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Interlude 13 - Inscrutable
🕑 Added 2024-10-21 17:00:09 +0000 UTCKazuma of Clan Higanashi, de facto Lord of his clan….
Found himself feeling terribly conflicted.
So much was happening all at once that he was having trouble settling on a single emotion.
There was the betrayal, of course. The campaign that the foreign exiled Sect had scouted him for had been months in the planning, with him involved every step of the way. Grandmaster Shacklock himself had sought him out, the infamous madman finding him slumped over a bar all those months ago in Nagizawa. He had been on the verge of weeping from the failure of his latest venture, when the thump of a cane had cut through the noise of the bar.
Insane, ambitious whispers in his ear had given him a hope that was now dashed.
There was the expected anger, from multiple different sources. Not only that Captain Wernstrom, who had been nothing but courteous to him, had dared to stab him in the back. But also that a figure that his family had presumed to have died out on this accursed isle was still among the living.
The ant man, Venix.
The name had been among the roster of students his great-grandfather was said to have trailing in his wake. Not much was said about him in the records, and certainly not his race. The only thing of note in the scrolls was that he took after the Twin Fang himself, in choosing to bear multiple blades at once.
He hadn’t expected that to mean four over the damn things.
By his own admission, the insect was at least partially responsible for the death of his great ancestor. There had been a palpable guilt in the shoulders of the bug when he had spoken of his master.
Not much was actually known of how Gozen had died. Not even Jiro of the Flickering Storm had been able to tell them, much less the historical remnants of the latest Ryumetsu Matsuri. The way his grandfather had spoken, Spirits rest his soul, the man had been half delirious when he stumbled into the then clan compound. He’d picked up some form of deadly jungle infection that haunted his grievous wounds, and no amount of Healing had been able to save him. The only words the man had been to utter before he passed was that the blade still existed, in a…cryptic way. The infection had taken his mind by that point.
As his grandfather had told him, the exact words Jiro had said before dying were,
“It never fell…the fang never fell. Eyes in the dark…flame that stalks…it took it. Lost not lost but still there. She waits…where silence burns…”
Suitably cryptic, to the apparent dismay of his Clan. But his father had spent decades of his life trying to decrypt the dying words of a delirious man, and had shared what he’d found with Kazuma. It hadn’t been much.
But it was enough to convince both Kazuma and Grandmaster Shacklock.
Kazuma wanted to demand answers from the Ant man. Maybe he possessed a crucial clue that would help to fit all the pieces together, and from there he could save his family from the proverbial gutters.
His pride sealed his lips, though, and thus he hadn’t so much as looked in the cur’s direction. But over the last few days, he had certainly felt Venix’s eyes on him.
Because the group of strange partisans who insisted they were not members of the Order of the Eclipsed Dawn had invited him to travel with them. Since he no longer had any comrades of his own in these savage wilds, he had of course accepted.
And so he’d been accompanying these odd people for two days now.
They were the cause of the third emotion that was unsettling him.
Confusion.
What an…eclectic group they were.
Firstly was the dwarf. Kazuma could count on one hand the number of times he had personally met one of his people. Nagizawa, the city his Clan had settled down in after their exile from the capital, was a port city. It mainly dealt in fish, though, and not expensive goods. That meant that Dwarven merchants were somewhat uncommon on the docks of the stinking city. The Velancians had their own fishing sources, and most seldom had need of what Kawamara could sell to them in that regard.
However, this Azarus was unlike any Dwarf he had met. He spoke and acted differently, simultaneously both with wisdom and blunt disregard. Kazuma’s studies from years past told him that the accent that colored the crimson-haired dwarf’s words placed him from the distant mountain holds, and yet he was clearly educated. Strong in the arm, too, from how he had dispatched a group of Wyrmkin his new group had encountered.
A contradiction.
The Gnolls were a puzzle in and of themselves. They were so different from each other. These were actually the first of their kind Kazuma had ever met before. The Throng was currently barred from venturing onto the shores of Kawamara, due to some courtly faux pas from when he was a child. As a result, you didn’t normally see Gnolls in the Land of Twinning Rivers. These two both were and were not what he had expected from their kind.
The female was almost what the tales told of these strangers of Vereden. She was elusive, rarely interacting with the group in favor of serving as a scout. She spoke little, and what she did say was in a quiet, shifty tone to his ears. He had yet to have the chance to speak to her, and it almost seemed like she was deliberately avoiding him.
Of course, the male was a Healer and had saved his life. Kazuma had pledged to guard him on this treacherous island, and taken up one of the guard positions in the center of the formation. This Renauld was…fairly easygoing, from his conversations with him. Kazuma understood that he was a student at the Academy of Mystic Arts, and had gotten caught up in the Herztalian’s civil war before falling in with this group. The fox man was a tad mercurial in his moods, but friendly enough. From the tales, he hadn’t expected that from one of his kind.
Which left only the humans of this troupe.
Both of which frustrated him, if only for different reasons.
The woman, Bella, he had learned was a pirate. Upon discovering that, Kazuma had begun to deliberately shun her presence. He refused to entertain a murdering criminal, and it stung at him that he had fallen so far that he must call one of her kind a comrade. She didn’t seem to care a whit about his disapproval, only smirking at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. If not for the man stopping her, he thought she would have spent the entire journey across Goryuen mocking him.
The man…
Who actually was a human.
That had surprised him. This Nathan Hart had long, pointed ears in the manner of the savage Elves from the mainland. Kawamara had none of those long-disgraced barbarians upon her shores, and the sight of such features had initially shocked him. Upon that beach when he had first seen the man, it had been his appearance that initially made Kazuma wary of the group. Not just him, but Wernstrom and the rest of Solstice’s Flame leadership.
Nobody that journeyed with an elf, much less one that had odd patches of what looked to be blackened scales dotting his body, could be trustworthy.
But Kazuma had come to learn that the quiet man was just that. A man, and not an Elf. His strange appearance was apparently the result of some form of curse, inflicted upon him by the Calamity that had briefly risen in the city of Elderwyck, in the dying days of the Construct War. In a shocking and somewhat scandalous move, the man had even invited Kazuma to Observe him to prove the truth of his words.
Kazuma had tentatively done so, only to see that Hart was nothing more than a mere Human. Nothing strange had been visible on his Status at all.
That had relieved him, he had to admit.
However, Hart was still a mystery to him. This group almost treated him like the true leader, and not the hulking, almost certainly more powerful Antium that led the formation. They consulted him on decisions, and more often than not, followed his advice. Kazuma had also learned that their entire expedition was apparently Hart’s idea. The other man was tight-lipped about what they sought here on the island, only saying that they sought something at the base of Mt. Gorenzan. When Kazuma had pointed out that that was the most dangerous place on the isle, as the Oni hordes encircled the throne of Tatsugan himself, Hart had merely nodded. The man seemed entirely unfazed by the potential danger, when even Kazuma himself, who had quite literally chosen to give his life for his clan, was apprehensive of that treacherous range.
Kazuma had been able to discover nothing of this strange, Elf-like Human’s origins. He spoke little of himself in Kazuma’s earshot, and his companions almost appeared unfalteringly loyal to him. Kazuma only knew a few things about the mysterious man. The first was that he was a Mage, in comparison to his own path of the Cultivator. The other was that his Professions were Smithing and Enchanting.
He could, at the very least, admire the strange armor and weapons this Hart seemed to carry, apparently borne of his own two hands. Kazuma had never actually seen Oninite smithed in that manner, and certainly not in such abundance. It felt almost extravagant, truthfully. Kazuma doubted that the Emperor himself had such a complement of Oninite.
He was at least competent, though. The man seemed to realize that he didn’t need to continue guarding the Healer with Kazuma around. He also appeared to have scout training like the taciturn Gnoll woman. Hart had joined her in becoming a scout, choosing to range around their flanks to ward off dangers that may be approaching.
But he didn’t need to for long, because the jungle was coming to an end.
On the morning of the third day since Kazuma had joined this small, odd troop, the scenery began to change around them. The trees started to thin out, the sounds of the jungle began to fade, and even the insects died down.
This was a relief to everyone. Even the ant man seemed grateful the vicious, bloodthirsty things were no longer poking at his chitin.
By the time lunch had rolled around, they reached the absolute edge of the jungles of Goryuen.
The transitionary point from the outer island…
To the inner.
The group gathered to stand in a line on the delineating point, shoulder to shoulder. The two scouts had returned by now to join them.
And stare out across the peaks of the horizon.
Kazuma had heard tale of the mountains of Goryuen. How they were the youngest, most treacherous spires upon the face of Vereden. How they were unnatural to the extreme, haunted by ghosts of the endless struggle with the Immortal Wyrm. And how only the foolish would brave their depths, when not bound by duty.
It turned out…those tales were true.
They seemed endless.
Stretching far off into the horizon was a sea of blade-like peaks and treacherous valleys. The stone of the range was blackened, and their summits almost seemed to gleam blue in the light of the shrouded sun overhead. Because the light of Tarus did not seem to fully touch the entirety of the span, no. Instead, angry, roiling grey clouds shrouded the sky as far as the eye could see, and the occasional spire of lighting reached down to touch the tips of those upthrust spears. Thunder rumbled among the clouds, a muted growl that reached the group from even this distance.
And yet, no rain appeared to be falling upon the range. No floods rushed through barren corridors of stone that threaded throughout the mountains. It was bone dry, nearly desert-like within that hell.
Unlike the jungles, nothing could live in there. No water, no animals, no greenery.
Only monsters and beasts.
It was a good thing, then, that Kazuma didn’t intend to venture inside.
Yet.
He only had to convince his newfound allies of the plan. Such as it was.
Kazuma’s introspection, and the silence of the group, was broken when Hart spoke first.
“Hmm,” He uttered in a mild tone. “That doesn’t look fun.”
The lord of Clan Higanashi couldn’t help but turn a disbelieving eye upon the man.
“Fun?” Kazuma uttered under his breath disbelievingly.
His companions had a different reaction.
Renauld smirked, seemingly put at ease, where only moments before intimidation had painted his furred face. “Downright spooky, even.”
Meanwhile, the dwarf actually looked a bit impressed. “Some damn fine mountains, though,” He said, strangely admiring. “The old holds ain’t got nothin’ on this. They’re a downright cakewalk in comparison.”
“I’ve never been,” Liora said, turning an interested eye towards Azarus. “Is there truly such a difference?”
“Oh, aye,” Azarus nodded. “Y’see…” To Kazuma’s disbelief, the two of them began a conversation on comparative geology.
Meanwhile, Hart had turned to Bella, who had taken out her far-eye and was examining the range. “See anything interesting? Can I borrow that?”
Bella lowered the instrument and turned to him with a taunting smirk. “Nothin’ noteworthy, just a few beasties. Think I saw a movin’ Oni horn, but it wasn’t part of a violence. And…maybe ye can look. If ye ask nicely.”
Hart returned her smirk with one of his own. “Oh, I’ll ask nicely. Just…later.”
The two of them chuckled to themselves, to Kazuma’s confusion, before Bella handed Hart the far-eye. The odd man took it but didn’t look through yet. Instead, he turned to Venix. “So, where should we enter? Straight ahead?”
The ant opened his treacherous mouth to answer, but Kazuma had shaken off the oddity of his ally's behavior. He co-opted the conversation by clearing his throat. When a majority of eyes turned his way, Kazuma made his play.
“There is somewhere else we should go first,” He began firmly. “The central range-”
He was cut off by Hart. “Is our destination,” The pseudo-Elf said sharply. “Do not forget, Kazuma Higanashi, you are our guest. I extended an invitation to you because you might have died, alone in the jungle. But we have our own plans on this island.”
Kazuma grit his teeth and tried not to lose his temper, aware even the conversation on mountain geology had died down. “I’m aware,” He said, suppressing his temper. “But I believe I know where the Shōmetsu no Kiba can be found.”
Venix took a step forward then, attention sharpening. “Where?”
The Kawamaran samurai took a deep breath. “The dying words of Jiro of the Flickering Storm gave my Clan enough to work off of for our research. We believe it might be there,” He said, pointing off to the right side of the horizon.
Towards a curl of smoke that wafted into the sky, originating from a short, squat mountain. This one had no blade-like tip like the rest of the range, and lay outside of it as well, crouching between it and the jungle.
The party followed his finger, as Kazuma spoke again.
“The volcano of Mt. Umetsuji.”
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Comments
Jesper Hallstensson
An unexpected interlude, but a welcomed one nonetheless
