Book 7: Chapter 10 - Black and Gold (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 10 - Black and Gold

The “Mage’s Tower” of the Academy is one of the greatest repositories of arcane knowledge on the continent. Within its ivory walls lie forbidden texts from before the Cataclysm, chained to their shelves lest they find some means of escape. The Magisters of Meridian say that to read certain volumes without sufficient training and mental fortitude is to invite madness.

However, in my experience, all who walk the path of magic reach that destination soon enough. The only difference is when the madness finds you.

- The Fanciful Travel of Beron de Laney 376 AC.

The encounter was a lesson. An instruction of sorts, and a warning in part, that one had to be careful when using one’s power. I could fight a legion. Thinking about it in a moment of tired of introspection as I looked down upon those who had had the gall to challenge me, I realized that could probably not fight an entire country. Yet, something told me, some inner voice, that even if I won such an epic conflict, the victory would cost me something great. Something beyond the meat of this body, memories, and even my sense of self. Something more, perhaps, something intrinsic to my very being.

For a time, I locked eyes with the Inquisitor, and a contest of wills passed between us. Distrust, disbelief, and ingrained instinct fought it out behind her sea-gray gaze with knives. Eventually, like all things, something had to give. She glanced at her companions, and something passed between them, some old understanding built over years of danger, argument, and survival. Then they both nodded at once.

A dam broke and they were forced to step back.

I urged Theodore forward as I raised my lance and let it rest upon his frill once more. Our would-be challengers were forced from the road, made to stand aside as our party simply moved past them. I imagined their eyes following us as we left them in the dirt, full of hate and thwarted certainty. The thought brought me no small amount of joy.

I had to repress a laugh. To do so would have ruined the gravitas of the moment.

So we continued down the road, Theodore’s pace creating a thunderous beat beneath me as the others followed. We rode through the last of the daylight and pressed on even after the early autumn sun sank behind the trees. The new moon gave enough light to see by, and what it did not provide, instinct and magic could supply. If a horse broke a leg, it did not matter. Magic or miracle could fix that minor inconvenience.

I was not in a mood to stop for through it all I felt them follow, for it could only be them.

Good, I thought to myself, let them follow. Their presence might dissuade other inconveniences like bandits, brigands, or quest givers who sought my aid.

We did not halt until we reached a small town, quiet and shuttered beneath the dark. We woke the innkeeper, who fat man who emerged pale and fearful, candle in hand, looking as though the dead themselves had come calling for room and board. Gold smoothed over whatever objections he might have had to being dragged from his bed. Luckily, caravans passed this way often enough, and the inn regularly looked after Ruar, the massive six-legged beasts favored by certain traveling peoples. There was space, then, even for Theodore in their enlarged stables.

I saw to stabling him myself, with Larynda at my side. The great beast accepted fresh vegetables and a side of meat as his reward, chewing with the grave dignity of a creature that had earned his supper through intimidation alone. The girls—or women, truly—were more grateful for rest than I was. The inn, humble as it was, became a small refuge from the road. Let them have their peace.

After washing and shedding my skin of metal, I found myself sharing a large bed with Larynda, lying anxiously upon a mattress that was far too rough. We simply slept together not for any base reasons, but for the simple desire for community and safety. The natural part of the human condition that even I, for all my many deformities of spirit, had not yet cut away entirely.

Larynda was my ward. My duty. To me, she would forever be the little girl who had joined me on this journey, the one person through all this madness who genuinely cared whether I lived or died for reasons not tied to profit, debt, fear, or prophecy. I felt protective. Responsible. The kind of responsibility that sat as a weight upon my conscience. And yet, it was also an anchor.

If anything harmed her, there would be a reckoning.

There were no bedbugs, no parasites, not even a single hostile bacterium on a microscopic scale in the room, let alone the bed. The magic of my Improved Entropic Aura had seen to that. Yet sleep did not find me. My body rested. My mind did not. That old familiar arrangement.

Careful not to disturb the girl, I sat up and lit a candle in the corner. Then I began the process of donning my armor of black and gold once more.

It was an exercise of extreme difficulty, especially alone, but it was meditative in its way. Each piece had a place. Each fastening had a purpose. Armor, when properly understood, was not merely metal placed between oneself and the world. A body remade by deliberate stages into something that could survive what flesh alone could not.

The first layer was the easiest: the strange underarmor I had received from the Trial, that dungeon set in a world technologically advanced and morally bankrupt. It clung close to the body, dark and smooth, absorbing the greater portion of the kinetic energy that the Adamantium plates would deflect. Putting it on felt less like dressing and more like being sealed into a second skin. The material tightened by degrees, recognizing me, adjusting to the movement of muscle and joint until it lay perfectly against me.

Then came the metal.

The legs came first. I set the sabatons over my feet, articulated black trimmed with gold plates folding into place. Then came the greaves, locking around my shins with a soft, heavy click. The poleyns followed, guarding the knees, and then the cuisses for the thighs. Alone, such work would have been miserable for most men. For me, through practice, it had grown merely tedious. 

Piece by piece, the lower half of my body vanished beneath the heavy Adamantium. The weight gathered slowly and with it a sense of safety. 

Next came the fauld and tassets, the layered plates that guarded waist and hip. I settled them into place and fastened them with practiced fingers. The cuirass, however, was more difficult.

I lifted the breastplate and set it against myself, feeling the familiar pressure as it covered chest and ribs. Then came the backplate. The two halves met at my sides, and I worked the tough straps tight. The gorget soon followed, closing around my throat.

Then came the arms. Pauldrons over the shoulders, broad and dark. Rerebraces for the upper arms. Couters at the elbows. Vambraces along the forearms. Each piece overlapped the next, black-gold plates sliding beneath and over one another in careful articulation. I flexed my arms as I worked, testing the range of motion.

Last came the gauntlets and they came easy enough. I flexed them slowly, watching the articulated metal shift and feeling the loss of Dexterity.

The serpent helm waited patiently. For a moment, I looked at it and the fanged face of black and gold simply stared back, empty and patient. The last piece made by the no doubt now-famous smith Kipikarui of Al-Lazar. I wore more than just armor, this was the garb of the First Tamkar and hero of the City of Dust.

I lifted it and set it over my head, my vision narrowing before lifting the visor. There, within the harness of plate, I felt the familiar calm settle over me. Not peace, but something adjacent to purpose and completion.

I sat against the wall in the corner of the little inn room, fully armored, black and gold beneath a single guttering candle, and listened to the breathing of the girl I had sworn to protect. Tomorrow would be the day, if the innkeepers sleepy words were to be believed, that we would arrive in Meridian.

***

We had a quick breakfast of fruit, porridge, and hard bread. The meal was plain and hearty, and the conversation remained light despite our recent encounter.

Theodore had behaved himself during the night, having not eaten any of the animals stabled around him. In my mind, that was a victory, and I had learned to take such things wherever and whenever they presented themselves. Sometimes it was enough that one’s monstrous mount had not devoured a merchant’s mule or a stablehand in the dark.

I saddled the massive beast with the help of the two sisters, preparing for the last leg of our journey. Theodore accepted the work with the solemn patience of a siege engine being dressed for war. Straps were tightened, packs secured, buckles checked, and the Second Horn settled into place atop his frill. The innkeeper watched from a safe distance, pretending not to stare and failing badly. He was thankful for our gold, but no doubt he was more thankful to see our backs.

Once we set out, I noticed that the farms became larger and better ordered, their fields divided by low walls and neat hedgerows. Things seemed more prosperous.

But even as I enjoyed the scenery, I could feel us being followed for the remainder of the morning by our watchers. As if in confirmation, Once, from somewhere far behind, there came a shriek that could only have belonged to a Gryphon. The sound cut across the sky, sharp and offended. Let them watch. Let them follow. So long as I refrained from using my more exotic magics, they would find nothing but a well-armed traveler, his companions, and a beast whose existence encouraged politeness.

We crested a small hill, and there it was, our destination.

Meridian sprawled in the valley below, gleaming beside the sea like a jewel. The city was threaded with winding canals that crossed and curled through its districts in a grand, living tapestry. The waters caught the sunlight with a shimmer, and upon their surfaces small boats moved to and fro like insects over a pond. Beyond them, ships sailed in and out of the bustling port. At this distance, they looked like toys, though I could make an educated guess that many were truly massive things, built to cross deep waters.

The sea beyond Meridian stretched blue and hard beneath the morning light. Gulls wheeled above the harbor. White sails of ships in the distance. Warehouses clustered near the docks, giving way to broad avenues, pale stone bridges, tiled roofs, and cultured gardens of affluent looking residential districts.

Above the city stood a colossal structure of glass that immediately caught my eye. It rose from the heart of Meridian like a frozen wave, its many panes catching the sun and scattering its brilliance. Near it stood an elegant spire of ivory stone, impossibly slender, reaching toward the sky as if in accusation.

It reminded me of Venice, not that I had ever been there, but rather of an artist’s depiction of it. A dream of Venice, perhaps, if the dreamer had been too enamoured of fantastical tales. In my opinion, Meridian possessed a grandeur different from Al-Lazar. Al-Lazar had been raw opulence. Meridian was refinement. Wealth given time to settle with culture. It was the elegance of silver beside the glimmer of gold.

But like Al-Lazar I could taste opportunity on the salt-sea air.

“It’s beautiful,” Larynda exclaimed, her green eyes wide with wonder.

The elven sisters looked at one another and simply shrugged. “It is beautiful in a way,” one of them allowed.

“It is that,” I agreed.

And, despite myself, I meant it.

“I hope to be there before nightfall and find good lodgings,” I added, before kicking Theodore into a gallop.

The massive beast surged forward beneath me, and the others followed. Larynda shrieked playfully and urged Bubbles to greater speed behind me.

As we descended toward Meridian, I found myself wondering what the local guards would think of an armored warrior on a monster, followed by two elves and a Magister. 

But then again, perhaps they were used to strange things arriving at their gates.