A Land Far Away

Jarixa stirred at the stew with a heel of bread. Rotting fish in oily broth was her evening meal. Again. The Blushing Mermaid served plenty of wholesome fare, but their infamous baitfish stew was fit for only the saltiest of seadogs. Boiled just long enough to chase Talona away, the stew filled many a sailor's iron belly. Not one for much seafaring, Jarixa still considered herself salty. A Gate lass, a Docks girl. Bitch o' Beshaba.

Twenty some years of haunting this place. If not here then some dark alley, some shadowy drain tunnel. Too many of those years spent as an oddity whore and message rat. The messenger role at least held some interest. A coded parchment for the black-cloaked dwarf with the crimson sash. A scroll case of bone for the gnome by Rat Alley. Messages. Of doom.

"Show 'em your horns, girl. Let 'em know Beshaba comes for them," they'd say.

Jarixa puffed in protest. "Can't I just give 'em papers and be off?" But there was no exceptions. The tiefling had a part to play.

"After we take down the Roaches, it's revel time baby!" His bright white smile was hard and unkind. Blackfinger was never kind. "We'll give you another scar for the Lady."

The teenager scowled youthfully. "I don't want anymore scars!" Jarixa had enough already. Barbed horizontal scars adorned her brow and beneath her eyes. Red eyes like a pair of dancing gemstones. She had horns too of a sort. Two stunted antler tines sprout up through her remarkably white hair. The tines are black and gnarled and glisten queerly in the light of fire. Outside these monstrous features, Jarixa is a pretty young woman.

Noisy night at the Mermaid and the Mermaid is a noisy place. Raucous laughter filled the air. Pipesmoke hung thick above patrons' heads like ghostly sheets. Raiders turned revelers, slouching behind trenchers of roast pig and heaps of shellfish. Greedy hands shoveling pork and mushrooms into foul-toothed maws. Rough fingers pinching bruises on the rumps of rugged serving wenches. Jarixa swept her red-eyed gaze over the customers, lingering briefly and cautiously on those unfamiliar, and watching the regulars with boredom. Jarixa had the night off.

Samshee folded his hand and took the opportunity to slurp from his bowl of pickled squid. At another table, Quiggs the Onyx rolled a pair of dice with one hand and sucked a raw oyster from its shell in the other. Gannus Olf spoke of sensitive storage cellars while Coppertooth haggled with fences. Jack the Whisper was scaring the piss out of some half-elf in a corner and Sea Ale just sat drinking sea ale. Kallis Duskeyes was closest to her, chewing a clam, his ale-stained beard bristling.

"Don't look at me when I've silver on a game." His dusky eyes narrowed at her over his cardhand.

"Where's my silver?" She replied, trying to put some menace in her stare.

"Blind ye, bitch." The mercenary looked back to his cards, absently wiping his fingers off on a small-fitting leather jerkin.

Certain ones would take the bait. When their superstitions had hooks in, many would slip her a copper here, a silver there. "Sit with me on this game, devil lass," or "Ah sail on the morrow. Like tuh miss misfortune if ah could. Lemme pay fer ye whiskey." Many others avoided her entirely. Making the sign of Tymora with their fingers or cursing her openly. That's when fights would break out.

Jarixa was wondering when someone at the card table was going to get caught in a cheat when the tavern door opened. She fixed her red eyes to the newcomer. She didn't know his name but she knew who he was. A thug from the Water Queen's House. Recent release from the city dungeon had him itching to prove himself again.

The teenage tiefling remembered well the night of his arrest. The pitiful Captain of Blackwhale had gifted her a conchshell dipped in gold, pleading stupidly that she bless him with Beshaba's mercy as he sailed off to some such isle. Jarixa remembered just shrugging at him, not sure what she was supposed to say. The Water Queen's House got word and were furious. The blue-armored thug of the Umberlants had given the poor captain a backhand to the face later that evening. The lobstered plates of metal from the thug's gauntlet had taken a portion of the man's face off. One fierce blow had sent several of the Amnian seafarer's teeth flying onto a nearby tabletop. "Like dice", Jarixa had thought oddly.

The memory gave Jarixa a shudder as several sailors presently threw nervous glances to her.

"This won't be good." She muttered to her bowl of baitfish stew.

Three hundred gold was what she got for that golden shell and the weight of what remained was a constant reminder. Thinking he meant to collect, Jarixa's black-gloved hand slipped slowly to the handle of her club.

"No, this won't be good." Her lips gave a nervous smile.

very very good read!

Nicely written and very interesting.

His helm came off with a casual tug. The warrior scowled over at Jarixa's group. Sweaty blonde hair stuck to his heavy brow. His eyes were a dark blue, black in the lamps' light. His right gauntlet gripped Kraken's Beak, a finely smithed halberd rumoured to have shed the blood of sea elves and merfolk.

"Jarixa." Barked the man plated with ocean blue. Light from the room's lamp flames caused the enamel to shimmer, like jellyfish near the surface of bleak waters.

Sea Ale scampered off suddenly. His halfling feet stomping, heavy from drunkenness. The bar clerk with the arms of an ogre snapped his fingers at a plump boy of nine summers, who darted off after the hin, both no doubt off to alert the muscle. Be it City Watch or sellswords to respond, one could not say. The two were sometimes difficult to tell apart, much like Sea Ale and the fat boy.

Jarixa made to rise but it was Kallis Duskeyes already on his feet, longsword singing from its sheath. His faded once-red tabard bore the sigil of the Citadel, a chess piece. The Knight. But Kallis gave up his knighthood's honor for a brigand's banner long ago. A deceptively skilled and cunning fighter who routinely gambled his tendays' earnings. Now the bladed tactician appeared to be baring steel in her defense. Or perhaps he just welcomed a good match.

"Your move," The swordsman said, his beard showing evidence of an interrupted meal.

Jack the Whisper whispered, then vanished into a shadow on the wall. Samshee however, slid up from his chair. His hands dissappeared behind his wool-cloaked back, one grasping a wand, the other a stiletto. The son of Mulani merchants, Samshee had open eyes tattooed on his eyelids. "What for?" She once asked him. "To be warned of thieves when I sleep." He replied gravely, his speech thick with beer and a Mulhorandi accent.

The young tiefling addressed the blonde Umberlant as she stood from the table. Her knees quivered and it felt like eels squirming in her belly. "What do you want?", she nearly stammered, bluffing confidence.

Ignoring Duskeyes' taunt, he locked eyes with Jarixa. "The Dark Breakers want yer services. There'll be coin, so don't be fussin'."

The sea-seasoned halbardier then looked over the nearby patrons. Black-skinned Quiggs the Onyx watched the scene placidly, his chair tilted back on two legs to rest against the wall. Gannus Olf, the card-playing wizard, shuffled a deck as if only he himself existed in the hall. The arcanist's familiar scurried in and out of the long black curls that spilled over his robed shoulders. Kallis Duskeyes gave a shrug after seeing he was being ignored, then admired his own longsword as he sheathed it with reluctance. Samshee however, stepped casually towards the Umberlant's flank, as if simply admiring the polish on the stout warrior's boots.

Jarixa sighed as privately as she could manage, her hand relaxing from the club handle. Her relief was brief for fear crept back in. "Services?" Her brow turning fretful. "Which kind?" The tiefling scratched at an antler. They itched suddenly. The way they do sometimes.

"The payin' kind. Priestess's coin." The warrior growled impatiently. "We'll talk in the Temple. Let's go." His tone and eyes suggested there was no other option.

Jarixa pulled up her hood, giving her little antler spikes another quick scratch. She followed the halbardier out, Kallis Duskeyes and Samshee trailing after.

I am FOR (not AGAINST) this story.

A few eyes beneath helms watched them make their way to the temple of Umberlee. The blonde sun-tanned halbardier indicated the club slung over her back. "What'd you expect to do with that?"

"Crack yer gnoll-brained skull open with it." Jarixa lied. "What's yer name anyhow?"

He gruffly dismissed her, "From what I've heard, you've not so much as killed an alley dog."

She didn't show the sting she felt at that remark. 'This one doesn't fear me at all,' she realized.

The armored Umberlant clanked along the city street. Jarixa hopped lightly beside him, her quiet boots dodging rainpuddles on the cobbles. Kallis strode behind, whistling a song sung earlier that night by a drunken shipcrew in the Blushing Mermaid. Kallis Duskeyes' thinning dark hair was flecked with white, and now stirred in the evening air. Samshee followed at a distance. The Mulani hitman's black cloak rippling in the Uktar winds. Tired rainfall and windblown rigging mixed with the low voices of the docks. It was moondark, and only the Tears were visible through clouds that parted like lovers reluctant.

They made their way through the temple, the sound of the ocean waves surrounded them. Above and below rumbled the voice of the sea as their steps took them across blue and sea-green tiles. Occasionally a thud or heavy thump would be heard from the walls, as if some great leviathan lurked on the other side. Jarixa looked at the walls as they walked, the stone bore the images of aquatic horror. Tridents and fangs, teeth and blades. Some stones showed no artwork at all but carried their own faint images all the same. The way the light reflected, the way the shadows moved. She saw faces, some gasping in terror, with others bloated and eyeless. She pulled her gaze away and watched the hulking halbardier lead them around a long curve within the haunting complex. 'Illusions to frighten is all. Or am I really in the belly of this terrible goddess?' She worried at an antler with gloved fingers.

They were ushered to a round chamber of dark blue stone. The ghostly blue-gray floortiles spiraled until centering on a small iron drain-hole. The small void in the mosaic-like floor seem to stare up at them, lifeless yet watchful, like the eye of some malevolent undead seabeast. Several of the Dark Breakers gang waited within the room, wearing short swords and black leathers. Cruel men with crueler faces, staring through bloodshot eyes. Cloaks lined with pale gray fur hung over their shoulders. A few of the killers, Jarixa recognized. The priestess of Umberlee named Mantiisa stood in the front, dressed in dark sickly-blue robes. A skeletal human hand hung low from a chain around her neck, perhaps a relic of her first drowning.

"Ah, Jarixa," she smiled thinly with blue-painted lips. "And her last two friends. I tell you true. Those of your little circus crew that aren't here favor coin more than they favor..." She looked the tiefling over with a gaze both condescending and bored. "...superstition."

A troubling revelation. If it was true. 'It is. That's why Gannus and Quiggs didn't come with me. Neither did Jack...'

Paid off and sailed out, she concluded. A rather saddening acceptance, for Jarixa was rather fond of those two. Gannus Olf, a wily wizard from Tethyr whose familiar she often palm-fed. Quiggs the Onyx was a Chultan and former slave pit-fighter, who spared Jarixa all manner of trouble on the streets. Jack the Whisper however was far too aloof for her liking and news of his betrayal was not a surprise.

Jarixa's vision blurred with tears, her knees drew slowly to the stone-tiled floor. "Services, aye?... I was promised coin."

````````````````````````````````````````````````
The last time she was invited to the Sea Queen's house, they had her scare the wits out of some captain from Calimshan, who'd just returned from sail. Jarixa had known him as a Blushing Mermaid patron but almost didn't recognize him with such short hair as he wrung his hands nervously, surrounded by the Bitch Queen's priestesses. The mad captain had cut it in response to a lice infestation in his cabin. Hygenic perhaps, but a terrible trespass within seafaring superstition. Jarixa was entertained to rebuke him in rhyme,

"A man that cuts his hair at sea
is a man that grooms you see?
This man gave offers to Sune
and provoked the rage of Umberlee!"

"And you had sailed out on Shieldmeet!?" Jarixa's tone, furious with disbelief.

Her stark white hair had a wild look to it with its many crude braids. Much of it no more than long tangles. She stood over, him on his knees, her shoulders back with the childish air of a girl playing queen.

"No one sets sail on Shieldmeet. No one! Those that do are cursed to drift at sea. Drift you will, should you dare set sail again. Drift! Drown! Dead!"

She smacked her palms together with each of those last words, grinning like a touched jester as he flinched with each clap. The scrawny Calishite captain sobbed madly, wide-eyed and blabbering in his foreign tongue. Pleading the gods' mercies, he promptly arranged the delivery of gold, gemstones, and other plunder to the temple of Umberlee. Some gold had even made it's way to Jarixa's purse.

`````````````````````````````````````````````````

They had loved her for that. But that was before the gang war. Before the Dark Breakers beat back the Rats, the Copper Hounds, and the Roaches. Now the Breakers work the docks. While the Shadow Sharks run the sewers.

Mantissa answered, "Do not think that business with the golden shell will go unpunished. You have gotten way out of territory and station, little girl. Out of respect for Blackfinger, you live. On your own."

The priestess gave a subtle wave, "Kill these other two."

Kallis showed steel while Samshee raised a wand for battle. Between them, young Jarixa covered her horned head with her arms and screamed, her eyes burning with tears. The Dark Breakers swarmed Kallis, cutting through his defenses with a frenzy of long steel teeth. And the faded sigil of the Citadel was red once again.

The head of Samshee's wand flashed with magic, but before the spell was unleashed someone whispered in his ear...

Jack stepped out of shadow, thrusting his rapier blade up into the armpit of the Mulani. That sweet soft spot where the leather and padding didn't cover. The wand spilled from Samshee's lifeless hand. Jack smiled and with an odd dance-like flourish lowered his victim to the floor.

Nearly black in the dim light, it ran snakelike, coiling and spiraling along the tiles. While the drain drank red, the sounds of the temple's waves roared, drowning out the sobbing wail of the tiefling.

"It's bad luck to light three pipes wit' the same tindertwig. You've heard tha' before, aye?

Lady Doom preys on the foolish, see. Long ago, this city came under attack wit' monsters comin' up from the docks. These beasties were attracted to light, so them watchmen 'ad to be careful when growin' bored an' restless at their posts. The three got out their pipes, see. One struck a twig an' lit his pipe. The monster spots 'im. With the second watchmen lightin' his pipe, the killer's movin' in, silent n' hungry. The time the twig lights tha' third bowl, well...

A bit o' sense in tha' superstition stuff perhaps. Lady Doom spares those o' us with some sense n' diligence. Best keep her in mind if you call yerself a soldier, eh?"

Wisdom from the trenches of the great war