69: Of Jatu, Mahakurma, and Prana Swarms (Patreon)

Couple of announcements before we begin. #1: It's my bday! Yay! (also ch 69, isn't that hilarious? If you haven't yet rated the fic on RR, I'd greatly appreciate it!)

#2: ch 67 edit: Vir no longer gives away the robe Mina gave him, as he doesn't trust the brohood yet enough at that point (the robe is royal, and thus raises attention) He instead gives the Executor all his $ as a deposit, leaving him broke.

#3: another ch 67 edit: Vir registers with the brohood as Apramor instead of Vir. This is a name Maiya will recognize, and is a bit smarter since it hides him if anyone knows his true identity comes looking.

While Vir had learned from Param that Daha was divided into three districts, it was one thing to hear about it, and another entirely to experience the city in person.

Daha was large.

Vir could scarcely believe this many people could coexist, all somehow living in harmony. Well, mostly. Vir had visited the seedier parts of the city, and while not as bad as the warrens, the situation there left much to be desired. It wasn’t so much the crime, but the grime and filth that made Brij look like a wonderland.

In fact, that seemed to be the trend for most of the city. He could count on one hand the number of neighborhoods that were clean and safe-looking.

As for the District of Internal Affairs, he had no clue; it was where the Sawai ‘ristos lived, and it was strictly off limits. The walls that separated the Commons from that district were even taller and thicker than the exterior walls, a fact that boggled Vir’s mind.

It was as if they feared the Commoners more than an invasion by an outside nation. The walls were so thick not even Dance could get through them, and the double portcullis gates remained highly guarded at all hours of the day. Access was restricted to royalty, Sawai, and those with invitations.

The castle district was even worse, towering over the rest of the city atop Royal Hill with walls that soared fifty paces high. The only path there led through the District of Internal Affairs.

He’d also learned that the Commons dwarfed both the castle and Internal Affair districts in both size and population. For most Dahans, the other districts existed as a fictional place, as they’d never even been there.

While getting there seemed untenable, that didn’t mean mapping out his surroundings had been a wasted effort. Far from it.

The fact was, Vir was more broke than a Brijer, without a single copper to his name. To stay even one more night at the inn, he’d had to improvise, and fast.

It just so happened he already possessed a useful skill. A skill few others boasted. Cartography.

Mapping out the city took the better part of the day, but once done, copying his work took little effort. Luckily, he’d brought along a few pieces of parchment from Riyan’s place. After cutting them up and miniaturizing his map, he’d set down at the Central Plaza, laid out his wares, and let the buyers come.

No one in their right mind would shell out silvers for a rudimentary charcoal sketch scribed on parchment, but the basic map he’d seen at the shop meant Vir needed little to attract buyers.

It started slow; in the first hour after he opened up, he made only a single sale earning him fifteen coppers.

But then word began to spread, and within hours, he’d sold out of the five copies he had.

He immediately spent it all on paper and ink, and refined the copies a bit, cutting palm-size square pieces with his katar to get more usage out of his sheets.

Finishing right as the sun grew long, he kept his shop open right until dusk, charging fifty coppers per. Soon, he had two hundred coppers, or two silvers worth, in his pocket.

His buyers warned that his little hustle was illegal—that the Merchant’s Guild would shut him down for lacking a permit. That didn’t stop them from buying his maps, though.

Courtesy of the inn’s precharged Magic Candle, he worked through the night to produce more. Heeding their advice, he’d migrated the next day to the Upper West Side, where the citizens’ coin purses weighed just a tad heavier.

He made another three silvers that day.

With five silvers, he’d stopped his little operation, fearful of attracting too much attention.

With only one day left, he turned his attention to the Brotherhood’s trial.

His days selling maps gave him time to think long and hard about the task. Bring back the eyes of that which sees without eyes.

Unless the riddle was especially cryptic—and he doubted it would be, given the number of mercenaries out there—it likely referred to an animal of some sort. He wasn’t an expert on that subject, but figured he could learn what he needed at a place that everyone talked about: the grand Dahan library. The city’s jewel.

From his mapping exploits, he’d learned that the repository of knowledge was actually within the Commons District. Because few were allowed into the upper districts, they’d placed the building in the location that would bring in the most money. A rare bit of foresight from Daha’s government, or so Param had said when Vir visited his shop to ask.

The library itself was situated off of the main thoroughfare in the Upper West Side neighborhood, where the homes were relatively larger, and the streets cleaner.

Vir entered the three-story stone structure to find a spacious interior lined wall to wall with shelves. The ceiling reached up all the way to the third story, with walkways on the two higher floors ringing the perimeter. Those were also filled with bookshelves, though their density decreased with each floor up.

“Can I help you?” a young woman clad in a black robe called out from her semicircular librarian’s desk that stood at the entrance. Her confident and educated demeanor made her look like a guardian than a mere employee.

“I’m looking for some books on animals. Specifically ones I can find here in Daha.”

The librarian thought for a moment. “Yes, we have several tomes on this topic. Admission is ten coppers an hour, and must be paid upfront.”

Good thing Param warned me about this, Vir thought, handing the woman thirty coppers.

She led him past a myriad of racks, and Vir found it difficult not to gape in awe.

There’s an ocean of books here! How does anyone find anything?

He could scarcely imagine the amount of knowledge packed within this great hall.

“What’s on the upper floors?” Vir asked. “Looks like there aren’t as many books up there?”

“Correct,” the librarian responded. “The upper floors are reserved for the city’s more privileged tomes. They are accessible only to the Sawai, and some even need a royal seal of approval. Though the city’s most precious books are kept deep within the castle.”

“What kind of information’s in those books?” Vir asked, his curiosity peaked. Who wouldn’t be excited by such hidden secrets?

“Ancient tomes. Whatever records we have from the Age of Gods. Among other things. I’ve never been up there myself. A separate Sawai librarian handles those floors. Besides, several of those books are written in the Imperium tongue, unreadable to most.”

“A different language?” Vir asked.

“No, scholars believe the gods spoke the same language as we do,” she said, picking up a ladder and hooking it onto a bookshelf, “but it has been four millennia since they left this realm. Speech and language have drifted far enough apart to make the languages nearly distinct.”

“Here you are,” she said, handing Vir an oversized leather-bound book. Its thick pages had yellowed with time, and the book was heavy with the weight of the information it possessed.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Actually,” Vir said, having a sudden thought.

I’m already here. Might as well learn everything I can. “Do you have a bestiary of the Ashen Realm?”

“You wish to learn of Ash Beasts?” the librarian asked, raising her brows. “A rare request, but we do have a few tomes on that subject. Though, most of our more complete books live on the higher floors. I can give you a book that contains mostly common knowledge, if that is alright?”

“Sure, that works,” Vir replied. It may have been common knowledge for most, but he’d had almost no exposure to this in Brij apart from the occasional campfire story or myth. Shardul the Vicious had told him to journey to the Ashen Realm. It couldn’t hurt to know a bit more, even if the prospect seemed suicidal.

Vir took his two books and settled down at a table. There were few others in the library at this hour, and Vir quickly lost himself in the tomes, learning far more about the world than he’d ever expected.

He learned that Prana beasts had nearly nothing in common with their Ash Beast brethren. Not only did they look different, Ash Beast Balar Ranks were universally higher. A lot higher; much of what he read horrified him.

Ash Wolves boasted glowing blue eyes and hides as dark as the Ash itself, whose prana was so potent that it manifested as black flames that burned off of their hides. The book said that their Balar scale ranged from twenty to forty… individually. But wolves were pack animals, and in a pack of five, their Balar Rank jumped to 200 to 400.

It was worse; the book said these wolves swarmed in the hundreds of thousands within the Ashen Realm.

As much as the Ash Wolves shocked Vir, the subsequent ones made him reel—to the point where he wondered whether the author had exaggerated the words for comedic effect.

Prana Swarms are beings comprised entirely of living prana. They are incorporeal, having no physical body, making them impossible to perceive. They seem to lack a will of any kind, mindlessly consuming anything that contains even the barest modicum of prana, growing ever more powerful with each assimilation.

Prana Swarms are invisible, invincible, and once encountered, utterly impossible to avoid. Many Kin’jal Mejai of Realms perished to bring back this information.

Balar Rank estimated to vary from 3,500 to 20,000. Threat Classification: Cataclysmic. Avoid at all costs.

And then there was the Mahakurma—a four-legged animal resembling a tortoise, also known as the Colossus.

Records of Mahakurma are few, but we do know that they compare in size to small islands. These mythical creatures stand hundreds of paces tall and thousands long, and entire forests and mountain ecosystems are said to grow upon their backs.

Balar Rank estimated to vary between 15,000 to 30,000. Threat Classification: Cataclysmic. Avoid at all costs.

Vir found the ‘avoid at all costs’ disclaimer somewhat amusing. It was as if the tome was written for plucky adventurers seeking fame and fortune in the Ashen Realm.

No one in their right mind would set foot in such a place.

When Vir remembered these were only the well-documented beasts—that the more exotic ones were restricted—he shelved all thoughts of venturing into that terrifying place.

The Ashen Realm was a plane of nightmares where neither days nor nights existed. A place of eternal twilight, where Ash fell unendingly from the sky, burying all in soot, and where no intelligent life existed.

Even if the animals didn’t kill him, it seemed that the prana was so dense within the Ashen Realm that it killed most living organisms in a matter of minutes. Including humans. The ones that somehow escaped that cruel fate suffered an even worse demise—their minds slowly broke until they were driven insane, corrupted into mindless animals doomed to rove the realm until a more powerful predator ended their suffering.

Most terrifying was that all the wording had disclaimers: ‘it is believed’, ‘we presume that’. Nothing factual. Because precious few who ever entered that realm ever returned to report their findings. The ones that did had lucked upon an Ash Tear that threw them back into the human realm before they succumbed to prana poisoning.

Vir closed the tome, classifying that horrifying place as a land of myth rather than anything real. Despite Shardul and Ekanai’s wishes, Vir wasn’t suicidal.

He opened the other book—thankfully full of creatures that had no Balar Rank at all—and flipped through its pages, looking at the black and white images of each animal.

Prana rats, Bandies, Ash’va. Most didn’t even come close to the description of what the Brotherhood riddle asked for… Except for one. His eyes lingered upon a certain creature. A Jatu.

The red-eyed Jatu is a winged creature that lives only in dark places. As nocturnal creatures, they sleep hanging upside down from their perches, feeding on blood at night. Individually harmless, but they often swarm in the hundreds, and their Balar Rank can range between one to ten.

Be wary when venturing into sewers, undercrofts, and other dark open spaces. The Jatu are highly territorial creatures and will attack all who enter their domain.

All of this would have led Vir to pass the Jatu over, but it was the last line that stuck out to him:

As they live in dark places, they have developed a means to see even without the use of their eyes. The exact mechanism is unknown and is often a topic of study for researchers.

A being that sees without eyes…

Something moved at the edge of Vir's vision, prompting him to look up. A scan of the area showed no one. Just him and the books.

Odd… he thought. He felt as if he was being watched, but Prana Vision showed only ambient pranic signatures. Guess it was nothing.

Vir realized he’d lingered at the library longer than he’d thought, and his eyes were growing weary from scanning the handwritten text.

Packing up his books, he carried them to the receptionist—the same young woman from earlier.

“Where can I find the nearest sewer entrance?” he asked.

The receptionist wrinkled her nose. “Why would someone as, erm, fashionable as yourself want to visit such a place?” she said, looking him up and down, a trace of blush on her cheeks.

Ah right, my current disguise is rather attractive, Vir reflected. Looks like that has some surprising uses…

“Brotherhood business,” Vir said.

“There’s one not far from here… but I recommend you bring a change of clothes. Ideally one you never want to wear again. And salves. Disinfectants too. Are you sure you want to go there?”

“No. No, I really don’t.”

With a deep breath, he left the library, bracing himself for the distasteful experience that was to come.

NOTE/QUESTION: Would you like it better if Vir's cartography exploits/selling got their own chapter?