81. Row Row Row Your Shell

  [Designations: STROKE-SIDE OAR and BOW-SIDE OAR]

  [Instrument Class: AUXILIARY]

  [Anchored Realm: PRETJORD (+1)]

  [Item Description: Some with clearer memories of the Mundane than others tell of an aquatic species that was valued for their eggs. Hard roe, salt-cured and consumed as garnish or spread. A decadent delicacy, its value elevated far beyond its constituent parts. “Pay your dues and show your worth.” But what if that ‘worth’ was derived by reducing you to an object of harvest? Would you be satisfied with your lot in life—accept your worth as defined by everyone but yourself and baked into the system from even before your birth? Or would you take up oars and row—up and up and up the stream, against the currents that would wash you bare?]

  ***

  Serac held on for dear life as a pair of oarsmen ferried her down the Sanzu River.

  The sturgeon twins’ turtle of choice was big enough to be a four-seater. At least it should’ve been, if it weren’t for the Tomasens’ ample frames and Serac herself needing to be on all fours as she clung to the turtle shell’s slippery surface. It all left poor Zacko as the odd man out, standing on tippy toes upon a tiny corner in the back of the shell.

  “Would you at least try to get on your feet?” the Manusya complained, looking down on the Rakshasa’s cowering figure with naked contempt. “It’s just that we’re on our way to take on allegedly the most dangerous criminal in the Realm, and if it were up to me, I’d like to get there without my legs falling asleep.”

  “Must… stay… low to ground…” Serac managed in a severely muffled voice. “Must… not… fall in water…”

  To be perfectly fair to the sturgeon twins’ boating skills, however, the ride itself was remarkably smooth. Serac couldn’t see the scenery that passed her by (owing to her head being buried in turtle shell), but that only made her more sensitive to the turtle’s every pitch and yaw, of which there were very few. For all their silent glaring and Palmr-Jorgensen-pandering, the Tomasens had, at least so far, given every indication of being a pair of competent Wayfarers.

  Shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. They’ve made it to KL-41, after all, and that should count for something.

  But exactly how much it counted towards their present mission still remained to be seen. Serac herself had yet to get over her concerns about a ‘scouting report’ on the deviant Wayfarer the locals called the Finless.

  “No one knows how, but she’s managed to strike her own name from Pathsight’s records,” Palmr the catfish businessman had explained, shortly before sending the Wayfaring quartet on their way, “which means no designation, and no way to connect her to any of the families listed on the Pretjordian census. But she still flaunts the rest of her status sheet like a badge of honor—or perhaps as a warning to the other Wayfarers.”

  “Warning? How scary are we talking?”

  “As of the most recent confirmed sighting by Kronvakt personnel, she’s at a Karmic Level of 63 and a Liminal Karma cache of 17,000 ? or thereabouts—which my boys tell me should be around halfway between KL-63 and -64.”

  Serac had blinked several times while Zacko had let out a low whistle.

  “63? But that’s already past the Karmic Benchmark for ascension from Pretjord to Tidereign, isn’t it?”

  “Correct, Wayfarer. But this Finless individual clearly hasn’t received an Ascension Mandate. Perhaps that’s why she made an attempt on the Realm Immortal’s life.”

  “Do we know anything about her Instruments?” this from Zacko.

  “She uses a Zealous Instrument called OYSTER,” Palmr with the prompt reply. “As far as anyone can tell, it’s a… dispensary of sorts, consisting of chemicals that imbue herself and others with various effects.”

  “A potion master, eh?” Zacko with a sneer of amusement. “Interesting. Can’t say I’ve come across too many of those. And her Auxiliary?”

  “A heavy steel shovel called DREDGER. It looks comically large on the Finless’s tree-frog frame, but don’t let that deceive you. She swings it around like it weighs nothing, whipping the surrounding terrain into whatever shape that suits her. If you ask me, her Auxiliary is even more of a nuisance to deal with than her main Instrument.”

  “Sounds like she could be a handful, but is that really all?” Serac had asked dubiously. “Your ‘boys’ and King Tyr’s stable of Wayfarers tried for years and failed to capture her, right? Even if she’s really good at hiding, running, and swimming, you wouldn’t think a potion-slinger with a shovel on her back could take on the whole Realm by herself.”

  “And you’d be right, Ms Edin,” Palmr had said as his eyes glinted anew. “For you see, the Finless has got something of an army behind her as well.”

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  “You mean she has sympathizers?” Zacko.

  “No. Not an army of Yakshas—but of Wildspawns. I’d say it’s inconceivable if the truth of it weren’t plain for all to see. It’s as if all of Pretjord’s untamed and monstrous elements have rallied around and chosen the Finless as their Aberrant queen. And it’s thanks in large part to their help that she’s evaded capture all these years…”

  As she continued to hug the turtle shell, Serac thought back on this rather formidable profile of her latest smiting target. Something about the Finless’s characterization as an ‘Aberrant queen’ had reminded her something of herself—or if not herself, then at least her regal ‘third entity’ that occasionally came out to play. It was for this among several other reasons that Serac hadn’t quite brought herself to think of Lady Pink as an ‘enemy’.

  “I’d suggest, Wayfarer, that you do away with useless distractions and focus on the task,” Trippy scolded in his usual monotone. “As a newcomer to the Realm, it’d behoove you to play by the local rules and customs. It seems to me that capturing this criminal is your most direct route to earning an ‘in’ with the Realm Immortal. And I shouldn’t need to explain to you how valuable that could prove to be.”

  “But she… saved… me and Zacko… from drowning…” Serac spoke into the turtle shell. “I just… can’t imagine… someone who’d do that… to be all bad…”

  “You’re still on about that?” Zacko scoffed from his tippy-toed height. “That and this are two different matters. The locals have given us a lead, and now we follow it until we get a better one. Isn’t that how we’ve always done it?”

  “Don’t… trust… Mr Catfish… so mean… to Petey…”

  Zacko acknowledged this with a good-natured chuckle. The sturgeon twins continued to row their boat in silence.

  “I don’t like fatso anymore than you do, Serac, but like my mama always used to say: don’t bite the hand that feeds you. At least… not until we can reliably feed ourselves. Look, let’s just see how it all plays out, yeah? You know me; I’m light on my feet, always ready to roll with the punches.”

  If the Tomasens had any opinions about their passengers openly insulting their boss and casually discussing a possible betrayal, they didn’t show it. They continued to row in competent silence, steering the turtle ever downstream towards the Reamltree’s so-called ‘Roots’.

  At some point, however, the turtle began to slow, prompting Serac to look up out of curiosity. From what she could see, the party had come to some sort of ‘bottleneck’. The river here was much narrower than she’d remembered it in the heart of Stamgard, and its banks were manned on either side by Yakshas in matching uniforms.

  Serac strained her hell bumpkin’s knowledge in an effort to describe the men’s attire, somehow coming up with the word camouflage. Their piscine features were mostly covered in a one-piece suit from collar to ankles, dyed with various shades of blue and green, and form-fitting save for the slit on the back to allow for the dorsal fin. If it weren’t for their leaning over the riverbank to wave down the party, they would’ve blended right into the trees and bushes around them.

  Oh, and if it weren’t also for the guns slung around their shoulders.

  Serac did a double-take, thinking they looked like a version of REVOLVER with a longer barrel and a more slender build. Upon closer inspection, however, she saw that the ‘barrel’ ended in a prominent arrowhead with a rope that attached to the main body.

  “Those are harpoon guns,” Zacko offered his Manesferan knowledge, “and the fellows holding them look to me like… soldiers.”

  The ‘soldiers’ didn’t delay the party for long. As soon as they saw who the oarsmen were, they stood at attention and saluted, before turning around and slinking back into the woods. Right on cue, the twins resumed their rowing, and the turtle picked its speed back up. Everything happened without the exchange of a single word.

  “A trained army of Anchored souls,” Serac muttered fluently, momentarily forgetting her fear of water. “Never seen that before. Is this like a Secondary Transfer thing for some of the Wayfarers here, do you think?”

  “Could be,” Zacko agreed slowly, “but even if that were the case, something’s definitely fishy here—pun very much intended. What we passed just now was clearly a checkpoint of some kind. And you don’t post armed men at a checkpoint unless you’ve got something to keep out—”

  “—Or unless you’ve got something to hide.”

  Zacko smiled down at Serac.

  “Now you’re thinking like a Wayfarer who’s seen some shit.”

  If the Tomasens had any opinions about their passengers openly hatching a conspiracy theory or two, they didn’t show it. They continued to row in competent silence, even as the waterway re-widened past the bottleneck. Seeing this, Serac buried her face again in the turtle shell, reminded as she was of the terrors of a watery abyss.

  But not for long. For the whole turtle pitched suddenly and yawed violently, forcing a hydrophobic Rakshasa to tighten her grip, even as she jerked her head up in alarm.

  The river, hitherto uniform and consistent in its currents, now bubbled and roiled, as if agitated by some great force. Even an uninitiated outrealmer like Serac knew right away that it wasn’t anything natural that had caused the sudden turbulence.

  Which meant veterans like the Tomasen twins were all the more ready to react to changing waters. They’d already taken their OARS out of the water, now holding them by their sides like the weapons they were.

  The first ‘Wildspawn’ jumped out from the turtle’s portside (STROKE-SIDE), only to be immediately batted away by Lars. It happened so fast Serac could barely see what the thing looked like, but a Pathsighted text lingered to give it a name: [RUMPETROLL].

  A second attack soared in from starboardside, and this time, Serac was alert enough to catch its bizarre figure before it too bounced away at a swing of Hans’s BOW-SIDE OAR. The thing was about the size of a large dog—not as imposing as an Ulvknall, but neither was it anything to sneeze at. The bulk of its roughly ovoid body was black, slimy, and writhing throughout, as though it contained some other alive thing that wanted to burst out. It also sported a distinct tail—a flat, veiny fin that spun and oscillated at speed, sending river water flying everywhere.

  Somewhere amidst the panic induced by turbulent water and her wonderment at seeing a new Aberrant, Serac managed to concoct the strangest thought: that thing kind of looks like Froggy—if Froggy were black, slimy, and didn’t have limbs.

  At the same time, she reached for REVOLVER at her waist. Still too scared to stand, and utterly inexperienced in the art of shooting from a prone position, she nevertheless willed herself to fight back against an unfamiliar enemy.

  And that was when one of the twins—Lars, according to which side of the turtle he stood on—opened his sturgeon mouth to speak for the first time.

  “No,” he said, voice surprisingly gentle and refined for a muscular brute such as he. “You do nothing. This for me and my brother.”

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