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The Broken Lands: Chapter 4
🕑 Added 2021-11-08 22:10:48 +0000 UTCxxxxxxxxx Chapter 4
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Gran would have preferred to drop off the side, but he’s strong, and we didn’t want to alert the thing just in case it turned out to be something even more dangerous than we thought, like a diarch or worse.
It might have already seen us, it might see us soon, but if you want to survive, you stack the odds in your favor.
Hell, it could be a real danger, like a burial shroud in the process of draining the life from a roc. We’d be flying for our lives then. We have exactly two lightning javelins for emergencies and while that’s enough to probably kill or see off a strangle scarf, they’d have to call in the navy if we see a burial shroud.
Wait, burial shrouds are kinda slow. Gran could definitely outrun a shroud. They’re only dangerous because they’re all but impossible to kill.
Ah! I think Mica’s fear is getting to me. As Gran gained air, I pulled Mica down into the loose top of my leather jacket and lightly scratched his neck. He made soft croaking sounds and let himself be soothed, and both our fears faded.
I felt Conrin rustle behind me, and it reminded me to get my crossbow ready, so I did that while we flew.
We got closer fast, which really did bring home how slowly the thing was drifting, and it wasn’t quite as big as I’d thought, definitely not roc sized.
Once we were close enough, it became clear what it was, though I’d only ever seen drawings of them.
A gnathotis.
A body the size of an oxcart, each wing nearly as big as Granarrik’s entire wingspan, for a total of around a hundred feet or more, though it was hard to be sure since one of them was definitely badly broken. A legless, tapered slug-like body a few shades darker and browner than the grey of the sky. Its namesake, that mighty, folding jaw that opened up so huge it could probably actually swallow an oxcart, though its teeth are small and prickly, for holding on rather than slicing off. It’s actually a little comical looking, since if it had a proper nose it would be a really good parody of a square jawed man’s profile.
Overall, they’re really very similar to madkites and bigmads. Wings, a body that’s mostly stomach, and a big mouth, with an appetite to match. The key differences is that madkites don’t even have the intelligence of an animal, gnathotis are at least smart enough to not slam themselves to death trying to eat something on a sky island. They’re also made of actual flesh, blood, and bones, and while rank to the point of nearly being inedible, can be fed to our animals or composted in the slime pit.
That’s not to say they’re not dumb. Momma said they’re about as smart as frogs or toads, which I’ve never seen in person, so I have to take her word for it. They’ll eat anything moving and small enough to swallow, and aren’t good judges of size, but they know not to fly too close to land, and will flee from things bigger than them or if you hurt them enough. That’s genius compared to a madkite.
They are really similar, though. People think they’re related somehow, but when a madkite gets this size, you get a bigmad, and the only reason we don’t fear bigmads more is that they keep killing themselves by landing on islands and being unable to take off again.
The wing was broken in at least two, maybe three places, right along the humerus, and it clearly hurt, but not enough that the stupid thing remembered to not flap at all. Instead, it would start a wingbeat, bend the wing, kind of do this whole body shiver, and pause for a few seconds before it completed the stroke. Then it would rest, sometimes for up to a minute, and try again. The creature’s side was streaked with cuts and old, congealed blood that had crusted over. It even had a smell, a kind of sour carrion stench that hit us whenever we were downwind of it. The wounds might be infected, or it might just have rotting meat in its stomach.
It’s big round eyes tracked us as we flew nearer, and it clearly tried to lunge at us, only to spin around as the working wing flapped too hard. It didn’t open its mouth, because it was too far away. They suck things in by opening their enormous mouth at the last moment, creating a vacuum. The big wing could have been a danger and hit us if we stayed still, but Granarrik avoided that on his own.
“Do you see that?” Conrin asked quietly.
“No, what?”
“Watch when it lunges. Bait it.”
Gran’s nervousness at being around a bigger flier had disappeared pretty quickly when it became clear to him that it was just helplessly flailing. That’s one of the reasons he’s not a great watchbird. If he doesn’t think it’s a threat to his 60 foot wingspan, 500 pound ass, he’s not concerned with it.
Conversely, if Mica thinks it’s a threat to his thirty inch wingspan, one pound self, he’s very, very concerned with it. But I’d rather have too much concern than not enough.
Granarrik back winged a bit and held his distance as the gnathotis twisted, and once again, as it came around and saw us, it lunged again.
This time, I saw it. As the monster gave a big push with its one working wing, the body tensed as well. But something in its body shifted, forming a bulge against the side of the legless body.
“There’s something in there,” I said, realizing.
“Mmmhmm. It ate something heavy. Really heavy. Probably made it fly so badly it slammed into something big, a rock, or maybe the underside of an island,” he explained.
I nodded. That made sense. I saw the cuts on the side with the wing. “What do you think it ate? Just a rock?”
“Mmm. We should kill it and look inside,” he said, disagreeing without disagreeing. “I’ll jump on its back and gaff it, then cut the spine. We don’t want to tie ourselves to it, but it can’t fly, so I’ll jump off if I need to.”
Alright then. Coaxing Gran to fly roughly behind it as it resumed its irregular spinning motion. When it was actually in the middle of a flap, it twisted its body fairly fast. But as soon as that giant sail of a wing stopped, its momentum died to almost nothing due to the wind resistance. Gnathotis have forward facing eyes and only some peripheral vision, and were stupid, so as soon as we were out of sight, it forgot about us.
Once we were close enough, Conrin leapt for it, a gaff in each hand, with a short length of rope going from the end of the gaff to his hands. He hit on his knees and elbows, slamming the big metal hooks of the gaffs into the sides of the thing to hold himself in place.
Even with the impact of landing on it, and the hooks digging into its body, it was still several breaths before it realized something was on it. Even then, it just wiggled its legless body and flailed its wings a little.
My mentor wrapped the rope from the gaffs around the bend of each arm, letting him hold on and brace against his feet as he pushed himself towards the top of the head. Then, once he was as solid as he felt he needed, he pulled out an axe and a hammer.
No mighty weapons these. The axe was a common combination of small shovel and axe, and the hammer was an iron hand maul. Neither was made for combat.
But there was no heroic fight, no fierce struggle here. The experienced dwarf hunter put the head of the axe across the base of the skull, finding it no doubt due to his experience with these things, and hammered it through the tough hide and thick bone with hard, sure strokes of the hammer.
It died with a crunch and a fully body shiver, then went still without so much as a sigh.
I flew Gran over, and we tethered to the enormous corpse. Using hand hooks, gaffs without the long poles, we climbed around the body and started prying the mouth open.
Ugh. I was a little too full for this. Why couldn’t the damned thing have waited until we’d finished cooking? Maybe after I’d had time to visit a bush.
Gnathotis catch things by opening their big mouths really fast, sucking in anything in front. The bones of their jaws are complicated and flexible, working together to turn a big mouth into an enormous chasm. Unfortunately, this means we have to dig our mining tools out of a pack to pry it open, and even Conrin hadn’t done that before, so it took some effort and thought.
We got it, though. No matter if you’re tired and uncomfortable, we do the work until it is through. Even as it cracked open under our effort, I felt a slight breeze coming from inside the mouth, which stank but wasn’t any more rancid than the outside of the monster. As the mouth opened wide enough for us to see inside, I realized what was creating the breeze.
It was a tiny swirl of air, visible only because there was some dust and small specks of detritus flying slowly around itself for no apparent reason. Importantly, there was a tangible, if tiny, bit of elemental wind magic that I could sense there.
“A zephyr!” I exclaimed.
The least of the wind elemental forces. Not even complex enough to be called alive, zephyrs were only slightly more complex than a dust devil formed by unmagical wind. More a magical phenomenon, they formed when there was the right combination of intense wind magic, which was widely available here in the plane of air, and a gentle gust of wind. The zephyr would then be self-sustaining, at least until it was torn apart by literally anything else.
A baby’s wave could disrupt one and scatter it. They could be made anywhere, but usually died the second they formed, to the point it was rare to actually see one. That was one of the reasons they were considered good luck, since fortunate events were hard to come by.
“You’re supposed to show up before we have all the good luck to let us know,” I jokingly chided it as it slowly fluttered out of the gnathotis’s mouth and into the vast sky, disappearing quickly.
“Saras, I think it did,” Conrin said quietly.
I looked into the mouth, which lead directly into the cavernous stomach of the monster, and at first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, because it was deep in shadow.
“Light,” I cast, bringing a gentle white glow to the inside. Immediately, golden sparkle filled the beast.
“Oh! Shiny!” Mica exclaimed, hopping inside to look at the enormous lump.
I will admit, for one heart stopping moment, I thought it was actually gold. But my mentor is a dwarf, and one of the things we look for when we’re out hunting is any source of valuable ore we can find. He’s taught me what to look for in minerals and stone since he took me as an apprentice.
The rock had a golden sparkle, yes. But gold usually forms in lumps mixed with other things, sometimes quartz, or in sands. This was irregular, flat planed crystals jumbled together.
“Pyrite,” I said, turning to the dwarf. “Sulfur and iron. You knew it was too heavy to be regular rock.”
“Close, Saras. Pyrite is shinier and paler in color, with more luster. No, this has a more golden color, with smaller, rougher crystals. Not just pyrite.” His eye seemed to gleam. “Chalcopyrite.”
Chalcopyrite. Roughly a third iron and a third sulfur, both valuable, which was why I was excited to see pyrite. But this was also about a third copper. Could also contain malachite or native copper, or a few other things, and had a chance to have bits of gold, but the important thing was the copper.
Since the breaking of the world, three generations ago, the Phoenix Kingdom has cataloged more than two thousand islands and large rocks, looking for resources and land to live on. As of the last report my parents received, we had one large and four small iron mines. Good steel is still expensive, but iron is one of the cheaper metals. Several of those mines pulled out pyrite, so sulfur, mainly used for black powder, is also not too terribly expensive. But we only had five small veins of copper ores across the entire kingdom, and we needed copper to make brass, bronze, good pewter, billion, and other alloys. Cannons, steam engines, fine gear work, and a whole host of other things all required copper alloys in their make, and even magic too.
In fact, you might say that copper is the metal of industry.
While we probably do have more copper than iron, copper is far more valuable. If you were lucky enough to find a copper penny from before the breaking, generally referred to as an ‘unbroken’ penny, you could buy enough potatoes to feed a family of four for a week. Of course, only the government was allowed to buy copper, and that penny would immediately be cast into the crucibles of industry.
There’s a reason we use tin bits in place of pennies now.
“How… how much is it?” I wondered, a bit shocked.
“Hard to say,” he replied, climbing inside. “Depends on how much of it is ore and how much is just dross.”
We used our pickaxes to push open a gap between the mass of ore and the stomach wall. It was sticky, filthy work, and the acids of the stomach burned any flesh they touched, but we figured it was somewhere between twelve to fifteen feet long, and maybe nine feet across at the widest. It was an irregular shape though, like a twisted, particularly lumpy potato.
Only something truly stupid would see a rock that big, doing nothing but tumbling in the air, and think ‘FOOD’.
And then be too heavy to fly.
No complaints from me though.
