Taya pushed aside the flaps of a tent as she entered the abode of Braslav, the apprentice druid of her village under Yaroslav. Ruhak and Peng followed her
The boy was a year or two younger than Taya and sat in a circle of herbs and symbolic items while incense burned upon a small wooden table. Naught but a small bedroll and wooden chest furnished the rest of the dimly lit space.
“The crows call for you, Taya,” the boy said, his tone cold as he spoke in Taya’s native language. “I cannot know if they seek to herald your arrival or give you warning.”
“Glad to see you alive, Braslav,” Taya muttered. “I need your help for a minute.”
The druid stood in his circle, his head coming up only to Taya’s nose. His face was covered in white and black paste and wore an overflowing emerald green robe. He surveyed her as well as Ruhak and Peng when they entered. “My...the crows call for you all. Misfortune befouls your steps.”
“The crows squawk at whoever they want. Misfortune is bound to befall everyone on this planet,” Taya said. “I never bothered to ask before I left, but I’m told you have visions.”
Braslav nodded.
“Do you know the prophecy of the Armageddon Event?”
Braslav sighed, “I have joined the Dawn Circle, Taya. I haven’t the time for Dusk Circle games.”
Taya cursed. This was going to be a whole hell of a lot more frustrating. “Don’t tell me you buy into the Dawn Circle’s disregard.”
“Don’t tell me you buy into the Dusk Circle’s fantasies, Taya,” Braslav muttered. “If that’s what you and your friends have come to talk with me about, you can leave.”
“The Nikan, Braslav,” Taya insisted. “The Nikan are the first sign. They’re the ‘Men betrayed, marching under the banner of the slave disguised as the emperor’.They’re here to cull our numbers and prepare the Newcomers so we can’t fight the Event. You can’t not see it.”
Braslav sighed, “There are things more important matters at play than prophecies about Bás Síoraí.”
Taya gave him the look. The look she gave to let people know when she knew they thought she was right. Or just to make them believe she’d seen through something.
“I haven’t seen anything about Bás Síoraí!” Braslav insisted, becoming defensive.
Taya willed her mark to start glowing.
“That’s it, huh? The mark? That’s why you left? You have a Plague, you know,” Braslav said. “Get out of my tent!”
“Not a Plague,” Taya said, a low growl in the base of her voice. “Just a Scar. And I know you know full well that there’s a reason I’m showing you this.”
Taya wasn’t in the mood to play games. She grabbed a small iron pot from Braslav’s things and crushed it between her palms.
“What are you going to do, kill me?”
Taya huffed with annoyance. Coldness rippled through her veins as black and violet smoke poured from the Scar and manifested in a swirl of the substance.
A woman’s visage appeared over Taya, draped in black robes with pale grey skin and burning violet eyes.
“Gods and fucking demons!” Ruhak hissed, backing away from her. Peng simply stood speechless, stunned by what he saw.
“Wh-what, you think you can threaten me with that?” Braslav asked.
“I do. As fond of you as I was in childhood, Braslav, Bás Síoraí is not something I’m willing to ignore like you and your Dawn Circle friends,” Taya snarled. “You tell me what Fate thinks is going to go down and I’ll be out of your hair, understand?”
Braslav took a shaky breath, his eyes flicking between her gaze and her Shedim’s.
“O-ok. Ok. Just...put that thing away. And don’t tell anyone I said anything,” Braslav whimpered. “I’m not even supposed to whisper about these in my sleep!”
Taya’s Shedim vanished in a puff of smoke, causing everyone in the tent to breathe a sigh of relief.
“So...the first trickles I got started last year, I’m guessing. It was the Gongsun dynasty emblem. That...well, that explains itself,” Braslav grimaced. “Since then, I’ve seen a banner with the same symbol wrapped around the necks of eleven different animals. They all have some kind of symbolism to Nikan in particular. Uh...then there were the ruined structures.”
“Ruined structures?” Taya asked.
“An Ascomanni longship wrecked in ice, an overgrown Sklaveni village, a Koini palace on fire, a barren Sarfan field, the bones of horses in the Khongirat Steppe, a weathered and broken pyramid in the deserts down south, a stone temple destroyed by lightning and a flooded island village. There are others, but those are the most common ones.”
“General notions of destruction, I’m guessing?” Taya assumed. Fate was being childishly vague with these.
Braslav shrugged, “I never really studied it. My masters ordered I never look into it again.”
“What else was there?”
“One more thing. There was a scene of a crow being torn apart by the bare hands of four...four beings. I don’t really know what they are. They had limbs, but not quite arms. Other parts of their bodies were all messed up. Maybe I just wasn’t seeing things correctly, or...I don’t know.”
Four beings. What could evoke a description as vague as that? She’d heard of the Newcomers being unearthly creatures, but they were supposed to resemble common fairy folk and the undead. Whatever the case, the crow represented her without a doubt. Perhaps it was a boastful threat.
“Is that everything?” Taya asked.
“Y-yes,” Braslav nodded. “I swear.”
Taya studied his face. She thought it was ironic how cryptic Braslav had acted as they entered, but how plain his intentions were on his face right now. They were all human, after all. But nevertheless, Braslav seemed to be telling the truth.
“Alright. Thank you, Braslav. If ever the Dawn circle decides to take its head out of its own ass, perhaps you can help us fight. We would welcome you.” She turned to Ruhak and Peng. “Come on you two, we’re going to go make a warband.”
Braslav nodded, but he seemed more concerned about getting her away from his tent.
Taya left the tent calmly, followed by Ruhak and Peng, who couldn’t seem to decide if they should be confused as they started their way to the city’s central plaza.
“I’m guessing you heard nothing of what I said in there, despite talking to him in Koini.” Taya said.
“Yeah. I would really like to know what the hell just happened and also everything you talked about in layman’s terms.” Ruhak said, “What the hell is a Dawn Circle?”
“The Dawn and Dusk Circles are druidic circles who split into two sects a few years back. There’s this prophecy that both held on to called the Tellings of Bás Síoraí, or Eternal Death. The Plague and Nikan aggression line up with what was foretold. The Dusk Circle wants to stop the prophecies from coming to fruition by nurturing Shedim Masters. The Dawn Circle wants the prophecies to happen, so they want the least amount of people to care as possible so nothing stands in its way,” Taya explained.
“What exactly do these prophecies foretell happening, ultimately?” Ruhak asked.
“The destruction and subjugation of mankind,” Taya put casually.
“Oh,” Ruhak muttered.
“I wanted to see if Braslav’s prophetic visions had told him anything.”
“What’d you find out?” Peng asked.
“Jack shit,” Taya sighed. “All of the signs were just general signs of desolation and any details were pointless without the proper context. Fate has a habit of being petty like that.”
Silence inserted itself between them for a long while until Taya couldn’t take it anymore.
“Ruhak…” Taya said. “Who are you?”
“What?” the Hikupti man asked.
“Aside from your name and your nationality, I know nothing about you. Hell, I know more about Peng!” Taya shrugged, “I think I ought to know who my fellow guildmates are.”
“Hold up,” Ruhak muttered. “I’m joining?”
“Unless you don’t want to,” Taya frowned. “But that’d be kind of a shame.”
“Well...I might,” Ruhak said, “I still have to think about where I wanna go after all this.”
“Then my question still stands.”
Ruhak sighed, his eyes looking occupied with organizing his thoughts.
“My story isn’t very long or interesting. Basically, I got sick of woodworking with my parents, so I joined the Koini legion. Was a soldier for a couple years. Rose up to become a commanding officer, even. But I, uh...I quit a few months or so after,” Ruhak explained.
“Why’d you quit? Not great at war games?” Taya chuckled.
“Oh, I’m very good at games. But it just wasn’t for me. Besides, I caught the Plague a few days after I arrived back home. I would’ve been sent to the island anyway.”
Taya nodded, “I suppose that’s true.”
“I don’t know, Ruhak,” Peng said. “You and I have played a game of chess. You stomped me even though I’ve held my own against some of the masters in my country. You’re more than very good.”
Ruhak frowned, “Hm, I was fishing for a stronger compliment.”
“Is ‘Divine Master of the Board Game’ more your style? Ultimately pointless grandeur does seem up your alley,” Peng scoffed.
“Oh, so the foot soldier has a wit now?”
“You’ve got to have just found yours if you’re noticing now.”
“Ladies, ladies, you’re both lovely,” Taya interjected. “Now shut your traps. We’re here.”
The capital’s meeting house was much like a typical Sklaveni hut, except several times bigger. Same stone foundation, wood planking and a straw roof. The reminder of home sent a pang of agony through Taya.
They entered the building, which was divided into two seperate areas. One was a reception desk in a small, semi-isolated room at the entrance. The rest of the building was for holding community summits, though the city was a tad big for local Sklaveni government structure.
A miserable looking young man worked the desk, bored out of his mind. If he was a little more suited to fighting or had Plague Scars with no symptoms, he’d probably jump at the idea of joining a warband.
“We would like to start a warband!” Taya declared to the man.
He looked up at her, before looking back down at his desk, “You mean...a guild?”
“Whichever,” Taya shrugged.
He pulled out a stack of parchment sheets, “Just fill these out.” The man’s voice might as well have come from a corpse, it was so dead sounding.
“Fill them out with...what?” Taya asked.
“Your information, obviously.”
“With a...pen?”
The man sighed, “Yes.”
“I…” Taya turned to the two men behind her. “I can’t read. Or write.”
“You’re illiterate in your own language?” Ruhak asked.
“Hey, I can speak three fluently!” Taya said defensively.
“Well, none of us can read your language either,” Peng shrugged.
“You can fill it out in Koini, if you want,” the man muttered. He swapped the parchment with another set, writing in a distinctly different language.
“Alright. I can read it, then,” Ruhak said.
“Take the ink bottle and use the furthest bench from the pedestal,” the man slid a bottle of ink with a bone pen in it.
Ruhak took the materials and stepped into the unoccupied meeting hall.
Taya thought the hall was rather impressive. It was shaped like a village longhouse, but more refined and complex in its structure.
“Alright, first things first,” Ruhak said, sitting on the wooden bench at the back of the room, “What’s your full name?”
“Taya Sergeyev,” she said.
Ruhak dipped the stylus in ink and scribbled down her name in Koini, “And your age?”
“Twenty.”
“Clan?”
Ruhak ran down three sheets’ worth of questions. Taya had opted to form a stateless mercenary guild, since ‘warband’ wasn’t an option because being a warlord was a little bit illegal. Also, they didn’t have to pay tolls to enter ports or use guild-controlled roads like merchant vessels did.
“Alright, last question.”
“Gods above, finally!” Taya groaned. The questions weren’t difficult to answer, but they were tedious as hell. In fact, that was worse than challenging questions.
“What do you want the guild name to be?” Ruhak asked.
Taya stared at nothing in particular for several moments, “How about...Nikan’s Ball Busters.”
“Very on the nose…” Ruhak muttered while scribbling down the name.
Taya chuckled, “I was kidding. I wanna call it the Searing Breath.”
“No, no, no. It fits your blunt personality,” Ruhak said, receiving a chuckle from Peng as he scribbled out the fake name and wrote in the real one. “And like that, we’re done.”
The three of them stood up and returned to the husk of a man working the desk. Taya proudly slammed her application down.
The man took the papers and looked them over, the boredom in his eyes fueling Taya’s enthusiasm with spite.
“Hm...everything seems acceptable,” the man put five metal badges on the table. “These badges will identify your guild members as part of your company and thus redirect the consequences of any blunders you’ll make off of your home countries until you make a coat of arms.”
“I think I’m going to have quite a few more than five members. Could I get twenty to start?” Taya asked.
The man shook his head, “If you want to expand your guild’s capacity, you’ll need to mint a Coat of Arms and submit an expansion application to the Guildmaster’s Association in Koinelia.”
Taya’s jaw dropped, “I have to go where?”
“Koinelia, capital city of the empire of the same name?”
Taya slammed her fist on the desk, startling the receptionist. Her anger came out in heavy breaths, “Gods. Damnit.”
She turned her back to the desk and stormed out of the building.
“KOINELIA? What the fuck kind of half-wit designed this gods-awful system that a boar in a coif could make better? They expect me to walk across half the continent to give six people a badge?” Taya screeched to the surprise of a few pedestrians. She composed herself with a sigh, “Let’s find Bjorn.”
She didn’t care anymore. If Taya had to walk all the way to gods damned Koinelia to assemble a decent-sized team of Shedim Masters, she would fucking do it.
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