AA3 59 - Fallout I

Verdan and Barb made their way through the Darjee settlement, picking their way around the piles of corpses that had been thrown together.

It was a gruesome affair, and though Gwen’s storm had abated, the blood and rain had worked in concert to make the base of the hill a quagmire of sucking mud.

It was only the Darjee and Thrall bodies that were left here now, and Verdan knew that parties of strong Kranjir were carrying them to be burnt, but there seemed to be no end to them.

The defeat of the Gormagyr had driven it to cut off all of its Thralls, and, not for the first time, Verdan wondered just how bad it would have been if the creature had escaped Kai.

Over a hundred Thralls had been left when the Gormagyr cut them loose, and that included a dozen or more at the prisoner pens.

Verdan was confident they still would have won, but there wouldn’t have been much left by the end.

Moving a little higher on the hill to avoid the mud, they passed by the remains of Verdan’s animated stone warrior. It had been fighting up until the moment its Aether ran out, taking the brunt of the combat where it could.

The smooth stone was pockmarked and damaged, with several larger sections broken away where the Darjee had been able to break through with their claws.

Shaking his head, Verdan thought of the brutal wounds he’d seen on many of the Kranjir. Darjee claws were terrifyingly effective; it was no wonder they had little need for other weapons.

“Looks like the Fwyn have been busy,” Barb said as they crested the hill and caught sight of the prisoner pens.

The Fwyn had left their old cages behind and had formed an earthen knoll the size of a small house a few hundred feet away. No doubt there was an extensive burrow underneath there to house them all.

“They’re probably all asleep,” Verdan said, eyeing the position of the sun thoughtfully. “Hopefully, some of them are still awake, though.”

“Right, yes, nocturnal,” Barb said with a shake of her head. “I always forget that about them.”

“It’s easy to,” Verdan said with a slight shrug. “Most other races we deal with are diurnal like us. I just have a lot of experience with Fwyn.”

“Right, from that raid where you found Sylvie and Elliot,” Barb said, clicking her fingers and nodding. “Not to mention the two living with us and the team that helped with the wall.”

Verdan nodded woodenly, internally cursing himself for the slip all the while. He’d actually been talking about working with them back in the Imperium.

Thankfully, he’d already put himself in a position where he was expected to be knowledgeable about other races, but he was annoyed that he’d spoken without thinking.

“So, I thought those Brecans were meant to be really big?” Barb asked, continuing on as they drew closer to the large mound of dirt. “Are they in there as well?”

“I think the smallest one I’ve ever seen was only a few inches taller than Elliot,” Verdan said, shrugging off his frustration and grinning at the shock on Barb’s face. “But yes, they’re likely down there; they bury themselves when they sleep and are usually more comfortable below ground. Hopefully, it’s the second of the two, as Brecan can sleep for a lot longer than we do.”

“How much longer?”

“Almost two complete days, sometimes longer, but then they go for a full month before needing sleep again.”

“A month without sleep?” Barb echoed, shaking her head in disbelief. “Yeah, no wonder they sleep for two whole days!”

Coming close to the house-sized mound of earth, Verdan circled it until he saw the entrance that had been shaped into position. A single Fwyn was sitting in the dark, and they looked up as Verdan came into view.

“Wizard, thank you again for helping save us,” the Fwyn said in low imperial, scrambling to his feet and bowing respectfully to Verdan.

“The credit goes to everyone involved,” Verdan said, all too aware that many others had paid in blood for this victory. “But I was hoping to ask for a favour of your people, if I may?”

The Fwyn hesitated before giving a half-nod. “I’m sure we would be willing to listen. If you would wait outside, I will speak with the others.”

“Thank you, that would be greatly appreciated,” Verdan said, giving the Fwyn a respectful nod before moving away from the entrance, Barb moving along behind him.

“So, that sounded good. What did he say?” Barb asked, reminding Verdan that the conversation had been in a language she didn’t speak.

“He’s taking my request to the rest of them,” Verdan said, choosing a mostly dry part of the ground to take a seat. He was still tired, and he was going to take what opportunities he could to rest before everything got busy again.

Barb nodded and idly fiddled with her prosthetic before taking a seat next to him. The two of them waited in companionable silence; each lost in their own thoughts as they did their best to ignore the stench of the nearby battlefield.

Around fifteen minutes passed before the Fwyn returned, this time accompanied by a second, far older, Fwyn.

The newcomer had pale, blotchy skin, his ears sagging a little with age, and his back hunched, making him look small, even for a Fwyn.

“Wizard Blacke, it is good to meet you,” the old Fwyn said, leaving the darkened interior of the earthen knoll to shake Verdan’s hand. “My name is Hursk; I am the leader of this enforced tribe and our envoy to you and the other humans.”

Verdan saw the old Fwyn squinting and blinking rapidly as he tried to get used to the bright sun beating down on them. Some might have taken their emergence as a sign they didn’t trust him to enter, but Verdan was confident it was the opposite.

Fwyn were careful and preferred to work from safety where they could. For such an old and clearly important Fwyn to meet with him outside was a gesture of trust that Verdan appreciated.

“A pleasure to meet you, Hursk,” Verdan said before gesturing to Barb. “This is my companion, Barb. She doesn’t speak low imperial, however.”

“That is fine,” Hursk said in fluent common, giving Verdan a slight smile before turning to Barb. “I am Hursk. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“And you,” Barb said, somewhat stiltedly, caught off guard by the Fwyn speaking in common.

“The Kranjir said that none of your people could speak common earlier,” Verdan remarked, his tone turning the statement into more of a question.

“A necessary deception,” Hursk said, somewhat apologetically. “We’ve not had the best relations with humans in the past, and we’ve found that limiting communication allows us to better slip away. The only reason we haven’t done so is your presence.”

Barb looked somewhat surprised by the statement, and Verdan abruptly realised that the odd ancestral memory that the Fwyn held would likely cause him a problem at some point.

Especially now that one of them knew common.

That particular problem was definitely for another day, though; they needed to deal with everything else first. Besides, hopefully, there wouldn’t be much opportunity for anyone to speak to Hursk about Verdan.

“So, I believe you wished to ask for a favour?” Hursk prompted after a few moments, drawing Verdan out of his thoughts.

“Yes, of course.” Verdan mentally shook himself and focused properly on the matter at hand. “There’s a meeting shortly that I’d like for a representative of the Fwyn and Brecan to attend. We’ll be discussing establishing a camp nearby while all this is worked through, and I was hoping that you would be willing to assist us in setting something up.”

“I see no issue in that,” Hursk said, looking thoughtful for a moment before nodding. “I will send word to the Brecan, if any are awake, and see if they have an envoy to send.”

“They’re already sleeping?” Verdan asked, a little surprised that they hadn’t waited longer.

“They had nowhere to sleep in those damned cages; they’re all long overdue. The Darjee would only let one or two sleep at a time, and they killed others if they overslept,” Hursk said bitterly, his eyes going dark for a moment before the old Fwyn straightened. “I’ll send a runner to find Gar’Dru for you; they are the leader of the Brecan and young enough to have coped better with the lack of sleep.”

“That would be greatly appreciated, thank you,” Verdan said, but Hursk waved aside his thanks as he hobbled back into the burrow to talk to the other Fwyn.

Verdan asked a few general questions of Hursk while they waited, trying to understand more about the Fwyn community and what they had planned.

The answer was that the prisoners represented the survivors of three different tribes of Fwyn, some of them having been prisoners for years, with the most recently captured having joined them almost a year ago.

The Brecan were in much the same situation, to the point that some of the Fwyn and Brecan had been captured at the same time.

Fwyn working with Brecan was a tale as old as time, so Verdan wasn’t especially surprised, but he wondered what they would do next.

Hursk had said that they didn’t have a firm plan in place yet but they had all agreed that they couldn’t go home. There was nothing left for them there.

A slight tremble ran through the ground around them as Hursk answered a question from Barb about his magic.

“Ah, here they are now,” Hursk said, breaking off his explanation with an apologetic glance at Barb.

Barb frowned and began to ask a question before stopping dead as the ground at the entrance to the burrow churned and shifted.

A huge figure rose from the dirt like someone walking up out of the sea, its smoky grey eyes glinting in the light as it took several measured steps over to them.

Barb had gone silent as she stared at the Brecan, the eight-foot-tall figure towering over her as its squat head turned to regard Hursk.

The Brecan lacked a nose, ears, or mouth, and their glittering crystal eyes were the main distinctive feature on their face. That wasn’t to say that they were featureless, but the bands and whirls of colour that they bore were more akin to the veins of minerals in a mine than the features of a human.

“Greetings, Gar’Dru,” Verdan said in common, trusting that the finely tuned senses of the Brecan would pick up his words without issue.

The Brecan didn’t visibly speak, but there was an all but imperceptible ripple in the Aether around them, and Hursk spoke up. “Gar’Dru thanks you for your greeting and returns it. They wish that the situation were better and apologise for startling your companion.”

Barb had made no overt signs of distress or confusion, yet her shock was evident, and Verdan began to wonder just how much trouble he’d cause bringing these two to a meeting.