“We should make preparations to depart, but cautiously,” said Wdondf. Ktsn found herself a bit annoyed, hearing her father agree with her on such a topic. It soured her guts a little for them to be on the same side, even when that side was the clearly sensible one and it set her position diametrically counter to Rlgts’s. Ah, well; she’d bear it.
But still… thanks a lot for ruining the day, Father.
“South and then East,” recommended the apothecary. “We can follow the Kregat River and use a boat as a ferry if needed.”
“Provisions!” shouted someone. The someone in question was a butcher, called Herkad or Nekrad or something like that. “We don’t know how long it’ll be before the… the… whatever-they-are get here!”
That ignited a whole series of rapidly-digressing subarguments. “Who knew how long it would be” was actually a diplomatic gambit lying somewhere between “we don’t have much in the way of information” and “wow, it’s been a while since we’ve eaten noonmeal, hasn’t it?” The concept of food and torches and clothing and other incidentals, somehow, made things far more real than the very visible sky-image of people proclaiming their peaceful intentions literally overhead to the entire world.
“What about fighting back?” shouted Rlgts. “Don’t we want to repulse these strange invaders at the earliest opportunity?”
She sounded scared, and to give her her due Ktsn was certainly frightened enough to wage war. Somehow, though, she felt a nagging confidence that waging war would be out of the question soon enough. Unlike her reluctance to listen to her fear, this sense was steelclad and impossibly sharp.
The little bit of planning and confidence-boosting discussion quickly succumbed to lots of tiny bits of planning and confidence-boosting discussion. For reasons Ktsn could never have explained thereafter, she felt that she needed to contribute to the decision-making process again, and more drastically than before. Yes, she wanted Rlgts to be exiled from her existence, and yes, she disliked her own father’s involvement. Yet, she realized with a sudden suffusion of the obvious that waffling would do very little besides leaving them squabbling and enthusiastically debating, when they needed to be ACTING. They’d get around to acting eventually, anyway. The important factor was to act immediately, and defer deferment as long as possible. She raised her strong voice over the many minor hubbubs, and the still-speaking sky-heads. She got their attention.
“If we are going to achieve anything here today, then we-”
A grinding of her mental machinery to a halt. Without ceremony, the components of her psyche were loosened, and detached from each other. New bits were threaded where old bits had been removed.
Then the machinery started up once more; an engine with different purpose.
“A thousand cities have come and gone, and a small fiefdom shall them join. On the day and hour of conjoinment will be the vessel’s further conjoinment, to another vessel filled once and half less. Sympathy came to those that the Beautiful One of Bones called her own; to Gegaunli herself, less or none. Those hurt by assistance will scatter to the winds and spread innocence without the malice of forethought. This is the atrament of one book brewed from the ashes of another.”
Silence. The surcease of the strange horn-deep voice that had leapt from Ktsn’s throat without her thought or knowledge or consent. She blinked once, twice. She shook herself as though to rid herself of water. Her tongues licked each other, and her nostrils spread wide and deep.
“Wh-”
She glanced around, and realized that every single person in the village was staring at her. Not many. Not most. All of them.
She shook her head again, and felt the hand of time reach forth from the past to bring her back through the words she’d channeled.
“Broken bones,” somebody swore. “I didn’t think we had any priestesses in the Daephods.”
It was precisely at that time that a figure appeared above Goskec Tktl, riding a large circular… something. Later, it occurred to the farmer that the voices from the sky muted themselves just as it came into existence.
The head peering over the edge of the circular something was that of a very strange human. Red in hue, very differently-shaped eyes, and natural-looking long ears on the sides of its face. Hovering directly over the square, the strange figure made a strange gesture with one limb that must have been an arm. Ktsn guessed that she could only see about half of its total size, but it was hard to tell, given that the thing was somehow floating between six and nine body-lengths off of the ground.
“Citizens of Goskec Tktl: greetings!” said the figure. “I am called…”
The creature emitted a string of diluted, thin sounds that pricked like a hundred thorny vines.
“... and I am here to help you. Please, do not be alarmed.”
“DO NOT BE ALARMED!” shouted Kglk.
“Do not be alarmed?” Rlgts shrieked, though at whom was a mystery never to be solved.
She followed through with a very impressive throw of a nearby support post, rendered obsolete when its awning had been torn away. The post was slightly longer and thinner than a good spear, and - considering the materials with which she had to work - the lapidary had to be commended in making her makeshift weapon drive straight at the figure’s hovering platform.
Regrettably, the wooden post shattered against its underside with nary a scuff to show for its good fortune and use.
The figure of the human turned slightly to look at Rlgts. Its hands did something Ktsn couldn’t fully see, and judging by the moving of its lips it said something that she also couldn’t hear. Then it spoke up again.
“I’m coming down, now. If you could be mindful, I’d appreciate your staying away from…”
A five-digit hand with strangely planar bone covering its back pointed at an open square between four stalls.
“That part, right there. Alright?”
Nobody said anything, but there was a great deal of scurrying and fetching of weapons.
Ktsn, for her part, kept watching the newcomer but with less automatic hostility than before. She wasn’t a genius, exactly, but she felt fairly certain that a person hailing from a culture where flight of large circular somethings was accepted fact would be more than capable of doing a place like their village enormous harm. As best as she could tell, no such intent was evident. She wasn’t relaxed, though.
“Alright!”
The vessel moved down to the ground in a smooth, almost biological way. Its rider, as it happened, was actually shorter than first suspected, judging from how much of it appeared over the open pit of the vessel.
“Now,” began the human’s curious knifelike voice once more.
An incredibly valuable and incredibly dangerous vial of fire oil flew straight for the shortish reddish figure. Instead of smashing and cascading over the newcomer, however, the vial exploded against thin air. The fire oil slurred across a hemispherical bulb of space that reached around the vehicle’s top, nowhere touching the intended target. As it ignited, the halo effect of the dancing flames gave the strange creature a truly fearsome air.
For four or five heartbeats, the burning continued in near silence, the oil devoured in short order. Eventually, the fire’s fuel died, and the flames with it.
“Is that quite everything?” asked the rider, both front-facing eyes considering the nameless apothecary who’d administered the inflammable substance.
When no answer came, a short plosive breathy sound left the human.
“Now, I’ve got a short dissertation to give all of you, but first we need to ensure that nothing goes horribly, horribly wrong. So, before things go any farther down paths we all wouldn’t enjoy-”
The glare at the apothecary redoubled.
“-let’s introduce you to some people. Just don’t give them the same welcome, or there will be very unfortunate consequences.”
“Excuse me,” said Wdondf, in the sort of firm voice he’d taken long hence when addressing his offspring on their more wayward days. He’d flipped onto his fastlegs, and began moving toward the strange human on a disadvantaged elevation. People made way for his approach.
“Yes?” asked the addressed party, strange-shaped eyes playing over Ktsn’s father’s form.
“We have not ever met any of your kind before,” he said. “We do not want conflict. Likewise, we do not want to be subjugated.”
Wdondf used the eye on the same side as his scarred hand to examine the biped. Neither dart nor deflagrant had any lasting effect on the strange and strangely-named individual, or the vehicle used by the same. Ktsn figured it was probably time to embrace that battered, non-belligerent fear that comes of admitting one’s powerlessness to fight back. The human glanced at the hand in question several times, obviously picking up on the deliberate admission of weakness.
“If there might be any way, foreign envoy, for us to peacefully resolve-”
He was cut off by a loud snort from the creature, along with a violent diagonal thrashing of hands.
“Ah!” came the bombastic response. “There, at least, is a misunderstanding that I can resolve easily enough! I’m not one of the volunteers. No, no… that’s inaccurate, I am a volunteer. I’m not that kind of volunteer, though - that would be their lot.”
A flat and vaguely plated hand jabbed out toward the southern horizon. In the distance, Ktsn spied a fair number of newly planted trees and bushes… no.
Movement. People.
And thus, the envoys that the village had feared and dreaded arrived with a complete absence of fanfare.
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