"Aye, little figment, aye"
Excerpt from Deep Lore, Chapter VI | Pigtail
Pigtail had stayed far too long on Knob Isle. She had always been short, even for a larinisse woman, but the effects of The Paramount had made her even smaller and gave her skin, in a certain light, a slight tinge of green. Even the tips of her ears were abandoning roundness for rather acute points, which she made every effort to hide beneath the locks of a luscious purple wig. But no one on the mainland gave her a second look. Going unnoticed was her trade, gathering information was her life’s work, and tracking people down was her passion.
She was accompanied by Layshio, a seasoned member of the inner circle to which she was recently promoted, whose copious grey hair and beard betrayed his hulking, four-and-a-half-foot frame. He carried a shaft adorned with a deep blue spearhead that most assumed was wrought iron. But, as with everything that dwelled within the mines of The Paramount, it was something far more precious and far more secret.
“This way,” said a slender man in a long-bodied, emerald-colored gown that dragged a donkey-length behind him. They followed him across a burgundy carpet embroidered with golden depictions of lions and longswords and chubby-cheeked royals wearing bejeweled crowns. The man’s sleeves flared as he directed them down each corridor, his heavy necklace clashing against the gems sewn into his every seam. The final leg of the maze terminated in a double-door entrance, giant even by humanisse standards, which was guarded by four men, one of whom demanded that Layshio leave his weapon outside.
“It’s quite alright,” their guide reassured the zealous defender, “they are here at the king’s request. They may keep their belongings about them.” His accommodating tone quickly changed as he repositioned his glance to Pigtail. “Though they’d be wise to keep their hands visible at all times. The archers on the mezzanine have a tendency to jump to conclusions.”
The mountainous entranceway rumbled as more guards on the inside pulled it open. Carved into each door were six panes, reducing the entirety of the ancient battle against Hethusella into twelve scenes, the last of which featured an Apston crowning the first king of the Mar dynasty. And sitting across the great hall, in an old but priceless chair, was the latest one.
When his heavy footsteps no longer ricocheted off the stone walls, and the tail of the slender man’s gown came to a stop, Pigtail and Layshio customarily bowed their heads and genuflected.
“You kneel in the presence of Kyrgun Mar, Lord of Maidenfail, High King among the High Kings, Overseer of Hyden and its Isles, Firstborn Protector of the Realm, and the one-hundred and eleventh son of the throne,” the skinny man announced with the volume and vigor of one addressing a crowded hall, despite there being fewer than ten souls in the room.
“Up. Up.” Kyrgun barked at them, already impatient. “You. Leave,” he ordered the man. “Play. Play,” he shouted at the foursome of harpers sitting in a small bandshell in the center of the hall. The music was upbeat yet reflective, but mostly, it was loud. So loud that Pigtail had to walk twenty paces closer to the throne to hear anything the king was saying.
“Fools. All of them. Fools. Three knights I’ve sent, and I’m no closer to getting my daughter back.” Kyrgun rose from the throne. He was forty if he was a day. He had the arms and shoulders of a man who was once strapping but the belly of one who parted with vanity long ago. “Gods know what this hedomage is doing with her. She’s my only child, and no prince is going to marry another man’s whore. I will not let this… fiend be the reason my bloodline dies out.”
Kyrgun tossed a small, blood-stained sack at their feet. Layshio cautiously picked it up.
Pigtail nodded in approval, and her companion pulled out three severed heads. One by one.
“The knights,” Kyrgun was breathing heavily. He snatched the sack from Layshio’s hands.“Discretion matters.”
“We are nothing if not—” Pigtail started.
“Yes. Yes. You lot don’t exist. Relics just happen to go missing, whispers just happen to be heard, healthy princes just happen to die in their sleep. None of it has to do with you. You’re just old wives’ tales and figments of our imagination. Figments that live on an island I control. Figments I’m paying handsomely.”
“You’re too kind, your grace,” was all Pigtail could mutter. The receiving of assignments and terms of agreements were all handled by the smallest, greenest, and pointiest-eared members back on Knob Isle. She only cared about the task at hand.
“Ask the lads in that sack how kind I am. I don’t need your pleasantries. I need your talents.”
“Then, if I may be frank, my lord,” Pigtail said sternly, “you need to spend less time wielding threats and more time telling us everything you know. Leave out no detail. Leave out no names. Leave out no actions, big or small.” She motioned toward the musicians. “Better tell them to play another song. We could be here a while.”
Kyrgun laughed. “Aye, little figment. Aye.”
When night fell, the slender man showed Pigtail to her chambers, a nook within the servants’ quarters with a blanketless cot. A far cry from the famed guestrooms of the royal palace. But I’m no guest. I don’t even exist.
She fetched a small mirror from her large knapsack and balanced it on the pillow. With both hands, she carefully removed her wig and examined the bald patches sprinkled across her scalp. Another consequence of spending two moons in The Paramount. She never concerned herself with beauty when she was younger—and did so even less now that she was past her childbearing years—but she always loved her hair.
She would occasionally become jealous of Layshio’s locks. There was little need for brutes like him to study the gamji, so he spent most of his days above ground where the poisoned air had no stronghold. Besides, he was more punch-and-stab than cloak-and-dagger, but he was a clever tracker in his own right. And Pigtail had known him since she was a child.
She put away the mirror and stood with her back to the opening where a door should have been. Then she retrieved a deep green box comprised of interwoven branches that gave no indication that it was more than decoration. Tugging on one branch, pulling on a second one, and unclasping another, two asymmetrical sides popped open, revealing a collection of colorful silk strings, plucked scales, and viles of vibrant venom within.
Pigtail selected a blue scale the size of her fingernail and placed it under her tongue with the sharpest edge facing up. She then removed her clothes, folded them, placed all her belongings in her knapsack, and hid it under her cot.
As she stepped naked into the hallway, she took a deep breath and thrust her tongue downward, piercing its underside with the scale. She could taste the residue of the gamji’s broken skin mixing with her blood as it traveled down her throat. Her body began to tingle, and the sound of her heartbeat grew stronger in her pointed ears.
And soon, she was completely invisible.
"A fickle breeze may touch no leaves"
Excerpt from: Deep Lore, Chapter X | Red Randalf
Red Randalf took a deep breath and slowly approached the entrance. The wind was fierce but penetrable—like a lover who repels with one hand and seduces with another—its relentless blows all but tore the robe from his body, causing it to follow him around like a shadow. He felt the rays of an unseen sun warm his skin, and with each step, the outside world evaporated. When he reached the narrowest part of the pathway, he was covered in a strange mist, and a misshapen pile of wood burned vaguely at its center. Its smoke smelled of curdled milk and hummed rhythmically as it ricocheted off the porous cavern walls. Its vapors glistened pale blue whenever it passed through the open flames. A strange woman hovered over it.
Red Randalf veiled his nose and mouth beneath the drape of his sleeve, but the Oracle swallowed and sniffed until cerulean soot sketched her a mustache and soiled her chin. She was old enough to be wise yet spry enough to dance naked about the bonfire. Her hair was copious and tangled with asymmetrical streaks of grey sprinkled throughout. Even her eyebrows refused to conform, the left one, maiden brown, its counterpart, a piercing shade of ivory.
Wrinkled cheeks and a leathery neck gave way to smooth shoulders, youthful legs, and surprisingly taught breasts. The hedomage felt himself becoming aroused but knew it would be for naught. The Oracle was unenchantable and uninterested in worldly desires. She was wed to the future, submissive to the unknown.
She turned toward him, piercing his soul with eyes that weren’t there. “Tell me what you seek and I shall seek what you tell.”
Red Randalf had only one question. Possibly the most sobering question he had ever asked.
“What will become of this world?”
“She walks without feet. She speaks with no lips. But she lies. She lies,” the Oracle prophesied, hissing as she once again shoved her face into the fire.
Although he had never interacted with seers, he knew they weren’t the most effective communicators. She answered questions he didn’t ask and he questioned answers she didn’t give. The best he could do was repeat himself.
“What will become of this world? Can my mistake be undone?”
The Oracle grabbed his hand, exposing his face to the odor and the fumes. She pulled him within kissing distance, two pupils nestled in each of her eyes, conjoined at the edges like the leaves of a clover. “Await not for wings to be upon us nor colors to not change, lest more will be mored and less will be lessed.”
“Sounds like a plan. But will the world end? Can anyone stop it?”
“Come.” Without the common courtesy of waiting for her guest to rise, the woman ventured into the dark depths of the cave. He hoisted himself off the dirty ground and hastened toward her naked body.
Smoke trailed behind her, dragging orange rays of light through the air like the wick of a hidden candle. They navigated a maze of flowstones and columns of petrified daggers threatening to stab them from above and below. Unfortunately, the light wasn’t accompanied by warmth, and the hedomage found himself shivering beneath layers of crimson wool, yet the unclad woman didn’t so much as quiver, even when they reached their icey destination.
“Stand here.” She pointed at a nondescript spot in the umber. “Tomorrow isn’t a tree, but the wind, a fickle breeze may touch no leaves, but a storm rattles all the branches.”
Red Randalf could see the outline of massive bats suspended from the crevices. While their number was great, they formed no cluster. Each creature was the king of his own domain. Folded wings and relentless stillness suggested they were asleep, but their ears were perked and their snouts pointed right toward him. No matter which direction he faced, a winged beast stared back at him with glimmerless eyes.
Suddenly, all light drained from the cavern, and he found himself in utter darkness. “No one sees the future, child. But if you listen closely, you just may hear it.” The Oracle’s voice seemed to come from nearby and afar all at once. But when her final word bounced off a distant wall, there was an abundance of nothing. Just me and the bats and no flock to help me fuck my way out of here.
But nothing became something as a choir of incessant, high-pitched chirps sang in unison. His head swayed amidst the dizzying melody, and his body soon followed suit. Despite covering his ears, their piercing cries penetrated his hands and provoked him all the same. The highs and the lows melted into a solitary tone like a band of bards calibrating their lyres to a single note. And when all was in balance, they began to play.
Sounds ascended and divided and descended and collided from every corner of the blackness: a woman’s laugh, a wave breaking like thunder, the clashing of steal, the burning of walls, the growling of a giant beast, moans of pleasure, the flapping of giant wings, the bells of a wedding, the splitting of skin, the cheers of thousands, a bellow of pain, the delicate steps of the nymphs, a stew boiling, hooves stomping, an old friend’s laugh.
And like a bard’s song, the sound paled in comparison to the emotions that accompanied it. Feelings so potent and foreign that to describe them would be nonsense. Perhaps the tongue of the oracle is more coherent than it seems.
The Oracle’s voice returned with a vengeance. “Man can’t save what the gods destroy, but gods can’t destroy what man has made. In the middle, the answer lies. Nestled between colorless thighs.”
When Red Randalf opened his eyes again, he was outside the entranceway, struggling to walk through the menacing wind. The sun was right where he left it, as if he had never entered at all.
“This is a waste of time,” said Kyrgena. “None of us can get in. It’s a shame. I was going to ask her how to be rid of you.”
Red Randalf said nothing and started the uphill climb to the bottom of the ridge. Replaying the riddle in his head. Trying to make sense of the world. Trying not to go mad.
But perhaps one must go mad to make sense of the world.
Sign up for the Newsletter!
I get it. Who needs another newsletter? Well, I polled all your friends, and apparently, you do! This one comes with novellas, sample chapters, whiskey recommendations, and giveaways. Plus, one in every seven hundred thousand subscribers gets magical abilities. So...totally worth it.
