Rova 12, 4719

Akrivel

Morning

It didn’t take long to realize that a jungle is not merely a hot, wet forest. It is a dizzyingly complicated ecosystem that’s teeming with life, from the canopy to the forest floor. It is layer upon layer upon layer upon layer. It’s not a place, but a thousand places, all woven together.

Kyira gave voice to the obvious: If we were to walk into this thing and have any hope of coming back out alive, we needed a guide.

“We need a guide”, she said.

The Ekujae couldn’t provide one. Even getting within a few miles of these totems rendered them blind. Fortunately, before we parted ways, Renali had offered to guide us. The Ekujae knew where her village was, so it was just a matter of getting in touch with her.

“Iskaryn, do you think you could find Renali?” I asked.

“Certainly,” she said.

I naively thought this simple exchange would stop there, and she’d fly off. I was wrong.

“Maybe she can drop a note to them,” Kyira said.

Then Trip chimed in. “Can’t your bird just talk to anybody it wants to now?”

Iskaryn fluttered down and gave me a pointed look. “What does ‘your goblin’ mean by ‘your bird’?”

This sort of thing is why Trip keeps making jokes about roasted bird.

Afternoon

Renali said she would meet us here tomorrow. I thought it would be just an uneventful day in the village—there is nothing wrong with uneventful—but Liberte had other ideas. He had been studying the gold bar we found near Huntergate, and learned it was thoroughly tainted with arsenic.

He explained that it can occur naturally in the raw ore. It’s removed during the refining process, long before it would ever be formed into gold bars like the one we found. No one would knowingly wear jewelry or carry coins laced with poison.

This turned into an interesting conversation with Akosa, who I learned had been held captive by an Aspis Consortium operation and forced to work in one of their gold mines. It explained a great deal about why he’s been terse with us. Perhaps all of it.

Akosa explained why most of the Ekujae didn’t wear any gold, and it had nothing to do with arsenic: it’s simply taboo. Their ancestors fought Dahak and somehow imprisoned him inside Alseta’s Ring with some ancient ritual, long forgotten. They believe his blood spilled over the land here, became gold once it cooled, and is now cursed by his nature. This taint is why people covet gold, and are willing to spill blood and take lives just to have more of it. 

The only exception is the keledi. They swear their lives to fighting Dahak should he ever return, and wear gold not as a sign of wealth, but as a sign that they are worthy. “That their very souls”, as Akosa put it, “can cut the flesh of a god”.

I grew up around gold; we had quite a lot of it when I was young (when I was older, not so much). It’s pretty much everywhere in Druma. I understand his point, but wealth takes many forms, and gold is only one of them. Removing gold from society doesn’t actually solve anything: people who are greedy or desperate enough will always find something worth killing for.

But then again, my family was destroyed by gold. In my home country, the people in power wear white to show their purity—abundantly adorned with gold jewelry—and long, white gloves so they don’t bespoil themselves by touching the unworthy. Otherwise known as “regular people”. It’s difficult not to see gold as a symbol.

So is gold tainted by the nature of Dahak? Maybe.

Or maybe it’s just tainted with arsenic.

Rova 13, 4719

Mwangi

Evening

I was thinking of the jungle as more of an endless rainforest, but it’s not really like that at all. There are trees, of course (just see Akrivel for proof of that), only they appear in groves rather than large stretches of land. Most of it is a dense tangle of underbrush, with plants so thick you can’t walk through them without clearing your own path ahead of you. The sun beats down on everything, and all this vegetation tries to crowd out its neighbors to get as much of it as it can.

And there are insects everywhere. This is not hyperbole. I have never seen so many insects at one time ever in my life. It’s apparent why the Ekujae gifted us with mosquito nettings and cautioned us to ensure our tents were completely enclosed in them at night. If only mosquitoes were the only bugs we had to worry about.

Renali pointed out that a common mistake people make when first entering the jungle is assuming that the biggest threat is from large predators. Yes, large predators will certainly kill and eat you if given the chance, but the more pervasive dangers are toxins and disease, delivered in the form of insects and reptiles, or just eating the wrong food. It’s humbling to realize that you can die from an insect that you didn’t even know bit you several days earlier.

As for Renali, she is traveling in what she calls her natural form: a humanoid spider. She actually asked us if this was OK first, because the Anadi have learned that humans are not always comfortable around spiders, much less human-sized ones, much less ones that literally look like people and spiders meeting halfway. That is a fair assessment, but after you’ve seen a skinless rider-and-horse monstrosity, it raises the bar for what you consider disturbing. A bipedal spider just doesn’t register.

The others didn’t seem bothered, either. Honestly, we’d seen worse in our first week in Breachill. Which, uh, sounds like I’m insulting the place where I live. I’m not. We just happened to stumble into some unusual events.

Entirely by coincidence, I’m sure.

Rova 14, 4719

Mwangi

Evening

Nketiah warned us that there were fey in this part of the jungle. Today we met one of them.

I am not under any illusions about the fey. There are a few that seek out humanity out of genuine curiosity, but most simply do not share our values. Their motivations range from inscrutable to entirely alien, and that makes them dangerous almost by happenstance: the boundary of a fey’s territory is as likely to be a rock half buried in the soil as it is something obvious like a stream or tree line. Others see us as inconvenient, entertainment, or outright prey. The malevolent ones will often combine the latter two.

It is not surprising that the most alluring of them tend to be the most dangerous. And that brings us to today.

We were tracking the Cinderclaws through the brush—the grauladons left quite the trail—when Gath came across a trail of freshly spilled blood. He decided to follow it. Someone will need to remind me why we thought this was a good idea.

What he found was a self-proclaimed hunter carrying a large sack over his shoulders. It was still dripping with blood. 

He was a very handsome man. And I want to point out that I meet a lot of attractive men and women, and normally don’t feel compelled to write it down. So when I say “he was a handsome man”, it means something.

He claimed that he had just killed a bird. Not long ago, we had fought two birds about the size of the lump in his sack, so it all seemed on the level to me. Gath, however, was suspicious.

I handled the translation between Taldan and Mwangi.

“Can we see the bird?” Gath asked. “We’re awfully interested in the local fauna.” 

“Uh, no. It will escape if I open the bag. But you can see one of its magnificent feathers,” he said. He then held up a large, fluorescent orange feather which did not look like any bird I knew.

But I don’t live here, so I threw the question to Renali, in Taldan. “Any birds in this jungle have bright, orange feathers?”

“Not that I am aware of,” she answered.

Which made me suspicious, too.

Some of my friends came up to investigate, and as they approached him, I could see them fall under his influence. One by one, their suspicions simply…faded. Trip and I stayed where we were. I didn’t know exactly how close I could get to him, and I was in no hurry to find out.

Real horror is not a monster. It’s watching your friends succumb to supernatural charms.

The creature discovered Gath spoke Sylvan. A few quiet words later, Gath did something extraordinary and terrifying. He set his bow on the ground, and calmly walked away.

Then Kyira recognized the feather: it belonged to an angel. She and Tarsius surrounded him, unaffected by his presence. His head swiveled, revealing a hyena’s face, and it attacked.

The violence shattered the enchantment on everyone. Everyone but Gath. He just kept walking.

As the others closed in on the creature, I sent Iskaryn after Gath. “Keep an eye on him!” I shouted. The thought of him wandering alone through the jungle—that we might lose him out there—was even more frightening than what we were fighting.

Both Trip and Marcus tried to break the enchantment on him, but neither could.

Finally, Trip yelled out, “Gath! Tarsius has been killed! We need your help! Now!”

It wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter. I watched him stop. Then he turned around.

The creature, which we later identified as a kishi, was surrounded by our warriors, but the killing blow came not from their blades, but a cold iron arrow.

Shot by Gath.

He looked at Trip and Marcus and said, “I will remember what you tried to do.”

We cut open the sack. Inside was not a bird, but a wounded angel with wings of bright orange feathers. Trip stabilized him before the kishi’s work could claim him.

He introduced himself as Choima, and thanked us for freeing him. Choima explained that he’d been traveling to the Magaambya with materials needed to break a curse, and apologized that he couldn’t stay. The mission had already been delayed long enough. We said our good-byes, and he took flight, disappearing to the south.

We gathered what little the kishi had left behind, found a place to make camp, and tried to put the day behind us.

Sleep did not come easily.

Rova 15, 4719

Mwangi

Evening

We encountered our first dragon pillar this afternoon. We’re calling them that because they are pillars topped with a carved dragon head, and there’s no reason to overcomplicate the name.

This one poisoned Gath. We are lucky that he is still alive.

So lucky that I am not even sure how he’s still alive, because it just doesn’t seem possible that he survived. It was that close.

It happened so quickly I only pieced it together afterward. The thick underbrush broke into a clearing of tall grasses with a small copse of trees, and the pillar was planted roughly in the center. Two bodies were hanging upside-down from the trees, which naturally put us on edge. We kept behind the taller vegetation while Gath and Qantrip crept forward through the brush to try and get a better look at it.

That’s when they spotted the drakes perched in the trees. Then something triggered it, and a beam of green light shot out from the pillar and struck Gath. He crawled his way back to us but looked horribly ill, his skin pale, his breathing strained and ragged, and sweat breaking out across his forehead.

Then the drakes took to the air and came for us, and our attention was split between surviving the attack and saving Gath. Arrows flew and blades slashed as the drakes descended on us. And every few seconds someone would glance back at Gath. Was he still breathing? Was the poison getting worse? Did anyone have another idea?

Then Marcus cried out as one of the drakes stung him while flying by. Now we had another poisoned companion to worry about. Kyira used a restorative spell to keep Gath alive while Marcus scrambled for an antitoxin. Neither of them was looking good.

One of the drakes went down, crashing into the ground, dead. I put an arrow in the other—a shot that it will remember for a very long time—and it took off to the west. 

But Gath was still dying. Marcus was getting weaker.

And all I could do was stand there and watch it happen.

I was sure Gath was gone, but Kyira managed a second restorative spell that I swear was too late…and he stabilized. His breaths were ragged and shallow, but he was still alive. The poison must have run its course.

Marcus was still struggling, though. We broke out the healer’s kit and more antitoxin, and still he fought not just to stay upright, but to even stay awake.

Eventually, he, too, stabilized.

But the dragon pillar was still there. Waiting. Two of our friends were down, and we hadn’t even gotten close to it.

That’s when I noticed what Renali had done during the fight. She had made herself invisible, crossed to the trees, and cut the charau-ka body down. The pillar hadn’t targeted her. And that gave us a way forward. I cast my own invisibility spell on Trip, and she used a flight spell to cross the clearing and drop a sack over the dragon pillar’s head.

That is all it took. It seemed so ridiculously simple, but I’ll take simple, ridiculously or otherwise. 

We studied it for a while before Gath figured out how to disrupt its magic for good. It is completely inert now. 

He’s currently hacking the dragon’s head to pieces.

No one is stopping him.

Rova 16, 4719

Some River, Mwangi

Afternoon

We’re camping by the river that Nketiah told us about while Gath and Marcus recover. There’s not really much for me to do here (I don’t have restorative magic beyond healing wounds), so my thoughts have turned back to the dragon pillar.

When Qantrip studied the white one over by Huntergate a couple of days back, she said, “This thing is a focus for magic energy. It funnels occult ritual magic, amplifies, sends it to a point far away, powers something there.” So the Cinderclaws are using these pillars to power something important. And that means they need the pillars, which means the pillars need to be defended.

Blinding the Ekujae elves was a logical choice, since they and the Cinderclaws are in direct opposition to one another. Nketiah said the Cinderclaws hold a grudge against the elves because they trapped Dahak between worlds long ago. So, keeping the elves from interfering, or even investigating, makes a lot of sense.

But more things live in the jungle than the Ekujae, and the Cinderclaws cannot assume the elves are the only threat. So the pillars can defend themselves. The green one proved that quite effectively.

The problem with that, though, is that it’s still a pillar. It can’t move, can’t think, can’t pursue anyone, and can’t adapt to when someone does something unexpectedly clever—like putting a sack over its head.

That is what the guards are for.

The more I think about the guards, though, the less the arrangement makes sense. There were two bodies hanging from that tree: a boggard and a charau-ka. Every sentient Cinderclaw cultist we’ve met so far has been one of those two. One of them wore enchanted armor dyed deep red, which just screams “Cinderclaws” to me. So these must have been the guards, or at least part of them.

So why were they dead? And how do the drakes fit in?

I am not entirely unfamiliar with drakes. We’d get them occasionally around Macridi—The Forest’s Drake didn’t just choose that name for the clever wordplay—and though they were generally smart enough not to tangle with the city, that is not the same thing as being smart. And, certainly, no one I knew ever accused drakes of being reasonable. They are impatient and prone to violence.

So why were there two drakes, a dead boggard, and a dead charau-ka sitting in those trees? I can think of two possibilities. The first is that the Cinderclaws intentionally paired them up, and that pairing…went poorly. The second is that the drakes weren’t sent by the Cinderclaws at all: they just came along and found the guards to be a tasty snack. They weren’t guarding the pillar. They were guarding their meal.

Except the pillar didn’t attack them. And presumably it wouldn’t attack its own guards. So maybe there’s something the pillar “sees” that lets it recognize an ally. Maybe whatever marks a creature as dangerous to the pillar does not include drakes. Or maybe the same magic that made this pillar poisonous also made poisonous creatures seem harmless to it.

I don’t know. That last one feels like a stretch.

Or maybe it’s not. Maybe the pillars are capable of more reasoning than I thought.

Night

Or. Maybe it’s a dragon pillar, and drakes are dragons.