BT II - Chapter 17 (Patreon)

Grass, half again as tall as Micah swayed gently on either side of the Amghul river.  Only by looking over the quickly flowing water could Micah actually make out the light blue of the early afternoon sky.

Jakaw sat on Leeka’s shoulder as she led the way, more or less useless from the moment they left the towering trees of the jungle behind and entered the swaying expanses of the Grass Sea.  The strip-tail clambered up her neck to perch itself atop Leeka’s head where it proceeded to jabber something unintelligible to Micah.

He smiled back awkwardly, suppressing a pang of frustration and loneliness as the little creature reminded him of Telivern.  The stag wasn’t nearly as chatty as the tiny monkey, but every time he saw the little furry animal’s bond with Leeka it brought up memories of the prissy deer.

“Jakaw says that he can hear a crashing and rumbling sound up ahead,” Leeka translated, keeping her gaze ahead of her as power walked along the narrow strip of muddy river-bank that wasn’t covered in oversized grass stalks.  “That must mean that we’re near Zattara Falls.”

Micah glanced into the roiling water of the river, careful to look for the wideset eyes of the river crocodiles that had plagued them on their journey out.  The reptiles were big and violent, but ultimately not much of a threat to him.  Leeka and Jakaw might struggle with one of the big lizards in a one on one, but there wasn’t much doubt that Micah could heal any damage done to them in a matter of seconds.

The power disparity didn’t take into account that the crocodiles were dumb.  Despite the vortex of energy swirling around Micah at any given point in time, they couldn’t help but view the small party as prey.  At least once a day one of the scaled annoyances would burst from the river, and try to drag Leeka or him into the water.

Without looking away from the murky depths, Micah spoke up.

“How far is Zattara Falls from Jakint again?”

“From what the elders have told me,” Leeka replied, “it will be three days by foot, or one day by boat.  Apparently there’s a tribe that we do some trading with that has set up a marketplace around the waterfall.  There isn’t any assurance that there will be anyone there will be any transportation there, but at a very minimum we should be able to rest and confirm our maps.”

“Confirm our maps?”  Micah asked, raising a single eyebrow.  “I thought that was the reason you were traveling with me, to make sure I could make it to Jakint without any sort of problem.”

“Well,” she answered uncomfortably, Jakaw scurrying down the single braid in her hair and retaking his position on her right shoulder.  “Yes and no.  I doubt you would have been able to navigate the jungle well enough to actually reach the Grass Sea without me, but at the same time, I don’t have much experience in the Grass Sea itself.”

“As best I understand it,” she continued, sending Jakaw into an angry chatter with a shrug, “Navigating the Grass Sea itself is basically impossible for everyone but the nomads that live there.  It’s nothing but unending yellow grass, well over your head for weeks in every direction.  We’re lucky because the Amghul River branches off from another river that runs just past Jakint, otherwise it would be completely impossible for us to make it to the coast.  We’d just end up wandering in circles and getting eaten by-”

She paused, glancing over her shoulder at Micah appraisingly.

“Well,” Leeka said with a grin.  “I doubt any ordinary grass monitor could do much to you.  There are stories about big ones that loom over the top of the Grass Sea itself, surrounded by swarms of smaller lizards, but I’m pretty sure the elders made those up to keep us from wandering out of the jungle.  Still, just to be on the safe side, we should probably avoid leaving the riverbank unless we have a nomad to guide us.”

“I’m pretty sure that I’m wearing a bigger reptile than anything we’re likely to find in the Grass Sea,” Micah replied, glancing at the swaying sheaves of grass that blotted out the sky.  “Still, being able to kill a lizard or three doesn’t mean that I have any hope of finding my way through this mess.  We’ll need to find a guide once we retrieve my friends because the next step after Jakint is crossing the Grass Sea.”

“Oooh,” she hissed.  “Tell me about your friends.  I know we’re on our way to meet up with them, but you haven’t said much other than that you’re on some sort of treasure hunt.”

“Now that I think of it,” Leeka mused, cocking her head to the side.  “I don’t think you’ve said a whole lot about this treasure hunt of yours.  Given that I’m part of all the fun and adventure now, I figure it only makes sense for you to fill me in.”

“Did we decide that you’d be coming the entire way with me?”  Micah asked, a half smile on his face while he grumbled.  “I thought you just told me that you were sticking along and I haven’t gotten around to objecting to the arrangement yet.”

“Of course I’m coming with you,” Leeka responded without a moment’s hesitation.  “I bring the levity and wit needed to prevent a weighty and serious journey from getting too dull.  Plus, I’m too pretty for you to just up and abandon.”

“Fair enough,” Micah replied with a chuckle.  “As for the treasure, the gods themselves contacted me to let me know that there was an unimaginable threat looming over Karell.  They revealed the location of an ancient spellcaster’s tower.  The goal is to retrieve artifacts of unimaginable power from the tower and use them to stave off the coming disaster.”

Leeka laughed.  Great convulsing spasms that wracked her body, forcing the large woman to stop.  Jakaw jumped off of her shoulder, scurrying a couple steps further down the river before turning around and joining her in shriek-shriek cackling at Micah’s explanation.

Past her, down the river, Micah could make out the bottom of a crashing waterfall set into a rocky plateau that jutted up out of the unending fields of grass. The current of the water had slowed noticeably and the river itself had swelled.  A quick glance confirmed that the base of the falls was surrounded by a fairly large lake that gradually drained into the Amghul.

“All you needed to say was that you and your friends were going to rid an ancient wizard’s tower,” Leeka said while wiping tears from her cheeks.  “There wasn’t any real need for the rest of the melodrama.  I was planning on coming with you anyway.”

“Believe what you want,” Micah responded with a disinterested shrug as he walked past her.  “Just don’t act astonished if we end up encountering a giant cloud of malevolent burning mist.  Surprise will only slow you down when you should be turning around and running in the other direction as fast as your legs can carry you.”

“Wait,” Leeka called after him, jogging to catch up as Jakaw clambered up her leg to resume his perch on a shoulder.  “You’re actually serious about all of this?  I’ve seen how powerful you are Micah.  I sincerely doubt there are many things out there that can seriously threaten you let alone an alliance of people around your level.  If things get bad enough, I’m sure that the gods themselves will step in and-”

“Believe what you want, I choose to take the gods at their word when they explained the magnitude of the threat to me” Micah replied, not bothering to turn around as he made his way toward the foot of the waterfall.  At some point, people had cut down the grass at the base of the plateau and constructed a large village.  Smoke rose from a couple dozen chimneys behind the thick stone walls, framing the massive pulley and lift system scaling the steep incline of the plateau.

A complicated web of docks jutted out into the waterfall-fed lake with at least two large flat bottomed barges moored there.  Even as Micah watched, a platform heavily laden with goods descended down the side of the plateau, a pair of grunting shirtless workers heaving at a complex series of ropes and pulleys to ensure a steady and measured descent.  Meanwhile, dockworkers unloaded carriages filled with crates onto the barges, transferring the cargo being lowered down the side of the cliff onto new ships for the next leg of its journey.

As he approached the village’s gate, an archer leaned over the edge, tapping a crossbow on the crudely fit stone while a slim man in a robe readied a magical staff to his left.  Neither of the guards were acting in an overtly threatening manner, but at the same time, both of them were watching Micah carefully.

“Hello traveler,” the crossbow wielder called out, her voice high-pitched and almost lyrical.  “We don’t usually see much foot traffic in Lower Zattara.  Mostly it’s just river barges or caravans coming in across the Grass Sea.  So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to need to know why you’re visiting Lower Zattara before we throw open the doors.”

Around the walls of the village a handful of other guards began ambling toward Micah and Leeka.  Nothing explicit, but it was clear from the way they gripped their weapons that the defenders were ready for violence if the need arose.

Micah plastered a big smile on his face, doing his best to look non-threatening as he waved up to the guard.

“Good to meet you friend,” he began, cheerfully.  “I was on a ship and ended up going overboard.  I managed to make it shore in the jungle and Leeka here,

He hooked a thumb backward at the tall orange woman as she approached from behind, not bothering to take a moment from speaking to look back.  “Well, Leeka helped get me this far.  Right now I’m looking to charter a boat to travel up the Amghul.  I have friends in Jakint, and I’d like to make contact with them sooner rather than later.”

“Jakint, eh?”  The robed man interjected, planting his staff into the stones of the wall and reaching up to stroke a well trimmed goatee.  “We’ve only been getting rumors down the river, but it sounds like they’re in the middle of some bad business up there.  Depending upon who you ask, it’s a plague, a rebellion, or some sort of divine punishment, but the one thing that everyone agrees on is that everyone up there is on edge and strange things are happening.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Micah replied, his fake smile blurring into a frown.  “Are ships still going to and from Jakint?  If the area’s in trouble, that just means I need to get there that much faster.”

“Aye.”  The woman with the crossbow leaned back, sitting the weapon on a battlement and motioning with her left hand.  A moment later, the gates shuddered and began opening with a squealing groan.  “As bad as things are, trade with Jakint is Zattara’s lifeblood.  Most of the captains are just that much more careful about taking on extra guards, just in case something does go wrong.  You might have some trouble finding transport, but the ships still are running.”

“Well,” Micah said, forcefully restoring his former smile.  “I suspect I’m worth any twenty mercenaries you’ll be able to find hereabouts.  Hopefully that will help encourage one of the ship captains to take me on.”

“Honesty?”  The woman responded as she waved them through the gate.  “It probably will.  The otters have been penned up in Upper Zattara for too long, they’re starting to get a bit antsy.  I bet a lot of cargo is piling up as well.  Most of the captains will probably jump at the chance to caravan up if they have some sort of assurance that you can protect them.”

“Otters?”  Micah asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Of course, you’ve never been upriver,” she answered with a laugh.  “It takes a bit of work to move the barges against the current, but the upriver merchants have figured it all out.  The otters are cute, but they need a lot of exercise.  If you leave them alone for too long, they get into all sorts of trouble.”

Three hours later, Micah sat at the prow of a barge, a giant grin on his face.  A pair of sleek, gargantuan otters, each of them almost the size of the barge itself, swam against the current, pulling at the rope harnesses that connected them to the ship.

The water rushed and gurgled past the wooden walls of their ship, flowing toward the two other barges in the convoy and Zattara Falls.  A gentle wind pushed through the unyielding barriers of grass on either side of the riverbank, rustling the golden stalks as they made steady progress upriver toward Jakint.

A well built man with brown, almost auburn hair and hazel eyes settled in next to Micah at the front of the barge.  He reached up and scratched at some of the acne covering his face as he looked at the otters contemplatively.

Without turning his head, he spoke up, eyes still locked on the frolicking mammals.  “You sure about this boy?  I haven’t been in Jakint in weeks, and things were starting to get strange back then.  Now?  I haven’t seen it, but all the captains are saying that things are only getting worse.  Hell, Old Ander paid a fortune in attunement to have his boat ferried down the plateau.  Thought it safer to stick to the downriver leg of trade rather than deal with whatever is happening on the coast.”

“Thomas is it?”  Micah asked.  The older man nodded, shifting slightly as he leaned against the edge of the barge.  “I have the levels necessary to keep us safe from pretty much anything I can think of, and I’m an accomplished healer.  Unless you’ve pissed off some kind of level eighty blessed that’s serving as the guardian of an entire kingdom, we should be fine.”

Thomas sighed, reaching into a pouch at his belt and pulling out a pipe and a pinch of tobacco.  He put the pipe in his mouth, clenching it between his teeth as he muttered a couple words of magic before tapping his index finger to the bowl of the pipe.  A spark of fire jumped from his finger to the crushed tobacco leaf, and for a moment, he puffed away at it contemplatively.

“Problem is,” he began, removing the pipe from his mouth, “I don’t exactly know what we’re dealing with.  A bunch of the forgotten were acting weird.  Not showing up to work on time to unload the boats, and the ones that did show up?  Glassy eyes, like they’d smoked something powerful.”

“Is that why people are saying it's a plague?”  Micah questioned, turning from the otters to look at Thomas.

“Maybe,” the other man grunted.  “Some people have gone missing too.  Not just the forgotten, but people that matter too.  The worst of it is that I don’t think I’ve actually seen anyone that’s sick.  Even the drugged forgotten were as healthy as bears.  I swear they worked harder and faster than I’ve ever seen out of them.  It was almost like they gained a blessing overnight.”

“As for everyone else?” Thomas said with a shrug, sliding his pipe back between chapped lips.  “They just vanished without a trace.  No symptoms one day, and gone completely the next.  Some people thought it might be assassins, but it’s far too common for that.  Plenty of ordinary folks, people not worth the attunement to off.  You know, merchants, couriers and blacksmiths, they’re disappearing too.”

“But it can’t be that dangerous?” Micah asked.  “I mean, you’re still willing to risk your boat and crew on a trip to Jakint, so whatever’s wrong must be manageable.”

Thomas took a deep pull from the pipe, stopping to blow out a ring of smoke.  The wind tore the fragile blue-grey circle apart, rustling Micah’s hair as well as the waving fields of grass.

“It’s a bad business,” Thomas replied unhappily.  “But a man and his family have to eat.”