Born a Monster

Chapter 88

Conclave of Thorns

I admit it; my mind had been equating conclave to cult, a small group of fanatical, devious poisoners. This was clearly a city-state, such as a town qualifies.

I’m not sure I’d call it prosperous, given what I’d seen of the farmland. That said, farms do look bare after harvest.

I was well inside the outer ring of farmland when I saw the first watchtower. Two people huddled under fur blankets, miserable in what they thought was cold.

They looked, saw, and ignored me. I walked right past them without challenge. Between the mountains and the town, there were no forts.

.....

Their wall was ... impressive. Not in height, which was only sixty feet at its lowest point against the river (its highest was perhaps ninety feet, although the natives will tell you it’s an even hundred). But the sheer volume of area encompassed was nearly half and again that of the other towns I had seen.

This close, I could see the water came in a dingy brown, and barely resembled water when it left. There was a plume of black smoke, which seemed to rise from the city as a whole. Please understand this was my first encounter with industry; I couldn’t figure out how many blacksmiths were needed to generate such a cloud.

But I get ahead of myself; I made it to the ferry, a wharf where boats with both sails and oars would dock, take on cargo and passengers, and then sail back to the city.

“How much is the ride to the city?” I asked.

The red-skinned man looked at me through slitted yellow eyes. “Three dinari.”

“I am unfamiliar with your local coin, are these dinari?”

He spat, not to the side, but right between his feet. “Those aren’t even coins. Use those as weights for your fishing line.”

His accent was pronouncedly different than I had been taught.

He held up three silver coins, flatter and wider in diameter than the ones used across the Daggers. “This is a dinari.”

“Ridiculous.” I said, and followed the river northward, upstream. The water was brown, and stank of sulphur. I didn’t much care for the idea of swimming in it, but if there were no affordable ferries...

There were fish in the river, and they were edible. They had a number of toxin resistances that might prove useful later. And some troubling resistances to acids. What had these poor fish been through?

The river was also not a good source of mana. I mean that you could, in theory tap it, but there was an unknown amount of aural taint involved.

I travelled upriver for most of the day, passing small fishing villages. Most also wanted dinari.

The coin system was a little more complex than I was used to. Copper or bronze coins were called dollor, and were the lowest used coin. Sixteen dollor were worth a silver coin known as a dinari. Eight dinari were worth a golden rom. Twelve rom were worth a lumen, a metal that required giant forges called smelters to produce.

All coins were minted and sanctioned by the holy church, or sectarians. Forgery and clipping coins were regarded as heresy, which was punishable by death.

#

So basically, I had no money until I got to a church. The nearest such church was in Vineport, the town I’d been marching away from. There was another between where I was and Sulphur Springs, the town upriver, responsible for what was wrong with the water.

“It’s that war that has all the indies up and just dumping their chemicals.”

“What are indies? What war?”

“Industials and the war with the Queendom of Basilla. What part of stupid-dom did you say you came from, again?”

“The other side of those mountains. What do your people call them?”

“I call them impassable, and I call you a liar.”

I shrugged. Of course, these people were rude; I was an unknown species to them, one small childlike thing that brought nothing but questions.

I threw up my tent outside the fishing village, and settled in for a night’s sleep.

It is an odd thing to wake up from nightmares about a volcanic valley you’d never been through because one of your abilities has activated in your sleep.

That ability, of course, was Boil, Boil. It had activated because my tent and my sleeping bag were on fire.

My backpack and armor were missing; I had been robbed.

Well, so much for just rude.

I split the back of the tent with my claws and walked out.

There were two of them, one on either side of the entrance, both with bidents. They were both male youths, one of them with a severe case of acne.

For a moment, I considered charging one. I could put him into a lock, and use him against the other as a shield...

And I’d end up dead. I walked a distance off into the high grass and sat down to watch.

After a time, they realized I was no longer in the tent, and they followed my tracks.

I circled, and considered, again, just charging. But they had left my remaining equipment by the now collapsed tent.

Did killing these people gain me anything? Did I really just want my gear?

It was a long waddle with more than I could comfortably hold, and they saw me. But I made a getaway into the river, deep enough to don my armor (which is interesting at night when your armor is trying to float downriver).

That took long enough for the youths to leave.

A backpack becomes a horrible weight when it is waterlogged. It did become a life saving shield when a giant catfish (well, eight feet from nose to tail, giant to me) decided to take a nibble.

I had my knife out, and I just stood there in the deep part of the river.

Again.

Life had taken everything from me again.

I was in a land of hostile people, just me and my armor and my inventory.

Again.

Then I sighed and continued on towards the eastern shore of the Nunya Bizniz river.

#

I gasped for air. The river was just that bad. I felt sick from the toxins and other chemicals. Four hundred twenty biomass sounded like a discount; maybe some life where I could take on a giant catfish.

Me, I was five days out from Might level three.

At least I had... no, my shield had been fastened to the backpack. It was gone.

Okay, inventory. Hunting knife, brass sickle, brass wood axe, iron cooking pot.

Whatever. I started the timer to expand my inventory, and had one development point remaining.

I wasn’t going to be Hashim the Magnificent, but the once miraculous storage ability was just no longer miraculous enough.

I was going to regret not saving those DP, but that happened with every expenditure.

I slept until cursed dawn, no longer delayed by the mountains, reminded me I had eyes.

All things considered, I was in pretty good shape for having survived a murder attempt.

The forest was familiar, even if I encountered new plants and animals.

I needed fifty-four nutrition again, per day. At twelve nutrition a serving, that took me five servings of stew, or roughly three hours, counting cooking time.

The gates of Vineport charged two dinari per use, so I instead just swam in through the river. I came out as close to the wall as I could; the bottom part of the river was obscured by a thick cloud of crap, some of which actually was feces. This was not aided by the outflow of sewers so large I could probably swim through them, if I didn’t need to breathe.

From inside the walls, it was obvious that the walls were built into the river, not just up to it. An entire artificial harbor existed, complete with portcullis upstream and down, complete with gate houses.

a stray cat asked me.

He moved to the edge of the water.

I waded into the shallows, and ended up running back. Something with massive crab-like claws retreated to just under the silted layer of water.

His tail raised, he sauntered off.

Okay... river is dangerous. Check.

The local fisherfolk pointed at me and laughed. I wondered, would they really have laughed harder if I had been hurt?

Their temple, a tiered ziggurat, was clearly visible from the river. It rose from the northern hill, six stories of blackened stone, set as if it was trying to claim the sky.

Might as well see how close I could get before the city guards demanded a toll.

#

As it turned out, they didn’t. There were separate temple guards, clad in green and black, patterned after stylized thorns.

Like all of the residents of Vineport, they seemed tall and thin. Lean. Hungry.

“Little thing,” one said as I approached to ask questions, “are you a member of the Conclave?”

.....

“No, I-”

“Begone, then.” Said the other one. “Only members of the Conclave are allowed admission.”

Well, that was inconvenient. “Do members of the synod ever walk among the people?”

“No. Why would they?”

“The synod runs this town, do they not?”

“They run this CITY, yes. And they’ve no need to even see ... visitors like you.”

Visitor? Better than monster. I could work with visitor status. Just not with the temple guard.

“Thank you for your time.”

His eyes widened as though I had insulted him. Maybe I had.

This town had a severe case of Whitehill Must Be Burned.

There was no problem surviving that first night; the street predators never searched the roofs, and the things that every household threw out had plenty of nutrition.

Getting to sleep was another matter; the smelteries and forges lit their district at night, and their smoke obscured the stars.

I gnashed my gums where the new teeth were growing in.

“Lucid Dreaming.” I sang.

I was on a rooftop, much like this one, only lit by brilliant daylight.

“Spirits of dreams, please hear me and answer my request. Link my dreams to those of the one who wields the Legendary Axe. Enter dream – Rakkal!”

It was successful, and immediate, and I will never speak of what I saw in those dreams. Suffice to say, I did not choose to report that night.

Well, that was a huge failure.

“Enter Dream – Sholwyr.”

It was a dark room, although when the shadows stirred the curtains, bright rays of sunlight would pierce the room. Always across the table, never touched by the light, Sholwyr played games with a deck of tarot cards.

To be fair, the cards were playing back.

“Rhishisikk. You are uninvited.”

“I cannot report to Rakkal.”

“Not my problem.”

“Very well, shall I return and tell him you refused to relay my messages?”

The cards slapped out into new positions.

“Of course, he’s bluffing.” She said.

“Go and continue your mission. You’ll either succeed or fail. Either way will benefit my master.”

I could have fought to remain in her dream, but really, I was surprised I had gotten a courteous dismissal.

Okay, so cut off from any means of support or education, check.

In the morning, I clambered into my armor, noticing that it smelled wrong, like algae was growing in it. I did a full invoke of Move All Water, which hopefully slowed the process.

So, I would need money, and could only think of one way to earn it.

I set off toward the plumes of black smoke, and kept my eyes open for the town’s street of carpenters.

#