- Ferro
The town is almost as large as Westgrove had been, but no one walks its streets any longer. With my ship secured inside my vault, I stand on the deck of the flying device Illigar uses to get around. The square platform of grayish stone is as large as a square in a decent-sized town, and the man’s storage device is high-grade enough to allow him to store it and pull it out at will. Along with me, sixteen other adventurers overlook the town that will be the staging area for the 4th army’s advance against the beast tide. It was once called River’s Hope, but with only a handful of structures still standing, the name no longer seems to fit.
Smoke snakes into the sky from a few lingering fires smoldering throughout the town, the structures burnt to useless lengths of charcoal here and there. Bodies littered every street and corner, the insectoid ruins of the monsters for the most part. The splashes of green ichor that faintly glow in the dying light of the day are broken up now and again by dark brown stains where people's blood has long dried over the last few days. The tributary winding through the ruin of the city was blocked halfway through by a tower having fallen into the water, the makeshift dam responsible for flooding half of the town.
The final evidence of the recent attack comes in the two squares of dirtied white linen set to either side of the town. To the west, an encampment of tents spreads out, shuffling refugees moving between the tents or sitting around small fires. To the east, there is a line of covered bodies set out in front of a huge ditch being dug by men with dour and dirty faces. It is the first time that I have ever seen the real aftermath of a monster attack, and the scene burns itself into my mind.
I turn my eyes north toward the downward slope that now houses a dry riverbed. A once beautiful valley stretches away from the town there, wildflowers and wild grasses trampled to dead and brown matter that mixes with the dirt. Huge bugs wander around the trampled plain, but it is hard to focus on them with the newest and greatest addition to the landscape. Three mounds of dried dirt tower into the air in a triangular formation near a mountain to the far north. The two in front easily rise over a hundred feet, set half a mile out in front of the third, which climbs up the side of the mountain, its apex more than three hundred feet high. The monsters swarming the plain grow more populace near these three structures, the three hives we have come to root out.
“There it is,” an adventurer on the flying platform says to a colleague. “The rank threes are in those.”
“There must be thousands,” the woman next to him answers, looking out across the plain. “We don’t even have a hundred in the 4th army.”
“We have more than enough,” I say, unable to stop myself. “We will burn them out.”
Staring at the hives, I see dozens of the bulky monsters crawling in and out of the myriad holes leading inside. It is strange to find them all being relatively similar, given how disparate the monster hordes we have faced until now have been. For the most part, they are all the large, six-legged beetles that are easily as big as a horse, some of the bigger among them as large as a covered wagon. The coloration is different, the eastern hive bearing aquamarine markings on their black carapaces while the western hive have reddish carapaces decorated with almost rune-like yellow lines. The far hive that abuts the mountain is too distant for me to make out any of the monsters there, and Galea begins to identify those that I can see. As far as I can tell, every insect monster that I spot is of one of two kinds, all rank two.
Acidic Termite
Lavalash Termite
I have never before seen even close to as many rank-two monsters in one place as the valley below. Then again, as we descend toward the temporary camp of adventurers set at the top of the southern slope, I have never seen as many powerful adventurers gathered in one place, their auras bare and seething in the air. Even for someone as unaquainted with reading auras as I am, the anger that I sense in the billowing clouds of color throughout the temporary camp is easy to read. We might only have less than a hundred adventurers in the 4th army, but I truly think that it will be enough.
We land near the encampment a few minutes later, and it takes almost no time at all for me to be caught up in the constricting embrace of Jess.
“We missed you,” she says, squeezing my arms tight enough that the bones threaten to creak.
Straining, I manage to slip from the woman’s grasp. She stares at me incredulously for a moment, her slitted eyes looking me up and down. “You got stronger.”
“New equipment,” I tell her, flashing the stone ring on my right hand. “Just enough strength that you won’t crush me.”
“I wasn’t even trying,” she scoffs. “All new clothes it looks like. That must have cost quite a bit.”
“I’m a good haggler,” I tell her. “When we get back to civilization, we can go around adorning you in new gear, too.”
“Danfalla left me broke,” she complains. “Maybe once we have been paid out from this operation. That doesn’t matter much now, anyway. Come on, the boys are anxious to see you.”
Jess takes my hand and starts leading me on through the small encampment. With the sun already setting on the western line, painting the sky a mix of purple and orange, there is little left to do for the day. The beginning of the assault is set for the morning, a fact that everyone in the camp seems to already know, a fact that leaves everyone stewing on the edge of battle.
The line of tents that Jess shows me screams of the general squalor of the camp, but the face I find Jor’Mari making as he is curled up inside the dimly-lit tent cements the idea.
“Look who’s here, Gallant,” Jess exclaims, pulling back the flap of the tent.
“I told you to…” His words die as our eyes meet.
“It’s been a minute, Jor.” It is all I can think to say.
“A little while,” he agrees, pulling himself out of the tent. “Did you just get here?”
“Just a moment ago.”
“Well, welcome to the majestic Camp Bugshit. We have all the amenities you might expect, including a big hole on the west side of the camp to shit in.” Jor’Mari stretches to his full height, straightening his flowing robes. They look worn now, stained at the hem with brown-green ichor.
“Jess didn’t tell me the name of the camp,” I say, turning and finding that the bladedancer has disappeared.
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“She is a sneaky one,” Jor’Mari says, noting Jess’s disappearance as well. “I think she might have gotten some sneaking ability at the second rank.”
“She does hold her abilities close to the chest,” I say. “A bit like you and Dovik do.”
“A bit like everyone does,” he quips, smirking at me in that way of his. “I don’t recall you volunteering to show me all of your cards.”
“I showed you plenty of my cards,” I say, only realizing the double-meaning once the words are already out.
The playful look on Jor’Mari’s face drains away. He covers it quickly by coughing into his fist and turning out to overlook the valley, but I saw the flash of pain on his face. “Did you see our friends out there? There is a whole lot of them, but you should have seen the hives just after they attacked the town a few miles back that way. You could hardly see a spike of grass down there with all those bugs running around. Dovik is out there now, working with the scouting team. Man has a knack for it.”
His babbling halts as I come around the front of him, staring up at his face and forcing him to look at me. “What was that?”
Jor’Mari’s eyes flick to me for a moment before he stares back out toward the darkening valley. “Dovik, something of a scout. He has the eyes for it, I suppose. Grace-type fighters tend to have a decent amount of perception, so it makes a certain sense.”
“Why are you avoiding me?” I ask, deciding that bluntness might be called for.
“I’m not avoiding you. I’m talking with you right now, aren’t I?”
“You aren’t even looking at me.”
His eyes flick down once more, meeting my own. Our gazes lock for only a few seconds before he turns away. “I don’t…Shit, no.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing out a breath. “I don’t want to be the kind of man that would lie to you. I’m sorry; I have been avoiding you.”
“What did I do?” I ask, feeling a swell of emotion collect like a stone in my chest. “We didn’t even go all the way. Did I cross some tradition or something I didn’t know about?”
“Charlene!” Jor’Mari looks around at those milling about nearby. “I’m not sure that here is the place to discuss such delicate matters.”
“You think these people care?” I ask. Nearby, a man chuckles to himself, grabbing the pot he was cooking over a fire and walking away.
Jor’Mari’s jaw flexes as he chews on his words. “There’s too many people here,” he says, grabbing my arm and leading me away.
I let him, despite the flash of anger that tries to join the ball of emotions choking me at having him lead me around like a child. We exit the camp, not that it takes long with how puny the small fortification on the slope is, but Jor’Mari does not stop leading me on until we are almost a mile away from the light of the fires. The sun has long dipped past the far horizon, the sky now a deep mix of indigo and blue, the light of the stars barely peeking through. In the light of twilight, Jor’Mari’s ethereal look takes on a shadowy presence, the wisps of his white hair a drifting gray.
He turns, piercing me with seriousness in his eyes. “The Duke is ill,” he says, flatly.
“I’m…sorry to hear that. Is your father okay?”
“I don’t know. No.” Jor’Mari clutches at the air, turning and groaning. “It’s been a few weeks, but the healers don’t seem to be able to do anything. My brother has been keeping me appraised even out here. No treatments they devised have worked at all; his condition just keeps getting worse. From the sounds of it, just keeping the barrier around the Duchy is straining him these days.”
Seeing him standing there, fists shaking at his side, I can’t help but walk next to him and set my hand on his back. “That’s terrible. I didn’t know that someone of such high station could even get sick. I thought they were too powerful for that to happen.”
“They aren’t supposed to be.” His eyes fall on my arm as I rub my hand against his back. The relief I feel when he doesn’t pull away is more of a comfort to me than it should be. “I thought there was no illness that could attack a duke either, but apparently I am wrong. The healers talk about it like it is a one-in-a-million chance. To hear them tell it, sometimes sicknesses show up just like monsters can: random, strange, deadly.”
“Well, I am sorry to hear about your father,” I say. “But I don’t see what that has to do with you avoiding me.”
“It shouldn’t, should it?” He rubs his face with his hands. “I didn’t mean to take it that far between us. You were drunk, and I should have been more of a gentleman. I just wanted to show you a good night in my city, and things just got away from me. Then you were there, so powerful, so glorious, and what man with blood in his veins wouldn’t want that.”
“So, it’s my fault?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood.
“No,” he groans. “No, it’s my fault.”
I slap myself mentally for even trying to make a joke.
“Now the branch family is pissed at me. They have always been bastards, but since that night, they have been even more hostile. With my father in his condition, we thought it would be a better idea if I didn’t antagonize them even more,” he explains.
“We? Who is we?” I am around him before I even know it, forcing him to look me in the face.
“A…” For an instant, there is genuine fear in his eyes, and I think that he might try to lie to me. He stops himself, but I can tell it is only just barely that honest words leave his lips. “The first wife, the Duchess.”
“You told someone about what we did together?” My finger waves in his face, making him go cross-eyed as he stares at it.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” he says quickly. “She already knew. She knows everything. Look, Charlene,” he takes a step away, holding up his hands, “my family is complicated. The Duchess thought that it was best if the family was seen as together right now with my father’s condition. If we were caught in a scandalous situation, it could be bad for us right now.”
“Oh.” My heart just about stops beating in my chest. It takes me two times to conjure more words as I take my own step away. “I see.”
“No!” He moves to me in the blink of an eye. “That sounded worse than it is. It isn’t because you’re human; it is because of family politics. There’s…ugh. There is a situation with a friend of my father’s, a Count on the other side of the empire. They want me to marry his daughter.”
“You’re engaged?” I slip my hand out of his reaching grasp, that bit of anger returning. “So you are promised to another woman, is it?”
“I am not engaged,” he says, adamant. “It is just some stupid agreement between our fathers, but nothing is set in stone. If I told him that I won’t marry the girl, he wouldn’t push the issue, I don’t think. I’ve never even met her.”
“If you told him?”
“Am I supposed to do that right now?” he asks, a bit of anger in his voice. “I just told you how bad off he is. I can’t put anything on him, not right now. If it was just a dalliance, I don’t think the Duchess would give it another glance, but…”
“But what?” I ask.
“But,” he looks at me, helplessness on his face. “It isn’t just a dalliance, is it? I feel something a little more between us, something…more serious.”
“Serious?” The word brings strange emotions up in my heart; the chief among them is anxiety. I guess I have never given it any thought as to whether what he and I were doing was all that serious. We just kissed the one time; the other time, we did a good bit more than kiss, though.
“Unless you didn’t think it was,” he quickly backpedals. “I don’t want to put that on you. I am not trying to pressure you into anything, Charlene.”
“No,” I say, stepping up to him, abandoning any attempt to choose my words, and just allowing them to flow. “I wouldn’t mind something serious.”
“You wouldn’t?” he asks, his smirk threatening to return. “Are you sure?”
“I think so,” I admit.
“Well, that brings us back to the issue,” he says, smirk fully back in place. “I can’t be seen getting into anything serious right now.” Despite his words, he takes a step closer to me, so close we could touch.
“I have to admit, there is a bit of a thrill in that,” I tell him, running my fingers along the hem of his robe.
“If the Duchess finds out, I will be in serious trouble.” Jor’Mari picks up a strand of my hair, rubbing it between his fingers before tucking it behind my ear.
“There’s no one here now,” I tell him.
“No,” he says, stepping in close enough that I can feel the heat of his breath on my cheek. “She always finds out. She is nosy that way.”
“You have to ask, is it worth the risk then? I have to admit, I never thought you would be scared of some old…” My words are cut off as his lips press to mine. We come together in the twilight, clinging tight to one another.
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