Tales of the Cold Frontier: Izidorius (Patreon)

It was supposed to be simple. A hike outside of Longbay, up to Kray Outcrop to see the steamer ship bringing in more stampeders passing through for the gold fields inland. Ever since the news broke about gold being discovered, countless people came flooding to the tiny port on their way to the gold fields hundreds of miles inland.

Another ship bearing hundreds of people seeking gold was coming in, and Kell decided he wanted to watch the ship come in, but the docks were so crowded he wouldn’t be able to see anything. Supposedly you could see everything in the city from Kray Outcrop, which is why Kell was making his way to it.

But instead of reaching his destination, Kell had stumbled across a brown bear. A male, since spring had scarcely begun and there were no cubs. That didn't mean better things for the young teen, as the bear seemed to be just as shocked by Kell's appearance as Kell was by the bear's. Rearing up on his hind legs, the bear let out a bellowing roar, making Kell scream in shock and fright, falling over himself in a desperate attempt to run away.

Kell didn’t make it far, his foot catching on a root he had stepped over without noticing earlier. His ankle twisted, with a sharp, stabbing ‘POP’, changing his screams to a mix of agony and fear. The bear didn’t seem to care, angered that this human boy that had startled it wasn’t leaving. Opening his mouth, the bear roared again, yellowed teeth on full display as drops of spittle flew. Kell curled up around his throbbing ankle, tears and snot flowing from his eyes and nose.

“I wanna go home,” Kell whimpered as the bear’s roar suddenly cut out, moments before there was a faint, echoing sound, muffled by the meaty ‘THUMP’ of a large body dropping to the ground.

Hesitantly, doing his best to push past the searing burn in his ankle, Kell looked past his arm to see the bear slumped on his back. The tree behind and to the left of where the bear had been standing was covered in a dripping red spray. Distracted by the agony he was feeling, it took Kell much longer than it normally would to realize what had happened. Someone had saved him. But who? No one came out here this time of day, not that Kell knew of, at least.

Curiosity briefly pushing down the pain, Kell looked around. The forest was relatively quiet, birds filling the air with song, the wind passing through the pine needles creating a whistling sound that had helped lull him to sleep when he was a little boy, the final echoes of the gunshot of whomever had shot the bear.

Kell kept his eyes on the gaps in the trees, hoping to spot his savior, while also hoping it wasn’t one of Vanius’s men. That bastard Limpwing had arrived in Longbay not even five months ago, and the city had been turning into ever more of a crime infested chumbucket since. If one of Vanius’s men were the one to have saved him, Kell just knew his father would have another fifty black added to his debt.

After five minutes, the woosh of large wings and a gust of air through his hair made Kell look up, and he swallowed nervously. An exquisite and well cared for rifle slung across the back told Kell that this was likely the one who saved him. But, as the taloned feet came down to the ground and the black and brown feathered wings flared out, there was little doubt in his mind that his accident had set his father back more than a year in paying off Vanius Limpwing.

This wasn’t Kell’s first time seeing a grifas, rare as they were in this part of the world, more than a few members of the vulture-like species had passed through Longbay on their way to seek gold. Vanius himself was a grifas, though with the crippling injury that gave him the moniker ‘Limpwing’ he couldn’t fly.

The grifas before him wasn’t one that he recognized, his avian head an ugly red and the feathers that covered his body being rather plain, black with a brown outline around the outside of each feather. His feet were bare, but that was common for grifas, wont as they were to use their taloned feet to grip and crouch instead of sitting. He didn’t wear a shirt, and rather unusually wore a belt to hold his pants in place instead of the usual suspenders. But on his belt, the unnamed grifas had a myriad of pouches and a very, very big knife.

The grifas turned from the bear to look at Kell, piercing eyes meeting his own before moving down to his ankle. The avian man let out a quiet huff, before moving over to a tree and breaking off two thick branches, snapping any twigs off before placing them next to Kell’s foot.

Still not saying a word, the grifas turned back to the bear and pulled out his knife. At a guess, Kell thought the blade itself, dark gray with odd ripple patterns unlike any he’d seen before, was as long as his forearm. The beautiful, and likely expensive, blade contrasted with the handle, a piece of antler from some sort of southern species of deer, because it was too thin to have come from one of the moose that the hunters would occasionally bring in. With a calmness and ease that came from long familiarity and practice, the grifas made an incision along the belly of the bear, and began pulling out organs.

The smell was immense, though not worse than the smell from the docks when the fishing boats had come in during the summer, and the sun wouldn’t set until after midnight. Kell heard the grifas sigh, the structure of his beak giving the act an odd whistle, before he began to skin the side of the bear. Kell started to lean forward, curious what the grifas was after, only to hiss as doing so put pressure on his ankle, the joint letting its displeasure known.

Laying back, to take the pressure off his foot, Kell blinked with curiosity as the grifas pulled out a chunk of meat before carefully cutting strips of an odd, silvery material he didn’t recognize. Picking up one of the organs he’d pulled out earlier, that looked like a greenish ball, the grifas walked over to Kell. After he set down the strips of silver meat and the organ down, the grifas pulled out a waterskin and rinsed off his hands, scaled and taloned like his feet, before pulling a strip of leather from one of his pouches.

“Wha,” was all Kell was able to say before the bit of leather was shoved into his mouth.

Kell was about to spit the leather out to ask the grifas what he was doing, when he picked up the two sticks he’d prepared earlier and placed them on either side of his ankle, lining up his foot none too gently. Now understanding what the leather was for, Kell bit down as he cried at the stabbing pain in his ankle. Uncaring or unbothered of his patient’s pain, the grifas took the silver strips and wrapped them around the makeshift brace, before tying the ends together with practiced ease.

Picking up the organ, the grifas carefully punctured it with a talon before squeezing the odd smelling, dark yellow liquid all over Kell’s injured leg. Once he’d squeezed out the last of it, Kell’s eyes widened as he made the connection. The grifas was a mage. Kell didn’t know much about magic, or those that utilized it, he could barely tell you more than the basics that everyone knew.

The grifas carefully picked up Kell’s leg, and with the pad of a finger smeared the bile across the entirety of the silver strips. His eyes narrowed, and there was a hissing sound, like water droplets on a hot skillet. Before Kell’s eyes, the bile burned away, and the silver strips contracted and stiffened as the magic rapidly dried it. The increased pressure on his ankle wasn’t pleasant, but a small amount of testing that had him biting down on the leather again told Kell that he wasn’t going to be moving that ankle until the brace came off.

Figuring that he’d seen all the magic he was going to, and his friends were never going to believe him, Kell was disheartened as the grifas stood up and walked back to the bear. Well, the grifas would probably make quite a bit of money by selling the right organs, and he’d already used up one helping Kell.

Kell pulled the leather out of his mouth, taking a moment to swirl some spit around to both wet his mouth and try to get the taste of old leather off his tongue. Crab walking with his good leg, Kell made his way over to a tree to give himself something to brace himself against, so he could try to stand.

He’d just reached the tree he’d picked, a rather sturdy looking hemlock, and was about to grab onto the trunk when the grifas came back. He put a hand on Kell’s shoulder, before kneeling down with yet another organ in hand. This organ looked a lot bigger and flatter than the one before, and Kell realized that he was about to see some more magic. Despite the throbbing and the sheer terror he’d felt earlier, Kell couldn’t help but feel excited.

Mages were rare in these parts, the only one he’d known of before today being the hot headed butcher his mother despised, and he mostly used his magic in starting hearths and ovens, nothing like what this grifas was doing.

The grifas in question used his knife to cut some lines down the length of the organ, before setting the knife on the ground and grabbing the organ with both hands. Twisting, he wrung the organ until a black liquid dribbled out onto Kell’s ankle. A lot less liquid came out of the new organ than the earlier one, and it was much thicker too, closer to molasses than water.

Once again, the liquid was smeared around Kell’s ankle, and this time instead of a hissing sound, there was a loud, dull ‘CRACK’ like when he and his friends dropped rocks from the bridge and they missed the river. The pain in his ankle faded as the liquid, what could only have been black bile, crumbled like dried mud.

Moving his foot as much as the brace allowed, Kell was shocked and ecstatic that he felt no pain. That kind of injury should have left him in crutches for weeks, perhaps months! Instead, he was healed. The grifas stood up, helping Kell to his feet as he did so. Kell eagerly stood up, only to wince as he put too much weight on his ankle. Okay, so it wasn’t completely healed. Magic may work miracles, but it couldn’t fix everything.

Looking up to the grifas, Kell smiled and said, “Thank you.”

The grifas simply nodded, before picking up his knife and the piece of leather he’d loaned to Kell. He walked over to a different tree, and picked up a long branch that had fallen to the ground. Testing it, he deemed it satisfactory and walked back to Kell, the stick held out for him to take.

“Go home, kid,” the grifas said in a raspy voice, nearly making Kell jump in shock. He’d honestly come to think the grifas was mute.

“Who are you?” Kell asked.

The grifas looked at him, before his gaze seemed to slide past to the direction of Longbay. Kell wasn’t familiar with grifas facial expressions, but he felt like his savior was feeling… guilt?

“I’m just an old buzzard. Tell Detective Yomin about the bear, now get moving,” the grifas said sternly.

Mindful of putting too much weight on his foot, Kell slowly turned around and started to make his way back to Longbay. It took the rest of the day, he couldn’t move nearly as fast even if it was mostly downhill, but eventually he reached the city. Wanting to know more about the grifas that had saved him, he made his way to the sheriff’s office to deliver his message, and hoped that the detective he’d mentioned would at least be able to tell Kell his name.

As Kell pushed open the door, a bell chimed and the person manning the desk, their entire body hidden from Kell’s view by the day’s newspaper, spoke in a tired and fairly thickly accented voice, “If it is about Vanius, you better have some evidence.”

“Uh… no, ma’am,” Kell stammered, thrown off by the woman’s yenotian accent. The newspaper was set aside, letting him see the black and gray furred woman, half his height at the most.

Her eyes, barely discernible from the black fur that surrounded them, took him in, “Have some trouble in the forest?”

“Um… yes? I was told to talk to a Detective Yomin?”

“You are speaking to her. What happened, boy?” she asked as she pulled out a pad of paper and a metal pen.

“Well… I’d heard that there was a steamer coming into port today, so when I finished my chores I went outside of town to hike up to Kray Outcrop. But partway there, maybe four miles outside of town? I stumbled across a really big brown bear,” Kell explained, as the woman calmly and dutifully took notes.

She asked an occasional question, but mostly let Kell speak, and when he finished she simply nodded and looked at him, “Well, you are quite fortunate, boy. If Izidorius hadn’t shown up, you would have probably been that bear’s next meal.”

“Is that his name? Izidorius?” Kell asked, excited to finally have a name.

“Of course he didn’t give his name,” Detective Yomin muttered. Louder, she told him, “He was a scout and sniper in the Humuric War, but he likes his peace and quiet, so don’t go causing a ruckus. Understand?”

“Of course!” Kell instantly agreed. The Humuric War had been the bloodiest war in recorded history, and almost no one who had served liked to talk about it. Kell’s father had lived through it, though he’d been too young to serve. But to think, a veteran of the war living so close, and also a mage?

Kell knew he was going to get in trouble for being gone so long, but he couldn’t wait to get home and ask his father about any experiences he’d had with mage veterans.