H - 144: You Started It (Patreon)

Just as dusk fell early in the deep passes below the mountains, dawn arrived early upon the peaks. And then receded again, depending on one’s course through them, but by the time she drew within sight of the lone tower perched improbably against one mountain’s upper face, the sun had risen high enough that light was constant even within the little crags and valleys that interrupted a direct course across the peaks.

Striding up the steep rock wall with the tower looming high above and directly ahead, she began to see the signs.

Actual, literal signs.

They were all over the place—a few affixed to the surface of the mountain, some organized vertically as they would be on flat ground, others positioned perpendicular to the rock face as if for the reading convenience of some improbable person climbing in the manner she was.

Many more were…around the mountain. They formed a sparse ring fully encircling the mountain itself starting just below the level of the tower’s foundations and extending downward for a good dozen vertical paces, as if to ensure nobody could miss one.

That would have been hard. These were set at a variety of crazy angles, facing outward in a profusion clearly organized to make their faces clear to potential approachers coming from any direction, by climbing or flying.

There were so many ways of affixing objects in the air that one could learn something about the wizard who’d done it by studying the method used. These had both ends of the posts to which the signs were attached anchored in tiny permanent portals—each two portals affixed back to back, in fact, such that they were locked in position relative to the planet’s gravity well. That would cause them to shift slightly with the orbits of the moons, but not enough to disrupt their function.

And of course, the signs themselves were heavily enchanted to survive the conditions at this altitude.

In fact, the entire mountain top was surrounded by wards—nothing like what was laid across the whole of Dragonvale, but powerful and intricate enough to reveal a mage of significant skill lived here.

Naturally, she passed through those as if they weren’t there. Not so thoroughly as to fully hide her presence; that was a rather unsociable action for someone who was planning to knock on the door. The wizard deserved a bit of warning, at least.

She did read the signs, of course, all which were oriented toward her as she climbed. Their profusion was arranged such that some were individual messages devoid of context, while many others formed their own sequences.

GO AWAY

NO TRESPASSING

FUCK OFF

FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF

PRIVATE PROPERTY OF AN UNPLEASANT WIZARD

NO SOLICITING

NO QUESTIONS ASKED

YOU ARE NOT AN EXCEPTION

COMPANY IS NOT WANTED

LEAVE

THE EASY WAY OR THE HARD WAY

VIOLATORS WILL BE SENT TO A MOON

A FUCKING GODDAMN MOON

WHICHEVER ONE IS CLOSER

THERE’S NO AIR AND IT’S COLD ENOUGH TO FREEZE NITROGEN

IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT NITROGEN IS YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS THIS CLOSE TO A WIZARD’S TOWER

I DON’T HAVE GUESTS, I HAVE TARGET PRACTICE

KEEP CLIMBING TO VOLUNTEER

NOT ACCEPTING VISITORS

OR APPRENTICES

OR THE EXISTENCE OF OTHER PEOPLE

THIS IS THE HOME OF A PORTAL MAGE WHO DOESN’T WANT GUESTS

THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE DOING

GO THE HELLS AWAY

GET LOST

NEXT PERSON WHO ASKS ME ABOUT THE DRAGONLORD IS GOING TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN

NO, NOT THAT OCEAN, I’M GONNA PICK AN EXOTIC ONE

NO TRESPASSING

ALL VISITATION IS TRESPASSING

THIS MEANS YOU

KEEP CLIMBING TO FIND OUT HOW SPECIAL YOU AREN’T

SPARE ME THE EFFORT

THROW YOURSELF OFF

WE HAVEN’T MET BUT I HATE YOU SPECIFICALLY

Obviously, the rules of mortals did not apply to such as she, any more than did their temporal concerns. A mage, of all people, should not need that explained. Hopefully this one would be less difficult than his décor warned in the presence of a goddess.

Then again…

She finally paused, just past the signs and below the level of the tower’s door; here, the mountain formed a shape that would be easily climbed by any reasonably fit mortal without gear, no steeper than a staircase. Here, there was set up an even more vivid demonstration.

Two permanent portals had been set horizontally, one above the other, the entire thing surrounded by powerful wards to secure the display against the high winds and other hazards of the mountaintop. Between them, perpetually falling into the bottom portal and out the top one, tumbling and flailing helplessly about, was a human skeleton.

It was dressed in shabby and clearly well-worn adventurer attire—cheap and mismatched armor over slightly ragged but once clearly expensive clothes. Two large knives and a hatchet were affixed to the skeleton’s belt, and a loose rapier was falling with it, turning end over end and occasionally rebounding off the corpse to be rebuffed back toward the center by the surrounding wards.

The goddess stared at this display for a moment, then studied the sign positioned right in front of it.

GO ON

JOIN MY COLLECTION

She could sense merely by directing her attention things that would require focused analysis by most mortals. To begin with: this was a real skeleton. From the bones to the ragged patches of dried out human leather stretched over mummified threads of sinew, this had once been the mortal corpus of a real person.

She could sense the protective enchantments over it, as well as the skillfully wrought metal wires holding the skeleton together, and the subtler enchantments upon those, aiding in their task.

Any mage could deduce this much had they the time and opportunity to examine the body in detail. As a being of the divine, she was aware of details that would have eluded most others.

Specifically, that this was the body of a high-ranking priest of the Jongleur, still touched by his god’s power. And, further, that like many of the Jongleur’s faithful, this man had left behind an earnest plea that, in death, his body be preserved—specifically, partially preserved—and employed as a prop in grotesque, tasteless practical jokes.

Not many people outside the Jongleur’s cult were even aware of this tradition. Most places that knew enough about them to have relevant laws had banned the practice. Few indeed were the faithful who left behind this final wish and saw it granted.

Shadrach Meshabedan had given this clown-priest an honor that few of his religion were able to achieve, and few people the world over would even have thought of.

This mage was a kinder soul than he wanted his visitors…or intruders, as he put it…to believe.

Hopefully that boded well for what was about to follow.

She resumed the much more reasonable hike, quickly stepping onto the small stone platform at the base of the tower. Stepping up to the door, she raised a fist to knock.

The door was shoved open from the inside before she could, forcing her to dodge, and there stood Shadrach Meshabedan, glaring at her.

He was in a loose, open-fronted silk robe over baggy Rhiva-style house trousers, and the way it showed off the musculature of his chest had to have been deliberate; anyone who had muscles like that had worked long and hard at it, and showing them off was never an accident. His hair was plausibly the result of simple neglect, though the way those shaggy curls tumbled across his forehead, over his ears, and down to the shoulder created an effect that many a professional stylist would struggle to replicate.

In contrast to his casual dress, he was carrying a wizard’s staff of clearly great venerability and power.

“If this is about Kaln,” he growled, “both of us are about to get off to a dismal start for the day.”

She blinked. “Who is Kaln?”

The wizard narrowed his eyes, but made a soft grunt that might have been something distantly akin to acquiescence. “All right. That, plus you being a caliber of critter it would be exceptionally annoying to dispose of, buys you a minute of my time. Make it count.”

“Thank you,” she said graciously. “I have come to this land because the wind called to me. There is a new member of my divine lineage, and I hear now that he has stepped into the role left by none other than the Dread. Styling himself Lord of Dragonva—”

“AUGH!” Shadrach screeched, clapping his free hand dramatically over his forehead. “There’s no fucking escape! When will you people take your goddamned questions about Kaln to Kaln? Why does his bullshit have to be my fucking problem? What will it take to make you all just go away?”

She blinked again, twice. “Wh—wait, that’s him? His name is Kaln? That’s…odd. What kind of name is that?”

“That is literally the most common—wait, no, I’m not doing this. You’ve probably been moldering in some crypt since the Lost Century, I am not catching you up on four hundred years of Rhiva etymology and I’m sure as hell not wasting another second of my life on his fucking business! You wanna ask about the so-called Dragonlord? Great, love that for you. Go ask someone in Dragonvale. It’s that way.”

He pointed the staff past her shoulder, then reached for the door latch to yank it shut.

“The gods and fates themselves curse those who forsake the ancient law of hospitality toward travelers upon the weary road.”

Shadrach paused, glaring at her through narrow eyes.

“I journey for that most sacred of ancient duties,” she continued gravely. “Of concern for my kinsman—to know whether he needs my aid, or due to his deeds, need be called back to order.”

“Your kinsman?” Shadrach sneered. “Whose name you didn’t know?”

“As a creature not of blood, I share none with those now living,” she replied calmly. “Ours is a shared lineage—one prone to cause strife to the world. And yet, none have risen so high or so fast. I have cause for concern.”

The mage inhaled and exhaled as if to calm his temper. “Right, well, if you were in need of hospitality, you wouldn’t have climbed all the way up here for it. And again—and I cannot believe I keep having to say this—Kaln is not my business. You want Kaln, you go to Dragonvale. That’s where he is. This isn’t complicated.”

“That was obviously my first thought,” she said swiftly as he reached for the door again. “I was turned back by presumptuous ghosts at the border.”

Shadrach froze.

Then, slowly, he straightened up to his full height, shifting his staff to rest the butt against the floor and hold it upright in a position that made him look, for the first time, like a wizard of old.

“The gods and fates,” he said solemnly in High Nourid, “rebuke more harshly none than they who, by plotting perfidy in the guise of guest right, abrade the most ancient law which protects all travelers. I name thee not oathbreaker, but only because I deny thee that opportunity. Though has falsely invoked guest right whilst plotting betrayal. Begone from this house and from this land, and show not thy face here. Thy welcome is profaned beyond redemption.”

She actually took a step back from him, eyes widening. “You…are an…educated young man.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Shadrach said caustically in modern Vhii. “Really thought you were gonna get away with that, didn’t you? You came to the wrong neighborhood, asshole. Now fuck off.”

“Beware,” she warned. “You cast accusations that, if without merit—”

“Those ghosts are Darashi,” he interrupted. “Do you even comprehend what that means? They’re like if every stereotype about Rhiva was true and cranked up so far it literally caused the collapse of their civilization. The two things they love more than anything else in the world are helping people in need and following rules. That’s who took one look at your shifty ass, spouting off about hospitality and guest right, and told you to pound sand. And that tells me pretty much what I need to know. Now are you gonna fuck off under your own power or are we going to discuss why Atraximos the Dread never got as close to my face as you are right now?”

“Those…spirits…may have failed to comprehend the nuance—”

“Uh huuuuuuh,” Shadrach drawled in an offensively mocking tone. “May have. Nuance. Pretty neat how it’s not ‘they were in error and this is why,’ you just launched without preamble into the mincing doublespeak of every politician who has ever known they were in the wrong and didn’t plan to let it stop ‘em. Really adding context to how you’re quick to babble about ancient law and guest right until it turns out you’re face to face with somebody who actually knows those rules. Let me guess, this is exactly where you fucked up with the Phantom Legion, isn’t it? Those guys were alive eight hundred years ago, and you thought you were gonna bamboozle ‘em by invoking what you think is archaic folklore?”

“Do not impugn my honor,” she snapped, and the crack of thunder echoed from the surrounding mountains despite the clear sky. “You knowingly challenge the divine, boy—know your place or be taught it. Do you think you are the first powerful man who presumed to argue the right of way with Death? Or the last? You will not even be memorable amongst their number.”

He studied her through narrowed eyes, his upper lip twisted in contempt. She glared back.

“Y’know what’s a fascinating place?” Shadrach said suddenly. “The center of the planet. It’s mostly just iron and nickel down there—but see, the interesting thing is how the sheer heat wants to reduce all that metal to liquid, but the pressure tries to keep it solid. And the interplay of those forces keeping it in rotation is why the world has a magnetic field, and thus an atmosphere, as well as some other cool stuff we don’t often appreciate. Now, my question is: would you like to see that up close? And as a follow-up question: are you one of those gods who’d be functionally destroyed by the loss of your physical body? The little ones who walk around on two feet often are, as I understand it.”

“Your understanding is, to vastly understate it, limited. There are no gods who would be destroyed by the loss of their mortal vessel.”

The mage shrugged. “But by the time you pulled yourself back together, you’d be a pain in the ass for a whole different generation of people, which is all I care about.”

“You threaten—”

“You started it,” he snapped. “You barged onto my property, tried to trick me into conflict with my neighbor, and then got huffy when I called you out. You’ve got no leg to stand on here, and that matters for a creature like you, doesn’t it? Can’t just stomp around doing whatever you want without some plausible casus belli, can you? Otherwise you’d have already tried instead of listening to me dress you down. So yeah, looks like we’re done here.”

This time, he didn’t bother reaching for the latch, simply stepping back and gesturing at it.

The door slammed, leaving her alone on the stone porch, surrounded by floating signs and the constant whisper of cold mountain wind.

“What is happening?” the goddess asked of no one. “When did the world change? Why do people suddenly think they can just tell me ‘no?’”

With a sigh of annoyance, she turned, panning her gaze around the breathtaking view. Up here, there was actually a horizon; though the further rise of the Highlands blocked the sky to the north, to the east she could see the ocean, and the gradual fall of peaks toward the distant green of Dragonvale to the south. She fixed her gaze on a point to the northwest, on a course which from this point revealed nothing but more craggy, trackless mountain ranges, and began walking.

“Very well, then. If the beast bites through the bars, one can either step back, or rattle the cage.”