The leaves upon the trees rustle, dry and cold husks. Their fire
hues given way to earthy brown, they rattle ready for a final
descent. Those fallen stir in the breeze and dance as nymphs away
from the forest's edge, seeking gutters and yards to clog before
feeding the new life come spring. The sky above is grey and
implacable, a ruffled slate canvas muffling a weakened autumn sun.
Gad rolls the sweet smelling paper into a tight line, drawing it
to his mouth. He lights it with a match, tasting the Cyril, a
tobacco hybrid, drift over his tongue. He inhales, allowing it to
caress his lungs. He puffs a dark billow, the wind whipping and
shaving it. It goes south with the rest of the warmth.
When he finishes, he tosses his handmade cigarette to the stony
road. He sits upon his mount, a vargr, assessing his haul. Slung
over the flank of the great wolf are the obsidian carcasses of his
last quarry. He had come and slain the remaining few. Now he wore
their pelts as armor, their tight scales shifting freely and offering
superior mobility despite the weight.
He spurs the beast gently, and it trots up the northward road.
Gadren plans on visiting Emeros, where he can get a fair price on the
meat and hides.
The road is long and silent save for the wind. The scales of the
dead canines scrape a bit, but it is a soft and unobtrusive sound.
The padded paws of his mount are light upon the road, and they move
swiftly into the biting wind. The fur of the beast ripples against
Gad's armored legs. The two are suited for this weather.
He arrives at Emeros the following morning after daybreak. It is
a larger port city resting against the icy Mourning Sea. The smell
of salt and sea life is mild, hampered by the chill of winter's
onset. The city is cut into the jagged cliffs of the Iron Hills,
transforming the smooth dark stones of amorphous design into
symmetrical hovels and windowed fortifications. The city had stood
long years against the northern water's assault and the tireless
winters, and it is now a hardy, if morose, bastion above the foam.
Gad rides into the city proper, which is an elevated canyon
between looming rock walls. The street here is flat and wide, full
of merchant stalls and traveling traders. Exotic wares can be seen
laid out on counters or hanging from hooks. Spices and meats from
foreign places and trinkets, real and counterfeit, move from hand to
hand in exchange for local goods and gold.
He dismounts and speaks with vendors trading pelts and articles of
clothing. There are silks and cottons, denim and leather, furs, and
various fiber and metal pieces of protection. He bargains and
haggles, a few of his buyers attempting to outbid one another. By
the time he finishes, he brings in a good haul of supplies for the
road, which he stows carefully into the saddlebags of his beast.
Furthermore, his coin purse is pleasingly weightier than it had been
before.
As he exchanges the last of the carcasses for a few more bits of
gleaming metal, the final trader thumbs his nose and eyes Gad's
mount. "The warg there." He tilts his chin (on which hangs a wiry
goatee) toward the great wolf. His accent is emphatic, pausing
momentarily between each word. It is a manner of speech common in
the southeast of the continent in and around the Salt Desert. "You
would not happen to be selling it, would you? Or, could I convince
you?"
Gad shakes his head. "I'll be traveling south again soon.
Going to need him for that." He turns and looks at the beast,
tempted to pet it but turns back and continues talking instead.
"Would there be any work around here? Sirens out on the rocks?
Pesky mist sprites? I've got a long trip from here. Want to be
stocked up."
The man with the goatee waves off a window shopper and then
crosses his arms, puzzled. "You must have earned a good penny
today." He shrugs. "Ask around. I'm just traveling myself."
Gad does not head straightaway to gather information but instead
ventures deeper into Emeros, descending its many hard cut steps. He
wants to familiarize himself with the area and find a kennel for his
mount. He had been to Emeros once before about a hundred years past.
Back then it had been little more than a fishing village with huts
built onto the side of the slopes, not carved into them. Now,
however, it sprawls with high towers and weaving tunnels, sentinels
and burrows resisting the sea. The people stream through the streets
endlessly, trading, commuting, or begging.
After finding a place to board his beast, Gad moves down into one
of the lower districts and visits a serviceable inn. It's a bit
nicer than his usual haunts. In the main room is a service desk and
bar, clean tables about. There are patrons, peaceable ones at that,
sitting in the low light and eating decent looking meals from the
kitchen. The inn is carved entirely of stone from the mountain,
though the tables and other furnishings appear to be hardwood. There
are electric lights with green glass housings hanging over the
tables. In the corner is a working radio. Gad smiles at the
eldritch technology, and his hand runs over the side of his coat,
under which is his revolver.
He takes a seat at the bar and spends the evening emptying
glasses. To his disappointment he notes the establishment is not the
kind to provide evening comfort, so he settles for the pleasantries
of alcohol and music he thought had been lost. The liquor has little
effect on Gad, but what little it does is soothing. He sits
undisturbed into the night but is brought out of his waking rest by
the radio.
"And debut single by a local boy. His life was cut short, but
he left us some of his talent. Rolling Cloud by Cal Burner,
everyone." The sound of an acoustic begins. It plays slow and
light and soon is harmonized by a violin. Then Calix's voice
enters the rhythm.
Watch the grey expanse
And fall into its trance
It passes by just like the years
And all our late night tears
Grey, grey, you ride so high
And I watch you pass overhead
Grey, grey, upon the sky
I'll soar like you when I'm dead
I remember when I held you in the rain
How we shared each other's pain
But sorrow clears just like the grey
Forever in my arms you can stay
Grey, grey, you ride so high
And I watch you pass overhead
Grey, grey, upon the sky
I'll soar like you when I'm dead
Rolling cloud which hides the sun
I will stand; I will not run
When the storms--
Gad turns to the innkeeper, unable to listen any longer. "Do you
have a room for the night?"
"Huh?" The innkeeper is taken by surprise by his silent
customer, but he smiles when he comes to. "Of course. The Grey
Guardian is more than welcome to stay. A room on the house even."
"I couldn't." Gad feigns.
"Ah." The man rubs his stubbled chin. "You can pay for the
drinks, if that eases your conscience. Tell you what, I have a
friend with some interesting relics. I'll have him swing by in the
morning."
"Fetishes? Ground necromancer teeth? A wrist watch?" Gad
restrains a grin.
The innkeeper leans across the counter. He smells of the alcohol
he'd been handling all day and of cedar wood. "A working camera.
It's not an original, mind you. It's something they conjured up
down south. Reverse engineered." He points at a barren section of
wall by the radio. "He's been taking pictures with it, and he
managed to get his hands on a printer. You know, maybe one day we'll
have flying ships again and figure out why our so-and-so
great-grandparents got stranded here." He snorts and clears his
throat. "Anyway, I commissioned him to get me some decent pictures.
Going to hang them up. It'll be novel. Now," he smiles and
bounces a finger at Gad, "I get a picture of you standing in here,
and I'm liable to draw in your fans. That can be your room
payment." He stands back and holds out his palms, nodding with
raised brows. He relaxes and adds, "Besides, business is slow now.
I can afford a room."
His rest is uneasy that night. Gad experiences another variant of
the sacrifice he had made well over a hundred years past. The pale
moonlight, the sharp wind against the branches, and that familiar
corpse. This time his brother speaks from his grave, begging to know
why, but when Gadren relents an answer, the boy seems deaf. He only
continues to ask, as though he was dissatisfied with the response.
In the morning he dons the scaled armor and humors the innkeeper.
He had not had his picture taken since he was a little boy, and his
brother had still been crawling. While he wore his years heavily,
the hunter of monsters sees in his photo that unnatural vitality he
had bargained for. He has jovial words with the proprietor and the
photographer, but the sight of his sin sours his gut, and he leaves
without eating.
He does not find the work he had wanted. Things are drying up,
and he knows it. Mankind is gaining a real foothold on this once
wild planet, and soon there will be little room for those of his
vocation.
So, instead of searching for work, he makes a deposit at a network
bank and finds a few warm articles of clothing to place under his
armor. He has a considerable fortune, when all is taken into
account. The income itself is not an issue, but he is nearing the
end of his purpose.
He takes his vargr from the livery and leaves the city, heading up
the craggy and battered coast. Time was when he could see sirens out
on such frothing rocks or a basilisk spawning ground, but now there
is only the angry waves and the fishing-vessel-dotted waters. He
rides on a high unmarked road which overlooks the uninviting beaches.
Down below there are smaller ports and private docks. Youths can be
seen now and then in gangs and pairs tossing stones into the waves,
huddled around fires, or sneaking off to secluded grottos. They do
this because they are young, but they succeed because they are safe.
He rides on.
The steady breeze combs his short beard, and the sound of it
reminds him of his true youth. The wind never changes, he thinks.
It sounds the same and feels the same now as it did then. Whatever
death cheating deals he makes, that wind was before him and it will
be after. He considers this, watching the stunted high hill grass
mimic the water below. He is only a temporal phase in a larger
scheme, and his lifelong ambitions can never outlast the flowing air.
Gad makes a camp that night. He gives raw meat to his mount
before eating some himself. In his beast's skin plate and his
mouth full of uncooked flesh he is more akin to the creatures he's
hunted for more than a century. A doppelganger had once told him as
much, that he was little more than a monster himself. For the most
part, the things he has pursued all these years were born enemies of
man and goodness, yet he was offered choice. He remembers Faust.
His father had told him the tale.
Beads of sweat form on his brow, painful in
the frosted air. He raises his right hand to the firelight and holds
his palm out before his face. There is a circular scar roughly hewn
into the leathery skin. Gadren Amon grimaces and fingers one of his
knives with his free hand. He looks over at his vargr, and the
titanic wolf watches him curiously and half-awake, as it is curled up
beside the warmth. He pulls the knife free and presses the frigid
flat side to the scarred palm.
He takes a deep breath and lifts his eyes to the abyssal sky
before focusing again on that circle. He whispers then, his words
lost in the wilderness. "I am going to parlay with the devil
again."
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