A G R I M D I S C O V E R Y
With little else to do and, once again treated like a kid, Rikard decided to investigate the cluster of...
something that lay in the middle of the long narrow bay that Zengali nestled around. Skimming a few feet above the water on currents of magnetism, he made his way closer and the strange construction resolved itself into... some sort of houseboat colony partially made up of heavily-augmented floatmelons. They were gaily-painted and appeared actively inhabited. There were - he stretched out his senses - somewhere between eight and twelve energy signatures around the complex and voices rising in conversation and laughter. He caught sight of an eeaiko woman clambering aboard, carrying a net full of fish but, as he as he prepared to land himself, most of the energy signatures winked out suddenly and conversation died with them.
Rikard paused there, danger sense on high alert. It was, in truth, an idyllic place. Long ropes covered in seaweed and mollusks stretched far down into blue waters. Tropical fish clustered in the shade and artificial environment the houses had made, and seagulls bleated and circled overhead. Yet, it was deathly quiet, save for the bubbling of some sort of cauldron. He suddenly found himself feeling like an intruder and, just in case, gathered his energy to create a temporal anchor. It took him at least a couple of tries.
Quietly, he alighted on the central houseboat, abashed at the lack of a door and his invasiveness. From beyond a beaded curtain appeared five people, all eeaiko: the woman from earlier, standing by a hole with muddy -
or bloody? - red residue, an old man channeling heat into a crucible, and a pair of children seated at a table. There was a fifth he had sensed but couldn't yet see. He cleared his throat, having drawn, senses on high alert.
"H-hi, excuse me?" he began tentatively.
"I don't mean to intrude, but I saw this place and was curious..."The people seemed more surprise that someone came in so haphazardly, save the woman cleaning fish that spotted Rikard earlier. The old man, permanently hunched over but surprisingly wide, turned to the incautious young man,
"You come in here, in the middle of our meal." He steps forward with his ladle, an old woman was sitting behind him with a cleaver,
"and don't even take off your shoes before coming into my house." He began to raise his ladle to smack the young man.
Rikard stammered.
"I-I... I didn't know you had a rule about that. Sorry!" He wasn't even fully inside yet!
"Where I come from, we put our shoes on!" He boosted himself backwards, hurtling out of the door.
"No offense, really!"His swing was strong and practiced, he has beaten entire crews with this attack. But he was old and frail now, not even given extra energy from his family. How the patriarch has fallen. The swing cleanly missed and he yelled out
"What?!" He was utterly gobsmacked at the dirtiness of this human,
"I knew you humans were dirty but this is an offense to Yptee," He was righteously irate at this point, ready to chase him out of the port.
Then a tired voice rang over the old mans,
"Oh quiet! You'll ruin the stew!" The old woman cracked a mussel open with her hands,
"If the boy is uneducated, than teach him how to enter a house."The man would argue is the sound of the shell breaking didn't frighten him, he yelled out to the boy,
"Wash your face, hands, and feet before you even come in here. Don't want your sick rubbing off on us. AND NO SHOES." Rikard's eyes darted about alarmedly.
My sick!? In truth, he found it all a bit hypocritical, given that this place wasn't exactly sparkling, and he was tempted to leave, but curiosity got the better of him once more. It always seemed to and it rarely ended well. He rolled his eyes, sat down, and took off his shoes outside of the door.
"Uh... not to sound rude, but where should I wash them?"The eaiko woman Rikard saw earlier came out of the beaded door, peering up at him with with curiosity,
"I'll show you the way." The woman started to guide Rikard to a blue melon, where their seemed to be a small station with an ever luxurious soap a bucket of water. She washed her hands and face quite normally and then more or less kicked her feet in the ocean,
"I take it you know what to do from here?" she teased coy smile though she stood ready to answer if what the boy said earlier was true.
Rikard cleared his throat.
"Uh... shoes off and scrub-a-dub-dub before entering?" She was... pretty hot, and he was somewhat distracted, but this person was also making herself available as a resource. He blinked.
"Oh yeah, uh... why are you guys so strict with that? I'm just curious. Never seen it before."The woman rolled her eyes at Rikard though her smile didn't break, finding his flustering almost endearing.
"Pretty much!" she responded and stepped out of the way for him. His question was met with a momentary thought of her own,
"Well, we are going to eat the our hands so they have to be clean. That's at least the way the people here tell us to eat the food." she answered before taking a look over his shoulder to make sure he was washing correctly,
"That and the plague is going around." she nodded her head like the 2nd reason was much more important than the first.
Rikard's eyes widened.
"The... plague?" He reached out to sense for any unusual fluctuations in body temperature or chemical imbalances, but the latter was not his best magic. He left his questioning at that, whatever her response might have been and, after washing up, was ready to enter the dwelling...
properly, this time.
"Yep," she said with a matter of fact tone.
"First it is a cough, then you go green, and then you die." She shrugged it off nonchalantly as she took a big step down into the house,
"Be a shame if you caught it too." Entering the dwelling was less chaotic, they now expected the young man and sat a bowl in between the kids. for him. The old lady from before cheerfully waved her cleaver at him before beheading a fish,
"Isn't it so much nicer to be clean? Go on an take a seat and the little ones will teach you how to eat."Teach me how to eat!? Rikard mused in quasi-alarm. Nonetheless, he remembered his manners.
"Uh... yes, and I suppose one can't be too careful if there's a plague going around." He took his seat, cross-legged, between the rambunctious little eeaiko, and regarded the bowl of... food before.
"Right, well, I'm all ears." In truth, he was.
A plague, but people turning green? It didn't sound like anything he'd ever heard of and, given the thresher's unusual behaviour the immediate question popped into his head:
I wonder if you're connected... The little boy was excited for Rikard, especially because he had been put in charge of teaching the boy. The power he felt was exquisite. The girl on the other side of Rikard was more reserved but only in comparison to the boy.
"Alright then-" the boy tried to think of something witty to call Rikard but stumbled.
"friend? Yes, a people that can share a meal are friends!" he rebounded.
"first you take your right hand, this is the only hand you are allowed to touch food with, if you don't..." A loud bang was produced by the old man to help with the theatrics. The boy and old man start to laugh and the girl takes over.
"Don't mind them they always liked to play jokes," she apologetically waved off her family's embarrassing quarks.
"We eat with only our right that way one hand stays clean in case we need to do something," She reached to the mound of food in the center, grabbing a handful,
"You take the..." She seemed to be having a hard time finding the words. Her avincian was relatively good but you could tell that she thought of what she said ahead of time and now had to wing it.
"Bread? and you spread it in your hand to scoop of the stew." The little girl showed Rikard her doing it carefully and showed that not even an single drop of stew got on her.
"Now you try," she encouraged Rikard.
"Yeah, sharing food." Rikard refrained, having little idea what was in there or how it would taste, but morbidly curious at the very least. He took the unfamiliar... bread and opened it into something like a bowl. Reaching out to scoop, he managed to keep his hand more or less out of the slop and, through some form of miracle, not spill a bit. A glob perched perilously on the rim but resisted the tug of gravity with a bit of help from the Gift. Somewhat proud of himself, he raised it as if in toast and lifted it to his lips. Then, he paused.
"So, uh... wait. How do you eat this? Is it like... a stew?""Like this," the girl placed it on her the bread on her bottom lip, letting it go and eating it. The 'bread' releases very easily from the fingers, leaving only a little bit of oil on the fingers.
When eaten the stew is immediately meaty and well spiced. the bread is slightly sweet, nutty, and potato like. Fish comes in pretty strongly but it is no more offensive than a fish stew. It was an oily stew but not greasy in the slightest. What isn't balanced is the growing burn on the tongue. Not even the spiciest Retanese food he had tried wasn't of any comparison. It was growing by the minute, could the young man handle the heat?
Rikard managed to eat the stew easily enough. It sort of half-melted into the bread and it was... good:
really good! The spice built up quickly, however, until his mouth was on fire. Now, normally, he liked spicy food. he could handle it better than most, but this was extreme. He got through the bowl - people appeared to back for seconds and third with their little loaves - and that was when he more or less broke.
"Whew," he puffed.
"It's good - really good - but it's..." He forced himself to breathe evenly. Someone had lit off fireworks in his mouth. He sucked air in and out.
"Spicy," he managed.
"You don't have any milk or anything, do you?" His face was as red as a radish.
The entire family had enjoyed the meal but even for some it was too spicy specifically the woman he met who went to pass him some fruit,
"Swimming with a pail of milk is a little hard but this should help." The energetic kids were in charge of washing the bowls and left the central room.
"You do well under the heat kid. That was real spicy dear," the old man spoke up, holding his belly like he ate too much. He tried to laugh at Rikard's face but felt a belly ache from the first chuckle. Some peculiar things and oddities stuck out to Rikard in the high of the heat. Everyone ate a lot, it was deliscious after all, but their was still a lot of stew left. The same could be said about the 'bread' that was taken by the kids. They obviously made too much food for a family of 5.
Rikard grinned.
"Well, I am adept in arcane magic," he joked,
"though even that only helped so much." He took a moment to wheeze. The food was painful. That's all there was to it. He eagerly awaited whatever the kids were soon to return with. he looked about, trying to create a mental map of the place.
Then, it came back to him! He'd sensed more people, briefly, on his way in! He cast about.
"Say," he chanced,
"When will the others be back?" He looked at the cauldron meaningfully and indicated the extra bread.
"Unless these are just leftovers to be restewed...""They are to be restewed," the old man shrugged off, not willing to give further reasoning. The old woman gave a playful smack to him,
"Oh answer more sincerely, you'll only make him more curious."The old man sighed,
"Fine," he muttered,
"We were going to deliver some eaiko that got washed up here because of the thresher." The children had just about made their way back into the room but they stopped upon hearing the conversation.
The woman sighed,
"The Marquis hasn't been too kind to us and our people. We can't just watch our kin go hungry like that." She answered truthfully but Rikard could detect their was something else. Differences in their accents were starting to show, even if it was slight.
The youth paused and furrowed his brow.
"Not to... pry," he began,
"but did some of you arrive that way too?" They seemed to be a bit of a mixed bunch, to be honest, fromt he way that they dressed to the way that they looked and the way that they spoke.
The boy just gave Rikard a weird look,
"What? we were born and raised here," he said proudly. his sister chimed in a yeah but her eyes were unsteady, darting to the woman then back to Rikard. She was not the performer her brother and grandpa were.
A silence took the room with the obvious giveaway from the little girl. The woman sat in it until she accepted she had been found out.
"Mind taking this outside?" her accent, cadence, or even tone didn't change but it felt vaguely threatening.
Rikard drew energy only very slowly and subtly, just in case, but he didn't expect to have to use it. These didn't seem like bad people, but he recognized that he
had stumbled into a secret. With a nod, he politely excused himself and followed the woman outside.
The woman headed up first, past the beaded entryway, past the main ship and all the way to the red floatmelon. She stayed silent for a little, looking at her feat as tossing ideas on what to stay. But eventually she broke the silence.
"So you're Rikard Ambrus," she started,
"My name is Laura, I was tailing the Sant'Agata della Compagnia Rossa before the thresher attacked." She watched how Rikard responded, not drawing an ounce of energy in front of the young mage.
Rikard stiffened.
"You... know my name," the youth remarked flatly, but then a bit of wonder - and respect - crept into his voice.
"How?" He decided to tackle the small question first before reaching the larger one. He had his theories, however, and they were trying to burn their way out of his mind.
"Your name has been in a lot of people's mouth since you came in the top 3 of this year's trials," she answered somewhat straightforwardly but their was a small eyeroll at the boy not realizing his growing status.
"The 'How' I want to know is how'd you end up in Zengali now of all times," she crossed her arms and looked at Rikard.
Rikard paused to consider.
"Well, never thought I'd be famous," he remarked. Then he grinned.
"But I won't complain." When she continued, he shrugged.
"I thought it might be a good idea to blow up a beast like that and I happen to have some experience in the field." He crossed his arms, trying to look like a real professional.
"A notice was put out and I took up the offer.""So they let 14 year old mages come and fight a beast that has killed hundreds," her expression tightened in some disbelieve, though not enough to outright question him. She looked from the red floatmelon across the water to the port,
"So which side did you come in on?" still crossing her arms but now she looked more at the humans working tirelessly on the port.
Rikard shrugged.
"If those fourteen year olds are better than the adults, I don't see why not," he challenged, but then came the real question, and he was keen enough to place a Perrench accent. The boy shrugged easily. He could tell the truth here, which was good, because he was a liar of questionable efficacy at best.
"The Perrench side. Rewards were better and I don't like pasta."She looked at him with a smile then a laugh,
"So sided that you don't even like pasta, now that's a lie," she wiped a singular tear from her eye before it could fall.
"That's good, I could never hide this forsaken accent." She seem to think about what to say to him past that, he was on the same side but she was still hesitant to speak openly to him.
Instead, she started with the basics,
"I imagine you have some questions then?" her arms opening up a little as she dropped the last of her fake accent.
"Well... yeah," he admitted, uncrossing his arms.
"Like, for starters, why follow the ship? Are you in the navy or something? Like... a spy?" He glanced about furtively and dropped a sonic bubble over them.
"I swear I won't say anything."Her eyes grow narrow, staring so intensely at Rikard. The bubble came down and then she weighed her thoughts. Rikard could feel a very small use of kinetic energy inside of his bubble. She nodded to herself,
"I'll have to believe you for now," she nodded to herself again still followed up with a small bit of kinetic energy used in the bubble.
"Yes I'm a spy," she gave a wink at Rikard, only because it still felt cool to herself that she was a spy.
Rikard was about to respond enthusiastically -
I guess we're on the same side, then! - but then he felt the kinetic magic and he froze. His eyes narrowed and he reached out with his senses. They were alone, but not.
"I guess we can talk about when we're alone, then," he said innocently, shooting her a meaningful look.
She payed attention to the same kinetic signals again and then turned to him,
"I mean, you already knew their was more of us, they are just doing their communication." Laure could tell that he wasn't a fan of the not visible thing but what could she do?
"Want to continue or come back later tonight?"He blinked.
"You... trust them?" he prodded.
"If you do, then I do." He shrugged.
"I know who it is so, yeah," she waved away the concern. This was basic communication they used. Shy comrades were the worst for correspondence.
"I serve the Royal Crown of Perrence, and we were tailing the Sant'Agata della Compagnia Rossa because of a lead that came in and now we are stuck here as well." Laure offered.
"What was the lead?" Rikard prodded, suddenly alarmed.
"What was it carrying!?" He kept his voice low, but the alarm was clear. Already, the wheels were turning in his head.
She leaned back against a rickety post, only to straighten up when she could feel it spelling her doom,
"No need to get that excited. Normal, high value war chest stuff. though some of it seems to be from Callanast. though now we know that wasn't exactly everything." Laure gestured to the encampment.
The boy glanced there involuntarily, and his face shifted.
"Holy shit...they're carrying weapons of...of..." Flustered, he struggled to find the correct word.
"Biological warfare." His face became grave and serious, the enormity of the situation and the clear moral imperative settling upon his young shoulders like some great weight. Still, Rikard considered, in the way that he often did.
"Well - wait a second - if the thresher ate some of the stuff in there..." He trailed off fora moment, regarding her expression for any insight.
Laure just shook her head,
"It ate most of the ship and even from that it's worrisome. There is no telling what is happening inside of it." Her voice was leveled but a bit of genuine worry escaped at the end.
"Eshiran willing, it'll turn belly-up before we need to kill it." He let out a bark of nervous laughter and ended it with a shaky sigh.
"Damn, that's a messed up situation. Makes me wanna figure it out even more." He shook his head.
"Fuck. I need a stiff drink."Her mind still seem to think on what fighting the beast would be like, her worry was almost palpable. But she shook it off quickly, snorting at Rikard.
"A stiff drink?" she was going to laugh it off but went with it instead,
"Maybe, but that will have to wait for the festival."The sun was hanging low in the sky and it wa slooking like he'd have to head over soon.
"You're headed there, then?" He furrowed his brow for a moment.
"Say, is everyone in there part of your group?" he asked skeptically.
She shook her head no,
"No to both, we aren't officially here so showing up at the festival would only cause issues. And they are just a nice family, if not a bit odd."Rikard considered.
"So, then... how many of you are there? Are you gonna be helping us fight the beast?""And get in the water with a Bluewater Behemoth with a taste for blood?" she waved off the unpleasant idea,
"Only if the royal family themselves demanded that of me."Rikard laughed nervously.
"Yeah, for real. What are the chances of that." he scratched at the back of his head and looked elsewhere for a moment:
anywhere else.
"I mean sending a boy here, sure. Sending even a high noble, maybe. But a royal family member on a life or death mission? That be a tale for the ages," she wiped away a tear from the thought. But somewhere, the boys mannerisms had her stomach turn. What if there was one?
Rikard shrugged.
"From my experience, a lot of the royals are mavericks." He sighed.
"You go to Ersand'Enise, you meet all of these high nobles and stuff you never thought you'd meet and you learn they're all kinda crazy."The more Rikard spoke, the more Laure grew sure their might be a fucking Royal of Perrence here. It was absurd and flew in the faces of the 5 gods that they would be here. But he was such a bad liar, he couldn't be acting right?
"I couldn't tell you, never met someone above middling nobility and even then it was just to receive orders. Though I would have to say I don't believe any of the royal family of Perrence would be so unwise to come here. Right?" she asked, seeing if he really did know something.
"Penelope, Princess de Perrence, is here," he admitted.
"She's rebelling against her family somewhat. There's a Perrench military guy here to protect her, but I think he's in over his head."Laure strained her eyes, racking her brain for a Princess Penelope but nothing came up at all. Seems like this was either a case of false impersonation or a fib. She could understand, fourteen year old's do that all the time and this one especially. She decided to make a joke of it, believing this to just be a fib but swore to investigate this later.
"Don't you mean a Perrench Guy?" she said with a thick Perrench accent.
He blinked.
"Haha, yeah. That's actually his name, for what it's worth: Guy Attard." the boy paused and tapped his chin with a finger pensively.
"I think he's half Djamantese and like... a sixteenth eeaiko. He was some sort of navy diver."Many things just clicked for Laure. Many of them she wished didn't. Last she heard he was selling Eshiran's gold in Thalakos. Now he was here in Zengali. He had to come from the same way Rikard did then or else they would have met earlier. Which meant Penelope, Princess du Perrence, was a real person.
She covered up the surprise of the revelation the best she could with her built acting skills but they weren't her strong suit.
"Seems my joke was a bit to close to the truth, apologies." she waved off the retrospectively bad joke, hoping the boy would fall for her act.
Rikard shrugged, and then there was a breeze and the sun setting and they were just standing there.
"No biggie," he responded,
"and, uh... thanks for the food and the hospitality and... all that." Had he understood? Had he not? It might've been hard for her to tell. Maybe he wasn't certain either, but what
was certain was that things were winding down and he needed to get back to where he was going, but not without having learned something extremely valuable.
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