Sam Mathews

Ruler of Gora’s Peninsula

Part II

-Not my plaguing beast!-

The bird sported a bright yellow plumage, large blue bristles around its brown beak -shockingly long and two large black eyes. It made a strange ticking sound and then flew away from the branch and disappeared from sight.

“Even the shades are hot,” Soren griped, for the third time in as many hours. Sam Mathews glanced at the bulky Nord and crooked his mouth into a smile.

“Yer horse is the one that should complain Soren.”

“It does, look how it breathes heavy!”

“That’s because you’re too heavy,” Dikra the Horselord grunted.

“It’s a small horse!” Soren protested, looking to Sam Mathews for help. “Right?”

“It’s a small horse,” He agreed, looking ahead to catch a glimpse of Nimra returning. The wiry scout had approached the massive tower ruins, a part of Goras East City Gates and the only thing of the old fortifications still standing in its initial form. The gargantuan walls lay in ruins, creating mountains of debris of collapsed boulder-sized granite pieces.

They came in three sizes and multiple types. Massive four-sided foundation parts weighing up to twenty tons, numerous medium sized pieces of about a ton each, cut in meter high perfect squares and smaller brick sized pieces used at the seams or at parapets now visible only at the top of the two towers.

Standing five hundred meters apart, the space left between them the size of the destroyed probably multiple gates –ten of them could fit there easily- the archway above them now collapsed, but parts of it protruding still. Sam thought it must have been used as an interconnecting bridge, creating a massive in size Barbican. Each Gatetower stood at a staggering ten floors in height, octagonal in shape and lacking the flair of other Zilan buildings. It served as an ominous deterrent and it probably allowed easy observation of the Imperial road coming from the Eternal Springs half a day away.

The final point of reference of what had been the gargantuan twenty meters in height walls surrounding the whole country-sized City. Soaring another ten meters above that, the Gatetowers had survived the calamity and now stood like two protruding middle fingers to the gods that had brought it upon the once proud city.

Most of it now under the waters of the gulf the blast had created at its center.

Watching the ruined fortifications behind the trees Sam felt a sense of awe. He’d stagnated for a couple of years in Eikenport, but now he felt that same sensation again returning. It had made him jump aboard ‘Henrietta’, a merchant ship leaving Andatelia ten years back. He was a scrawny thirteen years of age back then with four coppers in his purse and now he was in Wetull accompanying perhaps the most interesting character in both Jelin and Eplas.

Sam had traveled in the company of Gish, Dwarfs and Zilan. Horselords and Cofols of the Peninsula. An honest to goodness Wyvern of all plaguing things and he was just about ready to enter the ruins of legendary Goras.

The biggest city that ever was.

Or what’s left of it more like, he mused.

“Ayup, I have to piss,” Soren said bringing him back to the present and jumped from his worn out horse. The giant was shockingly heavy for the animal.

“Drinking all that water can do that to you,” Terta the other Horselord of their small group commented with a nasty smirk. Sam grimaced and turned to glare at him. Kalac’s people were a rough, uncivilized bunch. Closer to pirates on land, than knights.

“He’s a liability,” Terta explained returning his glare. The wiry rider’s face burned from the sun and weathered like an old hide forgotten out in the yard an entire Lesia summer. “Slow and fat.”

“Heed my words,” Sam warned him. “You don’t want to go against him. You’re too fragile.”

“Pfft,” The Horselord snorted dismissing his words.

“Shut yer mouths,” Dikra hissed looking back, his horse closer to the road. “Nimra returns.”

Nimra, son of Alem was a small-bodied Horselord, thin as a rail and tanned permanently it seemed, but for white cracks covering his wrinkled skin and random spots of pale. He’d a nervousness about him, his face constantly twitching, eyes blinking and ears turning to the sounds about them alike a young hound.

Sam had no idea how old he was, but the adventurer was certain Nimra was far older than anyone else in Kalac’s warband. Closer to fifty than forty years of age.

He was named after a lion, but he looked more like an old hyena.

“The blast ripped everything,” Nimra said crooking his mouth, an eye on the returning Soren. “The massive outer walls took the brunt of it, but this side of the city got it bad.”

“Any signs of Zilan?” Sam asked changing position on the saddle.

“Many,” Nimra snorted and snapped his head back to check the road he’d come from. “Everything under hoof is build. Roads clogged with debris wide as the steppe. Buildings bigger than the ones we have back at the Springs, ruined completely.”

“Anything living?” Dikra asked him.

“Hmm,” Nimra grunted. “Plenty of signs of that too.”

“You’ve seen them?” Sam asked.

“The dead? Aye. Some are still in their ruins. Small statues ‘n big.”

Sam felt a shiver running down his spine.

“Fuck does that mean?” Soren asked nigh perturbed.

Dikra spat down, upper lip crooked where a saber had missed the rest of his face. Leaving him a nasty scar and taking four teeth with it.

“We ride in, see for ourselves.”

“Hmm,” Nimra twitched nervously.

“What is it scout?” Sam asked.

“As I said Lorian,” Nimra retorted. “Many signs.”

A horse neighed in warning, the branches rustling in the light breeze and Sam turned his head back towards the flat expanse that was a boulevard-sized road between each ruined building. The sun bounced off of marble and granite tiles, some portions of the road showing clearly, others covered with grey stone-like paste. Lava that had cooled off mixed with putrid smoke that carried scorching hot dust particles.

It had followed the drainage built into the road, but flooded it at some point. The spillage –basically rising levels of hot lava- had trapped everyone inside the tall villas that had withstood the first blast and then the pyroclastic cloud of the catastrophic second eruption had killed them. Where the volcano had been, now there was only water and reefs, Soletha had told him. Sam wanted to learn what had happened, but it’s one thing to hear a tale, another to see the result with your own eyes.

Anyway the burdened with smoking ash ceilings had collapsed eventually. Some unlucky Zilan had managed to survive even that, but then the poisonous gasses reached them finally, boiled their lungs from the inside. When they had finally perished in horrified agony, the ashes that kept falling over their bodies had turned their flesh to asphalt like the road outside, lifelike statues frozen into the moments they had breathed their last.

A large dark shadow flew over their heads. It covered a good portion of the road, heading north and their camp. No bird was that big.

“Is that the Wyvern?” Terta asked and Sam nodded. “What’s it doing here?”

Sam had no idea and he returned his eyes on the family of three, hugged in the middle of what once had been a lavish living room. The parents shielding their child with their bodies in their final moments. You can’t unsee this, he thought.

The dead, as the scout had reported, are still here.

“What now?” Dikra asked with a scowl.

“Up the incline,” Nimra said appearing behind them, a tick on the side of his face. “The lava never reached up there.”

Sam nodded and got out of the ruined building coughing to clear his throat. Overgrowth had slowly creeped up on the flattened terrain, but no big trees. The rock-like paste underfoot brittle, but going down at least a meter deep at places.

“Soren?”

“Still looking about. He’ll catch up with us. I ain’t waiting for him. Big guy is slow as fuck.”

Right.

He wiped his sweaty face with a hand, adjusted his sword belt and followed after the short scout towards their horses.

It took them an hour to reach the less affected part of the city. The wide roads empty, the granite tiles disturbed at some places, but largely intact. The damage to the villas up the gentle rise less prominent.

“The smoke had no trouble climbing,” Nimra grunted, answering Sam’s unvoiced query. “Killed ‘em just the same.”

Ah.

He stopped his horse afore a walled estate, the gates gone and leaving a good view at the triangular tower-like building at the distance. It looked like a pyramid cut right in the middle, the gapping windows and balconies of the three floors on the flat inner side. The shape otherworldly. There were no similarities between each building anyway. Each had a different theme, probably representing something meaningful for the family that owned it.

“It looks like a temple,” Dikra rustled and Terta spat down, the breeze made all that fine dust that covered everything in a grey ominous sheet, billow up and clog yer airways something fierce.

“Let’s give it a looksee,” He said.

Nimra snorted in disapproval.

Sam sighed and cracked his head right and left. “I’m not turning back gents. I’m going in,” He said and kicked his legs to get his horse going.

The others following right behind him.

The bald, rather tall and scarred Zilan, dressed in a ragged tunic raised his head and stared at them approaching. Stooped as he’d been near what was a small garden, the flowers a sickly white hanging from thin twigs, Sam had missed him initially.

Dikra brought his bow forward and left it to rest on his saddle, the other hand reaching for a bone tip arrow.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Sam rustled with a glare and the Horselord grunted.

“Sneaky fucker,” Terta commented and led his horse near the decrepit Zilan that slowly stood up to face them. “Hey, you!” He barked in rusty Common.

The scarred Zilan, half his face paralyzed and turned to loose skin over a skeletal face, the right eye half-closed, showed them two rows of sharp teeth in a snarl.

“Relax, no sudden moves gods darn it!” Sam snapped at both Terta and the stranger.

“You brought it here,” The Zilan hissed in Common. “Collaborators and thugs.”

“We didn’t bring anything…” Sam retorted and seeing Dikra raising his bow barked at him. “Put that down ye fool!”

“Yet it’s hunting in the ruins,” The Zilan continued and stooped to get an old satchel from the ground. He passed the worn-out leather strap over his head calmly. “Killed Zirael this very morning. She lived down the street for seven centuries. Her street. Like this is mine. Yet here you are, strolling in like you own the place.”

What?

“Who did?” Sam queried, just as Terta turned his horse to the side, looking for a better angle to use his saber. “Terta for fuck’s sake!” He admonished him.

“The Onyx Wyvern,” The Zilan replied. “Only a fool would have brought one on Eplas,” He added looking at the twitching Horselord looming over him with a hand on his sword hilt. “That beast can’t be controlled.”

“Wait,” Sam gasped, just as the Zilan raised his left hand and blew something on Terta’s horse. The Horselord saw his move and unsheathed his saber with a nervous twitch, made to slash down on the snarling local, but the horse went berserk under him.

It shuddered and turned one way, then the other, before rising on its hind legs and send Terta tumbling down. The fall nasty, despite the Horselord kicking his legs out and turning mid drop to avoid the worst.

“Ah,” Dikra grunted and fired an arrow. It zipped a foot from Sam and plunged towards the standing still Zilan that plucked it out of the air, flipped it once in his hand and hurled it back towards the Horselord. Dikra -in the process of loading another arrow- saw it coming with ogling eyes and jerked right to avoid it.

Sam kicked his legs to get his mount moving, but the Zilan turned to him and whispered something. The horse froze and refused to budge.

Oh, ye holly whores of Cediorum!

He jumped down, boots thudding on the tiles and turned to face the creature.

“Nasty girl she was,” The Zilan said coming towards him without hurrying. “Difficult to get along with, but still who allows his beast to feed on the Old One's people?”

Sam unsheathed his sword and tried to cut him down, but the Zilan put a hand on his wrist and stopped him. He reached for his neck with the other.

The adventurer growled, realizing the strength behind the scrawny creature and reached for his dagger. Nimra’s arrow cutting the left side of his neck as it whistled past him and smacked the Zilan on the right shoulder pushing it back.

The Zilan snarled and stumbled away, his left hand in his satchel.

“GET BACK!” Sam yelled at Nimra, himself in the process of trying to put some distance between them on instinct and failing.

The Zilan had whispered something he’d missed.

Not that it mattered probably.

Sam couldn’t move.

Gods above!

The scarred Zilan, face distorted by pain on the size that wasn’t paralyzed grunted and reached for the arrow protruding from his shoulder. The blood painting a dark patch on his chest.

“You are not allowed in the neighborhoods of the Favored,” He explained grinding his gnarly teeth. “It’s principally profane, fouling my family’s street with your presence. But worst insult far above all others… Why, it’s unfathomable… letting your beast loose on noble citizens!”

The place looked abandoned for crying out loud and it’s not my plaguing beast! A frozen and gawking Sam Matheus growled inwardly.

It’s Garth’s for fuck’s sake!

The Zilan snorted as if not caring about his excuses and removed the arrow from his shoulder snarling like an old beast.

“I’ve been on a fruitarian diet for three hundred years,” He said looking at the paralyzed group with ravenous eyes. “But I reckon the Queen will allow me this small indulgence. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to move you and your vile friends inside, before your muscles start working again.”