AbyssalRoadTrip
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Abyssal Road Trip - 439 - Vengeance
🕑 Added 2024-08-15 04:38:27 +0000 UTCAmdirlain’s PoV - Vehtë - Greece
After the drama with Lutu and the gorgons, the next day’s trip along the coast proceeded with a suspenseful quiet. Kadaklan harvesting from bushes to test for alchemical properties made Amdirlain jump in her skin the first time leaves snapped. Startled by her spinning to face him, Kadaklan laughed and lifted the leaves he’d claimed. “Are you a bit on edge?”
“This hasn’t been the trip I expected,” replied Amdirlain.
Kadaklan shrugged. “Then you should set your expectations aside and live in the moment. True understanding means accepting what is rather than what you’d like things to be.”
“I’m not very good at merely accepting. Things can always be improved,” said Amdirlain. “Heck, I even got around to admitting my emotional issues properly.”
“The acceptance I refer to means seeing the whole situation, not just the parts you’d like. Once you understand, then you can make successful changes. If you don’t understand first, your changes could be counterproductive to your goals,” replied Kadaklan. “As an Alchemist, I need to know all the properties of a plant before I use it in brewing, but with life, one has to take part.”
“It’s important to observe and test a foe’s style so you don’t mistake traps for openings in their guard,” added Jinfeng. Her gaze flitted to the beach they’d been skirting, where two crabs clashed over a partly eaten four-metre tuna dwarfed by the looming crustaceans. “Are there a few villages along this shore because of the crabs? Or are there so many crabs because of the lack of villages?”
“The amount of crabs is because of the ley line that follows this coast,” replied Sarah. “It triggers the crab’s giantism. Even if they’re cleared out, the energy will transform some of the next generation of normal crabs birthed.”
“And here I was wondering why the crab didn’t eat its fish out in the water instead of bringing it to the beach,” said Klipyl. “Do they need to breathe while they eat?”
“They don’t. Maybe it liked the view better on land, or a bigger threat is out there and it sought dry land,” replied Amdirlain.
“There are some villages inland and further along the coast, nothing close to us but ruins and kobolds in caves,” announced Sarah. “Based on the open terrain, the next village is at least three days north at the pace we’ve been travelling. It will be towards the top of the bay where the rough terrain gives them a foundation for defences.”
“Maybe we can ask at the next village why there are so few about,” proposed Klipyl.
Sarah shrugged. “It’s not a big mystery, and Lizardfolk civilisations follow particular patterns. Their smaller coastal villages are set up partially submerged or to take advantage of naturally defensible coves. This stretch is open land despite the slope, so that is likely why it’s unpopulated. Kobolds prefer tunnels, and if I bothered to isolate the ones I’ve heard, we might find them in the hills around here. Probably not in the immediate areas, as they’ll have stayed away from the big bad that Sthenṓ would be to them.”
“Are you not listening to all the minds about the place?” asked Klipyl. “How did you hear that Dragon from so far away?”
“I’m only listening for screaming rage, and she had a loud mental voice,” replied Sarah. “Shall we keep moving?”
The first village turned out to be further north than Sarah predicted. With the battle-ready guards at the top of the cliff behind it, the group skirted the village and continued north along the ridgeline rather than continuing to follow the coast. Their pace of travel remained easy between Kadaklan’s investigation of the local plants and the hours Amdirlain spent sparring and teaching Jinfeng and Klipyl. Their few interactions with the locals were wary and at a distance, with warriors waving them away from villages.
It was two weeks of skirting ridgelines and following gullies before they saw a village ahead with no visible guards patrolling the area. The village was a decent-sized place near a stream fed from water rushing down a nearby rock face. Despite being late afternoon, no sign of smoke rose from any of the dome houses the Lizardfolk favoured.
The villagers had stacked slabs of grey stone to make the houses, sealing the gaps with dried mud and grasses. Tanned goat hides blocked the interior of the low open archways, except where the wind whistling through the small windows had successfully loosened the ties. The slapping of the hides and the bleating of hungry goats were the only sound from the village.
“This looks ominous. It seems like a plague has come through,” noted Jinfeng, and she nodded towards a partially complete rock cairn with two figures slumped near it.
To True Sight, a greenish magical haze lay across the houses, particularly the half-finished cairn.
“There are some incoherent minds still present,” advised Sarah. “The villagers aren’t in good shape. It seems someone took a dislike to them, and used a blessing to curse them.”
“Is it still active?” asked Jinfeng.
Amdirlain grunted. “I’ll deal with it and bring the survivors out. Where do you want to triage them, Kadaklan?”
“Just here, we’ll flatten these shrubs,” Kadaklan said, motioning to the surrounding knee-high greenery.
Amdirlain shattered the curse before moving into the village. She teleported to the closest entryway, and the smell of death and sickness immediately assaulted her nose. Ducking to fit through the low doorway, her gaze scanned the interior. Four solid stone columns supported the roof of the dome, and between them was a firepit surrounded by metal cooking implements. Near various beds around the exterior hung wicked-looking hooked swords and spears whose steel tips gleamed with care.
A quick check of the house found only one among twenty occupants alive, and Amdirlain used Psychometabolism techniques to bolster their body before shifting them out of the house. She checked the souls of each as she went rapidly between houses, healing those near death with Universal Life. As she stabilised survivors, she brought them to where the others were busy setting up in a newly flattened hollow.
There isn’t anything special about them, so why wipe them out?
Before she had laid the second villager onto the grass, Kadaklan was by their side, examining eyes and vomit-stained mouths. “Any idea as to the cause?”
“It's magical. I’ve broken the curse that lay over the village, but I didn’t want to leave them in the huts with the dead. I don’t know if they’d be able to be inflicted with the same disease twice,” said Amdirlain.
“Good point. Bring the rest here, and we’ll clean this filth from them,” ordered Kadaklan. Dipping into his storage bag, he brought out tonics and elixirs ripe with Ki.
“I’ve bolstered their nutrition levels with psionics, but I didn’t want to push their recovery too quickly in case there were other issues,” said Amdirlain before she moved to retrieve more.
Kadaklan nodded. “That’s the right approach. Since we don’t know their bodies, you could cause them unexpected issues. I didn’t know you’d been reading medical treatment texts.”
Amdirlain smiled grimly. “I followed hunches from Precognition.”
“Can we just wash them with water, or do they use sand scrubs or something?” asked Klipyl, appearing next to Kadaklan.
“They can spend a lot of time underwater, so it won’t hurt them to clean them normally,” replied Amdirlain.
Klipyl nodded in relief and pulled out a waterskin and some clothes.
Sarah helped with clearing the houses, but they found only twenty-seven of the Lizardfolk alive out of nearly two hundred.
“What a cowardly deed,” Jinfeng said, helping Kadaklan tend a weakly moaning survivor.
Amdirlain didn’t pause, simply jumping back to the village.
When they’d retrieved the last of the survivors, Sarah shaped a shelter into existence, silvery ectoplasm transforming into stone and wood. After they all pitched in to rearrange the shelter to Kadaklan’s satisfaction, Amdirlain tended to the dead.
She had settled a child beside their mother and reached to set the rocks into place when she felt Sarah behind her. “Checking up on me?”
“I was concerned you might take this hard,” said Sarah.
“I don’t know them. Their souls have already gone on, and I’m not raising the dead wholesale,” Amdirlain said, floating rocks into place to cover the family. “The stupid thing is that in this case, the plinth’s judgement could punish me for helping. If I brought them back and they’re good to others, that’s all fine, but if they’re not, it will hold me accountable. Yet if I leave them all dead, I’m not responsible for them being in that state, so that’s fine by the plinth. How fucked up is that?”
“Every rule set has gaps,” offered Sarah. “You’re not kicking yourself about not bringing them back?”
“If I didn’t come here, they’d still be dead, and the survivors would have died as well. Now, let’s move forward. My attempts at Analysis didn’t give me details on who cast the curse, only that it used a Blessing from the Path of Disease, amplified with spells,” noted Amdirlain.
“Maybe Gideon’s adhering to your request to butt out and only giving you what they supply others,” said Sarah. “I got the same thing. Why were you hoping to learn more?”
“I’m going to find this arsehole and educate him on the cost of wiping out villages,” declared Amdirlain coldly as she covered another child, tucking elaborately detailed hand-carved toys into the hide covering with them.
“I’d prefer you left it up to me,” said Sarah.
“If I’m going to be punished for something, I’ll do it with my own hands,” said Amdirlain. “Since my intentions can be seen as influencing you, going after them now will count against me. Shall we tend the dead in the next house?”
Sarah grunted discontentedly and set to helping Amdirlain with removing the dead from another house, this one with no survivors, so they pulled it apart to extend the funeral cairn.
Kadaklan approached and beckoned for Amdirlain’s attention. “I thought you should know some villagers are coherent now.”
“You’re not just getting them back to full health?” asked Sarah.
“I don’t know their physiology well enough to know if I’d just disguise symptoms of the illness lingering. This way, the survivors have time to process their grief without feeling obligated to assist us,” said Kadaklan. “Anyway, if I understand them correctly, one of the coherent ones is the chieftain.”
“That’s good news. Maybe he can shed some light on what happened,” said Amdirlain. A white flame ran across her hands to burn any disease from them even as Sarah used a purification device to eliminate contaminants from their clothing; its segmented pieces twirled like a flame in her hands. Cleaned up, they returned to the makeshift aid station.
As Amdirlain approached, the chief tried to lift himself from the ground; his movements were unsteady.
“Please don’t push yourself,” said Amdirlain, stretching her hand out to signal him to stay still. “Your village has lost many people. You’ll need all your strength to recover. You can call me Am. How should I address you?”
The Lizardfolk swayed briefly, and his claws dug into the ground. “I’m Urli. How do you speak my language?”
“There is some magic at work to let us speak clearly,” replied Amdirlain as she knelt beside him. “We found magic lying across your village, created by someone worshipping the local goddess of disease. Do you have any idea why?”
“We’ve only had one visitor of late. He didn’t say he was a Priest,” spluttered Urli. “He wore no symbol I recognised and asked for nothing to appease her.”
Amdirlain nodded. “Tell me about him?”
“He demanded we provide shelter,” explained Urli. “When we didn’t vacate a house for him, he insulted our clan. Before the warriors moved to attack him, he spat on the ground and stalked away to the north.”
With a low groan, he rubbed a palm across his chest. “Are you sure it was a Priest?”
“There is no doubt about the disease or the source,” said Amdirlain. “I just don’t know who set the curse. How long after his departure did the first person get sick?”
Kadaklan offered the chieftain a waterskin and motioned Amdirlain to be patient. The chieftain briefly fumbled with the skin before tilting his head back and spraying a jet into his mouth. After he lowered the skin, Kadaklan secured it on a rack beside him.
“A week later, the first of the children were delirious. On the third day, those who sickened first were dead, and half the village was down with the same fever and aches.”
“What can you tell me about this stranger?” asked Amdirlain.
“There was nothing about him that said he was a Priest. He carried only a staff capped with dull copper, not good steel, and a black hide satchel; nothing about him showed his clan or a goddess. There was an oddness about him that made me uncomfortable,” offered Urli. He weakly thrashed his head and babbled in disbelief. “He didn’t even announce himself or say he served a deity. As soon as I spoke to him, he started demanding shelter. Why would a Priest strong enough to sicken the entire village come along looking like a pauper?”
Kadaklan crouched on the other side of Urli, regarding him with concern.
Maybe he wanted a feeble excuse to do precisely what he did. I get the message, Kadaklan: I shouldn’t overexert him.
The mental images were hazy because of Urli’s state, but Amdirlain recovered them easily enough.
“I’ll see if I can track him down,” said Amdirlain. “Do you know which path he took?”
“The path to the northeast. Beyond the spring, take the path over the ridgeline, there spurs split off the back of the mountain,” explained Urli, his gaze bleak. “You are a strange one, soft skin. Why do you concern yourself with us?”
“I’m not good at turning a blind eye to acts of this nature,” said Amdirlain. “Since he did this so casually to your village, he might have done it to others, or plan to do so.”
Yet I can kill a Dragon without batting an eye; where does the line of my hypocrisy lie? Or is it my gamer brain thinking dragons are the top foes to kill? Or does Tiamat’s change to the chromatics make it hard to feel sympathy for them?
Amdirlain mentally groaned.
I need to work out what to do with those eggs I’ve got in stasis.
Holding that thought aside, she rose and nodded politely to Urli. “I’ll be back in a little while. Why don’t you get some rest?”
Klipyl took her place beside Urli and offered him a bowl of stewed meat. “Chew slowly. Let the juices relax your stomach.”
Urli grunted in protest at her tending him, but Klipyl stabbed a fork into the bowl and lifted a meat section. “No arguing, or you’ll get restricted to broth.”
Past the ridgeline, low, scraggly bushes covered the rough slope, providing little hindrance no matter which direction one walked. The major obstacles were small drops and spurs channelling passage further down the slope.
Looking over the slope, she triggered different psychometry techniques and delved into the past until she caught a mirage of a Lizardfolk male departing the village. Though he looked plain, death lingered around him. With that nudge, Ki Movement had her racing along the path, following flickering images to track his progress. He passed through three untouched villages that looked much like the one he had decimated. Similar domed buildings with stonework sealed up with mud. Amdirlain mentally touched the inhabitants and found them healthy and ignorant of the calamity that had left them unscathed. She circled each village and picked up the trail on the far side.
Eventually, his path led to a walled seaport nestled between two mountain spurs that reached the water’s edge. She studied its layout from her perch on a terraced hillside among grains that supplied herds of goats. The deep harbour hosted a fleet of small fishing boats and four large masted vessels with a catamaran-style rig to either side. More significant buildings ran along the harbour's rim, with multiple domes forming nodules off a central structure.
Concentric crescent walls expanded from a central fort, dividing the town into layered districts, the wide walls allowed plenty of space on top for patrols to move behind stationary guards who monitored the approaches and interior. Their steel armour and weapons looked well maintained, with a distinctly consistent feel to their styling.
Within the town’s crescent walls were a host of circular buildings, offset to cause the paths between them to wind. The layout restricted lines of sight to only a segment of any building’s length.
Cloaked from sight and scent, Amdirlain followed some farmers through the gates. She followed the flickering images from the more basic outer district through multiple gates to an area with larger dwellings. Amidst the more affluent townsfolk, whose scales bore filigree metalwork, she arrived at a sizable house with ornate markings around its archways. The servants’ minds revealed their master’s recent return and, armed with his name, Amdirlain tried Analysis again.
[Name: Yisvix
Species: Lizardfolk
Class: Wizard / Priest / Scout / Hunter
Level: 29 / 29 / 27 / 27
Defence: 104
Health: 2,522
Faith: 58
Magic: 39
Mana: 14,280
Melee Attack Power: 84
Combat Skills: Body Weaponry [Ad] (21), Hook Sword [M] (39), Various affinities, blessings, and spell lists.
Details: The eldest son of a prominent clan chief, he was ignored in the succession in favour of his physically stronger brothers. He is now determined to make all the clans grovel at the feet of his goddess with his own power.]
Lightly touching his thoughts, she found no consideration for his recent deeds present. A mental nudge with the chieftain’s features caused delight to bubble up, and he drew out a slate with other locations in the mountains marked. The plan she caught from his mind was to raise a festering undead army to conquer in his goddess’s name. With him considering the map, it was simple to get him to recall the locations, and Amdirlain moved ahead with the next phase. Individually, the servants exited the property, sure their master had sent them on chores around the seaport before Amdirlain let herself inside.
As the door shattered against the wall, he started up by reflex—too slowly to matter. Amdirlain put her hand through his chest, smearing the wall and the polished stone shelves behind him with blood, scales, flesh, and fragments of bone. When her hand retracted, his Soul came with it.
If you hit someone squishy hard enough, they don’t fold over your hand; the punch goes straight through them.
[Combat Summary
Lizardfolk x1
Total Experience gained: 4,862
Empress Malfex: +4,862]
Amdirlain looked at the malevolent nature of the Lizardfolk she’d slain. Tempted to send his Soul to be wiped clean, she reluctantly let go rather than draw attention from the goddess he’d served. As if weighed down with concrete blocks, the Soul’s ethereal form plunged, breaching the Astral Plane’s barrier. After she explored his house, she left with a fraction of the valuables she could find, which still overloaded three large leather sacks.
Among his things, she found a depiction of a female Lizardfolk with deep red scales made from carved rubies behind a shrine. Along its edges were jagged lines of silver, whose rough formation resembled barbed wire. She stood over a pyre with one hand extended above the shrouded figure, ready to be burned; her hooked talons caught in the process of descending to ravage the dead’s flesh. In a circle of blackened metal, at the bottom of the depiction was a dripping five-headed flail. Sensing the blessings upon it, she left the mosaic and its accompanying shrine alone.
His blood cleaned from her skin and clothing, and Amdirlain hopped to the oldest village afflicted with the curse. Among the buildings, zombies shuffled about, their scales rotting and covered with a damp, sickly sheen. Amdirlain activated Phoenix’s Rapture and flared the aura to cauterise the location. Circling the village, she incinerated the zombies that had shambled a distance from the village.
[Combat Summary
Pestilence Zombie x87
Total experience gained: 26,970
Empress Malfex: +26,970
Empress Malfex Levelled Up! x2]
She dealt with the other locations in short order, searing everything to ash with the primordial flames of Phoenix’s Rapture. Once, the experience notifications would have felt like a message about her own inadequacy in not arriving sooner, but now they only counted a sad tally of the dead.
Upon her return to the others, the chieftain stirred and regarded her with concern. “You are back quick. Has the trail grown cold?”
“No, I found him. He won’t be doing that to another village,” reassured Amdirlain.
The Lizardfolk’s inner eyelids snapped shut in surprise. “You only left a short time ago.”
“I followed the stench he’d smeared across the land and then smeared him.”
“We have nothing else to give you,” rasped Urli, his words slow with fatigue.
“I’m not looking for a reward. Now you need to rest up and recover,” said Amdirlain. “Thank you for helping me stop him.”
‘It wasn’t just out of spite?’ The question came through loud in Sarah’s public thoughts.
Amdirlain’s expression didn’t change as she projected to Sarah. ‘He planned to create pockets of specialised undead to contaminate waterways and fisheries. He picked this village as it was remote enough, and those that didn’t rise would eventually pollute the water with the disease inflicted by the curse.’
‘Undead can stir even without a curse in effect with so many dying in a brief space of time,’ returned Sarah, before she turned to the chieftain.
“Urli, is it an insult among your people to cremate the dead?” asked Sarah. His gaze flickered with confusion, and Sarah gently explained the custom.
“There isn’t enough wood for a single body, let alone all the dead here,” objected Urli.
“The flame isn’t an issue, as I’ve spells that can provide the required fire. Would your village take insult?” Amdirlain prompted calmly.
“We won’t stay here,” grunted Urli, pain slurring his words. “If you treat the remains without malice, no one will take offence.”
Amdirlain set down the sacks of coins and precious objects she’d looted beside Urli. “I hope these objects help you get re-established.”
He started back in surprise at the bags’ appearance, and when he settled again, he looked at the bulging sacks and lifted his gaze to hers in confusion. “What of yourself, Am?”
“I took these from the traveller’s home,” advised Amdirlain. “You have your villagers to look after, and he doesn’t need them now.”
“We won’t be fit to travel soon,” said Urli. His gaze flickered towards the pens where Jinfeng had been tending the goats; thoughts of the effort of herding them rose clearly.
“We’ll stay until you are all recovered and see you there safely.”
Kadaklan coughed. “If I might speak here, I can speed up your recovery now that you’re all awake and alert. Being unfamiliar with your species, I didn’t want to rush the process while you were unconscious and couldn’t advise me of how you felt.”
Urli chuffed and bobbed his head; the tension that had been present beneath his scales relaxed.
“I’ll leave you in Kadaklan’s care,” said Amdirlain. She nodded at his acknowledgement and repeated thanks before heading to the cairn. Her aura’s white flames led the way, incinerating the remains and piled rocks.
Behind her, Klipyl attributed the flames to the spells Amdirlain had mentioned, heading off their fearful prayers of appeasement. The vague reassurances she offered hinted at dragons and their oddities.
Maybe I should have waited until we’d gotten them to their relatives.
When Amdirlain returned to the group, the Lizardfolk regarded her in nervous awe; their tongues flickered as they scented the air.
“What are you?” asked Urli.
“Those flames are a form of Power that a Wizard with the right Affinity can tap into,” Amdirlain replied calmly. “The particular effect centres on me when I invoke it, and that’s all.”
Kadaklan had the villagers up and about in days. The group camped out in the open during this time, much to Sarah’s amusement, and Amdirlain kept further Power displays to a minimum.
Klipyl scouted nearby villages to ensure the disease hadn’t spread via the stream while Amdirlain checked on the relatives’ village. When the survivors were ready to be moved. She used Fabricate to prepare replacements for their possessions, unsure how well cleansing them would remove lingering traces of the disease.
With their travels through the mountains resumed, they returned to the quiet routine they’d established before the massacre they’d stumbled upon. The long break had allowed Sarah time to change the house’s interior, and the pair regained their evening privacy. After hitting the northern edge of the mountains, they struck out straight for the isthmus. Their route along the isthmus skirted the Lizardfolk settlements on the coast and headed into the central hills to avoid contact. However, with the isthmus only thirty-five kilometres long, they pushed the pace and made the mainland of Greece in a day.
Amdirlain set off towards the southeast once the isthmus was behind them, and Sarah grunted curiously. “Did you get your left and right mixed up?”
“The remains of Athens are in this direction,” Amdirlain motioned ahead.
“You feeling the need to gloat?”
“No, just something niggling at me the last few days,” replied Amdirlain.
Sarah nodded. “That’s fine. Let’s take a detour.”
They deliberately timed their arrival to reach a hill with a view of the bay where Athens had stood after sunset. The Lizardfolk township on the bay had similarly circular buildings as the town where she’d slain the plague Priest.
“From this perspective, the town looks like the inside of a warren, twisting back and forth, finding a path through soft earth,” noted Kadaklan.
Amdirlain’s attention was on the hill of the Acropolis, where the Parthenon would have stood on Earth with its crags of grey stone. From their hilltop vantage point, they could see its top was covered with broken stumps of flame-cracked pillars and a mound of collapsed stonework that looked like a Dragon had caved in the roof.
“Is there anyone home in the ruins?” asked Klipyl.
The question drew Amdirlain's attention back to the others waiting for her. "I'm not sure. I don't feel like it’s dangerous. It is simply important that I collect something from them. No wards would have survived the devastation, and I can't see any sign of energy lingering over the ruins."
Sarah looked discontent. “It was once a temple, and there might be further surprises. Is there no chance you’d turn on Resonance to check?”
“No.”
Klipyl nodded towards the west. “Why don’t you ask Thea if she remembers what’s there? She’s still serving the temple of Hestia at Sanctuary Cove.”
“I feel the interest is newer arrivals to the ruins,” said Amdirlain.
“Ahh. Do you think someone dragged something in there post-looting?” asked Klipyl.
With a helpless shrug, Amdirlain aimed for the most prominent rubble mound.
Comments
CringeWorthyStudios
Well, yes, that’s always an option too. 🤣
Glenn Wright
Or its a more complex situation than it appears ;)
CringeWorthyStudios
Well, I guess that’s another Goddess on Am’s naughty list that she can deal with once she’s free from her curse… Thanks for the chapter!
