CHAPTER 1.03 - WORLDQUAKE
Hugo comes to, feeling nauseous and wretched. As previously, he worries for a second that he may be blind, but light arrives as a pinprick, then a growing disc of clarity. As the inky darkness recedes to the edges of his vision, he is blinking back tears, suddenly dazzled by the brightness. He heaves briefly but nothing comes up; his stomach cramps and for a moment he is happy for its emptiness. As he sits upright from prone, he feels his foot tug as he draws it in. Looking down, he sees that his right ankle has been bound in a simple knot, rope attaching him to Thae. The half-elf’s head is shaking muzzily, his armoured friend sitting cross-legged. The other end of his rope is tied around Thae’s waist.
As he looks around, Hugo sees the carcass of a huge boar at the centre of the clearing. The beast apparently charged onto Rian’s pike, its butt driven into the soil of the forest floor, the point transfixing the beast. The animal’s head is partially pulverised, and as Hugo’s gaze shifts, he sees Rian kneeling at the stream, apparently focused entirely upon the babbling water. His head turns on hearing Hugo’s retch and Thae’s light gasp as his friend touches finger to face, probing what looks like a quickly forming black eye.
Rian grunts as he stands, looking even more exhausted than before. He seems to be about to speak when a burst of swearing erupts from the woman. She was lying on her back, however as everyone’s eyes snap to her, Hugo realises that her hands have been bound behind her.
The big man rushes over to the furious girl, dropping again to one knee as he quickly but gently scoops her into a seated position. Rian begins unknotting the length of rope trailing from her wrists. His deep voice is urgent but soothing “I’m sorry…miss. You weren’t yourself and I was worried about…” The man seems embarrassed as he dips his chin quickly towards his middle. Hugo’s already sensitive stomach knots again at the memory of a bandit’s crotch detonating.
The woman’s stream of profanity trails off as her eyes follow the gesture, her eyes snapping back to the bearded face. Hugo might expect similar embarrassment in her expression, but instead she smiles warmly at Rian, the most positive expression he has seen on her face. She inhales, mouth dropping slightly open in thought and in a calm but amused voice says “Anuk. I’m Anuk. That was probably smart, Rian.”
Once Anuk is freed, the big man returns to the edge of the stream, turns back to the group. In one hand he is holding Thae’s hammer, in the other four bulging waterskins. He goes first to Thae, handing over the hammer reverentially. “I…umm…had to take this from you. It’s beautiful.” The man’s not wrong; the head of the warhammer is decorated with owl heads on either side, raised detail picked out in gold. The bearded man grimaces as he points to the red mark on Thae’s cheekbone “Sorry about that; you didn’t want to let it go…”
Thae’s eyes look over the bludgeoned skull of the boar. “Well, friend, it looks as though you had need of it.” Rian nods ruefully, hands a waterskin to the half-elf. “Beautifully balanced too.”
The wild man proffers a waterskin to Hugo. He feels embarrassment flush into his face. “I didn’t have…”, but Rian pushes the skin into his hands. “You weren’t yourself, guess you lost your supplies before.” Hugo is about to reply, but Thae’s kindly voice interrupts him. “Thank you Rian; yes, I was lucky to keep hold of my own pack.” Not PRECISELY a lie, Hugo admires his companion’s diplomacy saving him face. Rian nods, carries on. “Your…instrument is just behind you.” Hugo spins, happy to focus on anything else as he retrieves his lute. He thinks for a moment then re-equips the bandit’s crossbow and quiver of bolts.
Anuk looks up, still massaging her wrists, as Rian hands her a waterskin. “So; you weren’t affected when the lights went out?” Hugo again notes Rian’s eyes flicker towards his belt as the man kneels to the bandit, assisting the bound man to drink from the last skin. “No. The…light didn’t change, but it feels cold and…just…hard to move, to think clearly. The animals HATE it.” Wiln sucks gratefully at the offered water as Rian’s eyes turn to the boar. “This one should have avoided us, but it was maddened, charged straight at me.”
As Wiln finishes drinking, Anuk gestures to the waterskins “Here, give those to me. I’ll refill them…you need to retrieve your weapon” nodding to Rian. The big man looks close to collapse but takes a deep breath then stands to his full height, rolling his broad shoulders. As Thae takes Hugo’s waterskin and hands both to Anuk, Hugo raises his eyes to the sky. “So…” he starts “…we were aiming for the road before things went crazy the first time.” As Rian wrestles the boar off his pike, he gestures back behind Hugo. Grunting with the beast’s weight, he mutters “Road’s that way”. Thae again pre-empts Hugo’s query, with “Sounds like you are not aiming for the road, Rian?”
The big man discards the boar and strides downstream from Anuk to wash his pike in the brook. He shakes his head, points to and edge of the clearing perpendicular to the road. “I have to go this way.” Anuk looks up from submerging a skin “I do not like the prospect of meeting more bandits alone.” Hugo finds his voice “Not that we’d be able to trust any direction in about half an hour. These…blanks? Terrors? Whatever they are, they’re getting closer together.”
Rian looks apologetic, but his tone is certain, unshakeable. “I have to do this, I’m sorry.” Again, the man’s eyes flick towards his belt pouch. He slumps a little, sighs. “I don’t know what I’m heading towards, but I think it’s connected to all of this.” His beard shifts and his lips purse. He looks for a moment to be working up to say something. Finally, he musters the words. “I could really use your help. I’m SO tired.” Thae and Hugo glance at one another, each nodding; the half-elf’s clear, kind voice intones “Then we are with you.”
Anuk stands, encumbered with the waterskins. “And once we unfuck this, you guide us to the Caladrian road?” Rian eyes glisten briefly and he blinks a couple of times. He tries to speak, voice catching before he quietly chokes out: “Thank you. Yes.” Hugo notes the man’s emotions, but this is urgent: “We need to go. Lead the way, big’un.” As he speaks, Hugo is looping the rope around his waist, Thae raising arms for the halfling to bind them back together. “If you’re not blacking out, we should be tied to you, I think.” He looks up at Anuk as she hands him a skin. Her mouth is tight, but she is nodding assent.
-x-
The next few hours pass in a blur of exhaustion, the band stumbling through dense, untamed forest. And through the “blips” (as Hugo names them), the dropping of darkness and fear over the rationality of four of the group. Rian, while apparently unaffected by this veil, is further drained by each instance. Hugo speculates that remaining conscious is somehow worse than absenting oneself; a scary prospect given how wretched they all feel re-emerging from the black. And the blips are getting both longer and more frequent. When they began this morning, he estimated they were manifesting hourly. According to Rian, the first few lasted maybe 30 seconds. As the day passes, the gaps have been reducing, the impact harder to deal with, the going slower.
Rian seemed to have intended to carry the bandit, fully bound, the whole time. The group talked him down. They are now roped together like mountaineers, Rian in the lead, Thae as rearguard, Wiln at the centre of the group. He is behind Hugo; however this doesn’t overly worry the halfling. For a start, the man’s arms are still bound behind his back. And of course, Anuk’s position behind the bandit would persuade even a zealot to behave.
They have all noticed that after each absence, Rian goes into his belt pouch and extracts a circle of gold. He holds it up to his eye, looking through the loop to scan the forest, and sometimes adjusts their heading. The big man is travelling in stolid silence, other than low, clipped instructions or warnings. Hugo is impressed by the woodsman’s ability; he seems to read the ground, the breeze, maybe even smells lost to his city-dwelling companions. A couple of times already, he has led them in a shallow arc around things invisible to the rest of them. One time close enough to some creature that they could hear it snuffling, the sounds of something big moving around.
The halfling can tell, even just from the hackles on the back of his neck, that Anuk wants to ask about the golden object, however Rian’s silence and competence seems to have kept her from challenging their guide. When Hugo looks round, he can see that she is simmering, her aura of frustration or resentment growing with the slog of the journey. He catches Thae’s eye, the half-elf nodding as though reading his mind.
Just then, Rian stumbles, almost falling on his face. Thankfully, they are tied with enough slack that the man doesn’t drag Hugo down with him, but it’s a close-run thing. By the halfling’s best guess, it’s early afternoon; they still have a handful of hours before dark. He voices this, begs Rian to get some rest. He can tell this is anathema to the man, but also sees Rian’s exhaustion, the temptation to stop. Thae, ever supportive, makes a plea: “Hugo and I did not sleep a WINK last night. I am not sure about him, but I would be grateful for a rest – a SHORT rest.” The half-elf smiles with an amazing display of embarrassment for being so weak, the perfect scapegoat against Rian’s instinct to run himself into the ground. Anuk is more direct, but no less helpful. “You’re no use to us if you’re asleep on your feet, and you’re leading this…” she looks the terrified Wiln directly in the eye, a wicked smile on her face “…merry band.” Hugo is impressed. It SHOULDN’T work. It lacks most of the components of a threat, and yet the bandit jumps, an unseemly fright noise not quite suppressed.
Rian rubs his eyes, then marshals them to the largest tree he can see close by. They climb, and bucket-chain Wiln up to the lowest, broadest branches some 12 feet off the forest floor. There is a brief discussion: there are only four remaining branches, however Thae immediately offers to share with Hugo. Anuk seems about to grill Rian, but Hugo catches her eye and shakes his head gently. He wouldn’t use the word ‘mollified’, but she at least bides her time. The woodsman appears to fall asleep instantly, a gift Hugo covets.
They have lost around an hour and a half, however once they are back on the lack-of-trail they are making faster, easier progress. Hugo decides to initiate conversation indirectly. He is a natural raconteur honed from decades of performance and walks a line through Thae’s and his own day while leaving out the reason for their departure from Caladria. It’s artful and anonymised; they “needed to get out of the city”; they “weren’t comfortable with appearing on the City Watch’s reports” and such. Thae makes him proud, at times adding a little description or flavour. It breaks the monotony of even a gifted speaker’s monologue. Plus, as a natural wing…well – wing-half-elf – the holy warrior’s additions seem to paint Thae into the background, merely the helper or even the audience to Hugo’s masterful planning and execution. Hugo has been reading people since before it became a conscious strategy and is certain that this is the way his comrade actually sees the world. Thae is there to support, the helpful assistant in others’ starring roles.
He feels genuine affection for the pointy-eared cleric. And a sharp pang of guilt that Thae might ever discover that they met under false pretences. That Hugo was planning…well, thinking of planning…to rob the temple.
And maybe to use the half-elf as his patsy.
