32 – Pointy ears

  “I don’t mean to seem pushy or vain, but no one has even hinted we’d be declared the Champions of Biwa.” Nura turned to Velesaar as they walked toward the other end of the village, where their home was and where Elanil had left Gaspard and Emily.

  “But Biwa is a village,” the elder noted cautiously. “We don’t have the authority to hand out these titles, even if we really wanted to. I must assure you, if we had the opportunity, we’d call you the Champions of Biwa in a heartbeat.”

  “Let me guess, only your Sublime Empire grants such authority. Right?”

  “Partially correct. It comes with a town status, and whether we have or don’t have the right to be called a town is determined by his Highness Governor.”

  “You northerners do like to complicate things,” Nura chuckled.

  “These are our customs,” Velesaar remarked. “They were not written by us, and it is not for us to dispute them.” Elanil noticed that although he sounded extremely polite, he seemed uneasy when discussing such sensitive issues as Imperial policies.

  Elanil was fascinated by how quickly Nura got used to the new circumstances. She sure remained the same straightforward and easy-going orc. Her views also seemed a little naive, as not surprisingly for a Steppe dweller who had never left her native land and was suddenly sent far away from home. So much around her was different. But Nura grasped everything on the fly. And even if her initial reaction to everything new was stubborn rejection, she could quickly and easily change her opinion about it to the completely opposite if she realized that this new thing could benefit her. That was true of her opinions on guilds, schematics, and reputation, for example.

  Children’s loud screams ahead distracted Elanil from her thoughts. Something definitely wrong was happening there—the piercing shrieks sounded so terrifying, as if someone were exorcising a demon from a possessed person. Elanil leaped forward bracing herself for something she would later desperately wish she could unsee.

  She didn’t immediately realize she was running alone. Neither Nura nor Velesaar followed her. Perhaps the impressionable old man, hearing the harrowing screams, had fainted, imagining horrific images, with Nura staying behind to bring him back to his senses? Elanil had no time to turn around and verify her hypothesis: with seconds ticking by, every delay could be fatal.

  She had her poignard drawn, ready for battle. She turned around the last house separating her from the epicentre of the screams and... stopped dead in her tracks, stunned by what she saw.

  Between several houses, there was a small area, clear of canals, so kids often played there, and adults weren’t worried about them falling into the water. Like a flock of excited ducklings, the children scurried across it, running in all directions Gaspard who was circling around the area. The bard looked slightly out of breath, sweaty from running, but he was smiling happily. He was growling like a bear and hissing like a serpent.

  A boy, Emily’s age, was perched on his shoulders. Brandishing a small wooden toy sword, he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Fear my dragon, undead!”

  The little ones fussed around under Gaspard’s “dragon’s” feet, trying not to get caught. These little bastards were ones emitting wild squeals that, up close, sounded more like something between a flock of angry geese and the creaking orchestra of unlubricated cart wheels.

  Seeing Elanil, Gaspard winked at her and, stopping, lowered the boy from his shoulders back onto the ground.

  “That’s it, this dragon is tired to death,” the assassin announced, breathing heavily. “You’ll have to find a new one.”

  The children met this news with disgruntled cries. But as soon as they saw Elanil, they immediately swarmed around her, shouting. “Elanil, be our dragon!”

  “No, no, this dragon isn’t a pet, you can’t ride it,” she protested, laughing, which immediately provoked a howling chorus of upset children.

  “Hey, little monkeys, what’s going on here?” Nura, who just arrived with Velesaar, rang out.

  The flock immediately rushed toward their fresh prey. “Nura, Nura! Be our dragon!”

  They began jumping frantically around her.

  “Aaaaargh!” The orc screamed furiously, causing a disturbed bird to fly up from a nearby tree. A chorus of squeals immediately followed. Nura rushed after the laughing children, her arms outstretched. “Fear the mighty dragon, or she will eat everyone here!” she screamed, accompanying her threats with a sinister laugh, which, however, couldn’t compete in volume, much less shrillness, with the kids’ squeals.

  “Elanil, what happened?” Velesaar asked sympathetically as he approached. “You darted off so quickly, I was worried about you.”

  “I... err,” Elanil hesitated, scratching her head. “I thought something was wrong with the children. I heard disturbing sounds.”

  “Have you never heard the sounds of children playing?” the bard asked as he joined their conversation. “What could happen to them if Nanny Gaspard is on guard? Or do you think Assassins don’t know how to look after children?”

  “So you are an Assassin, I see,” the village elder nodded. “That’s what Nura meant.”

  “Probably already an ex-Assassin, I think,” Gaspard chuckled. “I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that if Nura knows, sooner or later everyone around me will. Not quite the level of secrecy you’d expect from a practicing Assassin, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know much about your craft. I just... When Nura said Elanil had left the children with an Assassin, I was like... And then I thought: wait a minute, we haven’t had any strangers here except you these past few days. And there weren’t any Assassins among you. And what need have Assassins in Biwa? Who’s there to assassinate? We don’t really have any riches. Well, except for pearls, but those are the river ones, no match for the sea ones near the Berenice coast.”

  “People have been killed for less,” Gaspard blurted out, and seeing the old man’s face change, hastened to reassure him. “But I’m sure Biwa really isn’t of interest to any Assassin. With your permission, I’ll steal Elanil from you.”

  He bowed respectfully to Velesaar and dragged Elanil aside.

  “What’s the news?” Gaspard asked as they rounded the nearest building and the children’s cries stopped ringing in their ears.

  “The locals want to bury their ancestors as quickly as possible. Nura suggests burning them to ensure they never crawl out of their graves again. Velesaar is very reluctant to do that. That’s all,” she reported her meager findings. “Basically, we have two options: either listen to Nura and be confident that nothing will happen but lose a thousand points of Valley reputation, or do as you suggested—leave everything as is and hope there’s never a next time.”

  “I see…” Gaspard muttered, looking away thoughtfully.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Get out of here!” Elanil whispered, fascinated. It didn’t take a psychic to figure out what was on Gaspard’s mind. “Mister I-don’t-care has taken a liking to the people of Biwa, especially the little ones!”

  “You make it sound like I’m a heartless, cold-blooded monster,” Gaspard grumbled and then chuckled right away. “Remember, once I said there was little human in me?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure where you are going with this—”

  “I want to confess something to you. Promise you won’t tell anyone unless I ask you to.”

  “If you’re about to tell me you have a skeleton in your closet,” she muttered. “And I mean that literally, if you forgot to clean up after completing one of your contracts—”

  “And here I was thinking you have no sense of humor. But that’s not what I mean,” he smiled. “Listen, Elanil. I know you’re hiding something from us. I’m not going to pry what exactly right now,” he hastened to reassure her. “You probably have good reasons. But I can see you’re not telling Nura and me something about all this fuss with the Amulets and the Chasm. I hope you’re not driven by any malicious intent… But who am I kidding? What kind of malicious intent could you have? You wouldn’t hurt a bug, would you?”

  “For your information, I killed a bombardier beetle!” Elanil somehow felt offended.

  “Okay, I take it back, you’re a merciless bug killer.”

  “Am I really an open book to everyone?” she asked, upset.

  “Not to everyone, I guess, just to me,” he grinned. “Nura certainly doesn’t suspect anything. But you do remember, I’m endowed with keen eye and, shall we say, strong observational skill.”

  “Is that what you intended to tell me?”

  “Not only that. Keep your secrets, mage,” he winked at her. “But know that if anything happens, my ear is at your disposal.”

  “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind,” she smiled.

  “I’m just like you, Elanil,” Gaspard blurted out.

  Elanil’s eyes widened.

  “What does he mean, like me?” she thought feverishly. “Was he also ise—”

  “Here you go again!” he laughed at her reaction. “Seriously, we’ll have to work on your facial expression control in our spare time, otherwise we’ll be in trouble. One orc, who can’t keep her mouth shut, is enough for a party of three.”

  “What do you mean, you’re just like me?” Elanil whispered.

  Gaspard glanced around and, making sure no one was watching, ran his hands through his hair and pulled it back. Since they were standing so close, Elanil clearly saw his ears now, particularly the scars on their tops. As if they’d been cropped.

  It was then that it dawned on her what he meant.

  “You’re an elf!” she whispered.

  Gaspard nodded, adding, “Half.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My mother was an elf, my father... well, I don’t know who he was, but definitely not an elf.”

  “Are you a Wood Elf, too?”

  He shook his head. “A City Elf.”

  “But why are your ears cropped?”

  “I see in your lands you know little about the customs of the coastal Imperial cities. Lucky you.” He smiled bitterly. “If an elf has one ear cut off, it means they’re someone’s property.”

  “And when they have both…”

  “I cut off the other one myself when I ran away from my master, so as not to immediately expose myself as a runaway slave.”

  “Your mother was also...”

  “A slave? No. When I was ten, I was caught by guards and accused of theft, which I didn’t commit, actually. It all happened so quickly that I didn’t even notice I’d been sold as a payment for my “crime”. I don’t think my mother would’ve had time to collect the money for my fine... even if she’d wanted to.”

  These revelations hammered Elanil, making her look at Gaspard with new eyes. Only a day before, she thought of him as an ordinary, carefree rogue-jester, sometimes committing shady tasks on behalf of the Assassins’ Guild. It turned out his past was far darker than she could have imagined.

  “Yesterday, you mentioned you used to have a sister.” She remembered and immediately scolded herself mentally: perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to touch such a sensitive topic.

  “Did I tell you I grew up on the streets of Berenice? I wasn’t alone. I had my mom. I had my little sister. She had curly blonde hair, a cute snub nose, huge blue eyes: an angel. There was an epidemic that year. Typhus, I think, but I’m not sure. I was very sick too. Mom was... well, she was busy. Sometimes we didn’t see her for weeks… So, my sister was about to turn five the day after she died in my arms.”

  Unexpectedly for herself, Elanil leaned forward and hugged Gaspard tightly. Then, composing herself, she pulled away. He smiled at her outburst of sentimentality.

  “Sorry,” Elanil muttered. “I didn’t mean to. And I didn’t have to ask you about—”

  “Don’t worry. It had nothing to do with you. And it was a long time ago. Sure, it makes me sad sometimes thinking about her, but we can’t bring back dead children. I just,” he paused, looking thoughtfully into the space, “I just don’t want children to die for their stupid parents’ mistakes. So, you know what I mean. I’m all for making sure this damn Biwa will be safe. And if we have to burn that dead old granny in this ugly polka-dot dress, then so be it.”

  At that moment, Nura found them.

  “Hey, there you are. Cozying up and cooing, I see.”

  “Gossiping about you,” Gaspard grinned, his former cheerfulness instantly returning.

  “Successful?”

  “Don’t worry, we dished all the dirt on you.”

  “I didn’t doubt you,” Nura snorted. “But I’m not here for that. I just remembered something important. Remember how I told you about my grandfather who traveled a lot and told so many stories about his adventures? I really used to think he was more of a fabulist than... Whatever. Grandpa told me that our distant relatives far beyond the Steppe, have a funeral rite—if an orc dies and wishes to return to the bosom of Mother Earth, they put a special amulet in the grave that prevents any evil spirit from possessing the corpse. What if we try that?”

  “I’m afraid the people of Biwa won’t wait long for us to go to where your relatives live to get those amulets,” Elanil remarked.

  “Why would we go there?” Nura asked, surprised. “Grandpa said the amulet is just a piece of stone on a string. The most important thing is the stone.”

  “And what kind of stone is that?” Gaspard asked.

  “Glorgkhon. In your lands it’s usually called dawnstone.”

  “Have you heard it before?” Gaspard turned to Elanil.

  “I’m not sure,” she tried to refresh her scarce memory of the local mineralogy. “I’m more on the plant side. And animals, too: you know, what species inhabit what forests.”

  “We can find out about this stone in the Valley’s biggest town, Borrenton,” Nura suggested.

  “I’m glad you finally learned its name.”

  Nura ignored Gaspard’s taunt. “Let’s ask the elder to postpone the funeral for at least a few days until we find the stone. How about that?”

  “I’m in!” Gaspard volunteered first, causing her to look at him in surprise.

  “Me too,” Elanil smiled, knowing the reason for the bard’s enthusiasm about this new way to complete the quest.

  Quest: Future of Biwa

  Status: Updated

  Objective: Option 3: perform a cleansing ritual.

  Additional Information: The most time-consuming and complicated, yet potentially most reliable solution. It consists of two stages: 1) to find a glorgkhon, also known as a dawnstone; 2) to perform a ritual of cleansing to make sure the dead can finally rest in peace for eternity.

  Reward:

  + 1000 XP

  + 500 The Valley of Ringing Springs reputation

  Loot (conditional)

  Velesaar didn’t take long to being located. Appearing from around the corner of the house where they were standing and seeing them all there, he winced.

  “Pardon me. You probably have an important meeting here,” he was about to retreat, but Nura immediately stopped him.

  “Wait, wait, we were just about to talk to you.”

  “Me?”

  “Could you do us a favor?” Elanil said. “Postpone the funeral for a few days. We’d like to make some arrangements.”

  “Arrangements?”

  “We want to perform a cleansing ritual on your ancestors to ensure they won’t rise again from their graves. But to do that, we need to obtain a special stone. And we’d like to visit Borrenton and find out if it can be found in the Valley.”

  “Of course, I can delay the process,” he muttered hesitatingly. It was clear he didn’t want to refuse them, nor did the prospect of delaying the funeral appeal to him. “It’s just that, you see, the days are hot, and, well, you know…” He cleared his throat. “May I ask you, what kind of stone you’re looking for in Borrenton? I’m a former miner myself, maybe I know whether the Valley has it or not.”

  “Glorgkhon,” Nura said.

  “Oh, I’m afraid—”

  “It’s also called dawnstone,” Elanil added.

  “Dawnstone, hm…” he frowned, trying to remember and then realization lit his face. “Ah, dawnstone! But you don’t have to go to Borrenton for dawnstone. It’s in the caves nearby.” He waived to the North. “I just have to warn you,” he lowered his voice. “They’re not safe. There’s an abandoned cave not very far form here where I surely know that stone can be found. But no one’s ventured there in ages. They say something terrible lives there.”

  “Oh, please,” Nura chuckled. “Earlier today we fought a horde of zombies, yesterday a teddy bear possessed by a forest spirit, and that was just last night, yesterday morning we—”

  “Nura wants to say we are no strangers to danger,” Elanil cut her short.

  “Yes, you’re right,” Velesaar nodded. “Well, then I need to dig through my old papers. I should probably have a map of the route to the cave, and maybe even of the cave itself.”

  Quest: Scout the abandoned cave

  Status: Acquired

  Description: According to Velesaar, the village elder, glorgkhon can be found in the cave to the North of Biwa

  Additional Information:

  Threat Level: Moderate

  Notable Traits: N/A

  Reward:

  Glorgkhon supply

  XP (conditional)

  Loot (conditional)

  “So, guys,” Nura looked back at Elanil and Gaspard. “How about a good old dungeon crawl?”