Runaway dragon – Chapter 1

The first half of the third month eta-Lashaati (Ripple), the last month of spring, 151 years after the impact of the Fallen Black Star

Up among the northern quarter of the heartland, nestled at the cusp where the ‘real’ northward provinces of the realm begins, with stout and dark stone walls facing in this direction, lies a city constructed upon the premise of arising as a bulwark against the foul raiders who would dare to trespass deeper south. In fact, its very name ‘Kambaresa’ supposedly has the older meaning of ‘Eagle’s Aegis’ in Nswarha, one of the major tongues in the topmost direction of Ngoyamen. Notwithstanding that it wouldn’t be accurate to claim that this minor metropolis lies against the actual border to the north, nor are the raids as common to endure these days, its history has not been forgotten and this is showcased in how it was built – pressed against the foot of a small mountain or plateau, hemmed in by two or three layers of walls and each house fashioned of impressive brown stone or rugged clay, with their peaked roofs and tall statures, an outsider could very much assert that its construction has ambitioned to put on a display of fearlessness and supervision.

Eyren knows Kambaresa from her earlier visits, partially due to the fact that this is the closest major settlement near to her own home province, but she has moreover actually dropped by this place on more than a handful of occasions. It’s one of those sites up here where a roamer like her may attain fruitful tips of assignments, purchase supplies or a safe station to rest, if she’s gotten into trouble or is escorting someone else that might be. Her foremost impression of it hasn’t really altered overly past her opening entry either, knowing it as a highly security-based burg, with firm checkpoints, watchers on the wall always overseeing outsiders, and inflexible laws. She’s not rightly familiar with the name of the lord who rules upon the roost, but she trusts that they’re a warlord of some variety, as fitting for this level of plane.

Her goal amid this current drop-in is equal to what it tends to be whenever she checks into the city – she’s hunting for intel. A week ago, she picked up an intriguing commission which caught her eye, one that spoke of a bounty for a distinctly slippery figure. Eyren isn’t traditionally a bloodhound for humans, especially as prying into such matters within major cities has the habit of getting one in undue trouble, but she’s made an exception for this one. The price is set at 100,000 impercesm for a fugitive woman, a supposedly ‘dangerous killer’ who scarpered from a prison in southern Ahterilio, the easternmost province and partial neighbor to Ngoyamen. She knows little else in regards to the woman’s crimes, but she has seen a hasty illustration and earned a name – Nivra. The drawing wasn’t perhaps the finest, and other than that she’s supposed to have black hair and dark brown skin, she wouldn’t stand out inordinately. That is, if she didn’t possess a pretty severe marker – backwards-pointing ebony horns with rows of grooves, bent-up tips and small spiky knots along their lengths. In common parlance, these are styled ‘dragon horns’ and are extremely rare as a human characteristic. So rare in fact that Eyren has never met a person with them. They were the most prominent trait on the sketch as well, indicating she only has to keep an eye out for such a person. And this Nivra has reputedly fled somewhere to northern Ngoyamen, which means Eyren could catch up with her. Maybe she even passed by Kambaresa.

When she and Razz push up to the large grided gateway, the sky being forebodingly cloudy, she notes instantly that there’s a decently lengthy line outside of people seeking to tread within. Beyond and around the gate stands roughly a dozen troopers, with a handful more up on the wall fitted with bows and crossbows, in spite that none of them are drawn. Eyren tracks their steely visages and rigid phrases, knowing precisely their types. Some of them may or may not have an unfavorable slant of outsiders, but in general, this is simply what their wages pay for, to only let in the deserving and filter out unwanted scraps.

Hopping off her raptor’s back, Eyren turns aside and arms herself to stand in this queue for a stretch, seeing as the flow isn’t changing swiftly. However, this outlook has to be readdressed when one of the guards waves at her.
“You with the raptor. Approach.” Looking around herself if there’s another person who might meet this standard, she shrugs and honors what she’s told, albeit with a couple of frigid stares from the people who were in line ahead of her nailing her back. The sentry is mildly shorter than her with a piece of green cloth wrapped over his head and slid down around his neck, body draped in mainly leather armor and a few pieces of metal for gauntlets and shoulder pads, which doesn’t differ blisteringly from his comrades. At his belt sits a saber and an oblong shield is attached to his posterior. “You look like the sturdy sort”, he says in only faintly accented Ahteron. “State your business.”

“Uh, sure”, she replies, making sure to remark the half a dozen of accompanying glances she notches up from the other guards. “I’m Eyren, uh…self-sufficient warrior and bounty hunter. I’m here to shop for possible rumors and data on a potential prize.”

The man snorts from behind his thick black moustache and bobs his head.
“As I thought. You’re not the first mweger who’s made it here to stalk a prey in the last few weeks”, he goes. That term in Nswarha is one she recalls meaning ‘outsider’ and is more neutral than demeaning. “In you go, then. But be heedful when you traipse across our streets. Don’t stir up any trouble, alright? Your visit won’t be all that long-lived, if so.”

A threat isn’t that extraordinary to be impelled by from sentinels of any city, but this one comes off as doubly cautious to her. She snorts and shrugs her shoulders.
“This isn’t my first time in Kambaresa, sir. I know the rules.”

“See that you do.”

She dips her head in recognition and thereafter guides Razz with her past the gate, where the guards imminently blank on that she was at all present.
Pacing forward into the gravel and dirt roads which extends down the lowest district in the area, Eyren is nominally jolted by the view which comes into play, for there’s hardly any people nearby. Not that these streets are forever teeming to the brim with crowds all day long, notably as these first avenues aren’t anything but living and working quarters, but she had projected appended numbers than the smatter of folks that she beholds in corners here and there. Maybe that’s her faulty judgment coming from someone who wasn’t born in a city, that these places are continually so dense that it’s hard to breathe.

Upon reaching the center of the area, around the market district, that’s when she finally ferrets out larger clutches, even greater than what she’s normally adapted to. The stalls and shops here do usually attract most denizens due to that they hawk all the goods, food, equipment and more that you might itch for, but it’s coincidently a highly opportune space to track down the kind of lowdown that Eyren is after. With all this hubbub and noise at play, though, she’s wondering if maybe it would be wise to find out what’s going on for starters, since the bulk of people aren’t making purchases or browsing, but chatting. This chatter in particular has Razz a smidgen antsy, for she appreciates masses less than Eyren does.

While she advances on an array of locals who sit by a table in the outskirts of an inn, hoping to catch what scant specifics she’s able to, she garners more than a sprinkle of strange and wary looks. Soon enough, a man who’s seated by the table waves her over, running his eyeline across her features.
“You there. You eavesdropping on us?”

Eyren hadn’t exactly been hiding this fact per se, as she was situated just a fragment of meters away while looking at them, but she does cough gauchely at the allegation.
“Well uh…that’s a kinda pointed question, but…I mostly just wanted to listen in on what’s up right now.”

The cluster of people around the table, plus several more who sit and listen in the vicinity, peer at her with additional ounces of suspicion.
“You new in town?”

She gradually inches up to their spot, Razz stood behind her, practically breathing her nose into Eyren’s neck.
“In a manner of speaking. I arrived a couple of minutes before.”

The company exchanges looks again, previous to nailing doubtable scowls at her.
“Where you from?”

“Uh, I’m a wanderer, but eastern Steorshlag originally. A village several miles north of Urmesan, if you’d like to be precise.”

This specification does seem to settle them and those who had been glaring at her from disparate tables return to their own jangles.
“Well, that’s a relief. Thought you might’ve been one of the bastards we had at us earlier…”

“Bastards? What’re you talking about?”

“Huh? Didn’t you see what happened outside?”

“Outside? Didn’t notice anything unordinary out there.”

“Pff, must’ve come from the northern gate, then. Last week, we were assaulted by troops from a town to the west. Just came at our gates without warning and attacked caravans and traders who were making for our markets! The gall of those people!”

To the west? Eyren considers where that could’ve commenced. There’s undoubtedly independent towns in the neighborhood of Kambaresa, both north and west, which still rest behind the figurative lines of Ngoyamen. With that said, she’s unsure if any of them would be sufficiently cocky to lay onto a reinforced region like Kambaresa.
“Uh, which one are you speaking of? Not one of your neighbors, surely?”

“Heh, not on your life”, mumbles a woman who sits across from the man. “Ain’t a mbjaker in the nearest hundred miles who’d slight our proud home with such maneuvers. No no, it was that vicious lord of Jingtanya. Can’t trust a Xilan, I swear…”

Huh. Not a denotation she’d expect to hear, since that’s a town in eastern Shaim Xil, the province closest to the west of Ngoyamen.
“Really? But that’s miles from here. And I’ve been to Jingtanya. Most of the people in that region are rice farmers. Never heard of their lord besetting anyone.”

“Then you haven’t been there for a long while, aiwei”, the man retorts. “A coup or something took place a couple of years back and they’ve gained a real ambitious slime at the top instead. Been sending out warbands and mercenaries left and right. Mainly to target his nearest hamlets, but he’s set his sights higher now, on the shining lid of the Aegis!”

Weighing this in her head, Eyren registers that the idea is an ineludible fact of the world. Everywhere in the continent, the landowners, grand merchants, lords and other nabobs upon their thrones have a tendency to bicker among themselves. They send their armies or paid mercenaries between one another, to pillage or to claim, hoping to reap larger territory for themselves. Whenever one rises, another looms from behind to stab them. Roving warbands and massive volumes of bandits have cropped up specifically because of this, either to take advantage of wages or to steal from those who suffer. It’s really the overriding chaos of the modern world. In the era of the Ahterilion Empire, in spite of that it locked culture, rules and opulence onto itself, one thing you can say for it is that it pegged down a method with which to bring peace to the continent. Needless to say, this was by way of first conquering practically each piece of land available.

“Hmm”, Eyren radiates. “Is that what this commotion is about? The city has assembled in the markets to debate the attack?”

“Oh, no no, not even slightly”, the woman denies. “The Lord of the Talon, the chief of Kambaresa, sent out his heralds yesterday to announce that there have been captives taken from a recent battle. One of them is a lieutenant, and people are whispering that it’s gonna end in a public trial.”

“Damn right it will”, the man approves. “And they better execute that fucking pucau! She and her people better suffer for what they did to us!”

“An eye for an eye!”, a third person agrees, followed by other denizens proximate to them holding up their mugs and glasses in acceptance.

As for Eyren’s view, she would somehow dispute that. Officers aren’t typically sentenced in that regard, for there’re multiple benefits to exchange them for prisoners among the enemy, or to just ransom them. Then again, if this native lord happens to figure that death is suitable…could he be sending a message? Could a greater war in the region be brewing?