Things are not as simple as they appear to be.

Roxanne Martin - the Oracle - Speaking to the Beastmaster after he finds Clucker’s intact skeleton sitting pretty in her cupboard.

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“Silas? Is that really you?” Ethan croaked in a thin voice, his chest heaving up and down. He was tearing up by the second.

The Duellist felt his eyes dampen as well. He lowered his head and felt the guilt he had carried around for months and months came crashing down in a stream of tears and snivelled confessions. “I’m sorry for leaving you. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have been there for you two...”

He didn’t know how long he spoke for but eventually, he realised Ethan was squeezing his hand reassuringly, if feebly. The Duellist wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve and finally met his brother’s gaze: there was only forgiveness and affection on Ethan’s face as he answered Silas’s worries with a gentle but genuine smile.

“It’s fine now, all water under the bridge,” he said. “I’m just glad to see you here; I thought I’d never see again you after you left. How did you know to find me here, though?”

Although such kindness was typical of Ethan, who was always caring and quick to forgive, it still struck Silas deep. “I asked a Seer to locate you for me,” he answered in a daze, shocked it had all gone so smoothly. “That was three days ago, and I only just got here.”

“What about Chloe?”

This pulled Silas back into reality, and he gave a weak smile. “I was told she was far south-east, although I don’t know how far. From the sounds of it, she was doing well for herself, so I decided to come for you first.”

Ethan laughed at that, or began to before spluttering and coughing. “I guess it only makes sense she’s thriving here.” He gulped. “And what about dad?”

Adopting a straight face, Silas stared at him for a long moment before sighing. “I didn’t ask.”

“Oh, okay.” Ethan paused for a moment, his mind clearly racing to find an avenue off this awkward topic. “You look like you’ve done well for yourself so far. How did you get so strong?”

Silas graciously accepted the divergence and told his tale then, skipping the details on his homeless life before the Apocalypse but painting his journey afterwards vividly.

“Mia told me about your tutorial,” Ethan said. “She said you were brave even when you were weak, and I felt proud of you.”

Silas mussed Ethan’s hair, although his action lost strength as he felt how his brother’s hair clung damply to his scalp. The blankets underneath him were smudged with days’, if not weeks’, worth of sweat marks, and there were dark splotches of what could be blood as well. For that matter, Ethan himself looked wan with pallid skin coloured with ugly bruises and dirt. Like everyone else here, he was also alarmingly skinny with his arm as thick as a delicate twig. Although he was sixteen, he physically looked closer to someone three years younger than him. “And what about your journey?” Silas eventually asked, inwardly dreading what he was about to hear.

Taking a moment to reflect on his time so far, Ethan started slowly, describing how, although shocked senseless at first, he had passed the normal tutorial without much difficulty. After landing on Idroa, he had joined a group of wanderers and eventually come here to Valrun’s Keep, a holiday home of the D’Aegor royal line of the shaerd. Silas recognised the shaerd as one of the names that had popped up in the Dangers section when he had still been mayor of Riverside.

Either way, Ethan explained how the shaerd had accepted the humans with open arms with even the princess, who was mayor here, personally coming out and welcoming them. Other than their steadily decreasing food reserves, everything else had been good, at least until the ratkin had begun their raids. Then, it had all gone down the gutters as the princess had holed up inside her fort, providing little help to the humans and her remaining subjects outside the walls. Ethan had been injured during one of these raids more than a week before and was still recovering from his wounds from then.

Silas grimaced towards the end of Ethan’s tale, cursing himself for not leaving Riverside earlier. Then again, at least he had gotten here in time to find his brother alive and kicking. He got to work at once engraving Ethan’s clothes with constitution runes, aiming to boost his immediate recovery. Although they were grimy and torn, Silas intended to find better clothes before the runes expired in eighteen hours. While he engraved, he spoke casually of idle matters.

Finishing up, he passed Ethan his clothes back and gave a warm hug. “Alright, you sit tight. I’ll find supplies and armour for you, and then we can get going to Riverside.”

The younger Wycliffe’s warm expression shattered at once, revealing underneath a face of abject fear. “Leave? No, we can’t leave Valrun’s Keep!”

Brow furrowed, Silas was taken aback. “What? Why?”

“We have it too good here. Riverside sounds nice from what you’ve said, but it’s better here,” Ethan continued, visibly panicking.

“But you told me there’s no food here, and that the princess doesn’t care about anyone outside her fort!” Silas paused and adopted a softer tone. “The ratkin are bound to attack soon, so we should leave before it happens.”

Ethan met his older brother in the eye and spoke desperately, “I told you, we can’t leave. That’s the worst thing we could do. No, we have to stay here and do our best.”

By now, Silas had a strong feeling that something wasn’t right. But instead of voicing his suspicion, he smiled and eased Ethan back into bed. “Fine, if you say so. You just rest here, alright, while I go speak with the others for a bit.”

“Okay,” Ethan replied, exhaling in relief and returning to his old self. “Don’t do anything stupid, Silas.”

“I won’t,” the Duellist said with a wave, stepping out. There was no one waiting outside, but he had expected such as they had popped in a while back to say there were going to Brigette’s house. Still, he spotted Bandit roosting on the roof and beckoned the avian over.

The owl slid down the sloped surface and hooted. Silas scratched its crest mindlessly while his face lined and eyes narrowed. “Bandit, could you keep watch here for a while longer; I’m going out for a bit. Only let Mia in, and if anyone tries to do Ethan harm, kill them at once.”

Bandit nodded, its eyes a-glitter. It was squawking and hissing a sentence when it abruptly rolled its head in the opposite direction and gazed down the street. Silas followed its gaze and saw a heavily armed, dozen-strong party of shaerd. Because of their disproportional limbs, they appeared to walk funny, but he found little amusement in their dangerous auras and levelled weapons.

They stood six-feet tall and had brawny, jutting chests and thick limbs. While they had a range of skin colours, they were ultimately all shades of pink and blue with different textures: the pinks being fuzzier and the blues being smoother. They lacked all forms of hair and instead had horns atop their circular heads, two pointed ones for the pink shaerd and three longer but floppier ones, almost like limp antennas, for the blue shaerd.

As for their faces, there were no whites in their eyes, only pastel coloured irises and giant pupils, giving them a disarming, harmless look. Curiously, while they had curved, lipless mouths, he noted a lack of noses, which he supposed made sense of the stench in the settlement. They also lacked ears, but he noted how they spoke amongst themselves as they moved, so it was likely their ears were simply hidden from sight.

They stopped a couple of dozen paces away from Silas and looked him and Bandit up. The foremost shaerd, a dark-skinned blue, spoke up in a booming voice. “Greetings, travellers. I hate to be so rude from the outset, but could you kindly state your intentions in our village?”

Silas frowned, immediately deciding he wouldn’t mention Ethan as these guys looked like trouble. “Just passing by. What’s it to you?”

“Naught much,” the shaerd answered with what appeared to be a smile as its mouth curved wider. “We simply happened to spot your avian friend perching atop the roof and let our curiosity overcome us. And now that we are here, it appears to me that, as opposed to your statement, the two of you are here to visit someone, perchance someone close to you. Am I correct?”

Glaring now, Silas levelled his spear but didn’t deign to reply.

The shaerd raised its stubby hands and shook them as if to placate him. “Now, now, I recognise your strength and that of your companion. You see, we do not wish to antagonise you but rather aid you and, if I am correct, your addled friend inside the house.”

____

The Shaerd are a peculiar and very unique race for a range of reasons. For one, although their bodies are teeming with the arcane, the vast majority of them cannot use magic. Instead, the mana inside their bodies takes a more passive approach and causes them to become highly resistant to magical attacks while also slightly buffing their physicalities. This evolution likely came about because of the highly arcane nature of Xiivet and would have undoubtedly served them well there as well as it does them here. However, not all Shaerd are equally magic-resistant as it depends on their caste, which is easiest identified by their skin colour.

The browns (commonly referred to as the cracked) are the lowest caste with little arcane resistance, and they serve as serfs. Above them are the pinks (free commoners), followed by the blues (nobility), and finally the purples (royalty). In a twist of fate, however, or perhaps to be expected, of the few Shaerd to awaken to magic, almost all of them belong to the browns.

Suko Ryo - Interspeciel Expert - Humanity and the Other Races