Chapter 15: The Scorpion

It turned out when Jafar said he wanted to trade drinks and stories, he was being literal. Shortly after we sat down at his table the bartender returned and Jafar offered to buy us drinks, which I graciously accepted. However he insisted we swap my Dark Goodnight with whatever it was he was drinking. It was apparently traditional to his people to bond by giving a man your drink and him giving you his in turn.

When I thoughtlessly took a deep pull of the drink he’d given me, I nearly spit it out all over the table. “By the Gods, what is this?! It’s like drinking melted sugar,” I said, slightly horrified as I stared at the concoction in front of me.

Jafar looked amused from where he was sitting as he sipped my own Dark Goodnight. “My people find sugar to be highly palatable. Frankly, some of my people’s most famous recipes are almost inedible to humans. Your kind simply doesn’t cope well with our kind of sweetness. What you’ve got there is what I like to drink whenever I come here as Grom is good enough to make it for me.”

I looked at the drink it my hand dubiously before taking another drink. It was all I could do not to make another face. “What’s in this?”

“Two parts ale, two parts honey, and one part sweet wine.”

“Uh, you’re a sick man if you drink this stuff willingly,” I told him, before braving to take another sip. My taste buds might have been shutting down due to sugar shock, which was probably why the third taste wasn’t quite as horrible as the first two. “If this is the kind of stuff you like, do you even enjoy that Dark Goodnight?”

“No, I think it’s repulsive,” Jafar said with a good natured smile, before taking another deep drink without seeming to be affected by it at all. Bastard. “Sometimes I think you humans must really hate life to drink stuff this vile. But then I remember that our taste buds are different and try to withhold from giving too much judgment.”

“You’re the very picture of a magnanimous soul,” I said dryly, before braving another sip of the sin against all things fermented that was Jafar’s drink. It went down a bit easier that time.

“So,” I began, grasping for some topic of conversation. “That brainless thug called you Aqra. Is that another name you go by?”

“No,” said Jafar, shaking his head. “He called me that because the good mister Jacklis cannot pronounce the name of my people properly. We are known as Aqrabueli.”

I raked my memory since that sounded familiar. Aqrabueli, I’d been taught, were one of the many minority intelligent species that were subjects of the empire alongside humans. It took me a moment before I remembered what I had been taught as a child, but that couldn’t be right. “The scorpion people?” I asked.

“That’s right,” said Jafar as he sipped his drink. I narrowed my eyes and sipped mine in return. It truly wasn’t that repulsive now that my taste buds had already committed suicide.

“No offense, but you don’t look much like the gigantic sapients with a human torso and a scorpion’s lower body that my tutors told me about.”

“Ah, an educated man,” Jafar said with an appreciative nod. “Well, I can understand how that might cause confusion. There is a simple explanation. You see, I happen to be a sufi for my people,” he said, opening up his hand as if offering something as he said so. Was it a culturally significant gesture?

“Sufi?”

“Think of it like a shaman for my people. It’s a close enough equivalent.”

“I see,” I replied with a frown, thinking of my own limited experienced with shamans. “So you can do some magic then?”

Jafar nodded. “The magics of our people are limited but powerful. The sufi of my tribe are well known for our divination and shape-changing magics. The latter allows us to assume a form more suitable for interacting with the humans of the empire.”

I eyed him with renewed interest. I’d been led to believe the lower body of an Aqrabueli was twice as long as a horse. “Must be uncomfortable to stuff all of that mass into two tiny human legs,” I said.

“It’s like walking around with your elbows glued to your ribs and three of your fingers glued to your palms,” Jafar replied with good humor.

“Sounds awful.”

“A bit awkward no doubt, but over the years I’ve quite grown used to it,” Jafar replied, tilting his head up in a strange angle for just a moment in a way that didn’t mean anything to me.

“By the way friend,” Jafar began again after a heartbeat, an indulgent look on his face. “I shall gently remind you that you haven’t introduced yourself yet. I would have your name if you do not mind.”

It took me a moment to parse that as I took another drink. That’s right, I hadn’t even told him my name, had I? “Right,” I said a tad sheepishly, straightening up in my chair. “Garrett Marius Chapman, at your service, sir.”

Jafar stilled at hearing my name. However this cessation of movement wasn’t anything as commonplace as when a person decides to go still. No, this was the stillness that he displayed was the stillness of rocks and corpses, as if all sense of breath and life had suddenly abandoned him. Mammals were incapable of holding still to that degree but as I was suddenly reminded Aqrabueli were not mammals at all. The sight was downright unsettling.

Then like a spell the moment of stillness ended and Jafar was somea hing like a human once again. “Ah, that sword. It all makes sense now,” he said, his completely white eyes somehow managing to convey interest. “Truly, I would have put it together sooner if we had been in Iskander. What strange and curious fortune, that I would meet the hero of Emerald Passes in a slightly worse for wear tavern in Galia of all places. Perhaps it is the hand of fate that brought us together?” The last sentence was said almost to himself.

I almost grimaced at being called “Ser” but ignored that in the favor of the latter thing Jafar said. “You served in the legions?” I asked with surprise.anyone had overheard. Luckily the din in the tavern was loud enough and our table was far away enough from any others that eavesdropping was unlikely, not that anyone seemed to be all that interested in the first place. I turned back to Jafar and practically hissed at him under my breath. “Would you keep quiet about that? I don’t want it getting around.” Such rumors would make it so much easier for anyone who came looking to find us. “How did you even know about that? You’re not even from Iskander. I’m not that famous, am I?” I asked, and my tone did not in any way sound like I was whining.

“I would imagine not,” Jafar said, evidently finding some amusement in my suffering. “For most people throughout the empire the Fourth Sky Tyrant War was nothing more than a curious bit of trivia of events happening in a far off province. I doubt most people could even name a single individual involved other than the Supreme Legatus who led the campaign, much less a commoner who took command of a legion during a single battle. The only reason I’m familiar with you Ser Garrett is because I also served during the war.”

I almost grimaced atbeing called “Ser” but ignored that in the favor of the latter thing Jafar said. “You served in the legions?” I asked with surprise.

Jafar shook his head. “No, I was never officially part of the legions. I was part of an irregular unit. Volunteers that for one reason or another didn’t want to join the legions proper or were deemed unsuitable. We called ourselves the Iron Pike Militia and by and large operated semi-independently of the proper legion command structure. Which usually meant they told us who and where to raid and harass and we would figure out the rest for ourselves.”

I thought about that and decided it was certainly possible. There had been a few units like that I’d been aware of though I’d never interacted much with any of them. However conveniently there was also no way for me to use my knowledge to verify if he was telling the truth or not. Though Jafar’s friendliness had begun to win me over I was still somewhat suspicious of him and his intentions. Thinking it might help me to confirm or deny my suspicions of him, I went ahead and activated my [Observe] skill.

Level: 20 [13 Archer, 5 Shaman, 2 Explorer]

Name: Jafar of the Azam

Skills: Precision ShotI, Explorer I, Rage of the Aqrabueli I

Status: Healthy

Stones of Apotheosis: 0/4

“You’re [Level 20]?” I blurted out, the drink loosening my tongue.

Thankfully he didn’t seem to take offense at me looking through his status. Instead he seemed somewhat pleasantly surprised. “Ah, so you have the [Observe] skill then? Very useful. Yes, when you spend as many years wandering the empire as I have you will eventually get into enough desperate fights that it almost becomes inevitable,” Jafar said, looking to lose himself memories for a moment before turning back to me. “What about you, Ser Garrett? Are you also [Level 20] yourself?”

I nodded and took another drink to give myself a moment to think. I’d met a few other [Level 20] people in my day, all of them legion veterans with at the very minimum twelve years of service. I was something of an anomaly having achieved [Level 20] after only seven very active years in the legions. Though it was foolish and not very reasonable, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat closer to this man who had so much in common with me. We were both [Level 20] and warriors, and veterans of the same war. It didn’t hurt that he had been nothing but pleasant and easy to talk to thus far, even if he had shit taste in drinks.

“Aye, I’m [Level 20],” I said, and the two of us shared an understanding look heavy with meaning. We both stood at the apex of the common man and yet we both understood how little that meant in the context of the wider world.

“So,” I began, taking another taste and nearly finishing off that vile drink. “What brings you to Bassett and eastern Galia?”

Jafar took another drink before he answered, face pensive. “Not long after reaching adulthood I became a wanderer, traveling from one end of the empire to the other,” he began. “As decade after decade rolled by however the thrill of discovery had not lessened, but the desire for ceaseless wandering gradually did. So eventually I preformed a ritual of my people called a spirit quest, a ritual that I used to decipher what destiny had in store for me. That spirit quest led me here to Bassett. It is here that I will find the destiny I am looking for.”

“Decades?” I murmured looking him over. By human terms he might have looked thirty or thirty-five. “How old are you?”

“Eighty-six,” Jafar said. He grinned at my shocked look. “My people are much longer lived than yours. I am perhaps a third of the way though my natural lifetime.”

“Lucky you,” I said sourly, quickly recovering from my surprise before addressing the other thing I was wondering about. “So what is this destiny of yours?” I asked, not bothering to hide my skepticism for the topic.

“It is my destiny to break the bonds of mortality and enter the path of the Ascended.”

The way he said it, so casually and matter of fact, was completely out of proportion for the enormity of what he was stating.

“You think your destiny is to become an adventurer?” I asked him incredulously.

“’Adventurer’ is merely the profession that most Ascended dedicate themselves to within the empire,” corrected Jafar dryly. “But essentially, yes. As I see it, that is my destiny.”