after reaching the Omenpath to the Sokenzan Mountains, and he hadn’t lost them once. Whatever Dr. Zlovol had intended for the clone to do, they were pretty sure it hadn’t involved moving undetected through a jungle. In fact, despite the several days lead, on account of how long it took to get from Littjara to anywhere you could reach any part of Alara from, let alone get close to Jund, Bromley was confident they had caught up with the clone. Bromley had a decade of experience in Jund, the clone barely had ten days experience with life outside a vat. He was close enough that it was safe, well safer, to project into Greywind’s senses and spot the clone as she flew, rather than just have her patrol for dangers while he focused on tracking. Once he had that data, the clone’s exact position, he’d move in and hopefully take the clone down with the first shot.
He’d do that in the morning. It was getting late, and unless the clone was a lot cleverer than the evidence suggested, they had nothing to worry about. The tale that Bromley had read from the footprints was that clone was still clearly heavily armored, despite it slowing them significantly, and something causing them to stumble fairly often, probably exhaustion, pointed to them likely not having enough skill to figure out that they were being followed, albeit at a mile or two out. Besides, he’d laid some snares around the camp, and Greywind would be alert at dawn, if nothing else.
Shregresha awoke in the captain’s quarters to the sound of shouting. Next to her, wearing a nightgown, Captain Tressa Laguna was hurriedly buckling her boots. Shregresha stood and stretched, her back always complained a bit after sleeping in a bed. Beds were comfortable, but she’d grown accustomed to hard, flat dirt with a bedroll over it or a simple cot at most. She sank weirdly into these mattresses, and her back didn’t know how to handle the lack of support.
Shregresha donned her belt and the short-sleeved top she’d been wearing the night prior, stuck her feet into her boots, and dashed after Captain Laguna, who was wearing an eclectic mix of her nightdress, boots buckled only at the top, cutlass and harpoon pistol hanging from her belt, and the gilded bicorn hat she wore as a token of office. The captain’s slapdash appearance reminded Shregresha of what had been the one awkward part of last night: all the buttons, buckles, and layers that it seemed a pirate, er… merchant captain wore. Shregresha wasn’t used to dealing with any of that.
The two leaders burst onto the deck to find chaos onboard all ships, as well as the shoreline. The first mate hurried over to explain the situation right as the captain of one of the other ships called out, “Dragon-thing’s coming back for another pass! Fire at will!” While Laguna was in charge of the whole convoy, each ships’ captain still operated independently when it came to protecting their ship. The Jundians on the shore weren’t close enough to hit the monster with javelins as it swooped down, but the pirates let out a volley of harpoons and crossbow bolts from the deck. Those that reached the infernal dragon did little more than annoy it, and it shouted out, “Little insects with your little stings! I will crush you like the bugs you are!”
Shregresha’s mind cleared any lingering idle thoughts the instant the dragon spoke. Jundian dragons didn’t talk. Well, not those that were entirely dragons. It’d been over a decade, and she’d only seen him from a distance, but this creature had the same general form as the fell general of the undead horde she’d fought only a day’s march around the Maelstrom from here. It was the spitting image of Malfegor, the demonic dragon. Fortunately, it wasn’t as big as he was, but its wingspan was still wider than the ship’s width. Shregresha cursed under her breath. This was not the terrain for dragon-fighting. Too flat, too open, nothing to scale and get the drop on it, nowhere to hem the dragon in, no way to keep it on the ground if it decided to engage. And since this thing had at least some of the intelligence of a demon, it’d likely just strafe them with its fire breath until the ships burned to the waterline, and those on the shore had scattered into the woods. She began forming the scraps of a plan. It would be dangerous. It would be risky. It would be-
Shregresha’s world was rocked by a massive explosion. The dragon had just strafed a ship that had managed to fire a cannon at it, and unfortunately, the flames caught the fuel for the firecannons. The ship and its crew were reduced to cinders between breaths.
Laguna staggered back, not from the physical shockwave that slammed into her, but from the horror of what had happened. As her eyes began to glaze over, Shregresha grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her.
“Tressa, you need to order everyone to abandon the ships! Tell them to bring harpoons, crossbows, whatever you have and try to draw the dragon to the shore! Try luring it over there, use the tree cover, scatter, Meerama knows how to do this, just follow her lead!” Shregresha shouted.
“Me? What about yerself?” Captain Laguna asked, dazed.
“I’m gonna try something very, very, stupid,” Shregresha told her, grabbing hold of the rigging and starting to climb.
Durkrag had been awake for all of five minutes, and was already leading the warriors Meerama had assigned to throw javelins if the dragon-thing came within range. He had good aim, and Meerama knew him better than many of the other warriors, who were from different clans. Due to them not being in a good position for fighting a dragon, Durkrag’s standing order was to begin throwing after he hurled his first, unless the range was completely off, to launch at will and then scatter, using trees as cover when not throwing, and then resume throwing from a new position. It wasn’t a great plan, but unless someone got a very solid wing hit in, the purpose of javelins was to lure the dragon into fighting on the ground. Unfortunately, Meerama didn’t understand the difference between a dragon and a demon-dragon. She hadn’t been part of Kresh’s war band over a decade ago, and due to none of the Jundians actually fighting Malfegor themselves, few tales were told of the monstrosity.
As the pirates swam ashore, washed up clinging to floating casks, barrels, and the like, or in the case of the sirens, flew, Durkrag started looking for his mother. He didn’t see her, but he saw the captain she’d went back to the ship with, and, since the dragon wasn’t yet in javelin range, instead chasing down an unlucky siren who’d gotten separated from the rest of the pirates, he strode over to Captain Laguna.
“Where’s my mom?” Durkrag asked, sighing as he saw the look of confusion on Laguna’s face, “Shregresha, she’s my mother. Where is she?”
“Yer mom’s o’er thar, climbing up the rigging of me ship. Na sure why meself, but she’s the capable sort, she knows what she’s doing,” Laguna responded. “Are you Meerama?”
“No, I’m Durkrag. Meerama’s over there,” he said, gesturing towards Shregresha’s second. “But I’ll save you some time, order your warriors with ranged weapons to join us in harrying the dragon when it comes. Fire at will, scatter after each shot, don’t want to be clumped together for dragon fire.”
As Laguna gave the orders to the pirates, Durkrag squinted and saw the small figure of Shregresha scaling the rigging, then working her way up the main mast towards the siren’s nest, as the lookout was called by some sailors. He watched as she drew her swords, banging them together and facing the dragon, presumably yelling something. Durkrag had seen what had happened to the last ship engulfed in draconic flames. He would not watch his mother die.
Grinak Laotagar wasn’t the shaman Durkrag would’ve wanted to implement his plan. Durkrag would’ve much preferred his half-brother, Turrak, be the one to help make Shregresha’s scheme work, but he had Grinak instead. It wasn’t that Grinak was a bad shaman, just that his skills lay in the enchanting of items and the shaping of bone. Those were useful talents, and for the trading mission, meant he’d be very valuable, able to discern the magic on items acquired and enchant some pieces of jewelry to increase their value when sold. He also knew medicinal practices, and was a fine healer. Those were not the skills Durkrag required. Unfortunately, it’s what he had.
“Grinak Laotagar, I desperately petition you for aid in fighting the dragon. My mother is attempting to draw it to her, but I fear that it will just breathe fire on her from a distance, killing her and leaving us without the most experienced dragon-slayer here. I implore you to call upon the aid of a wind elemental to blow the dragon towards my mom when it approaches, so she can leap upon its back and hopefully kill it, and so that she doesn’t die. If there’s anything I can give you to help in this, I will. Blood, life-force, treasure, anything!” Durkrag pleaded, making direct eye contact with Grinak.
“I… I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try my best. It might take some time though, and I don’t know how much time we have,” Grinak said, preparing to enter a trance state and pulling off some of his bracelets as an offering for the elemental he intended to call for aid.
“I’ll see if I can give us some more time. It probably won’t be much, but I’ll try,” Durkrag said, mind whirling as he ran back to where the pirates and javelin throwers were loosely assembled.
“Who’s got the longest range weapon here?” he called out.
“That’d be this beauty,” one of the pirates said, unslinging a massive harpoon gun from over his shoulder. It had a long barrel, and unlike most of the harpoons, a scope made from a retrofitted spyglass.
“Could you hit the dragon at this range?” Durkrag asked, eyeing the odd weapon.
The grizzled sharpshooter brought the scope to his eye and trained it towards the dragon, adjusting the position until he grunted and said, “Aye, but it’s at the limit of tha range. It’s a coin flip, but no other gun could put you anywhere near it.”
Ignoring the unfamiliar metaphor, Durkrag simply asked, “And how hard would it be to hit specifically the wing?”
“That’d be… well, na very likely, ’specially cause of the winds blowin helter-skelter, but I’d reckon I could get it within four shots with a bit o’ luck,” the pirate replied, “But it’s a moot point anyways, only got the one harpoon on me, left the rest on the ship.”
“You three!” Durkrag called out, pointing at three other pirates, “Give this warrior your harpoons!”
Shregresha clanged her swords together and called out towards the demon-dragon, “This blade is made from the jawbone of a dragon! While you’re an ugly shit, your jaw looks perfectly serviceable to be turned into a true matching pair! My name is Scalebreaker, because I am strong enough to break the scales of a dragon! Fight me or flee as a coward!”
The fiendish dragon let out a rumble and bellowed back, sparks flickering in the back of its throat, “And what stops me from simply roasting you where you stand?”
“I have sangrite and can use it in such a way as to make me immune to heat!” Shregresha shouted, overselling the truth. While sangrite did make one more heat-resistant, flames would still burn her.
“And the wooden float you stand upon?” the demon said, smiling wide and readying its fiery breath.
Shregresha tensed her legs and crushed some sangrite in her palm. A standing jump towards the dragon was risky, but she might be able to do it. Better than burning alive, even if she missed.
Before either dragon or human could make their move, a harpoon flew from the shore and impaled the demon-dragon in the wing, barbed head shredding the sensitive membrane. The abomination shrieked in agony, but reared back to unleash an inferno from its jaws. A second harpoon flew past it, just under the wing, and it decided that trying to kill one human who couldn’t even reach it was less practical than flying over to the shore and incinerating whoever was shooting those harpoons. With some awkward maneuvering, the creature broke the shaft off the harpoon, an impressive feat considering it was all one piece of metal, and aerially limped forward with the head still in the wing.
The dragon made it all of ten yards before a third harpoon struck it in the underbelly. An involuntary gout of flame poured from its mouth, and as it began to fall out of the sky, a strong wind kicked up, and like a champion boxer driving their opponent up off the mat with a devastating uppercut, forced it towards where Shregresha was.
She was not one to look a gift thrinax in the mouth, and leapt from the siren’s nest down onto the demon, fortunately landing on its back. Her swords impaled it between where the kidney would’ve be for a human and the wings. Moving between wing-beats to avoid being blown off, she sprang forward, up the thrashing form, using the scales as an impromptu foothold, and landed at the small of the back, in between the wings. Normally, when fighting a dragon, anywhere on their back was, while still dangerous, better than being in front of or under them, since you were out of range of their claws and teeth, and only had to worry about them using their tail like a whip, something that not all dragons could do. Since this one was part demon and had a demon’s humanoid torso atop a draconic body, Shregresha knew to position herself in the one place that humanoid arms usually couldn’t reach on their own bodies, the point on the spine that you can never quite scratch unaided.
She stuck her most recent metal blade into the space between two vertebrae, a saber she’d recently acquired from a previous trading convoy with the Coalition, and bent the blade a bit to wedge it in there, ignoring how the flesh she stood upon shook as the demon howled in pain. Holding onto the saber, tuning out everything but the meat and bone around her, Shregresha went to work with the dragon’s jawbone she held in her other hand. It rose and fell like a butcher’s cleaver, except that Shregresha had to sometimes saw it back and forth to pull it free from the spinal column she was cutting. The teeth were hungry for blood, and as Shregresha hacked through the last nerve fiber, the attached wings failed completely, turning the spiraling descent into a plummet.
Fortunately, the winds and a bit of elemental intervention had pushed them away from the ship, so when the dead weight of the demon-dragon’s lower body smashed into the ocean, the waves simply rocked the vessel and caused water to spill over the deck, rather than breaking the masts and crushing the deck.
Unfortunately, Shregresha, her body bruised from the concussive force of the impact, now had to deal with a situation her plan hadn’t developed far enough to account for. She couldn’t swim. As the inert legs buckled underneath the wailing weight of the demon-dragon, the demonic torso began to pitch sideways into the water. Shregresha wasted valuable seconds trying to pull the metal saber loose, before a splash against her ankles made her decide to cut her losses. Stumbling and thrashing, she clambered up the spine, taking a few more seconds to reach below the rising water with her one remaining blade to slit the foul creature’s throat. She knew that while devastating, the wound she had previously inflicted would’ve only meant a slow death. She was a good hunter, and a good hunter always puts their prey out of its misery.
However, finishing the job came at a cost. As the water turned a murky red-brown with plumes of corrosive, steaming blood coursing into it, she found herself lacking anything to stand on, submerged up to her shoulders, and sinking. She flailed about, trying to keep her head above water, with little success. As she felt the cool water and hot blood rise alongside her throat, her body starting to sting, she took a deep breath, hoping her ability to hold her breath she’d honed to survive smoke and volcanic fumes would allow her to live long enough to get rescued.
Bromley crashed through the brush, running with a loaded crossbow in one hand and a machete in the other. He knew it wasn’t safe, but he’d overslept. He wasn’t in as good a shape as he’d been in before he disappeared off to Littjara, and the days of tracking and bushwhacking had caught up with him. Greywind currently had eyes on the target, and he was getting a steady stream of images the clone’s location in one corner of their mind while he focused on the trail of the disheveled youth that would lead him what they were seeing. He finally crested a hill, and saw the clone, just standing there at the treeline, looking at something on the beach in front of the Maelstrom. Bromley would find out what that was after he’d neutralized the target.
JH-3a assessed the situation in front of them and struggled to come up with a plan of action. They saw their target, the killer of Dr. Zlovol and would’ve moved in to kill her if not for the crowd of people around her prone form. There was also the issue that she was not moving, possibly dead already. And looking down at her was JH-3. The original, but without the improvements that Dr. Zlovol had granted him. JH-3a didn’t know what to make of that. The last moments of Dr. Zlovol’s life, which had been uploaded to JH-3a’s brain upon her death along with the directive to eliminate her killer, still showed JH-3 with the improvements made.
Further confusing matters, in replaying that ten seconds of data over and over in their mind to keep themselves focused on the objective, JH-3a had realized that while the killer was the last thing Dr. Zlovol had seen before she experienced indescribable pain and died, the killer was a good four meters away from Dr. Zlovol, and had her hands full fighting off moving cables. Well, if she wasn’t the direct killer, which still wasn’t known, she’d participated, and would probably know who struck down Dr. Zlovol. Still, what to do about the other people? Wait them out? Yeah, that was probably the only plan. JH-3a turned to go sit behind a tree and wait for nightfall.
Durkrag stood over his mother’s body and wished he wasn’t useless. He hadn’t been the one to pull her from the water, minutes after she went under. He couldn’t even swim. He hadn’t been the one to clear her airways of water and make sure she could still breathe. He didn’t know how. He wasn’t the one currently bandaging her body, applying a salve on the caustic burns, and muttering spells under his breath all at once. He wasn’t Grinak, who was a shaman. And being a shaman was much more useful than being a one-armed javelin thrower. Jakagera was standing next to him, and had grabbed his hand to hold, then let go and began to back away before he reached out to her, without even looking her way. Her squeezing his hand was anchoring him, preventing the despair from washing him out into the sea of melancholy and drowning him there. He craved some- NO! The only thing he craved was for his mom to wake up.
Suddenly, Durkrag and the rest of those assembled on the shoreline heard the thump of a body in armor hitting the ground, a noise most of them had heard before. Captain Laguna looked around and gestured at several of her crew to move in, and then said to Durkrag, Grinak, and Meerama, “I’m going to check that out, stay here.”
As she crossed the treeline, she saw her crew members standing over a body dressed in… Kamigawan armor? That’s what it looked like to her, although it didn’t exactly fit the person wearing it. She noticed the crossbow bolt emerging from between the plates over the shoulder, and belatedly raised her harpoon pistol, then scanned the jungle, something the rest of the pirates were already doing.
“Hello there! Whomever you may be, I have no quarrel with you. Walk back the way you came, and no harm will come to anyone else! I will be gone soon, and you will never hear from me again!” a voice called from somewhere deeper in the jungle, probably in the direction of those hills, Laguna guessed.
“How do we know we can trust ye? We can’t even see yer face!” Captain Laguna shouted back, scrutinizing the hillside to see if there was any movement.
“Because I haven’t put a crossbow bolt in any of you, despite having ample time to do so,” the voice called back, although now it seemed to be coming from up in a tree.
Captain Laguna knew that if the voice had taken time to reload the crossbow immediately after firing it, they would’ve just managed to, meaning if they had done so, she likely would’ve heard some strain from the voice. It was thus more likely that they had another crossbow, already loaded. And if they were carrying one extra crossbow, while unlikely, they could be carrying two. However, it was unlikely the shooter could remain hidden while firing, meaning that even if they managed two shots, they’d only take down one or two the four pirates, and rest of the them would be able to respond. It wasn’t great odds, and there were too many assumptions for Laguna’s liking, since there could be more crossbowmen who had simply stayed silent.
The tension was punctured when Meerama stepped past the treeline and asked, “What’s going on?”
An exhausted groan could be heard from the bushes. A groan in a voice that sounded familiar to Meerama, although she couldn’t immediately place why. What she could place was the crossbow bolt sticking out of a familiar figure near her feet. She’d seen it sticking out of enough lizards and undead to recognize.
“Bromley?” she called out, tomahawks still in hand.
“Yeah, it’s me. Before I explain, where’s Shregresha? She deserves to hear this and if she’s going to find out, I’d rather be the person who told her than who hid this from her,” Bromley called, emerging from the foliage, seeming to materialize to the eyes of the pirates unfamiliar with the terrain.
“She’s… she’s in a bad way. Durkrag’s on the beach with her, and Grinak, the shaman, is tending to her wounds, but she was dragged out of a pool of dragon blood from the weirdest dragon I’ve ever seen in the middle of the lake. Did you not hear the explosions and the screaming?” Meerama asked.
“I did, but I had a job to do, and I couldn’t see anything. Thought it was just a skirmish around the Maelstrom, those still happen occasionally. Anyways, you should be there taking command until Shregresha’s better. I’ll be right behind you, just have to tie up our friend by your feet” Bromley said, having unloaded and clipped his crossbows to his belt, and dug a length of hempen cord out of his pack as he walked over.
“Heh! Nice try, but even if I did let you scurry away, how were you going to drag a full-grown person in armor and hide them?” Meerama asked.
“I was going to ask for a favor… from a cephalid who lives on the crime city plane,” Bromley said, a lopsided grin on his face.
“Well, we’re here now, let me help you get this fellow in an easier to tie up position,” Meerama said, reaching down to move the clone.
“NO!” Bromley shouted, stepping forward and reaching out a hand, still a few feet away.
But it was too late. Meerama, Captain Laguna, the pirates, and some assorted Jundians who’d followed Meerama saw the clone’s face as she lifted their prone body, and all assembled out a collective gasp.
“By the bloody names of me long-dead ancestors, tell me what in all the hells going on!” Captain Laguna shouted, “I just talked to that lad, but ’e had warpaint on and only one full arm!”
“Who in the boiling seas of the planes are ye!” she yelled, pointing at Bromley with her harpoon pistol.
“I thought the random dragon attack was going to be the most confusing thing of the day, but this is more baffling, albeit fortunately less disastrous. It is less disastrous than one of my convoy’s ships exploding, right? This isn’t some stupid cosmic timeline magical bullshit, is it?” Captain Laguna ranted, her powers of deduction only telling her so much. She was the only one of the pirates to notice that the clone didn’t have Durkrag’s war paint, and had figured out the armor was from Kamigawa on sight, but that context didn’t help explain the situation.
“No, it’s just cloning nonsense… I’ll explain everything, but we should tie the clone up now. The tranquilizer on the bolt should last about an hour, but reactions aren’t consistent and who knows what alterations the mad scientist who created this clone made,” Bromley said, not moving.
“Mad scientist… You mean that dead vedalken bitch?” Meerama asked, not sure whether a yes or a no would be worse.
“Yes, and… wait, Durkrag’s here?” Bromley asked, his brain finally catching up to the full implications of what Captain Laguna had said.
Laguna and Meerama both nodded.
“Of course he his. By the fucking thrice-dammed angels, fate has a very nasty sense of humor; this is the scenario my involvement was supposed to avoid!” Bromley said, swearing harsh enough to upset a hardened Jhessian sailor, and a Sighted priest to charge him with blasphemy. But, since none of those around him were Bantian, they didn’t catch the specific severity of the curse; they did not have beliefs that much involved angels, let alone spoke to the inherent abomination that a dammed angel would be. They just understood he was angry, and vaguely pissed at the powers-that-be.
“So, I’m gonna tie up this clone, call up an octopod gangster, and disappear. It’d be for the best if you all forgot about this, I’m not gonna fuck up Durkrag’s life with something like this until I’ve had a chance to talk to Shregresha about it, which is gonna have to happen later,” Bromley said, as he began tying the clone’s hands together behind their back.
“Why not just kill the clone?” Laguna asked, lowering her harpoon pistol.
“That wasn’t the job. The client didn’t want the clone dead without a chance to speak with them first,” Bromley said, his hands winding rope around the clone’s arms and torso to limit their mobility.
“And who knew about this situation to hire you?” Laguna asked, her harpoon pistol no longer pointed at Bromley but still in hand.
“I have no clue. I don’t ask questions unless I find the job distasteful, and this job was just a simple retrieval mission that would help protect some old friends,” Bromley said, bold-faced lying.
“Now, I’m sure you have better things to do than gawk at me tying up a person, and we don’t want anyone to get suspicious about what’s taking you so long and coming to investigate themselves, so I suggest that you head back, assure whoever else is on the beach that nothing serious happened, and we go our separate ways for the foreseeable future,” Bromley said, beginning to fashion a frame to lash the clone to, which would allow him to drag the much larger person easier than trying to carry or drag them without support.
Laguna turned to Meerama, whispered something in the Jundian woman’s ear, and then both motioned for their respective groups to head back towards the beach, talking quietly to each other about what Bromley had said, attempting to deduce the nature of the client.
So lost in conversation, Meerama almost walked right into Durkrag, who was rooted to the spot, mouth open in horror, eyes wide with fear.
“Tell me, tell me it isn’t true. Tell me I misheard, tell me I got it wrong, tell me that something else is going on, something other than that vile vedalken having made another weapon out of me!” Durkrag pleaded, grabbing Meerama’s forearm as tears formed in his eyes.
Meerama didn’t say anything. She couldn’t say anything. She simply wrapped Durkrag in a hug tight enough that he felt it on his ribs.
Bromley regretted. It wasn’t the passing thought that things would’ve been easier if he’d stayed gone, the regret ran deeper than that. Bromley regretted leaving in the first place, and having abandoned Durkrag, Shregresha, and Turrak to face Dr. Zlovol alone. Bromley regretted coming into their lives at all. They would’ve been better off if they’d never saved his accursed ass. Bromley regretted stealing that fruit, the mango from the crate on the docks, just unloaded from Topa, back at the tender age of five. He’d gotten away with it, disappearing like ghost before anyone noticed, and that act had sent him down the path of lawlessness, murder, and villainy that brought misfortune to everyone around him. It left his parents heartbroken and shamed, damn near every pirate or thief they’d ever ran with was dead or doing time, and the squad he’d joined up to run away from that life had gotten eaten by a dragon. He should’ve known their luck would catch up to the Jundians who’d been his closest friends and allies, bordering on another family for him. That’s why they left them, and everyone else they’d met when it became clear that Bant was hunting him still, and now Esper was too. He didn’t want people getting wrecked in his wake again. But he came back. They couldn’t stay away from the people they cared about, even though that was the best protection he could offer them.
But they couldn’t leave. This mess was their responsibility, and if he wanted to change, he had to start taking responsibility. But they couldn’t stay. That would just bring more misfortune, more misery from the twisted claws of fate.
Not for the first time in their miserable life, the hunter considered ending the hunt. For good. The only thing that stopped him this time was that it would simply hurt those around him even more. And since that was true, leaving would do much the same. No, he had to take responsibility, and that meant staying here, guarding the clone in this Coalition supply tent. Until Shregresha was stable and awake, and he could tell her about the situation.
Bromley squeezed his hand into a fist hard enough for their fingernails to leave an indent on their palm, closed his eyes, and threw his head back in a silent scream. There was something else they had to do to take responsibility. Telling Shregresha was important, but he also had to tell Kresh. And unlike with Shregresha, there was no reason they couldn’t talk to Kresh right now. There was no reason to protect the fiction of the client. Meerama had figured it out after a single question from Laguna. All Bromley had to do was call him.
Kresh knew he was old. Kresh had been feeling his age, and he’d seen horrible things happen to people. His people. He’d seen them burned alive by dragon-fire. He’d watched them bleed out in his arms as he carried them towards a healer. He’d listened to the screams of a man as the killing magic of Grixis ate through his body, layer by layer, the man screaming until his vocal cords had withered to ash and blown away in the wind, but the man hadn’t died then. Kresh saw his beating heart inside his ribs, after the muscles over the bones had rotted, and only when the skull disappeared and the spinal column with it, did Kresh know the man had passed. He’d been witness to all these horrors and more. The Phyrexian invasion alone would’ve been enough nightmares for a dozen lifetimes. Despite that, his heart hadn’t hardened completely. He felt like he’d been stabbed in the gut when he heard about Shregresha’s injured state from Bromley. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, nor one he was unaccustomed too. He felt a numbness growing in his chest, and the beginnings of a state the felt like shock.
While he and Shregresha hadn’t had time to be close in years, they’d been friends once. He’d seen a master warrior’s drive and fight in her when she was an upstart teen trying to make a name for herself in Tol Hera, and taken her under his wing. She’d had some sort of hero worship thing going on towards him for the next few years, but by the time he was known as one of, if not the greatest warriors among the clans, she’d grown up and become his right-hand woman. Without her emotional support, he probably would’ve never broken away from Tol Hera and founded Tol Angata.
He’d had ideas, he didn’t like the way Javid was doing things, but he didn’t see any way around it other than potentially fighting the man to the death. While Kresh was renowned, he knew that Javid only lacked his own reputation because no one had fought him in a duel in over ten cycles. Javid didn’t need to prove himself, being the leader of Tol Hera, so he challenged no one, and those who had challenged him after his claiming of Clan Leader had all died quickly and brutally in the ring. It was Shregresha who convinced Kresh that his vision for a society was worth risking not only his life, but the stability of the clan for. It was her asking to train against Javid during sparring sessions that allowed him to observe the way the old man fought without giving away his own measure. And when he’d won, she’d been the first to publicly join Tol Angata. In disputes with other clans, she’d been his champion, wrestling the other clan’s champion to submission, a way of proving strength without overthrowing another clan. She’d been his protegee, then his friend and equal, and for the past two decades, his second-in-command.
While his worries were largely about the fate of the clan, the growing pit in his stomach was not. He was scared for a friend, and there was nothing he could do to help her. He felt his heartbeat quicken, and sat back down on the stool in his hut, only coming out of his thoughts when he heard Bromley’s voice calling his name.
“Kresh? Kresh? You still hearing me? Connection still clear?” Bromley called from his end of the communicator.
“Yeah, just processing the news about Shregresha. I’ve known her pretty much her whole life, and I’ve seen her come out the other side of plenty of scrapes, but never hurt this bad. What was Grinak’s prognosis about her lungs again?” Kresh said, looking at Bromley’s face on the communicator screen, wondering if his eyes were that red and puffy as the hunter’s.
“Her lungs are surprisingly okay, only minor damage. Apparently, even after she passed out, her muscle memory held her wind-tube sealed for at least another minute. It’s the rest of her breathing parts he’s more concerned about. Nostrils haven’t stopped bleeding, even after he tried a skin-seal-spell, and if the burns in her mouth are any indication, she’s going to have trouble talking if, —when she wakes up, and he doesn’t know how long it’s going to last,” Bromley said, looking as miserable as Kresh felt.
“I’ll have Gruak Enagarr get on an iguanar and be there in a few days, but there’s only so much even he can do once scarring starts, I should I know. What’s the situation with the clone?” Kresh asked, trying to keep the worry about Shregresha off his face.
“In the United Army of Bant, there was a phrase that the enlisted used a lot, especially those of us who were in the Expeditionary Corps: ‘All is normal, all is fucked.’ That sums up the situation with the clone. There’s nothing critical or dangerous anymore, but everything is an angels-dammed mess. The clone’s tied up over there,” Bromley said, panning the camera towards them, “but Durkrag knows and so does Meerama. The Coalition captain freaked out at the sight of the clone, was afraid the clone was the result of something to do with time travel. There’s probably a story there, but I doubt it matters to our current situation. So, whatever your decision about the clone, the rest of the planes will probably hear about it eventually.”
Kresh rubbed his temples.
“Look, I do not know enough about the clone to make a decision myself if I want to do it with any semblance of fairness. I think that leaving it up to Meerama to leave it up to Shregresha and Durkrag is my best call for the moment. Unless you’ve got a better idea. If so, I would hear it,” Kresh said.
“My input? I… this is well out of my league, but from what I can tell, we need to some way to have the clone understand…” Bromley said, trailing off to think. “Can you message Goro-Goro to send you the information on the clone? His people know the devices better than we do, probably can get it and send it on the network. You send me a copy, and I’ll have the clone read it. Maybe, if the clone understands that Dr. Zlovol saw them as a thing and not a person, we’d be able to begin teaching them how to be something other than a weapon of vengeance. This is pure speculation, and regardless of if that helps the clone, it won’t change Durkrag’s willingness to even lay eyes on them. And, frankly, the clone probably shouldn’t remain on Jund for their own sake. They don’t know the environment, don’t seem to speak anything other than the Kamigawan dialect of planar common, and don’t seem to have any of the necessary skills for survival outside of a city besides fighting capabilities. Whether or not you consider them Tol Angatan, I think they’re more Kamigawan than Jundian.”
“Well, keep me updated, let me know when Shregresha wakes up, and hopefully, the clone no longer wants to kill her by that point,” Kresh said, wishing it was an acceptable time of day to drink some tukatongue mead and retire to a cot with some of his partners. Unfortunately, he had woken up to Bromley calling on the communicator, and the sun had only risen a short while prior.
“Will do, and I’m sorry. For everything,” Bromley said mournfully.
“What are you- It’s fine, you did your best, didn’t have a better opportunity to get the clone, just bad luck where it happened,” Kresh said, pinching his brow and closing his eyes. He didn’t really get what Bromley was talking about, but he knew when someone needed encouragement.
“I- I could’ve done more, I could’ve done better, I could’ve pushed harder, could’ve been there months ago, could’ve helped Shregresha fight the demon-dragon, could’ve cleared up the mess with Bant instead of running like coward,” Bromley sobbed.
“It’s in the past now. Can’t change it, just gotta move forward. Every day is a new fight for survival, don’t focus on what you did, just make sure you do better in the future,” Kresh said, his face a stony mask. His true thoughts about Bromley disappearing were ones that he wasn’t voicing without being face-to-face with the hunter, but he didn’t blame them for what happened in their absence either. Kresh doubted that their presence would’ve been enough to change anything significantly. “You couldn’t have prevented this, stop kicking yourself for it.”
“I- Ok, I guess. Please have Goro-Goro send those files when you can, it’s a long shot, but it’s all I can think of,” Bromley said, blinking tears out of his eyes.
“Let me know as soon as Shregresha wakes up. And we will talk more about your situation concerning Bant when there is only air between us,” Kresh said, signing off.
JH-3a… didn’t like being JH-3a anymore. The person who captured… him had showed him dozens of files. Their captor couldn’t read the files, for they were in a mix of Kamigawan, Ravi, and High Vedalken. While JH-3a could only read the first two languages, it was enough for him to feel sick to his stomach, and enough to know that they were true. The creator, Dr. Zlovol, wasn’t the benevolent master she’d programmed him to believe she was, the not-so-good doctor was a callous scientist who saw people as little more than experiments or tools. He was, by her reckoning, both. He knew he had been created, he knew it was for the purpose of fighting and killing, but he thought that he would be valued for it! They could hardly believe how deluded they had been! The thought that Zlovol would have respected them, cared for him, treated him like a person, all a lie! Apparently, a part of the programming hadn’t been uploaded before his release, the part that would make him believe the treatment that Zlovol considered normal was actually affectionate. Those akki had never intended to release from the pod him, but apparently, that accident was the best thing that happened to him.
It… it recast his mission of vengeance. He didn’t know how to feel about JH— Durkrag, they didn’t know how to feel about Durkrag, the source. And, apparently, the woman he’d been trying to find and kill was the source’s mother. Biologically, his mother. He had the same half of her DNA that Durkrag did, save for some minor tweaks, mostly to compensate for translation errors in the copying process. The other person they saw directly fighting Dr. Zlovol in her last minutes was the source’s half sibling, for they shared a father. And, the other person they remembered seeing closest was also with the other Jundians. She had also played a role in killing the creator, by throwing a tomahawk into Zlovol’s back. He didn’t know what he was going to do about all of this, but he knew he didn’t want to be JH-3a anymore.
“How does one go about getting a name?” the clone asked Bromley, startling the hunter, as he hadn’t spoken at all in the past two hours of reading files.
“Most people get a name from their… parents, but plenty of people pick one for themselves. I’ve done both. Why?” Bromley replied.
“I do not wish to be JH-3a anymore, but I don’t know who I want to be. I want to have a name that I like, rather than just a designation,” the clone explained. “If I can simply pick one, then that is what I shall do. I do not know many names. If I hear one I like more later on, can I pick that name instead?”
“I’ve used multiple names throughout my life, and plenty of people pick a new name and start going by that name instead of their old one. It’s not something that’s locked in once you pick one,” Bromley said, putting a positive spin on his identity fraud.
“I will think more on this and decide on a name for now. Thank you for the advice. May I be freed now?” the clone asked.
“I’m not the person who’s in charge here, and I’m not one of the people you set out to kill. That’s who’s going to be making those decisions. Although, if you don’t want to kill them anymore, that will go a long way towards helping your case,” Bromley said.
The clone did not respond.
Durkrag was curled up in the fetal position, quietly weeping on his bedroll. His arm ached like it was still there, and while he’d dealt with phantom pains before, the added fact that his clone still had both arms broke something inside Durkrag. It was not fair! It was not fair! He’d been a prisoner and watched Dr. Zlovol turn his body into a weapon without his permission, then watched as his body attacked his family. Now, his body had been replicated without his knowledge and turned into yet another weapon sent to kill his family. It was not right! And he couldn’t even stop his nonexistent arm from hurting!
Wait, he could! Grinak was a shaman, and in his collection of potions and poultices, he likely had packed some peppermoss. Since Grinak was… elsewhere, there might be peppermoss just sitting in his tent. All Durkrag had to do was get up and leave his tent, and he could make the pain go away. He could get the warmth back again!
As Durkrag stood up, his tent flap opened and Jakagera stood in the entryway. He stopped in his tracks, and stared at her, brows furrowed, worry lines on his forehead.
“I- I saw what happened, and I can’t imagine how you’re feeling right now, but I’m here if you need someone to listen,” Jakagera said, her normally joyful energy absent.
“Why would you want to listen to me complaining about my disaster of a life?” Durkrag asked, trying to make her go away.
“Because you need someone to talk to, and you listened to me more than anyone else does. I love iguanars, more than most of the other iguanar riders, and I like to tell people about them. But I’ve gotten used to others telling me to shut up or talk about something else or to be quiet. You never did any of that,” Jakagera said, taking a step into the tent.
“I wasn’t really paying that much attention,” Durkrag said, taking a step towards the tent’s opening.
“You were paying enough attention that you mentioned when I repeated something to you, because you already knew it. No one who isn’t an iguanar rider had done that before. I saw you smile when I told you about their bite strength. You paid more attention than anyone else has,” Jakagera said, looking down at her boots.
“I…” Durkrag began, before trailing off as Jakagera lifted her head and looked him in the eyes.
“You ate dinner with me and then we cuddled last night, and when I took your hand to let you know you had someone earlier, you reached back out for me. If I’ve misinterpreted your actions, please let me know, but I think I care about you, and I want to be here for you, if you want me too, and if you care about me too,” Jakagera said, taking another step towards Durkrag, maintaining eye contact.
Durkrag collapsed into Jakagera’s arms, weeping.
Captain Tressa Laguna sat at her desk onboard The Tenacious, writing a report for Admiral Sussana, head of the Parsec fleet. It mainly detailed how devastating a single dragon was to the merchant convoy, and that if there was a likelihood of future attacks, then Alara would no longer be a viable part of the trade routes, which, due to the plane’s seemingly endless oceans off the coasts of Bant and Esper, was a sizable issue. With the Omenpath navigation tools the Coalition was developing, they could take advantage of temporary Omenpaths, provided they were large enough, and the expanse of water provided many opportunities for such Omenpaths. The regular Omenpath from Istfell to the headwaters of the Maelstrom, which was open once every three days, for about an hour each day, was the main point of entrance, and if no shortcut Omenpaths could be found, there was an intermittent one off the coast of Valeron used by both foreign vessels and Bantian merchants. It wasn’t consistent though, so ships often had to wait in its general vicinity until it opened.
Still, it was a part of trade routes, the markets of Bant and Esper were profitable, and they were in talks with both Bantian and Esperite nations for letters of marquee. The Coalition largely was in favor of privateering; it was like piracy, but you could safely dock at ports of the allied nation for repairs and supplies. But, if the dragon attacks were likely to continue, it wasn’t worth the risk, even if the ships on this route were completely refitted with ballistae and lightning cannons, to prevent the firecannon fuel from causing a similar disaster as had happened this time, a single dragon could still burn the sails, alight the deck, and knock down a mast, all in a single pass overhead.
She needed more information, but her best source for something like that was currently unconscious and severely injured. She’d ask the second-in-command tomorrow, emotions were running high, and discussing such matters as if they were ever returning so soon could be seen as callous.
Thinking of things that could be callous, she should probably go and supervise the search for remains that was being carried out near the wreck. All hands were presumed dead, and while a sea burial was traditional, the water wasn’t too deep to make dredging impossible, some of those who’d known the deceased had volunteered to be divers and retrieve bones, and due to the horrific nature, the remains would be hard to identify without the magic of the Grim Fleet. Thus, the current plan was to fell some trees, carve some coffins, pack them with dried grass, place the bones inside, and take the shortest route back to Ixalan to have the bodies identified prior to the burial.
Tressa looked back at the parchment to see that the fresh ink had run where her tears landed on it. She wiped her eyes, set the quill back in the ink bottle, and went above decks to help with the recovery effort.
Grinak hadn’t felt mana exhaustion this bad since he had undergone the trial of the Shamanic Circle. He’d bargained with a more powerful elemental than he’d ever directly interacted with and since then, had been pumping life energy into a woman whose skin had been burned on over two-thirds of her body, and whose respiratory system had also been similarly burned. He was a good generalist healer, but specialized in first aid. From his training, he knew that one of the biggest risks when it came to burns was infection, especially fungal infection, and that there was no guarantee that life energy alone would drive out the infection. He had taken stock of his collection of talismans meant to ward off infection, only to realize that since most of Shregresha was burned, there was no good place to put them on her; the only areas not as significantly burnt were those where she’d been wearing clothing. Currently, he had settled on simply hoping that proximity would impart some effectiveness, but it was unclear.
Fortunately, he had other methods to forestall infection. Some of his poultices could be applied, and one of the pirate’s medicine worker, called a surgeon, had an alcohol so strong the smell made Grinak’s eyes water, which would apparently kill most infections before they took root. Of course, since the sawbones’ first suggestion had been to amputate Shregresha’s left leg when they saw the intensity of the burns, Grinak took their advice at arm’s length. They didn’t know about the capability for healing magic to regrow and revitalize heavily damaged tissue. As long as the burns weren’t bone deep, which they fortunately weren’t, if Grinak poured his all into it, bandages were changed frequently, and Shregresha was otherwise healthy, some degree of recovery was possible.
Grinak muttered another incantation and applied another ointment to Shregresha’s face. She was strong, she was a living legend. She would pull through. She had slain the dragon, she deserved to bask in the glory of her victory. And, even if she didn’t, Grinak had given her enough medicine that she wasn’t feeling any pain. He hoped he wouldn’t be conducting a funeral ritual for Shregresha.
Thanks to @xenobladexfan for making cards and helping with design!
Credit to @jasper-graphics for all dividers!
