Pillar

Chapter Six

The moonlight streaming through the lazy clouds sliding across the twinkling sky was enough to light up the streets, saving the lantern-lighters the effort of keeping up the light for the town. Several lanterns were lit at a rowdy event that over one patrol of Royal Guards stopped to consider at a stall in the River District.

The tattooists were drinking heavily from a barrel of Blue Trout Stout that Vivian had spent her herbalist-earned silvers on, while three hunters from an off-shoot of the Tyrik Clan were partaking of their own honeyed meads rolled over from their stall, where they’d been selling meats and cheeses all day.

Ukah could even pay one of the tavern-keepers daughters to haul out the cauldron of goat stew that’d been boiling over the fire pit in the middle of the Sound of War. With wooden bowls and spoons, the tattooists were laughing and dancing as one played a mandolin. Tobias and Lillian, both trainees for the Holy King’s army as infantry, showed up after an hour into the celebration.

Lillian, a short-haired teen that was busy comparing scars with the trio of river-hunters, who were currently wincing over her spear scar just below her ribs from an overzealous training exercise with a fellow trainee who was clumsy, laughed as she was passed another stein of Stout.

Tobias, a lean man wearing a sleeveless jerkin with a chain shirt underneath, was busy playing bartender for the raucous group. A sword strapped to his hip with a crossbow slung over his shoulder. He was a man who was always prepared. With his perfect smile, short locks of dirty-blonde hair and wiry muscles, Vivian had a hard time not looking up every now and again from her perch at one workstation.

Especially when he laughed.

“Hey!” Jack snapped. “Pay attention to what you’re doing! Those are my best needles!”

Vivian turned her eyes back to the twin needles, set into wooden handles with each equaling about half-a-foot. Selecting the language of the Aqua Lord, she added runes that would keep the points clean and sharp, while also imbuing a drowsy peace into those who they pierced.

 Chiseling in the wood with her tools, using Anam sand granules and horse glue, she created one unbroken chain of energy over the course of a grueling hour, trying to keep focus as the revelers sang and as Tobias laughed.

She finished just in time, as Lillian, still in her padded leather armor and her brown linens from her day of training, had challenged the large tattooist bearing the water worshipper mandala on his chest to a game of Mercy. Standing up while passing the bundled needles to Jack for his judgement, she grabbed a flagon of Stout and a bowl of spicy goat stew.

Sitting down on one of the low tables the customers had been laying out on to get their markings earlier in the evening, Lillian watched as Ezra (the man with the mandala) was slowly crushed in the grueling bout of interlocked fingers with the young soldier. Lillian danced about while Ezra shook, feeling back into his hands, bumping chests with one hunter as she hollered out her victory, the gathered men and women laughing right along with her.

 Dropping on the workbench next to her, Tobias leaned back with his back up against one of the thick posts holding the canopy up. He crossed his arms and looked over at Vivian and smiled. “So, a tattoo, huh?”

Vivian looked down at her bowl of stew and fought to control her blush from heating through her dusky skin. “Well yeah, I’ve thought about it before. I mean, I see how Ukah and the Tyrik are all marked in their own way and… well, I think it’d be nice to have some art of my own.”

“Art?” Tobias repeated.

“Yeah, I think tattoos are more than just brands and symbols used for marking who belongs where. I think they can serve as pieces of living art. I mean, look at Ezra. That mandala, while it serves as a religious text, it’s beautiful on its own! The colors, the folding forms, the curved structures of the cascading waves… its art.”

“And you want art on your arm?” Tobias asked, looking at her with curiosity.

Vivian lowered her Stout, wiping suds from her lip. “I want art with a purpose. If I’m right, then my new piece of artwork should be able to aid me in spell casting.”

“Ah,” Tobias said, rolling his eyes. “You and your precious spells…”

“Hey! They’re just as useful as a sword!” Vivian argued, already knowing where Tobias was going.

They often argued over the use of magic. He respected the Orators, proud magicians who called upon the power radiating from a large gathering of people to call out epic poems and battle cries, which would use said power to grants abilities to those close by. A gifted Orator could turn the tide of battle by just singing the praises of one army’s cause, hastening their blows and making their armor more resilient.

He looked down on wizards as he saw all the time spent in study as wasted effort. An Orator spent just as much time practicing with weapons as they did reading and studying ancient battles. The wizard was required to know how the world worked if they wanted to bend its laws, and reshaping the will of the spirits was difficult to even the most skilled wizard, whereas Orators were common throughout Pillar; few were truly gifted, but they were everywhere.

Before they could get into an argument, Jack croaked loudly.

“Well, they seem fine,” he said, motioning to his needles. “And Kaden returned with a piece of Leeching Willow that was laying half-buried in the mud. Almost had to fight some angry troll over it, but he had an iron bell with him.

Kaden, a tall man with shoulder length sun-bleached hair and a missing eye, held the broken branch with a thick glove, careful not to let any part of the wood touch him. Vivian set her drink to the side and passed her dinner to Tobias, before sauntering to the dangling branch. Most of the revelers stopped dancing, the hunters halted drinking, and even Lillian and Ukah stopped their conversation as they felt a swirl of the arcane carry on the wind.

The night fell hushed beneath the full light of both Selene and Wulf; a perfect time for magic to be stretched to the limits. While technically forbidden, even a neophyte wizard could resurrect a creature from beyond the grave, pulling its soul from where it rested in Elysium (for the good, virtuous, and brave) or Dis (for the evil, calculating, and cowardly) back to its destroyed body to pump it for information. If a wizard caught another one doing such an act, it would be grounds for a Ruk’tha immediately, the losing wizard being spared from the usual death sentence with the practitioner forced to willingly give up their wizard staff.

Magic is all about symbolism, Vivian thought, the very idea of giving up a handmade staff at the very pinnacle of an insult to magic. A wizard would be hard-pressed to get the Astral flows to work with them again after such an incident.

While a Leeching Willow’s cast-off branch wouldn’t possess a soul, it would keep enough information to let her know if it had indeed died a natural death by breaking off from wind or rain, or if it’d been broken off by a man such as Kaden.

Bringing her hands up, her rings sending out a soft azure flow for her to safely handle and communicate with the toxic wood. Vivian closed her eyes and focused on the last thoughts the tree was having before this branch was lost, the entire crowd silently watching her as she worked.

Fear.

Anger.

There was food, not just a simple animal. Not man. Like man, but like waste. Like bones. Bone-Man was trying to get to trunk.

Wasps drove him away, stingers slicing away chunks which fell in roots. Root moves over one before recoiling.

Dark energy, twisted and foul.

Pollution.

The branch whipped down and struck it away from the roots, a c***k in the bark forming from this action.

Need to remove injured limb.

A sudden rush of hot pain burned behind Vivian’s eyes, forcing her to open them to stare into Kaden’s eye with amazement.

He smiled. “Man, you have amazing eyes…”

“Hush,” Vivian said, thinking back on what the Willow had said earlier in the day. Something foul was walking around the outskirts of town after dark. I may have to investigate and see what it is. Maybe Bleak could provide some insight?

“Pillar to Vivian!” Tobias called out, breaking the silence around the small gathering, a slight chuckle following from the hunters. “What’d you learn?”

“The branch… it’s a cast off alright. The Willow used it to get rid of something it didn’t want to eat.”

“So, does that make it suitable for this brief experiment of yours?” Jack asked, grinding the Anam crystals with a mortar and pestle. “Because I’m not sending anyone out again tonight. It’s too dark, and the trolls close by are getting braver by the week. We must have something done about them, eventually.”

“Pay me thirty silvers and me and Tobias will clean out the two of ‘em out!” Lillian called out with a laugh. Ukah cracked a smile at Tobias’s face, and the hunters all broke out into wild laughter. Even two tattooists chuckled at the girl’s bravado.

“I’m tempted to offer just to see if you could,” Jack said, pouring the pale blue Anam sand into a bowl of rainwater, clouding it up quickly, “I imagine I’d just end up having to shell out the money as you’d muck it up enough to kill them, and one of you!”

“Not it!” Lillian cried, holding up her hand in excitement.

Tobias scowled. “Hey now, why do I have to die?”

The two of them fell into a heated argument that gathered the party’s attention, leaving Vivian and Jack to talk. She walked over with the branch and leaned on it as if it were her staff, which was resting next to the barrel of Stout. “This will serve as a perfect mixture for the Anam crystals.”

“You’re certain you want me putting that into your body? Even breathing the ashes can kill someone,” Jack asked, “I’ll do it, but only on your request in front of this large a crowd. I’m not getting set up for the hangman’s noose so soon after they use it.”

Vivian shuddered at the thought of the noose. Made from the hair of murderers, slavers, and rapists, it was a gruesome amalgamation that served as the executioner for the Kingdom of Vreba. All the victims of the noose were sent to Hamlin and kept for three days, where they were confined without food or water, before they were brought out at dawn on the fourth day to be hung.

The last man to be hung had been a soldier in the war between Vreba and the Red Marshes, a mercenary that traveled from battlefield to battlefield to satisfy his bloodlust. He worked for room and board, and the rights to loot the dead for tokens of affection from the fallen soldiers’ loved ones. It was rumored he kept a necklace of wedding rings that, upon capture at Vreba’s border, had over sixty-three dangling on it, all of them stained with blood from a recent kill. They’d kept him in holding while he investigated and found that a small cabin in the marshes had fallen victim to an attack that claimed the lives of three small children and a mother. Her ring finger was severed, as were all their heads, which were driven onto spits outside the cabin’s back door, along with the mutilated remains of an infant.

Vivian had made certain to see the man the day of his hanging, as she wanted to see the face of evil before it was killed. She was one of many, the gallows outside of town surrounded by people who were just as bloodthirsty as the mercenary had been that day. When he stepped out into the light from the wagon, Vivian had nearly screamed on the spot. Every inch of this man was covered in scars, many obviously self-inflicted.

Lines danced along his forearms, interrupted by wide gashes: some weapon of war had obviously done that. One wide wound was still becoming a fresh scar, going from his left clavicle down to the middle of his sternum. He kept his eyes closed the entire time, though his split grin was disgusting beyond reason. No cheeks to speak of, one could count all his teeth as he opened and closed his mouth as if it were a nervous habit.

He wasn’t introduced; the official declaring his name to be an insult upon the civilized tongue. When offered an ultimate word, he’d merely shaken his shaved dome, eyes closed the whole time. They’d then slipped a black bag over his head and the now-longer noose around his neck, before having a horse pull him up to slowly choke out. It took him five minutes to stop kicking, his bare feet nothing but solid scar tissue that looked like he’d gained by walking on coals.

Shivering, Vivian shook her head. “So, you were there too, eh?”

Jack shook his head. “No, I was busy minding the shop while the boys went to see the so-called show. I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve seen enough death. Now you swear I won’t see another if I mix the branches ashes with the crystals and then use it to ink out the strange designs on you?”

Vivian smiled, a smile that died when she looked over at Tobias and Lilian, who’d linked arms as they swigged from their flagons, their faces close enough to make Vivian’s heart lurch. “Yeah… I won’t feel a thing.”