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High Priest Doran had the finest horse in the empire. He knew this for certain, because he had personally ensured it. The horse's name was Providence, and he stood eight feet tall at the shoulder. His coat was immaculate white, with brilliant blond hair up to the knee, and a striking, golden tail half the length of a man. Precious gems were threaded into his radiant mane. Of course, Providence was a pure mudsdale, true as far back as the records of his ancestry stretched. There was not a purer, more perfect horse known to any groom in Callouse.
As it should be, for as they say, the horse ought befit the man. And as of his ecclesiastical inauguration exactly nine days ago, there was quite officially no purer, more perfect man of the Lord in Callouse, either. His pristinely white cape flapped in the wind behind him, his vestments clinging tightly to his frame and accentuating his lithe yet lean build. The blond hair that framed his gaunt, stern face almost matched his mount's, though it was a touch duller. Between his grandiose appearance and the sizable escort of over a dozen soldiers trailing him, they must have cut quite an intimidating figure, he reckoned.
Far more intimidating, at least, than the lucario at his side. It was speaking slowly to Doran as it tried to keep pace on its little gogoat. The pathetic thing barely reached Providence's shoulder. Doran appreciated the way it forced the lucario to look up at him as it spoke.
"We're very glad Your Grace found it wise to pay a visit to our tribe," the lucario said, gesturing around at the small community they were passing through. Though its Calloussian was respectable, its voice was rough and gravelly. It was the voice of a creature used to communicating in barks and grunts, Doran thought.
Their village was quaint, he had to admit, and not all too different in character from the village he grew up in, if technological differences were to be ignored. Tents made from tauros leather stretched over branches dotted the area, though it seemed that most everyone was outside. Lucario of various shapes and colors tended to flames, or fussed with their cattle, or chased after rambunctious riolu. Doran would not wish squalor like this on his most pathetic inferior, of course, but despite it all, the inhabitants of this simple village seemed content and at peace. For these people—the lucarios—Doran supposed he could see how it might feel like home.
"Relations between the Empire and the Lucario Tribe have been stagnant for the past few decades," the lucario continued, the foreign quality of its voice making its tone inscrutable. "We hope that Your Grace's visit will be the start of a new era of positive diplomacy between our peoples."
Doran said nothing as they trotted onward. He had some words to say eventually, of course, but they were not for this prattling footman.
The lucario opened its mouth to speak again, then hesitated. They made the rest of their way to the chieftain's hall in silence.
Unlike the teepees erected about the village, the chieftain’s hall was a proper building. Not in the sense that Doran knew a proper building, of course, but it was certainly leagues closer to a civilized structure than the tents. Its walls arched from a stone base to form a semi-sphere of woven wood. As they approached it at last, Doran dismounted Providence patted the grand horse lightly on the shoulder. The mudsdale snorted and shook his head in response.
"Soldiers," Doran said, turning to his escorts but looking right through them. "Keep after Providence for me, won't you? I don't imagine I will be terribly long." The lucario that had led them there reached out haphazardly and opened his mouth again to speak, but this time Doran shot him a pointed, supercilious look, and gently placed a hand on the pommel of his ceremonial sword, as if daring the lucario to speak. He did not dare, so Doran stepped through the tapestry that served as the hut's door, white cape swishing behind him.
Within moments of entering it, Doran concluded that the hut's interior was unremarkable. Some more tapestries hung from the walls of the unlit room, and vases with simple, folksy patterns adorned the edges of the worn tile floor. Doran's splendid white clothing seemed to glow in the lackluster dimness of the space.
At the room's center stood an elderly lucario, dressed in a tattered red cape. Three parallel scars traced his face, crossing a cloudy white eye down to the tip of his muzzle where the whiskers went silver. Here was a chief who had visibly won his office tooth and nail. These victories were apparent not just in the combat-scars that adorned his body, but in the confident way he stood, sizing up the high priest with narrowed eyes. If there were a lucario to fear in this whole tribe, there was no doubt that this was the one. High Priest Doran, of course, did not fear him all the same. In all his grizzled glory, the lucario did not even come up to the high priest's chest.
"Good day to you," the lucario said, inclining his head slightly but keeping his eyes locked in contact with Doran's. Surprisingly, his accent was quite near perfect. He sounded more like an old, gruff man than a beast making attempts at a distinguished tongue.
Doran nodded curtly. "Good day to you as well, Chief Silverfoot. Shall we get down to business?"
The lucario did not let down his front of wariness, though a spark of confusion did rise behind his expression. "I am not aware of any business, Your Grace," he said slowly. "It was you who arranged this visit."
"Indeed," Doran replied, forcing his tightly pursed lips into a smile. He began to walk about the room as he talked, pretending to closely analyze the tapestries on the wall. He could feel the elder chief's gaze burning holes into his back. "I am new to my office, as you know. The previous high priest was a... differently minded man than I, that much is for certain. Careful to please, never overstepping his perceived boundaries, even for the spiritual wellbeing of the empire. Though he sought merely to avoid strife, the empire reached new heights of corruption under his careless eye. Relations abroad grew icy and unfamiliar as time weathered on... Even you, our nearest neighbors, are now but distant friends. Do you know this to be true, Chief Silverfoot?"
"I know it to be true," the lucario confirmed, "though I never knew why. The politics of your people remain a hazy mystery to the sharpest lucario minds, I'm afraid."
"Indeed," Doran muttered, breaking into a skewed grin. He turned about to face the lucario, and met eyes with a beast different than the one who had greeted him just moments ago. Now the chief's eyes seemed curious, searching. Genuine. "Tell me," Doran continued, taking a few leisurely steps forward, "would it affront you to hear the former High Priest Antoine called a coward?"
"Mm." The chief narrowed his eyes in thought. "No. The man you have described to me sounds like a coward. It is fitting," he said.
"Yes." Doran turned back to the wall and gazed out the makeshift window. There were riolu playing outside, mocking swordplay with straight sticks as their parents watched, lips contorted upward in animalistic smiles. "This is where he and I differ. Antoine was spineless, I daresay. The High Regalia should have never graced his unworthy head. But I am no coward. I am righteous. I am justice. I am the right hand of God. That is why He has placed this tiara on my head. I have come here to speak with you, Chief Silverfoot, not as an emissary of the empire, but as an ambassador of the One Most High. Do you understand me?"
The lucario did not respond immediately. Doran stood there, hands clasped behind his back, until he did.
"I shall attempt to, Your Grace."
"Good. Then, understanding my place at the side of God, I cast away my reservations and tell you this: there are those within Callouse would would slander your people as godless pagans. Idol worshipers and servants to worldly things. I must know, Chief Silverfoot. Is this true?"
Again, the lucario did not say anything at first. Doran could hear him slowly lowering himself to his haunches, grunting with exertion as he fell into a sitting position on the ground. "You have spoken of yourself at great length now, Your Grace," he said. "Would you hear my words for a moment?"
Doran turned about, looking down at the seated chieftain. "If I must."
The lucario took a deep breath, a knot in his brow betraying his displeasure. A moment passed in silence before he began to speak. "There are those among my people who can see the souls of the living. What do you think of that?" he asked.
"It sounds to me like blasphemy," Doran sneered. "It is for God alone to look upon the souls of men. And the souls of... others. Any who claim this ability for themselves… Well, it is not through God that such powers are achieved. It is my view that apostates are to be punished.”
"I thought you might say so," Silverfoot replied solemnly, shutting his eyes and pressing his hands together. His position seemed somewhat meditative now, but he continued to speak, eyes still closed. "I am among those who can see into the hearts of others." The lucario screwed up his face in concentration, and his body began to tremor all but imperceptibly. "I can see Your Grace's as we speak. Flickering beneath those gaudy robes of white and gold, I see a flame of dark black. What is it you truly wish to know, High Priest Doran? I am no fool. I know a man like you would not waste his time chatting idly with a grey old lucario."
The priest's face contorted. He forced his lips apart to speak, vein bulging in his neck. "You dare—"
Silverfoot held up a paw to stop him. Remarkably, it worked—Doran halted on the spot. "The Sight is as natural to my people as the sense of smell, the sense of hearing. Your religion decries it as a power dark and unholy. Only one of these things can be true, you understand. What is an old wolf like me to do? When we look inside ourselves and see what the creator has placed there, are we meant to recoil in disgust? Or are we meant to wield it with pride?" His lips curled into a snarl as he drew a deep breath. "I have grown old, and seen many battles. Many foul things have been said of me in my time. But none who know me well would call me a traitor to my people. I will not have our ways, old as time, slandered so."
The elder chief's eyes snapped open. Sharp, icy blue pierced through his milky cataracts and granted him True Sight. He had seen into the High Priest’s soul, seen the rage and contempt roiling there. Now he expected his eyes to reveal to him a mask knotted and pulsating with that unbridled anger, but they did not. High Priest Doran was leaning over the lucario, cape draped at his sides. A wide smile split his face, sweet and serene. His heavy eyelids fell halfway down his knowing gaze, and if Silverfoot didn't know better, he might think the priest was staring into the eyes of a lover. The lucario frowned deeply. The priest's spirit was inscrutable now.
"I respect your determination," Doran said, standing straight again and moving toward the exit. "Or shall we call it stubbornness? Make no mistake, you have told me exactly what I wished to hear. For this, I thank you. But... Yes. I have heard all I care to. I'll be taking my leave." He paused just before passing through the curtain at the hut's door, and turned back. "I did make one misjudgment of you, however. Perhaps you'd like to know? I saw your scars and read them, foolishly, as testaments to your prowess in combat. Testaments to your resolve. Yet I see them for what they are now." His innocuous grin twisted into one of condescension. "Marks of weakness. It is the badge of your unyielding, given form in your flesh. They are not symbols of your victories. Memories of hits you have taken, that you could have evaded. Persistence is a boon to the strong, but it is the herald of a swift death to the weak. I have decided that your scars are in fact symbols of your inability to protect yourself." He turned back around, and walked through the curtain. "Or your people."
As he stepped out of the dim hut, Doran found the brightness of the outdoors almost blinding. He raised a hand over his face to block out the sun as he squinted. His escorts stood at attention at the sight of him, two of them holding Providence's reins. One of them stood slack, and was chatting casually with the lucario who had led them there. He seemed unaware of Doran's presence. The priest approached them.
"You."
Both the guard and the lucario snapped to attention. "Your Grace," the soldier said, saluting stiffly. Doran looked him up and down. Though he stood a few inches taller than Doran himself, in that moment the priest couldn't help but find him pathetically small.
"Take care of your friend here," Doran instructed, pointing at the lucario with a thin, outstretched finger.
"Your Grace?"
"Kill him,” Doran said, firmly this time. “Immediately."
The soldier swallowed hard, hand moving reluctantly and clumsily to the sword at his side. The lucario's eyes flitted back and forth between Doran and the guard, and the look of panic in its eyes slowly melted into one of grim understanding. It leaped backwards, raising its paws and then clapping them together. They came away from one another cloaked in translucent blue flame.
"Now, soldier," Doran reiterated. The soldier nodded, and the hesitance in his eyes fell away. Though he had been chatting with the lucario just moments ago, his training held true and would not be erased. At his core, he was a soldier, conditioned to follow the order of any superior, harsh as it may be. Loyalty to one’s country, to one’s God, came first. Doran knew this. He tolerated no less.
What ensued could hardly be described as a fight. The soldier advanced and caught the small lucario by its arm. It struggled to no avail as the guard raised his sword underhand and slashed it across the dog’s neck. It fell to the grass soundlessly, clutching uselessly at the weeping trench in its throat. Dark red blood spilled over the field.
Someone screamed. Commotion ensued. Doran was only aware of it peripherally as he turned to his soldiers, and frankly he did not care to watch it more closely than he had to. Soiling his fingernails with dirt was not part of his job anymore. He was here to give the orders of God, and his men were here to join that divine will with reality.
He walked over to Providence and allowed a pair of soldiers to lift him onto the great horse’s back wordlessly. He settled himself into the saddle, took the reins, and then looked down to his guard.
"Men," he said, looking them over. They all seemed fearful in the smallest way. Fearful? Anxious, perhaps. Doran did not know. He was not personally acquainted with the emotions of war. "Subjugate this village. Kill if you must. These dogs are assets of the Church, now. I will return in a week, and I expect to find them all bound in shackles and ready for deportation."
The soldiers saluted. "Yes, Your Grace," they chanted. They were obviously practiced words. Familiar. Easy to cling to in moments of doubt, Doran suspected. He didn't care if they doubted, really. If he returned to mutiny, well... He'd have a guard twice as large at his side then, and quick work would be made of the dissenters. No, it did them no good to resist. He looked down at the guards as the expendable muscle that they were, and nodded.
"I want the chieftain dead. Preserve the rest if you can. Best of luck to you, men. Do not disappoint me."
He took a deep breath before departing. Screaming. The cleansing smell of rising flames. Righteousness. Justice. I am the right hand of God.
They drew their swords and began to fight. Doran urged Providence forward and did not look back.
hi guys! thanks a ton for your reviews. i took them all into consideration when writing this next chapter, so hopefully it's improved! sorry for the delay, i was really having a hard time writing this all out in a way that i was totally comfortable with, but ultimately it's better just to get it out and written even if it's not perfect, right? i've got a bit of a double feature here to make up for the lost time. with that, here's the first few chapters of the fic. hope you guys enjoy!
The Twilight of Youth Fifteen years later…
What was the best way to celebrate one’s final hours of freedom?
Some of the lucario were out feasting, laughing and cheering, and celebrating their culture with traditional songs from their youth.. And who could blame them? It was the last time they would be permitted to do so, after all.
But Ferrycloth had no room in his heart for festivities and joy today. He was in no mood to celebrate and saw no sense in pretending otherwise. Why squander his last moments of liberty maintaining a facade for people he’d never see again?
Instead, he sat at the riverside, eyes closed, feet in the water, as he did every other morning. Unlike every other morning, however, his whole body was pulsating with a dull ache. God, but that human had made quick work of him yesterday. Years of combat training, just to be beaten into the dirt by the first hairless, duck-footed, flat-toothed monkey to swing a sword at him. He could only blame himself. Why wasn’t he better?
Well, no use in dwelling on it. For better or worse, here he was now, biding his last few hours of freedom in throbbing discomfort. The ambient pain and the numb feeling of the cold water as it flowed over his feet made it hard for him to hone his focus, but not impossible. With each deep breath, infinitesimal traces of life whispered across his inner eye, radiating warmth as they floated down the river lazily. Specks of algae, slow-crawling snails, the occasional school of minnows. All drifting away with the current, not thinking of their destination, content just to move. Ferry lost himself in their amorphous feelings, privately envious of their simple existences.
Something larger approached from behind. Ferry recognized the aura even without focusing on it. His ear twitched at the sound of its footsteps.
“Ferrycloth,” spoke the aura’s source as it came to a stop behind him. Ferry pried an eye open and turned his head back, sizing up the speaker.
Quicktail was a fist or two taller than Ferry, though at the moment he towered over Ferry’s sitting form. His legs were marked with sable stripes, and the fur on his face came to a point behind his eyes, giving him a fierce appearance.
“Shouldn’t you be out celebrating with the others?” Ferry asked, frowning. His focus on the auras of the river were gone now that he’d dropped his focus, reverted to nothing more than tiny, formless pinpricks of sensation on the back of his neck.
Quicktail shrugged and sat down next to Ferry, kicking up a bit of dust. Ferry raised his lip in gentle annoyance, dusting off his fur. “I’m feeling a little too pensive for all that,” Quicktail replied. “I could ask the same of you, couldn’t I? But I already know you’re wound up too tight to party with the rest." He chuckled.
Ferry said nothing and cast his eyes back down to his feet. He wasn’t tightly-wound, he was just reasonable. All those lucario out in the tents, drinking and laughing and joking… They were in denial. Ferry was just seeing the situation for what it was rather than cloaking it behind festivities.
“I heard you lost to your first opponent,” Quicktail said after a moment, his voice delicate. Ferry grunted. “I’m surprised to hear that. You’re one of the best fighters in the platoon.”
A growl rose in the back of Ferry’s throat. “Did you just come here to torment me?” he demanded, meeting Quicktail’s eyes with a scowl. “It doesn’t matter. The pairings are random. You fight until you lose. I happened to pair with a powerful human right away, and lost. Is that you wanted to hear?”
Quicktail raised his paws defensively. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just surprised, is all. I lost to my first opponent too.”
“Mm.” Ferry wasn’t surprised by that. Quicktail wasn’t a particularly accomplished fighter. He wasn’t sure if it made him feel better or worse that Quicktail had been beaten so swiftly, too.
“Looks like there’s only an hour or two left before midday,” Quicktail remarked, showing Ferry his timepiece. The chip of adamantium crystal at its center was only the slightest tinge away from transparency, indicating the approach of noon. Ferry frowned. “Guess this is it, huh? The end of our lives as free mon.” Ferry nodded idly, not speaking. It was true, but what was there to be said?
“Well,” Quicktail added, “I guess I don’t really have any regrets. I wasn’t the best fighter or anything like that, but I think I spent my time well. I enjoyed myself while it lasted. I don’t think there’s anything I would change.” He trailed off, eyes glassy and face relaxed. “What about you, Ferry? Are you content with the way things ended up?”
Instead of answering, Ferry leaned forward and plunged his hands into the chilly water. He drew a sharp breath at the sudden sting of the river’s touch. Feeling. Fleeting sensation. The things that kept him alive. He’d allowed himself to plummet pathetically into the shapeless whims of reminiscence and longing, but no more. He pulled his cupped paws out of the water and splashed it onto his face, his breaths again coming jerkily and loudly as his skin tingled beneath the beads of water clinging to his fur.
“You’re weak,” he said through a snarl as he stood up, water still dripping from his face.
“What?”
“I said you’re weak. You’re a sentimental fool.”
“Okay, no need to be an ass about it, I’ll just get going—”
“You’re ‘content’ with the adolescence you spent in captivity like an animal, being trained to raise your fists against your brothers, all to eventually be sold into slavery to some ungrateful human like the object you are?” Ferry snapped. “Fine, go drink and make merry over the end of your free life with the others. You all make me sick, every last one of you.” His lips were curled now, baring his pointed teeth.
Despite the mutual knowledge that Ferry could pound him into dust without breaking a sweat, Quicktail didn’t seem all that intimidated. “Where the fuck do you get off?” he asked. “You’re the one who threw yourself into their training. You’re the one taking all of this seriously. You really think you’re better than everyone else because they’re capable of pulling the stick out of their asses? You’re the one who’s been treating this whole thing like religion. You’re a hypocrite.” He put a paw to his forehead. “I can’t believe I felt bad for you. You deserve to spend your last free hours alone out here.”
Ferry grit his teeth and slugged Quicktail in the face with all his might. The lucario stumbled backward with a loud grunt, but didn’t return a blow of his own. Instead, he stood up straight and clutched at his jaw, scowling at his assailant.
“Fuck you,” Ferry growled. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. Just go.”
“Fine.”
Quicktail was on his way, but Ferry wasn’t watching to see him leave. His vision was a rapid blur of red and black, anger so intense it made his head light. He curled his fist again and smashed it into a nearby tree. It crumpled with a resounding crack, splinters spraying from its surface, but did not fall.
The sun did not pause for Ferry as it climbed toward its zenith. Time was slipping through Ferry’s hands like sand, passing through the adamantine shard in his pocket like the flow of the river. There was precious little of it left before Ferry surrendered himself to the shackles of servitude for the rest of his life. He resolved to spend it raging at the world and bloodying his fists.
On one thing, he could agree with Quicktail. He had no regrets about the way he’d spent his time: training, honing his skill, and now burning with rage at the unjustness of the world with a fury so hot it was painful to behold.
That was the way a warrior fought and died. And whether he was serving his own people or serving strangers, Ferrycloth was a warrior.
“That’s right,” Primeveire replied through a hearty bite of food. She hadn’t really checked to see what she was eating, but it was some kind of meat for sure, and damn, it was good.
“I can’t believe it,” Rowan said, kicking back and throwing back a gulp of beer. “There really is a light at the end of the tunnel, huh? The training tunnel.”
“The training tunnel,” Prim echoed.
“Yes. You know what I mean. We’ve been doing this so long, it’s really strange to think of going to bed tonight and not waking up at four in the morning for formation.”
Prim shrugged. “Eh. Not really.”
“That’s because you never woke up at four in the morning for formation, you fucking slakoth,” chimed in Ulric from across the table.
Prim shrugged again. “And yet here I sit, a free woman. Didn’t seem to matter that much, did it?” With that she took a hearty bite of her unidentified meat item.
“She’s right, you know,” Rowan added, half impressed and half depressed. “Reckon she could kick everyone of our asses. Probably at the same time. You can afford to sleep in a little when you fight like that, the sergeants turn a blind eye.”
“Yeah?” Ulric challenged, squinting sardonically at Prim as she chowed merrily at her food. “I bet she couldn’t beat me in an arm wrestle.”
Rowan shot him a flat look. “That’s a bit unfair,” he conceded. “She’s a woman. Upper arm strength isn’t everything, anyway. You saw the way she beat the shit out of that lucario, didn’t you? Dead impressive.”
“What, I’m supposed to be blown away that she was able to kick a dog to the curb like everyone else did, after years of specific training to do just that?”
“That thing wasn’t fucking around, man. You saw the way it punched.”
“We were all fighting lucario, Rowan. They all—”
The bone to Prim’s meat clattered loudly onto its metal plate. It was totally clean of flesh—the bones had even been cracked and the marrow sucked out. “You want to arm wrestle?” she said, wiping her greasy face on the back of her sleeve. “Okay, let’s do it.”
Everyone around the table chattered excitedly as they cleared out of the way, Ulric scooting to the side in order to sit across from Prim. He swept aside plates and napkins and cups with his big, callused hands, and smacked his elbow onto the wooden surface of the table with a loud thump.
“Ooh,” Prim cooed, raising her eyebrows. “Big scary muscle man. I guess I’m in trouble, huh?”
“Guess we’ll see,” Ulric replied. Prim frowned. It was more fun when they took the bait.
Still she placed her elbow on the table cautiously, holding her hand in the air for a minute as she inspected her opponent. He was a big man, that much was for sure. His shoulderspan was probably close to double hers, and his hands were no doubt big enough to cradle her skull like she might an apple. He was a man whose size was not just inherent, but honed and increased through hours of intense training. It made sense to her, suddenly, that he was so dismissive of her strength, and so irritated by her laziness. He’d worked hard to get where he was. Someone like her didn’t deserve the acclaim she was receiving.
But she got it anyway, didn’t she?
She clasped his hand and shivered at the grainy feeling of his giant callouses. He squeezed her hand back— he was hunched all the way over just so his hand could be level with hers. His eyes bore into her own with a smug confidence. This was not going to be a challenge at all for him and he knew it.
“Three,” Rowan chanted excitedly, “two… One!”
Prim drove her heel into Ulric’s crotch from beneath the table. His eyes bulged in surprise and anguish, and an exerted grunt forced its way out of his lips. Prim’s face screwed into a crooked smile as she slammed his arm down onto the table effortlessly.
Rowan’s eyes were dinner plates. “W… Winner?” The table erupted into bewildered applause.
“Hey, what the fuck!” Ulric exclaimed, his face red from what was likely to be a cross between embarrassment and anger. “She just kicked me in the nuts! She cheated!”
“Yep,” Prim replied, beaming. “But I won, didn’t I?”
“Fuck you.”
Prim threw back her head and let out a heart laugh. “Not today, old pal.” She sighed as her smile faded, then stood up. “Right, I’m bored of this place. I guess it’s almost noon, huh?” she asked, checking her timepiece. The time crystal was just about fully transparent, clear as glass. “Ready to start the rest of our lives?”
Her proposition was met by a round of cheers, save for from Ulric, who just muttered some vague affirmative as he massaged his undercarriage. The other tables took note and rose to their feet with them. Just like that, they were swept out of the tent and onto the road, toward the clearing where their new lives would begin.
* * *
The lucario were all lined up and looking quite grim, as they often did. They were such a strange fusion of worlds, Prim thought, with their satchels and clothes and hand wraps. It was almost funny, like dogs playing human. But Prim had learned enough about lucario, both in her training and through her personal interactions with them, to know they were far more than that.
The soldiers were all queued up, facing forward. Prim had been told many times in the week leading up to today just how this ceremony would go. They were to step up, one at a time, and speak their name to the sergeant at front. The sergeant would then call out the name of the soldier’s paired lucario, and that lucario would step out of line and move forward to join the soldier. The sergeant would present the deed, and then the soldier and their newly bestowed lucario would be on their way… somewhere.
And it did advance just like that. One after another. And another. And another. A lady could get fairly tired, standing out in the heat like this, nodding gently to the rhythmic patter of feet and distant calling of names. Why did the transition into adulthood have to be so bloody boring?
The lucario didn’t seem particularly thrilled, either. Most of them stood staring at the ground, tails swishing, fists clenched. Some of them were panting, pink tongues undulating from behind their pointed teeth. Prim thought she was burning up… How hot must they have been under all that fur?
It wasn’t all bad, though. Lucario and humans alike, everyone standing in this miserable, sweaty formation was standing in formation for probably the last time. Every one of them had spent most of their lives in training, and every one of them was looking forward at their final formal transaction before stepping out into freedom for the first time ever. The thought of it made her perk up just a little.
And before too terribly long, she was at the front of the line. Her turn. She proceeded carefully, boots clicking on the steps as she made her way up to the square-jawed sergeant. She met his eyes and spoke her name carefully. “Lady Primeveire of Cromlexia.”
A moment of relative quiet hung over the crowd as the sergeant peered over his paper, scanning for her name. Then: “Ferrycloth the lucario, come forward.”
There was no movement at first. Some of the lucario looked up and around, searching for their absent comrade. At least, he shuffled out from the queue, and made his way down the aisle and up the stairs. Prim wasn’t particularly talented at telling lucario apart, but there was no way she could forget this lucario’s appearance. A furious scowl, coming sharply to a narrow point, eyes burning with fury, sharp teeth poking out from below a curled black lip. His hand wraps were stained with dry blood, his fur scruffy and his tail sweeping low, kicking up clouds of dust as he walked. From their single, brief bout of combat, Prim knew this lucario to have more raw, animalistic fury and strength than anyone or thing she’d ever met. Even though she’d bested him easily in combat, she couldn’t help but wince as he stepped up beside her, chest puffed and furious eyes fixed on the sergeant.
“Here I am,” he growled. The sergeant looked the lucario up and down, clearly dissatisfied with his disheveled appearance, but there was nothing he could do about it.
“As sergeant of the King’s Army, I hereby transfer stewardship of this lucario, Ferrycloth, to you, Lady Primeveire of Cromlexia. You are henceforth graduated from combat training and are pronounced an official Wandersword, ordained by His Royal Majesty King of Shallor.”
Prim saluted stiffly. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to feel. Pride, perhaps? But no such thing was welling up in her bosom now— she felt empty and desolate, standing here at the altar of her duty and achievement. A frail scarecrow. This sweltering heat, the rugged and unkempt lucario she was to call partner for the foreseeable future, this empty and silent pit in her chest… It all felt so wrong. But it was exactly as it was meant to be. This was her moment. The sergeant saluted her back and Prim walked to the end of the stage and down the stairs, her steps practiced and formal and rhythmic. Ferrycloth stomped unceremoniously behind him, skipping a step as he descended, fists clenched.
And then the ceremony was behind her, and she was free. The great blue sky stretched over her head, great alabaster clouds drifting gently across it, the heat of the sun at her neck. There was only one way to go from here.
“I hate you.”
Prim turned her head to look at Ferry. He was standing to her side, just a few feet behind, but he was not looking at her. His furious glare was focused ahead, fixed somewhere in the distance. She could feel the angry heat pouring off his body. It gave her the chills.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, and continued walking. “But I guess we’re stuck together, huh?”
“Yes.”
Prim wasn’t going to say it, and it didn’t seem like Ferry was either, but there was a reason they were stuck together.
If Ferry lashed out, or tried to escape, Prim would kill him. It would be quick and effortless. They both knew it, and the brief silence as they walked together back towards town was a nonverbal acknowledgement of that fact. For better or worse, they were stuck together.
“Make no mistake,” Ferry added, “I will serve you to the best of my ability, as is my duty. But I will not be pleased to do it.”
Prim frowned. At least he was going to be cooperative. That was the best she could ask for, right?
Yet, with a sulking dog by her side, the road ahead seemed so much longer now than it had before.
hi guys! thanks for reading my fic, and sorry for the long wait. i'm moved into my new place now (hopefully for at LEAST the next five months) and am more or less on a steady schedule now. oddly enough it seems like having a bunch of free time actually decreased my motivation to write, so i guess we'll see about getting back into a groove, haha. to answer a few questions/comments:
Well! These have certainly been short chapters, but if there's anything I wasn't quite expecting, it was a jump 15 years later. Looks like all that happened previously isn't quite the main story, just the backdrop, though I imagine we'll be seeing that guy later.
I don't have very much to say about the chapters as a whole (I mean, they're short, so what do you expect?) but I will say one thing: the atmosphere is dreary! I know you're going for that, so good work on the depiction there of basically a sort of hopeless situation of a race of weaklings (which is also a bit jarring, but at least you established it early) oppressed by the humans.
I think you do a good job at depicting that hopeless/dreary atmosphere, though that's not quite the sort of thing I personally enjoy reading~ Perhaps some other time I'll get back to this when there are more chapters, but otherwise, I just want to let you know that you write it well.
i'm glad i established tone effectively here, haha. i don't mean for it to be too terribly dreary so maybe in a few chapter's time it'll be closer to something you're more interested in. thanks for giving it a read!
You know, I'm glad you opted to post these two chapters together. One, since they're pretty short, so one might not have been enough. And two, because of the fun contrast in seeing the two completely opposing views on this meeting. The instant we switched to a human pov I was like "oboy this is the one who beat Ferry isn't it lol." I think it's gonna be a lot of fun to see how these two's interactions progress. And I'm really curious what sort of work these soldiers are heading off toward.
Even though Pokemon are low power in this setting, I was still a bit surprised that it would be "effortless" for Prim to kill Ferry. Even killing a fellow human tends to take a fair bit of effort! But maybe it's a reference to how easily she beat him earlier. Still, it'd be hard to keep your guard up 100% of the time...
i've been wanting to write a dynamic like prim and ferry's for a while now, so hopefully their interactions don't disappoint. :D i think the power scale in this fic is quite different from what you'd expect to see in the average pokémon fic, and i'm having some trouble nailing it down completely, but there are a few things to consider here i think. one thing kind of bouncing around in my head here is that lucario are pretty lithe pack hunters, like wolves, so i assume they chase after smaller pray unless they're attacking in a team, which ferry wasn't. lucario are actually pretty small— the pokédex lists them at 4'11", so we're looking at a fight between a highly trained, athletic adult and a canine the size of a human child. pair that with the fact that the aura powers of lucario in this era are relatively watered down... but you're right, prim can't stay vigilant forever, and ferry does have the stealth advantage on his side. i guess we'll see!
thanks! glad you're staying tuned. :D just want to say thanks a ton for pointing out my mechanical mistakes/awkward phrasing etc... it really helps a ton not just to polish my prose but to get that insight into the areas where i need to grow, so i'm really grateful for that. now to answer a few of your questions...
This is a pretty cool little tidbit. So how does the crystal work? Presumably it cycles every twenty-four hours, but not in response to sunlight, presumably, or they'd be worthless if you kept them in your pocket or indoors. Maybe something to do with gravitational pull e.g. position of the moon, or attuned to a magic/energy field, such as the one Ferrycloth can sense?
i don't see this ever coming up in the lore so i think it's safe to just say outright that these little timepieces are shards of an Adamant Orb. they're cut and faceted in such a way that their inherent temporal properties are harnessed to roughly indicate the time of day. probably not super plot-relevant, but i like slipping in fun little world details like that where i can. :p
I was kind of thinking that the groups must be kept separate up until this tournament ritual thing, since neither Prim nor Ferry seemed to be at all familiar with each other, but Prim mentions having worked with lucario a lot in the past, so, not sure?
i'll go more into depth on this as the story progresses, but lucario occupy many niches in shallor— only the toughest are selected to accompany a wandersword. prim and the other humans have definitely interacted with other more servile lucario throughout their lives.
Random thing I'm wondering--how old is Prim? I was thinking she was early twenties somewhere, but if this is an adulthood ritual thing, you'd expect her to be younger.
hmmm. i'd put her at around nineteen. good question!
thanks again to everyone who's been reading for all of your awesome feedback! now without further adieu...
A Bandit in the Night
The road was long, and in the height of summer, it felt longer.
Fledgling wanderswords, fresh from their training, were not given much in the way of equipment or gold. Prim had been issued a set of boiled leather armor and two sets of walking clothes. The spare was tucked away in her rucksack with her rations— some dried meat, cheese, and a flask of wine she'd saved from the graduation day celebrations. Her training sword, dull-edged but familiar, swung from her waist as she walked.
Ferry had been given even less, though in this heat, Prim almost envied him the light load. Fresh wraps adorned both sets of paws, and a skin for water hung at his side. He'd seemed surprised when she gave him the waterskin—maybe lucario didn't use them. He hadn't been surprised enough to thank her, of course. Prim had known the lucario less than a day, but she'd already given up on expecting any thanks.
Yet for all the things they did have, there were so many they did not. Prim was much more keenly aware of this than Ferry, who was simply content to have been given anything at all. For instance, she thought to herself, they lacked a horse. Two would be ideal, really, if Prim was honest. They lacked a map. They lacked a compass. Prim would have been quite glad for an apple, too, if she could get one. Anything crisp and moist and not so damnably dry.
They were passing west through the country via the Lanceroute, so called because it was about as broad as a lance was long. Its maintenance the responsibility of the lords whose lands it carved through, but Prim could see plainly that it was not a responsibility they paid much mind. Its surface was about as even as a sandslash's, and there wasn't a single tree for shade in sight. Some road indeed.
"My feet ache," Prim said with a frown. "The roads at camp were so nice and smooth. Drills on roads like that couldn't have prepared me for this."
"Perhaps they should have drilled you harder," Ferry suggested. Prim wished she could beat that scathing tone out of him, but she knew by now that she'd have better luck scrubbing the blue out of his fur. "I confess that I have wondered when this journey will end. I'm... poorly learned on the lay of your country." He sounded pained to admit a shortcoming like that.
“Hmm. Lucario are fairly territorial, aren’t they?” she asked.
“Yes,” Ferry replied, “though not in the same way as your kind, mind.”
“How do your kind keep track of what belongs to whom, then?” she asked, seizing hopefully onto the thread of conversation.
"By scent." Ferry sniffed and gave her maps another dubious look. "Your way of markings on paper… I don’t understand what meaning there is to be drawn from that."
"Mm. Fair enough,” Prim said. “I'm not sure a map would be of much use out here even if we had one... It's hard to tell one mile from the last out here."
"Hopefully it isn't much longer."
They carried on in silence after that, though Prim was rather happy to have made any conversation with her broody companion at all. He was so awfully standoffish and terse, she could hardly bear it.
She was about ready to collapse when the sun finally kissed the horizon. "Well, I suppose we should set up camp soon," she said anxiously. The words had been sitting on her lips for hours now; it was a great relief to finally say them aloud.
Ferry was less enthusiastic. "There won't be much of a camp to speak of, unless you're hiding a tent in that bag of yours," he said, gesturing at her back. Prim bit her lip. She was not hiding a tent in that bag of hers. In fact, she wasn't hiding so much as a sleeping mat. There were no trees in sight, either, so they'd have to do without a fire to sleep by. It would have to be Prim and Ferry on the grass under the stars.
Ferry frowned. Conditions weren’t fantastic for the lucario at camp, but at least they’d had cots to sleep on. "We should sleep in shifts," he suggested, though it didn't sound much like a suggestion at all.
"Yes," Prim said. "Yes, of course."
They had practiced sleeping in shifts in training. The instructors had stressed its necessity, though it hadn't occurred to her that she might have to do it here, now, on the side of this desolate road. It seemed so empty out here— they hadn’t seen another soul in their entire day’s journey, human or not. The other recruits had gone east, or north, or south, or anywhere else really. Everyone knew that the lands around the Lanceroute were sparse and agrarian, and most wanderswords preferred denser population centers, where work opportunities were more numerous and closer together. But Prim had supposed that if she were the only one going this direction, all the contracts there would be hers for the taking. Well, perhaps that had been a mistake. Still, Prim knew from her training that the emptiness of the day did not imply emptiness in the night. When the sun receded and the air cooled, the creatures of the night shook themselves from their slumber and crawled out of their dens to hunt.
She moved off the path and set her pack down with a breath of relief. Her shoulders were soaked with sweat and aching something awful, not to mention her back. Fortunately, the rucksack was mostly full of clothes, so it would serve as a suitably comfortable structure to rest against. Or perhaps "suitable" was too charitable a descriptor, but it would have to do.
"Are you going to run away?" she asked Ferry, suppressing a yawn. The question was mostly rhetorical. Ferry could try and run if he wanted, but there were only three ways to go: back to camp, where he would be executed for deserting; forward, to a town where he would no doubt be captured and sold as a slave to some other, inevitably less kind master; or away from the road and into the wilds, where wild beasts waited for bumbling blue-furred idiots to traipse into their maws.
Still, a brief span of silence betrayed Ferry's hesitation. At last he said, "It is my duty to serve you. I will keep watch.” His tone was begrudging, yet Prim had no choice but to trust him. She studied his expression. Even for a lucario, he was inscrutable. His hard eyes bore into her searching ones until Prim couldn’t help but avert her gaze.
"Okay. I'm trusting you."
"Good. That is what you must do if we are to survive."
Prim smirked at that. Where was his trust, then? But there was no use in arguing about it now. She wearily slumped onto the ground and leaned against her rucksack— God Almighty, had it been that comfortable when she was wearing it just a few minutes ago? She opened her mouth to say something else to her partner before she drifted off into sleep, but it never came. Exhaustion overcame her, and in moments she was soundly asleep.
* * *
Ferrycloth had always hated zoroark. Like most lucario, he had been brought up on old wives' tales of evil tricksters in the night, mischievous and malevolent and without honor. They were said to be everything a lucario should not: conniving, unscrupulous, solitary. Or so the stories went, anyway. He had never actually met one, and as far as he could tell, the zoroark liked it that way. They lurked in the shadows, choosing to remain unseen, clandestine and sheltered from disapproving eyes.
Until the moment they weren't.
This was one such moment.
"Get your claws off of me," Ferry snarled.
"Silence," the zoroark replied, and he did not get his claws off of him. Ferry was face-down in the dirt, his wrists pressed against his back by one of the zoroark's hands. The other was running its long, curved crimson hooks along Ferry's body, searching for hidden possessions. His wraps, waterskin and timepiece already lay discarded on the ground a few feet away.
The feeling of the zoroark's claws gingerly tracing his skin forced a shudder through Ferry's body. "For the last fucking time," he growled, "I don't have anything else. You can take what you found. Just let me go." Bargaining for his life with a bloody zoroark. Ferry was disgusted at his own pathetic desperation.
"Let prey go? Foolish," the zoroark replied, sounding quite genuinely taken aback. "Now silence." This time the zoroark's command was coupled with a sudden sharp pain in Ferry's back. The fox was running his claws through Ferry's flesh, leaving shallow wounds in their wake. Ferry could only grit his teeth and try not to cry out, but hatred for his shadowy captor roiled in his gut even as pain flashed across his back. Pain inflicted not for utility but for sport. Despicable.
The sun had risen far enough by now that its golden light was glistening off the dew. Ferry saw it acutely from this vantage, his face pressed into the grass. The horizon was a radiant watercolor of pink and blue— in another time, he might have been enjoying that sunrise by the river. But the creature had taken him in the night instead. Ferry had seen him coming, and sensed him coming far before even that, but he looked and felt like a human traveller. Unusual for the hour but not impossibly so. He had not realized it then, but it was the trickery of old, dark magic— the twisted cousin to the sparks of like that Ferry saw with his inner eye. Unaware, Ferry had allowed the bandit passage without raising a ruckus. For his compassion he had been awarded a slash to the face and a thorough beating. Perhaps if the hour had not been quite so late, the journey quite so long... But no. The zoroark had prevailed, and Ferry had lost. There was no sense in blaming that on anything but his own weakness.
Then he had dragged him here, to his den perhaps a mile away. Dragged him, claws digging into his ankles, pulling his back against the grass and the stones. Ferry had been too tired, too bruised to resist. He still was. And now the damned thing was digging his claws into his back, rending his flesh apart for the hell of it, licking his chops excitedly, pushing his hot breath onto the back of Ferry's neck.
Of course that good-for-nothing human had slept through the entire affair.
Something moist and rough rubbed over Ferry's fresh wounds. Gods, the thing was lapping up his blood now. Ferry squirmed again, as intensely as he could muster. The zoroark grabbed the back of his head, lifted, and then slammed his face into the ground. The lucario couldn't help but yelp. He was now eye to eye with the dirt. There was a little ant crawling by.
"I will tell you a truth now," the zoroark said in the rough accent of a wildling. The shadow fox's muzzle was only a few inches away from Ferry's ear. With each breath the zoroark took, a blast of warm air filled the lucario’s twitching ear, uncomfortably loud due to the proximity. "The flesh of a hunter is not good for eating. It is tarnished by the deed of killing. Impure. You are hunter. You know this. Does your kind eat hunters?"
Ferry said nothing. The zoroark gripped the back of his head again and rose it once more. The lucario's body entire body tensed painfully, still tender and sore from the beating. He saw his own blood drip from his muzzle onto the grass. "Please," he croaked despite himself. Begging, again. He had half a mind to let the zoroark have his way. Ferry hardly felt he deserved life after falling this low. But still he begged, "Please don't."
The zoroark released Ferry's head nonchalantly. It slumped back downward again harmlessly, though a jolt of pain surged up his face where it had been smashed into the ground the first time.
"You know this, yes?" the zoroark repeated. "Your kind does not eat hunters, yes?"
"... No," Ferry wheezed. "We do not eat other predators. It is... unclean."
"Yes," the zoroark said. "Yes. Unclean. You know this. Your kind knows this. I know your kind. You are lovers of the rules. You are very proud, yes?" The zoroark paused. This time, Ferry was quick to answer.
"Not proud. Honorable. We follow the old way. We are unyielding..." He realized the irony of his words, speaking of honor and unyielding as he lay pinned and beaten on the ground, bleeding out of his mouth and bending to interrogation by a patronizingly conversational zoroark. It was hard not to cry. He was ashamed of himself for that, too.
"Yes, honor," the zoroark echoed. "Your kind calls it honor. Our kind, we call it pride. You... You are proud even for your kind. This is why I smashed your head." Another gust of hot breath accosted Ferry's face as his captor laughed at his own joke. If it could be called a joke. "Yes, you are proud, but you are hunter. This is why I cannot be eating you. You understand."
"Please," Ferry rasped one more time. "Just let me go then."
This request did not please the zoroark. He grabbed Ferry's skull tightly, claws sinking into his head and drawing blood. Ferry groaned in anguish, but that was all he could do. "Silence," the fox seethed. "I do not let you go. I take your things and I leave you here to die. Fuck your honor."
Ferry decided he was fine with that, as long as it meant the zoroark left him alone and didn't force him to grovel any further. Anything was better than that.
The sound of metal passing across leather broke the silence suddenly. Ferry felt a wave of relief wash over him, so powerful it bordered on euphoria. It was the gentle sound of a sword being drawn from its scabbard.
The zoroark leapt away, and just in time. The thin edge of Prim’s blade sliced the air where the sable fox had been crouching just a moment before. At last relieved of the zoroark's hold, Ferry forced himself onto his feet, legs shaking. His whole body ached and seared in protest, but it didn't matter now. Adrenaline was pulsing through his body as fast as his heart could pump it— the pain felt distant and dull. For the first time, he was indescribably glad to see Primeveire of Cromlexia standing before him, dressed in her full set of boiled leather, golden hair pulled back and sword arm extended.
The zoroark's blood-red eyes were sizing Prim up, evaluating her worth as an opponent. Ferry knew it was not below the creature to flee from the fight by any means necessary if it considered its opponent too formidable to handle. That was the zoroark way. But the fox did not make that decision. Instead it lunged forward, claws out. Ferry fell into a fighting stance and raised his fists, baring his teeth and growling loudly. Unlike Ferry, the zoroark was only a few inches Prim's junior, and was far more physiologically equipped for combat than any lucario could hope to be. Given that Ferry was effectively out for the count, it might be close to a fair match. Ferry could not blame the zoroark for taking his chances— if he had not known the contents of his partner's bag or the level of her skill, he might have considered it a worthwhile match himself.
But of course, he knew it was not. Prim rose her sword against the zoroark, deflecting his slash. Without missing a beat, she forced her boot into the fox's chest and forced him backward. Yet quick as a whip the zoroark rolled onto his feet again and darted forward, slashing out again with both hands. Prim evaded the first, but the second slashed triple canals into her new leather armor. The knight gritted her teeth in frustration and stumbled backward, holding up her sword as she regained her footing, but the fox had the advantage now...
Ferry moved in. Ignoring the pain in his limbs as he moved, the lucario forced his knee into the zororark's thigh, then wound up and socked the creature in the shoulder with all his might. The fox staggered backwards, missing his balance. That moment of discombobulation was all Prim needed to do her deed. There was a slash of the sword, and then the zoroark was finished, just a mess of tangled black fur on the ground.
The sun was aloft now, and it was beginning to grow uncomfortably warm. Ferry was too aware of this as he panted raggedly, tongue hanging loosely from his mouth. Prim sheathed her sword unceremoniously and dabbed at the sweat beading on her brow as she regarded her fallen opponent. Then she looked to her battered partner, who looked away.
“By the time I woke up, it was early morning. You weren’t there. About scared the shit out of me,” she explained between breaths. “But he didn’t cover his tracks very well. It was easy enough to follow them here.”
"He came in the night,” Ferry explained hastily. “He used his black magic to deceive me. I should have been able to resist, but I—”
"I don't care about that," Prim insisted. She looked him over one more time, eyes passing over the gashes on his cranium, the blood dripping from his muzzle. "You look... awful. We need to find a medic. We can't be far from the nearest town. Let's go, now." She reached out to take Ferry by the arm, but he withdrew, scowling.
"I wear these wounds as a consequence of my own failure," he declared. "My ineptitude jeopardized us both. It is only right that I should suffer any pain incurred as a result of—"
Prim rolled her eyes. "Don't be stupid! Let's go!" And this time Ferry did not resist as she took him by the arm and led him back to the road.
He would die a thousand deaths before he admitted it, but just this once, he was glad to have someone to save him from his own sense of duty.
thanks so much for the reviews, everyone! they're super motivational, and the grammatical/spelling corrections help a lot. i'm glad you guys seem to be liking the story so far— i feel that these first couple chapters have been very dry reading back on them now, so i guess it bodes pretty well that people found them enjoyable :'D
Hey, glad to see you working on this again! And hoo boy, you sure captured the desolate air of their journey well. I hadn't realize just how ill-prepared they were for traveling out in the wilds! It made for an unforgiving atmosphere, which of course made it all the more appropriate that Ferry got mugged on his first night keeping watch.
hey, thanks for reading! i'm glad i established the tone well. i personally really enjoy when stories open with underpowered scrubs who get the crap beat out of them a lot, and it probably shows here a bit too much. :'D it's fun though right!?
It took me a bit, but I think I understand the exact flavor of depowered Pokemon you've got in this setting (and correct me if I'm wrong.) Pokemon seem to lack elemental power here. Sure, they're still got their various special abilities (Lucario's aura-reading, Zoroark's illusions, etc.) But there appears to be no elemental power in their moves. No fighting aura in Lucario's physical blows. No dark aura in Zoroark's slashes. And by extension, no type advantages. That's interesting!
haha, something like that! i think some type advantages would still make sense in this setting, like water vs. fire, etc... but for the most part, yeah, i really like the idea of pokémon as animals that have specific adaptations that they do cool stuff with. :p hopefully it proves interesting!
This is a neat detail, and not one you see very often in stories even though it makes sense. Pokémon usually seem comfortable with the concept of the written word, maps, etc. even if they aren't actually literate.
I hope lucario have some method of scent-marking that doesn't involve peeing on everything like actual dogs, though. XD
hahaha, i can promise you at least that i will never WRITE a lucario peeing all over the place. i haven't thought much about this honestly, but i think maybe lucarios leave aura-based markings to carve their territory out? that would make sense to me at least. maybe i'll bring that back up later...!
you know, i am almost twenty years old and i did not know this before you said it. this helps a ton, lol. thanks a lot for picking out the minor errors like this, it helps a ton to have someone do that! hopefully i'll leave fewer and fewer for you over time. :'D
I always love little details like this because they show that not only is the villain a massive shitlord, but he's so shitty at being high up on his high horse that he needs two people to help him get there.
mmmmm yes medieval people and weird knight assemblies and pokemon-human relations; this is such a rich concept and you're definitely unfolding it very delicately.
thanks, i'm glad you think i'm handling it well! medieval intrigue can be really interesting, i think, but it's one of those things that falls flat on its face if you fail to write it in an engaging way, more so even than most subjects. :p so hopefully i continue to keep it interesting going forward!
re: the combat height thing, i definitely see where you're coming from although i was coming at it from less of a "short human vs tall human" angle and more of like, the broader morphological differences between the species here. zoroark are actually quite a lot bigger than lucario, more than i expected:
my thinking here is that, while lucario and zoroark are both pack animals, zoroark are solitary hunters... sort of like a lion, i guess? as a result, i figure they're much more strongly built, seeing as they're not depending on other individuals for their success in a fight. put that up against something wiry that relies on numbers and communication to win, and you get a pretty lopsided fight when it's one-on-one.. that's the way i was coming at it, at least. however...
So honestly I found this assessment completely valid if you're going for a more grounded fantasy setting rather than the kind where Yoda does kickflips off of Palpatine in an arena of floating chairs.
honestly? there's a place for this too. ninja yoda is AWESOME.
anyway, thanks again for the reviews everyone! i was VERY slow writing this chapter, but it's because i was planning the next couple chapters at the same time... i started this story with no plan whatsoever, and it just was not working, so i had to get that out of the way. but we should be good to go now! with any luck, the plot will really get going from here forward, and i'll be a bit quicker about getting chapters out, haha.
without further ado! i've reread this, like, ten times, backwards and forwards, so i think i'd better just bite the bullet and post it already. i hope you guys enjoy this one!
Spoiler Warning: This chapter contains a pokémon from the upcoming games Sword and Shield. If you're avoiding spoilers for the new game altogether, you might not want to read this chapter.
A dull ache throbbed inside his skull, and stripes of pain traced his scalp. His head was heavy.
Before he looked on the new morning, Ferrycloth opened the eye within, and he saw.
It was hard to discern where he was, but it had an unfamiliar feeling to it. Most probably somewhere he had never been. There were at least a dozen others in the building, though their signatures were blurry through the walls. Ferry was lying face-up on a fairly comfortable bed, certainly much nicer than anything he’d slept on before.
With a sigh, he pushed both of his eyes open, but only one found light—the vision of the other was obscured by a blurry field of white. Ferry raised a paw to his head and felt rough linen. Bandages.
Relieved he had not gone blind, he turned his attention to the room around him. It was built from wood, and in fairly nice condition. Another bed like his stood at the opposite side of the room, and a depression on its surface informed him that Prim had slept here last night, too. A window pane on the wall to his left opened up to the bright blue sky. Judging by the position of the sun, Ferry surmised it was either mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Based on the sour taste in his mouth and the heavy deposits of crust in his eyes, he guessed it was the latter.
Damn it. It wasn’t like him to sleep so late. Though it was true that the rest was probably well-needed after his battering the night before, it still felt like he’d pissed half his day away. And he didn’t feel like he much deserved rest after that embarrassing display with the zoroark, anyway. But there was no sense in wasting any more time. Ferry sat up slowly, his back prickling and cracking loudly as he did. He frowned at the unpleasant sound of it. This was what happened when you went to bed without stretching first, wasn’t it?
He reached for his bag as he swung himself off the bed and fished his timepiece out of it. A quick look at it confirmed his suspicions— it was several hours past noon, at least.
Moving his bag revealed a piece of paper on the bedside table. He snatched it up and looked at it for a moment, but his eyes glazed over at the loopy handwriting. Loopy meant it was written by a woman, right? So probably Prim.
He felt anger rush up inside him at the thought of it. Didn’t that blasted woman know that lucario can’t read? Why had she just left him here alone? Now we’d have to go search for her, or even worse, try and convince some other human to read her letter off to him. What if they harassed him for not being able to read it himself? What if the letter mentioned his embarrassing failure form the night before? What if—
Ferry noticed his face was scrunched up and his arms were shaking. He took a deep breath and stuffed the letter into his bag. Then he took one last look around the room, head out, and descended the stairs. The steps were clearly engineered for humans, so each one was just slightly too large for him. He was forced to hobble down them awkwardly, one at a time, as he made his descent.
The ground floor of the inn was a small restaurant of sorts. There were a number of patrons already sipping at their beers and tearing up their chickens, although Ferry still felt too groggy for such things. Every single one of them was human, and they were all appraising him with suspicious eyes as he made his way into the room. He could feel their gazes, and they were heavy. He felt as though he were on the brink of being crushed by the weight of it, and in that moment he wanted nothing more than to become invisibly small. But as anxiety gave way to anger, he felt himself becoming very large instead, so large he couldn’t be contained...
“What?” he snapped, the corners of his lips raising in a snarl. “Never seen a lucario before?” The humans all casually averted their glances and went back to what they were doing, some of them looking afraid and others irritated. As he descended the final step, Ferry heard someone near the back say something that sounded quite a lot like “fucking mon,” but for his own sake he chose to ignore it. The eyes were off him now. That was enough.
Come to think of it, even though it was quite early for eating, those chickens didn’t look half bad. Ferry winced as his stomach growled, and he hoped dearly no one else could hear it. Eating would have to wait for now, he knew. The items in Prim’s bag were all they had to their name, and most of that was trail food. There was certainly no gold in there.
A man leaned against the bar, drumming his fingers on its polished surface. He was all but ogling at Ferry as he proceeded toward him, making no attempt to veil his interest at the lucario’s appearance. Ferry pulled himself up on a bar stool, permanent scowl painted on his face, and fished the letter out of his bag.
“Good morning,” the innkeeper said, his voice friendly to the point that it teetered on patronizing. His expression was smug, yet curious. “You must be that Wandersword’s lucario.” Ferry didn’t return the salutation, instead fishing the letter out of his bag and slapping it onto the bar’s surface.
“I assume you can read,” he said gruffly, pushing the piece of paper towards the man.
The innkeeper’s face fell, probably dispirited by Ferry’s refusal to take the bait. “That I can,” he replied, taking the page up and holding it close to his face.
“‘Ferrycloth’,” he read aloud, smirking. “Is that your name? I’ve never heard such a—”
“Just read the fucking letter,” Ferry demanded. The innkeeper narrowed his eyes, but continued.
“‘Ferrycloth, I am out foraging for vegetables in order to repay our debt to this innkeeper. He healed you as well, so please treat him well.’” The innkeeper was wise enough not to remark on that line. “‘I will be back before sundown. I insist you stay in bed and rest— you will do no one any good by straining yourself. Primeveire.’ Why, I could have told you all that, if only you’d asked.” The innkeeper set the letter back down, and Ferry hastily snatched it up and stuffed it back into his bag. “She’s in the woods behind the inn, if you must know. Though I agree, you hardly look to be in the best shape. Perhaps it would be better if you stayed here.” Ferry shot him the nastiest look he could muster, and the man raised his hands defensively. “I’ve told you where she is,” he said. “Do what you will.”
“I always do.” He hopped off the barstool and marched to the inn’s exit, head pounding from standing so quickly. He pretended not to feel it as he pushed the door out of his way and walked out into the afternoon sun. The day was ageing already, so the air was sticky and uncomfortably warm. Suddenly Ferry felt very itchy and uncomfortable under his bandages. He decided tearing them off would be worse, though, and tried to ignore the discomfort as he walked around the inn’s perimeter and headed to its back garden, reaching out with his inner eye in search of his partner.
He felt Prim there before he saw her, hunched over in the woods. The pine needles were dry but pleasantly cool under his paws as he picked through the woods in her direction, gently touching the trees as he passed them. The canopy overhead provided decent shade, and made the air just a touch more bearable. Ferry took a deep breath as a gust of wind passed through him, pushing through his fur and cooling his skin. In another time, in another world, perhaps it would have brought a smile to his face.
When he arrived at Prim’s side, he found her bent over and rooting through the pine needles for vegetables and mushrooms, her fingers raw and her nails dirty. There was a basket a few feet to her left, containing only a handful of pickings. Not a very good harvest at all, if she’d been out here as long as he suspected.
He watched her foraging fruitlessly for a few moments before saying, “Not much luck?” Prim just about leapt out of her skin, hand flying to her sword as she scuttled backward. Ferry just stood there, and she relaxed when she saw it was only him.
“God, I thought you were a stranger,” she said breathlessly, placing a hand over her heart. “What are you doing here? I wanted you to stay inside. You need rest.”
Ferry felt a wave of ire rise in his gut, but he suppressed it. Blowing up on Prim would only make life worse for them both. He was above that. “I can make decisions on my own,” he said, only scowling a little. “I feel fine.”
Prim frowned. “I suppose I didn’t really expect you to stay,” she admitted. That made Ferry angry too, though he wasn’t sure why. He clenched his fist and took a deep breath.
“It looks like your harvest hasn’t been very good,” he said again.
“Yeah,” Prim replied, wiping her brow. “The innkeeper said there were supposed to be a ton out here, but I’m not seeing much.”
“Why don’t you go tell him?”
“Well, I’m worried it’s just because I’m looking in the wrong spots…,” she said with a chuckle.
“Mm.” Ferry could understand that self-consciousness, but only because he was a lucario. It made sense for him to avoid situations where humans might sneer at him for admitting weakness. Coming from a human, though, he didn’t think that kind of behavior made very much sense. “Let me see if I can detect any…”
Ferry clamped his eyes shut and reached out again with his inner eye. The sensors on the back of his head were beginning to ache from overuse already, probably on account of his empty stomach and injured head, but he pushed through it. He brushed over the forest floor with his mind, caressing the fading signatures of the copper-hued pine needles and grazing the little worms and beetles that crawled under the thicket. There were a handful of vegetables that Prim had missed— scallions, if he were to venture a guess based on their shape and feeling— but not as many as he would have expected.
Still, he probed deeper, straining himself as he ran his consciousness over the ground, feeling its dips and hills. And its divots. Hundreds of tiny divots, almost imperceptible, partially filled with loose, crumbly soil. Divots with lingering traces, however faint, of life that had once inhabited them. It seemed, in fact, that there were once hundreds of scallions here, but the vast majority of them had been plucked away.
Ferry shut his mind’s eye and opened his real ones. His sensors were burning hot and painfully sore. He massaged them gently, grunting quietly in pain, then spoke: “Something’s been through here and taken all the vegetables. There’s almost nothing left in the forest.”
Prim looked surprised. “You figured that out with your…?” She gestured at the back of her head. Ferry inclined his head in affirmation. “Mm. Well, I guess this is the best we can do…”
The harvest was pretty pitiful. For all the hours of work she’d spent out here, she’d gotten virtually nothing for it, and Ferry wasn’t sure the innkeeper would be satisfied with their work. He clenched his jaw in annoyance. He really didn’t want to help. He wasn’t even supposed to be out here in the first place, and now his sensors were aching to match his head injury, not to mention the fact that he would have been happy to sleep under the stars if it had saved them from this foolish debt…
But if he left it to Prim, she’d present her half-empty basket to the innkeeper, bow her head in apology, and hope for the best. In Ferry’s view, a job half-done was worse than a job not done at all. Reluctantly, he fell onto all fours and pushed his nose to the ground, sniffing for more scallions. Lucario didn’t have as refined a sense of smell as some other species, but he certainly out classed Prim. Having scanned the area over just moments before didn’t hurt, either. He plucked the scallions out of the earth as he crawled, and increased their stock by about a third within a quarter of an hour. By then the sky was already waxing indigo. Ferry fell back on his haunches, exhausted, and huffed.
The basket still wasn’t full, but at least now it didn’t look downright meager. Prim rearranged the vegetables to improve their appearance, then stood up with the basket and stretched. Ferry stood too, still feeling quite spent.
“Thank you,” she said as they began to walk back to the inn. Ferry opened his mouth to brush her gratitude off, but she continued. “I know you’re aching and tired, but you helped a lot. I really appreciate it.”
Damnable girl. The way she was acting made things so much harder for him. Still, as they approached the inn, he found himself mumbling something resembling “you’re welcome.”
The innkeeper was still behind the bar when they entered again. Now the place was completely filled with patrons, talking and laughing loudly as they ate and drank. It was overwhelming to Ferry, whose head and sensors were still pounding and whose belly was still profoundly empty. He almost would have been glad that the innkeeper ignored him in favor of Prim, if only it didn’t piss him off so much.
“Thank you for your hard work,” he said, though as Ferry predicted he didn’t seem terribly impressed with their yield.
“Sorry there isn’t much,” Prim said quickly, apparently catching onto the man’s heedless expression. “You said your last harvest was a few months ago, right?”
“Indeed,” the innkeeper replied, counting the scallions as he spoke. “One would expect the harvest to be more… bountiful.”
Prim looked to Ferry with a pleading expression. He sighed. “Something went through there and took a bunch of your vegetables,” he explained. “That’s why we don’t have much.”
“And you know this how?” the innkeeper inquired.
“Why the fuck else would we have brought you a half empty basket of vegetables after hours in the woods?”
“Laziness, perhaps.”
“You fucking—”
Prim extended an arm in front of Ferry, preventing him from moving forward. Probably for the best, even if he hated to admit it. Ferry clenched his fist with all his might, arm shaking.
“What my friend means to say,” she interjected, tone apologetic but firm, “is that this is all we could find, so our best guess is that something big came through and ate them all. You can check the forest yourself, if you’d like.”
The innkeeper’s eyes flitted down to the basket for a moment, and he moved some vegetables around as he considered them. Then, he pulled the basket toward himself and said, “No, this will do. Thank you.” Prim deflated in relief, though Ferry was worried about where the hell they were going to sleep now that this avenue was exhausted.
That didn’t seem to be a worry in Prim’s mind, however. “If that’s all, then, we’ll be taking our leave,” she said, bowing slightly. The innkeeper nodded absentmindedly, then raised his eyebrows and vocalized as though he had just remembered something.
“Oh, I’d nearly forgotten. A local came by here today asking after you,” he said. “He was a farmer who lives on the northeastern border of the town. His name is Frans Mertens. I’m not sure what the job was, but he said it was fairly urgent and he was willing to pay you well for your work. I’d advise seeing him if you have the time.”
Prim looked to Ferry, and then nodded. “We have all the time in the world. Thank you, sir.”
“The pleasure is mine, my lady,” the innkeeper replied, though his voice indicated that the pleasure wasn’t really his at all. Prim and Ferry at last left the inn, and Ferry suspected the innkeeper was glad of it.
The air was cooling now, and the sky was a brilliant display of violets and deep crimsons. Stars twinkled from behind the magenta clouds, and the sun was sinking behind the forest, painting the trees in radiant gold. “So... our first job,” Prim said excitedly. Ferry wasn’t really very excited about it all, in truth— all he wanted right now was a mouthful of chicken and a nice warm bed. But a job was a means to that end, so he didn’t protest.
It was only about a ten minute walk to the farm the innkeeper had described. Large wooden posts partitioned off the man’s land, and a finely engraved sign that Ferry assumed bore the farmer’s name hung over the entry gate. A young man was herding a group of mareep and woolloo into a barn for the night as Ferry followed Prim to the front door.
She rapped on it sharply with her knuckles, then stepped back. Ferry felt the man coming— fifty years old, perhaps, sleepy yet anxious. He braced himself for confrontation as the door swung open.
The man, presumably Merten, looked exactly how Ferry supposed a farmer ought to look. His impassive expression was painted over an otherwise kindly face creased with laugh lines. Ferry seldom trusted men, but those who lived off the land by hard work and the sweat of their brows were not so different from him, he thought.
The man’s eyes flitted between Prim and Ferry, then down to the scabbard at Prim’s hip. “You’re the Wanderswords, I hope?”
Prim pressed the back of her sword hand to her opposite hip, then moved swiftly moved her hand back upward and placed it against her heart. Ferry recognized it as the Wandersword Salute. He’d learned the motion in his training, too, although the policy was that adjutants like him were only allowed to use it with other Wanderswords.
The man’s eyes lit up in recognition of the motion. “Excellent,” he said, bearing a slight smile as he motioned for the two to enter. He entered the house behind Prim took a seat next to her at the farmer’s behest.
“Can I offer you a drink?” the farmer offered, already making his way to the kitchen. “Some ale, perhaps?”
“No thank you,” Prim replied, her tone respectful.
“Ale, please,” Ferry said. It was bad form for him to accept what his keeper declined, but by now he was willing to do more than breach etiquette to put something in his belly.
Martens assented kindly, retrieving an already-opened bottle of ale and pouring two cups of it— one for Ferry and a slightly taller one for himself. Ferry accepted the mug gratefully and wasted no time taking a hearty sip. The stuff burnt his mouth and nose, and then it burnt all the way down before settling in his stomach and burning there instead. Ferry’s eyes watered as his head danced just a touch. The sensation of the farmer’s spirit blurred a bit too, edges running from the straight stroke of a quill to the soft blur of watercolor. His head was still pounding from his run-in the night before, and the drink wasn’t doing much to improve the matter. But gods, it felt good to drink something.
Martens took a sip too, then smacked his lips and set his cup on the table between them. “It has been a terribly long time since a Wandersword passed through our town,” he mused. Ferry bristled slightly at his wording—a Wandersword? Singular? They came in groups of two. Everyone knew that. Unless you didn’t count the lucario, of course. “It’s normally not a problem. The Royal Guard usually has quite a strong presence here, but these past few months, they’ve been diverted somewhere else, and we’ve been left to fend for ourselves.” His expression darkened, but he just pressed his mouth into a line and left it at that. “At any rate, your timing is impeccable. It was just this morning, you see…”
He gestured over his shoulder to something on the ground. Ferry had to stand to see it. It was an opened parcel of fluffy white wool. “Are you not a shepherd?” Ferry asked, narrowing his eyes in confusion.
“I am,” Martens said. “But I found this parcel on my doorstep this morning, you see, and when I went to count my sheep this afternoon, I was missing one. Someone or some*thing* made off with one of my wooloo.”
Ferry frowned. “Do you think it might have been a zoroark?” he asked.
But the farmer shook his head. “I’ve dealt with zo’arks before. Sometimes they’ll get over the fence and climb through the barn and get away with a sheep or two. But their claws are huge— they always leave scratches on the barn’s face from their climbing. There was nothing like that there today. No scratches, no signs of forced entry. It’s as if the sheep just disappeared… And yet here is its wool.” He looked back at the wool himself, and looked depressed at the thought of it. “Besides, no zoroark could tie the parcel like that. I think a person did this, and I think it’s a threat. If you could find out who was behind this, I would reward you greatly.”
Prim tapped her chin thoughtfully. The reminder of a reward jogged Ferry’s motivation, but he was still thinking that a zoroark was likely the captor here. What if it had just developed a bit more finesse since last time? It wasn’t unthinkable.
“It’s growing late,” Prim said eventually. “Perhaps we can stay the night around your barn and keep an eye out for the perpetrator? If we don’t see anything, we’ll investigate further in the morning, but it’s worth a try.”
Martens nodded. “Yes, that sounds like a good idea.” He stood up and gestured for the pair to follow him. Ferry became suddenly aware of the cup in his hand, from which he’d only taken a single sip. It would be unwise to drink any more if they were going to have to keep watch. He felt silly asking for a mug only to waste most of it, but set the cup on the table anyway, grimacing as he stood.
They were led to the house’s side door. Martens fiddled with the bolt lock before opening it and stepping into the clammy night air. The sky had shed its evening brilliance by now, slipping instead into inky night. The moon was nowhere to be found; only the dull luminance of the stars penetrated the murky dark. The low light caused Ferry to subconsciously reach out with his inner eye rather than relying on his normal vision, despite the dull ache that came with overuse. He could feel the sheep nestled safely in their barn for the night, many of them sleeping. Orange light spilled from a house in the distance, where Ferry could feel a man eating— probably the farm hand from earlier. The fuzzy mental static of a million blades of grass caressed him from below. A hardwood fence enclosed the ranch on all sides.
“The barn is that way,” Martens said, pointing. With its white facade peeking through the heavy mantle of night, the barn was probably the most visible thing in the area. The farmer fished a brass key from his pocket and dangled it in front of Prim. She accepted it and turned it over in her hand, examining it. “That’s the key to the barn. There’s some straw in there for you to sleep on, if you want it. Sorry I don’t have more for you.”
“It’s not a problem,” Prim responded cheerily. “We’re Wanderswords. Sleeping under the stars is what we do.” Martens smiled warmly.
“I’ll see you in the morning, then. Best of luck to you.” He raised his fingers to his brow in a tired salute, then returned to his house, locking the door behind him and leaving the pair of Wanderswords alone.
Prim started toward the barn, so Ferry followed at her heels. “Stand beside me,” Prim urged. “We’re a team.” Ferry suppressed the urge to roll his eyes as he caught up to her. The words were nice, but that didn’t make them true. Ferry knew his lot as a lesser knight, and acting like Prim’s equal wouldn’t make him so, even if he desired it more than anything.
“Do you mind taking the first watch?” Prim asked sheepishly. “I hate to ask that of you, but I’m tired from working in the sun all day.”
“Yes, that’s fine,” Ferry replied. He’d expected as much anyway, seeing as he hadn’t woken up until the afternoon.
It didn’t take them long to reach the barn. Prim unlocked its door gently and entered, cautious not to wake any of the sheep. After a moment, she returned with an armful of straw and got to laying it out on the ground before locking the door again.
Ferry seated himself and tried his best to meditate as Prim lay down and drifted into sleep. His inner vision was dampened by the ale he’d had earlier, but he could feel his intense focus burning away the haze as time passed. Using his extra sense so much in a day, especially on such little energy and after taking such a beating, was painful to be sure, but Ferry had endured more before. Besides, the peace of mind it awarded him was worth it. He could feel Prim’s consciousness waning with each breath, then ebbing and flowing like the tide in the strange but familiar way that sleep did. The sheep were sound asleep too, and the flames of their consciousness flickered in the same way. It was tranquil at night to the average person, and even more so for one in tune with their inner eye. The rhythmic pulsation of those slumbering gently, lying in quiet bliss atop the soft whispers of grass and the little pinpricks of life that crawled beneath the earth… One became sharply aware of the world beneath the world at this hour, the tiny insects and animals of the night that lived their whole lives beneath the starlight, where men seldom saw.
It would have been easy for him to lose himself in them, to immerse his whole mind in their collective consciousness and plunge himself into thoughtless oblivion. It wasn’t quite the same as sleep, functionally, but in practice it was close enough that it would be unwise to indulge right now. He forced himself out of the alluring hypnosis, focusing on his own sense of self, grounding himself in the moment.
Me.
Ferrycloth the Red.
He dreamt of them.
The memory was so potent he could almost smell the smoke.
The men, so tall, bearing swords. The lucario didn’t stand a chance. Some of the more powerful ones, the sorcerers, they could fell a soldier or two. Three if they were lucky. None of them lasted forever. The men were so much larger, their reach so much wider, their armor so much stronger. And there were so damn many of them.
The pups were spared. The men grabbed them by their scruffs and threw them in the wagon. Put them in shackles. Ferry didn’t feel like himself, then. He felt like he was watching it all from above, aware of the cool touch of the shackles on his wrist but feeling them no more personally than he felt the blue on the sky. He was a tool now, a resource. They all were—the ones that survived, that was. Ferry had known as much from day one. The soldiers moved the pups out of harm’s way, but they didn’t care if they saw their elders, their mothers and fathers and uncles and cousins, with throats agape, shooting ruby blood into the afternoon air, their limbs torn off and discarded like playthings. Ferry didn’t know where his parents were, but he didn’t particularly care. Maybe it was better he didn’t see him that way. Gasping, screaming, grunting, dying.
Singing.
Smoke borne from the ceaseless burning of Ferry’s ancestral home coiled through the air. And he stood there, his curtains of platinum blond hair waving gently in the hazy breeze. Framing the piercing blue eyes that sunk into his face. A face like a skull, its skin stretching around its extended lips. Whistling merrily, as though it was watching children at play. Ferry had heard the song before. He knew how the words went.
A loving God, compassion grows
Deeper, wider than you know—
Ferry had never hated someone so much. His anger had not ceased since that day. Raging forever and ever. Every time he closed his eyes, there was his face again, haunting his dreams, his subconscious, his very being.
The High Priest of Shallor.
They had begged Ferry and the others to forgive the massacre in the years that followed. It was a necessary evil. Surely they could understand. Many submitted. Many chose to forget.
Ferry wished he could strike it from his mind. It was the only thing he wanted in the world. But he could not forget the song that day, ringing through the grotesque cacophony of an entire village going to slaughter. Clear and perfectly on-key. Practiced.
Cross his path, incur his wrath
Your bones to snow, your flesh to ash.
Fuck.
Something was there. Something real. He could feel its presence. It shook Ferry from his trance, throwing him back into the real world. Night. It was night. Prim was sleeping. The sheep were sleeping. It was not the afternoon, there was no whistling, no smoke, no one was dying. It was night, and something real was there.
Ferry reached out and felt it with his mind. It was hard to discern just what it was from a distance. There was something familiar about its signature. A bird? A staraptor or noctowl, perhaps. Probably a staraptor, by the size of it. The cogs began turning in Ferry’s head. With some difficulty, a staraptor could conceivably fit through the window of the barn and carry a wooloo off. It wouldn’t need to enter forcibly, and it wouldn’t leave scratches. It made sense.
He cracked his eyes open and paused for a moment to allow his vision to adjust to the darkness, careful to keep track of the bird as he waited. He nudged Prim gently, and forced a finger to his lips when she stirred awake. Quiet. Then, cautiously, he gestured for her to stand. They both rose slowly.
Wherever it was, Ferry couldn’t see it from here. The pair of them advanced as slowly as they could manage, trying their best not to make any sound as they moved. Prim kept her hand on the hilt of her sword, her eyes wide.
Ferry led them toward the signature, but the closer he got, the less familiar it became. And still, they couldn’t see it. Where the hell was this thing? In the air, perhaps? Could it be a ghost?
After creeping along about a hundred feet, Ferry stopped. They were right on it, as far as he could gather, and yet it was still out of sight. What the hell was going on? It occurred to him suddenly that it could be a zoroark, cloaking its presence with illusory magic. His heart jumped at the thought of it, and he abruptly fell into a fighting stance, whipping his head about in search of a flaw in the illusion, anything to determine the damned thing’s location.
Then it disappeared. Ferry’s grasp on its signature faltered completely. He reached out for it again desperately, but it was nowhere to be found. His sensors began to ache and pound from overuse, but he steeled himself against the pain. “What the fuck?” he whispered, his eyes wide and searching desperately. Something was seriously wrong.
A blur of grey. Ferry was on the ground, his legs knocked out from under him. His back hit the grass hard, knocking the breath from his lungs. He barely heard Prim draw her sword over the sound of his own desperate gasping. It didn’t last long, however— within a moment, it had disarmed her, and Prim’s sword fell to the ground, almost silent against the soft grass.
Ferry wrenched himself to his feet. The thing was vaguely visible now, a mass of grey against the dark. Ferry noticed it was clinking as it moved, as though made of metal. Was it a skarmory? He had seen those down south before, but this far north—
It launched another hit at him with some kind of weapon. This time he was ready. He leaned out of its way swiftly, and the huge weapon whiffed less than an inch to his side. It had a sword?
It lifted the thing back up, and then swung down again. The size of the weapon made it somewhat slow, apparently, so Ferry should have had little difficulty dodging its hits now that he could see it. It wasn’t changing the trajectory of its strikes by much. And yet, he seemed to be miscalculating its course by a small margin each time. Ferry leapt out of the way of yet another swing, breath pressing through his teeth as the blade narrowly missed his head.
Was it aiming for his bandages? This was no ordinary mon. Too clever, too precise. Yet it was far too small to be a man…
Ferry realized with a start that his depth perception was being skewed by the bandages blocking his vision. He threw a paw up to his face and tore the bandages off his face, grunting loudly in pain as the dry blood peeled from his scalp. It took a few moments for the newly freed eye to adjust to the darkness, but once it did, dodging the sluggish blows was virtually effortless.
However, the range of the weapon was so great that Ferry was unable to get close enough to return hits of his own, even as he tumbled out of the way of hit after hit. Where the hell was Prim at?
Clang!
There she was, with her sword recovered. The thing was apparently alarmed by the hit she landed. It turned toward Prim and threw up its sword in defense. The blades didn’t make much sound as they collided. The sound was more like an ax against wood.
Ferry stepped back as he felt the thing’s signature focus. Holy hell… It’s been playing with us. Ferry watched in awe for just a second or two as it traded blows with Prim masterfully, forcing her back and hitting her hard with the flat of its weapon several times in just a few moments.
It turned toward Ferry quick as lighting as Prim recoiled. He had no time to react before it smacked him hard with its weapon, launching him onto the grass like a ragdoll and forcing the breath from his lungs again. He gasped loudly as his ribs burned. With difficulty, he pulled himself to his feet again.
By the time he’d recovered his wits, the thing had made its way past Prim and was rushing toward the farm, vocalizing with each stride. “Hup, hup.” Then, it tossed its weapon in the air, caught it with an inverted grip, and forced it into the ground as it dashed. It was about to vault into the barn.
There was nothing Ferry could do in time. He ripped his eyes off the thing and turned to Prim, his expression panicked. He couldn’t make out her form in the light, but he could sense her resolve, not just in her signature but in the purposeful, determined way she moved. She drew her arm back, sword in hand, and she threw her weapon.
The projectile struck true. It bounced off the thing’s metallic body with a loud clang— not enough to maim it, but just enough to disrupt its balance. It let out a cry as it tumbled backwards. Prim was already running toward it by the time it began its descent.
It squawked in anguish as it hit the ground fast and hard. Prim was on it within moments. She fell to her knees, pinning it face-up as its blade fell to the ground next to it. Ferry jogged to catch up, his ribs searing in pain and his breaths coming short. At least the fight was finally over.
Ferry looked at the perpetrator.
It was a fucking duck, decked shoulder to waist in heavy, gleaming armor.
“I have been bested in fair combat,” it said between pants, its voice deep and booming. It took a moment to steady his breaths, beak curving into a smile as it moved its gaze between Prim and Ferry. “Fair as a bout with two trained fighters twice my height can be, at any rate. Ohoho!”
No one said anything for a moment. They all just remained there, filling the night with their loud panting.
“Well?” the duck demanded. “You’ve captured me. I didn’t expect to go out this way, but you’ll make my death quick and honorable, won’t you? A proud old duck like me deserves at least that much.”
Prim looked to Ferry for a moment, then back to the duck.
“Get on with it, then!” it cried. “Do I have to—”
Prim raised her fist and then brought it down on the duck’s face with a surprising amount of force. It quacked and then fell silent. Ferry felt its consciousness extinguish abruptly, but not entirely. It would be out cold for a few hours at least.
“Well,” Prim said, and she let out a chuckle. “We got him.”
hey y'all, thanks for the awesome reviews! i'll be the first to admit that my writing is imperfect and my updates are few and far between, but reading your guys' thoughts on this story is super encouraging, and i've made pretty big changes to my outline based on your feedback, so again thanks a ton! :D gonna respond to some of your guys' thoughts here before i get on with the chapter:
why can't lucario read/why doesn't Prim know this? If they're basically squires to the wanderswords, it'd actually be pretty useful to have them be able to read/write, both for situations like this or so that they could take note of what was happening/send letters on behalf of their knights, so it would seem like something lucario would be trained to do. If it's more of a common "let's disenfranchise lucario as much as possible so they don't rise up against us", then it seems strange that Prim would leave this note in the first place since a societal norm like that would be pretty ingrained in all involved, and especially irresponsible of Prim/whoever taught her for her not to know what her servant can and cannot do.
interesting question! i hinted at this vaguely in the bit where ferry reflects to himself about maps, so i think it's ok to come out and say basically that lucario just can't read, physically. i'm no physiologist so i won't attempt to come up with some scientifically-backed explanation for this, but basically they're just unable as a species to derive symbolic meaning from writing, or even drawings that are too abstract as is the case with maps. this isn't unique to lucario, either—the vast majority of pokémon in this setting, including humanoid ones, can't read either. prim is probably vaguely aware of this, but just hasn't been working with lucario long enough (outside of, like, the sparring they did in their training) to really internalize it. a human squire would probably be superior as far as stuff like this goes, but lucario and other pokémon have their own qualities that make the tradeoff worth it.
That being said, I really loved the cheerful/calmer moments of this chapter. Prim digging for mushrooms and being nice to the innkeeper later, the sirfetch'd being a chivalrous little shit -- you have a really grim overarching world but it's nice to have little bits of time where your characters are actually happy to be in it. Lotta fun this chapter; really digging the extended/multi-scene pacing here!
hey, thanks! this was my first pre-outlined chapter, so i'm hoping i'm able to keep up the pace and tone. this next chapter isn't quite as exciting, i don't think, but i do hope it's a bit less meandering than the first few were. thanks for staying current on this story and offering your thoughts, it means a lot! :D
While I found the exploration of that kind of Pokemon very rich as well as heartwrenching for the shit they get put through in this story, it also begs the question of how the other species influence the world and if they'll either be present in the story. Dragons would be a big one, for instance, and there are many other Pokemon with powers of their own, that would give humans a heck of a time. As Namo pointed out, Lucario are presented as a lot weaker than their game counterparts, so perhaps it's the same for other species as well. Still, the absence of many other Pokemon aside from the Mudsdale and the Zoroark seemed odd, though it didn't get in the way of the story.
we will definitely be seeing more pokémon as the story develops, hopefully in engaging detail seeing as wanderswords are after all effectively monster-hunters. and dragons definitely have their place in any medieval setting... 👀 that said, something i've been keeping in mind about pokémon diversity so far is the impact that pokémon training has on the variety of pokémon we see in canon. in this setting, where only a small subset of pokémon have domestic uses, the number of different species the average person will see on an average day is much lower. most of the cool ones are out in the wild, intentionally as far away as they can be from the civilization that this story follows. but again, given the nature of the wandersword profession, i'm hoping we'll get to see a lot of new pokémon in the coming chapters.
Two is a bit of a tonal issue which might turn some people off, I'm afraid. I've discussed this with you already through Discord, but so far, the tone has been relentlessly bleak. It has provided some great drama so far, especially in the prologue, and I'm starting to see some of the payoffs for it already, but the start of the story for these three and a half chapters have been a bit tough to swallow. Not only has the story started with a Lucario village massacre by an absolute hate sink of a villain, the main Pokemon protagonist has also effectively been sold into slavery, as well as beaten up by his superior in a previous fight and almost killed by a Zoroark, humiliating him in the process twice. Everyone around him, including himself, is rightfully bitter about the world, and what we've seen so far, the world is a huge shithole, which is par for the course for a medieval setting, but still. This isn't reflective of the writing quality, which has been excellent so far, but because of the bleak tone, it also has me wondering how far the story can take it before I lose my interest.
i hear this loud and clear. we talked about this a bit on discord, but this piece of feedback actually had me revising my outline quite a lot, haha. i made a pretty big decision in the last chapter and in this next coming one to address this issue, so we'll have to see how it plays out, but i'm hoping it improves the overwhelmingly depressing tone a bit, hahaha. as i was saying to kintsugi, chapter four is actually the first one i wrote with an outline, and i think it saw a pretty big tone change, so i'm hoping the story will be a bit less gloom and doom from this point forward... i think my default is to just write depressing angsty shit when i'm letting the words flow unplanned. :'D anyway, thanks for the awesome review! your words have definitely influenced the course of this story, and i hope it feels more like something you can follow comfortably from this point forward.
So first of all, I want to say that I love the air of suspense that this chapter set up. The introduction of the mystery, the buildup, and the payoff were all very satisfying. To say nothing of the fact that I can't believe I missed the foreshadowing with the scallions aaaaa.
hahaha, it seems like a lot of people actually missed out on this! maybe calling them "scallions" vs "leeks" or something else more obvious was a bit too opaque? but i think people would have figured it out too soon otherwise. :p thanks a ton for the read and review!
ants deserve rights!!!! even if they're not poké ants. thanks for keeping up with my story, your reviews have been fun to read! :D
now, without further ado, the latest chapter in Sord Girl and Anger Dog! sort of a lowkey chapter this time, setting up for the next few, but also a shorter one. hope you guys enjoy.
The Onion Knight
The Onion Knight
Prim grunted, her muscles straining as she leaned forward to lace up her boot. It wasn’t terribly easy to bend one’s body about in armor, not even in the light leather she was wearing now. She wondered how people managed to go about their business in plate, though she supposed most knights had a squire to assist them by the time they received armor of that caliber. She smiled at the idea of Ferry on his knees, oiling her armor for her, tightening up her buckles. An unlikely situation, and one she wasn’t sure she cared to bring into reality.
Come to think of it, the duck wore plate, didn’t he?
“How do you manage to put your armor on alone?” Prim asked, moving to the other boot now.
“Eh?” The duck turned his head at the sound of Prim’s voice, his armor clinking as he did. “Why, it’s as simple as putting on a particularly bulky shirt, isn’t it? Oho.”
“That was not my understanding,” Prim replied.
“Well,” the duck said, pulling himself to his feet. The sound of it was quite clamorous, what with all his heavy armor. Prim’s eyes flitted to Ferry, who was still curled up on a bed of straw, out cold. “I’m something of a special case, am I not? No greaves for me, no boots. None at all, my lady. I’m so close to the ground, there’s no chance of the average assailant swiping for my legs… And if they did, why, they’re so brittle I suppose I’d be out of luck whether I had armor on them or not, eh? Ohoho!”
The sound of his hearty laugh sent at least a dozen birds from the trees. Prim worried he might prematurely wake some others up, too—Ferry or Mertens, for instance. She gritted her teeth in annoyance. “You’re awfully loud, you know,” she said.
“Do pardon me, my lady. I’m so terribly full of spirit that sometimes there’s nothing I can do to stop it overflowing. Ohohoho!”
Prim sighed and carried on preparing for the day.
Since she had gotten a few hours of sleep while Ferry kept watch last night, she’d taken over his shift after they’d caught the culprit, and had been up long enough to watch the sky bleed from deep black to violet to indigo. It had lightened to a pale blue by now, and the air was crisp and clear. Rays of golden morning light had begun to peek between the trunks of the gently swaying trees on the east side of the field. The grass was all nicely decked in so many little beads of dew, and the sheep had already come out for the morning. Every so often, one bleated softly in the distance between mouthfuls of dripping grass. It might have been a tranquil moment if not for the boisterous duck cutting through the serenity like an especially dull ax.
Prim tied her second boot successfully and then fell slack, waves of relief emanating from her lower back as she straightened it. “What did you say your name was, again?”
The duck’s eyes lit up at the question. “Ser Lauchzelot of Fetscheim, seventh of his name,” he replied, falling into a formal posture as he spoke. “Ser Lauchs, for short. But we are all knights here, are we not? You may just call me Lauchs, if it please my lady. Oho!”
Fetscheim. Prim pressed her lips into a thin line. She might have guessed he was from there, if she’d thought about it. Fetscheim was not so far from the town she had been raised in, actually, and it was the ancestral home of the fetch’d people, of which Lauchs was very obviously one. But that area had fallen to imperial control not so long ago, she recalled, and the fetch’d people had met an unpleasant fate… She wondered what one of their knights was doing here, on the far side of Callouse.
“Laucksalot,” Prim echoed.
“Ah ah,” Lauchs clucked. “Lauch-ze-lot.” The “ch” sounded an awful lot like a quack to Prim’s ears. She couldn’t suppress a small giggle. Lauchs took it in good humor, returning a grin of his own and repeating the sound for her amusement. “And my lady’s name?”
“Primeveire,” she said, not bothering to style it with all the frills Lauchs had. “But you may call me Prim. My partner here is Ferrycloth.”
Ferry’s eyes snapped open at the sound of his name and focused on Lauchs without delay. He groaned and rose to his haunches, looking awfully doglike as he stretched. Lauchs waddled over to him, armor clinking, and extended a wing as though to shake. Ferry just looked at his hand, eyes narrowing in suspicion. Not one to be deterred, Lauchs retracted his wing and gave Ferry a broad smile. “Well met, Ser Ferrycloth!” he boomed.
Ferry frowned. “I’m no ser,” he growled as he stood. The lucario sniffed the air and looked around him, his face impassive. “It grows late already. Let’s return this fool to the farmer and get on with our lives, then.”
Lauchs’ face became a mask of almost comical surprise. “Eh!? Why, you fluffy bastard!” he exclaimed, the indignance in his tone sounding more mocking than anything. Prim thought his spirits were awfully high for a prisoner whose fate was uncertain. “Well, I can appreciate a fellow mon who’s short and to the point, I suppose. Ohoho!”
Ferry gave Prim a flat look. “Let’s go.”
Prim nodded, and they gathered their things despite Lauchs’ reservations. Ferry held onto the gigantic leek sword, and Prim ushered the duck forward at the point of her own blade.
It wasn’t a terribly long walk to Mertens’ house, as they’d spent the night in his field. They were only about halfway through it when a deep growl rang through the field, startling birds from the trees and shaking dew off the grass. Prim’s heart leapt. “There’s something here,” she whispered. She quickly fell into a defensive position, raising her sword and pulling Lauchs close to ensure he didn’t flee. She saw Ferry raise his fists out of the corner of her eye, his ears standing straight up.
“My dear friends—” Lauchs said, but Ferry hushed him emphatically, his eyes intense. “I beg of you—”
“Quiet, man!” Ferry hissed, baring his teeth.
The growl rang out again.
“Forgive me!” Lauchs cried. “It’s me… I’m just so terribly hungry… Normally I’ve eaten a dozen eggs by this time of day, you see…”
The growl came one more time, and this time Prim saw Lauchs’ armor shudder. Ferry stared daggers into Lauchs. The duck let out a shrill quack as Ferry’s fist collided with his face.
“This isn’t justice...,” Lauchs said weakly, massaging his bruising cheek as the wanderswords dragged him to the farmer’s doorstep.
Prim sheathed her sword and rapped three times on the farmer’s door. It didn’t take him long to answer it, and to Prim’s surprise, the man didn’t look tired in the slightest. He squinted wordlessly down at Lauchs, who looked back up at the farmer sheepishly and offered a small wave with his free hand.
“This is the culprit, then?” he asked, looking back up to Prim.
“Sure as the day follows night,” Ferry rasped.
The farmer nods. “Very good work,” he said. “I’m quite impressed. The wanderswords are as professional as ever, I see.” Prim smiled at the compliment. “I’ll go get your payment, then.” Mertens withdrew into his home, not bothering to shut the door behind him, and returned with a respectable pouch that clinked delightfully with each step he took. He tossed it to Ferry, who caught it deftly. The farmer grimaced as he looked to Lauchs again.
“I was hoping it was a feral mon of some sort,” he said. “Something you could rid me of cleanly. But this duck walks on two legs, talks, and swings a sword, by the looks of it… I suppose the law dictates he is yours to do with as you please.” The farmer didn’t seem all too pleased to deliver that news. “I’m an honest man who respects the law. But I tell you, wandersword, if I find this bastard on my property again, my family will be feasting on roast duck.”
Prim found herself disturbed by that comment, but Lauchs and Ferry seemed more unimpressed by it than anything. “Thank you for the payment, old man,” Ferry said. “Have a good life, then.” Then he pulled the door shut forcefully and turned around. He was already beginning to count the coins by the time Prim processed what he’d just done.
“Ferry, what the hell?” she demanded. Ferry turned around to face her, his eyes half-lidded. In that moment, she wanted to smack him with all her might. She tried to be patient with him, she really did, but the way he… He… “You can’t just… Treat people like that,” she sputtered, exasperated.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” he said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, dropping the coins in his hand back into the purse.
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” he repeated. “Listening to you humans talk about us like we’re second-class citizens, to be commanded and butchered.” Prim opened her mouth to speak, but Ferry cut her off. “I don’t care that the fucking duck is an obnoxious criminal. I don’t care if he’s the most vile scum ever to crawl the earth. The way that farmer talked about him, looked at him, looked at me… You humans don’t treat your own like that. Not even the poorest, grimiest peasant.” His lip was curled by the time he finished talking, baring his sharp teeth, and his eyes were wide with anger. He took a deep breath and calmed himself, lowering his shoulders. “Besides, we’ve received our payment. Our business is done. Now let’s go.”
Prim was at a loss for words. She wanted desperately to say something, anything to him. Anything to put him back in line. She wasn’t wrong—you couldn’t just treat people like that. But he wasn’t wrong, either. She didn’t know what it was like. She had seen just a glimpse, a painful glimpse into the prejudice that Ferry felt every day. He was right to be angry. But that didn’t give him an excuse to act however he pleased, to spit on anyone he felt wronged him, to—
The tense silence was broken by a deep, hearty laugh. Prim’s head pounded at the sound of it. Lauchs’s laugh was quickly becoming her least favorite sound in the world, though in this case she was almost glad it saved her from having to deal with Ferry for the time being.
“Oh, Ferrycloth!” he exclaimed, wiggling his wing free of Prim’s grip and waddling toward the lucario. “I just knew you’d come around to me, you delightful, sulking little bastard! We’re two birds of a feather, you and me!” Ferry did not seem at all pleased with the duck’s overly familiar behavior, but it was the last line that did it for him: “Bring it in, Clothy!”
Not a moment later, the duck was rubbing his beak delicately, a single tear running down his light brown feathers. “I love that untamed spirit of yours,” he croaked. “I’d let you call me Zealot, you know, but it just doesn’t have the same effect…”
“Don’t think for a minute that I’m on your side,” Ferry spat. “We’re still yet to determine what we’re going to do with you. If I have my way, it won’t be pleasant.”
“Come now, Ferry,” Prim said sternly. “Ser Lauchs is a knight. It’s not our place to handle him… uncouthly.”
“As his captors, it is exactly our place,” Ferry replied. “Besides, the farmer says he’ll have the duck’s head if he finds him on his property again. What do you think will happen if we just set him free? I’ll tell you what will happen. He’ll be back by the end of the day, stealing yet another sheep, and we’ll have done no one any good at all.”
Once again, Prim did not want Ferry to be right, not with that tone of voice he used. Yet she found herself at a loss again. If they just let him free, nothing would change. Ferry was right about that much. But… What then? Execution? That seemed needlessly drastic, especially for a mon who called himself a knight.
“Let’s go back to the inn,” Ferry said at last. “I’m starving, and this farmer’s property doesn’t seem like the right place to be anymore.”
Prim gave Ferry an exasperated look, then shook her head and sheathed her sword. “All right. Come with us, Ser Lauchs.” The duck raised a wing to his forehead in a mock salute, and the three of them made their way back to the inn.
It was a short walk, but Prim was glad for the momentary quiet, not to mention the excuse to stretch her legs after a long night of sitting. The tavern was nearly empty when they arrived. Only a few men sat at the tables, slowly sipping at mugs of beer or picking at plates of baked potato.
“Welcome back,” the innkeep said to them as they entered. “Ah, I take it you finished the job, then? Good to see.” He squinted at Lauchs, then wagged a vaguely accusatory finger at him. “Ahh, the duck. I know this fellow.”
“You do?” Prim asked.
“Yes, yes, he came by a few nights ago asking for a room. I turned him away, of course. Now I see I made the right decision.”
Lauchs grumbled something inaudible. Prim wasn’t sure quite what to say.
“We’d like breakfast,” Ferry said after a brief lull. Prim nearly sighed with relief. Curt though he might be, sometimes it was good to have Ferry around after all. He had a way of cutting straight through the pleasantries.
The innkeep nodded, and the three of them situated themselves at a table, Ferry and Prim next to one another and Lauchs on the other side. Ferry leaned Lauchs’s sword on the wall next to them—it stood like an especially tall, pale man, watching over the table.
Lauchs wasted no time pitching his plea. “I’m unsure what a duck’s promise is worth to you,” he said, “but if it spares me my life, I can promise to move on from this town. I have no ties here, you see.”
A few of the other patrons in the tavern turned to face the source of the loud voice, but they seemed to decide it wasn’t worth much attention, and turned back to their food after a few moments.
“Then what are you doing here?” Prim demanded, her tone slightly hushed. She hoped Lauchs might take the hint and quiet down, though it didn’t seem likely.
The duck sighed. “I’ve been making my way down the Lanceroute, you see. I only planned to stop over here for a night, but you heard that fellow at the counter. None of the inns would take in an old duck like me. I ran out of food that night, and have been trying my best to gather more before I set out again, but I’m a duck of tremendous appetite, you see… I keep eating all the food I collect before the end of the day. So I’ve been stranded here for a week now, held hostage by my own stomach. Ohoho…”
Ferry and Prim exchanged a look.
“We could just throw him in a ravine,” Ferry suggested. “He’d starve to death by the end of the day, apparently. Wouldn’t be our fault.” Prim elbowed Ferry and gave him a stern look.
“Why won’t they take you in?” she asked.
“Well, no one takes a solitary mon seriously in this land. Surely you’ve seen as much, oho.”
Prim couldn’t actually recall ever having seen a mon on their own before this. They either lived in tribes, in the wild, or as assistants to humans. She supposed it made sense that a mon on his own might not be treated well. The thought had never occurred to her before.
“I spent the last few years in the Kingdom of Galar, you see. Mon can make an honest name for themselves there,” Lauchs continued. “I suppose I grew too used to that way of living… Here in Callouse, a lone mon is no better than a vagrant. On my own, without a human to accompany me, well… It’s no good at all, ohoho.”
“Then go back to Galar,” Ferry said flatly. Despite his harsh tone, Prim thought his expression looked softer than usual.
The innkeep approached bearing several plates. “Eggs for the lady and her lucario,” he said, stooping to place the pair of plates on the table, “and some scallions for the fetch’d.” His eyes lit up with revelation as he spoke. “Wait,” he added, squinting at Lauchs. “Are you the one who rooted through my garden and took all the scallions?”
Lauchs averted his gaze. “Sorry about that, my good man,” he said, fishing a gold coin from his armor. He flipped it to the innkeep, who caught it in his palm. “A duck has to eat, hasn’t he? Ohohoho!” The innkeep didn’t seem terribly amused, but he seemed to accept the coin after scrutinizing it for a moment and left the table alone with a shake of his head. Lauchs watched with a sheepish expression as the man went, then turned back to Ferry.
“I can’t simply return to Galar, dear Ferry,” he said, crunching on a scallion. “I’ve come here on a quest, you see. I will not throw up my arms in defeat at the first sight of hardship. That’s not the knightly way!” He polished off the scallion, bliss washing over his face as he swallowed. “Listen. I have a proposition for you two. We’re both here in this backwater town, notable only for its placement on the Lanceroute. So you two are headed down the road too, aren’t you?” Neither Prim nor Ferry spoke up, but Lauchs took their silence as affirmation. “Well, I’m on a journey to Shallor, and I could use the company of a local wandersword. I believe you could benefit from my company as well. I’m an accomplished swordsman, as you know, and I’ve been at this knight-errant business for quite some time myself. Don’t you see? It’s destiny that we travel together!”
Ferry’s plate clattered to the table—it seemed he’d been licking the scraps off it. “Absolutely fucking not.”
Prim gave him a pleading look. “Ferry, please,” she said, growing quite tired of his attitude already. And it was so early in the day…
“What?” Ferry snapped. Prim recoiled physically. She was used to his irritability, but this tendency to push back on her was catching her off guard. So far he had for the most part kept his head down and suffered her suggestions, however grudgingly… She wasn’t sure what to make of this change in behavior. “He’s a liability. An extra bed to buy, and an extra mouth to feed—an insatiable one at that. Besides, he’s going to want a cut of the pay for jobs we could very well manage on our own. We don’t need him.”
But he needs us, Prim wanted to say. Yet she knew Ferry wouldn’t care. Would they be better off if she didn’t, either? Still, he had nearly taken them both last night. That kind of expertise raised the bar for the kinds of jobs they could take, and harder jobs meant better rewards.
“Come now, Ferrycloth,” Lauchs said. “Give it a chance. Let’s all go to the next town and do just one job together. You can make up your mind then.” Ferry growled in annoyance but didn’t say anything more. By now Prim knew that was the closest he ever came to concession.
“So it’s decided, then!” Lauchs exclaimed, breaking into a wide smile. “Drinks for my friends, then, innkeep! Ohoho!”
Ferry stood up abruptly. “I’m done eating,” he said. “It’s far too early to drink. Let’s go.”
Not missing a beat, Lauchs stood as well. “Never mind those drinks, innkeep! You’re quite right, Ferrycloth, old chum. But before we set out, there’s a thing or two I need to gather from my camp, if you don’t mind…”
Ferry collected the leek sword and, after Prim paid the innkeep his due, they walked out into the crisp morning air. Prim, for one, was just glad to be outside, far enough from the poor folks in the tavern that they no longer had to suffer through the bombastic duck’s shouting. The next few days were going to be interesting.
- - -
Lauchs’s camp was tucked away in the woods surrounding the town, a bit less than a mile out of the way of Mertens’ farm. Lauchs had made a small clearing here, it seemed—perhaps half a dozen stumps stuck up from the ground, their heads splintered as though the trees they’d once supported had been pushed down rather than cut. Prim’s eyes flitted to Lauchs’ gigantic, blunt leek sword, and decided that that was probably the case.
There was a fire pit at the center of the clearing, flameless and charred black, and all around it were scraps of food. In particular, piles of crispy leek butts littered the ground, hundreds of them, easily. A dozen feet or so back sat a wooloo skeleton, the bones pure white and stripped completely of meat. It must have been the one he’d stolen from Mertens, whose wool he had delivered in a neat parcel to the farmer’s door. Prim couldn’t help but be impressed by Lauchs’ apparent talent for butchery despite the grimness of it.
“I apologize for the mess,” Lauchs said. “I didn’t think anyone else would be seeing this place any time soon, ohoho. I’ll just collect my things quickly, and we can take our leave.”
Beside the fire was a log that looked quite good for sitting, and behind that was a bundle of possessions over to which Lauchs waddled. There was a large wicker basket, probably more than half the size of Lauchs himself, and a fine wooden shield was strapped to its back face—arm straps were fastened to the opposite side. A tall pole stretched from the basket perhaps five feet into the air, and from it hung a long green flag depicting a leek. Lauchs piled a few objects into the trunk—a handful of scallions, his coin purse, a wineskin—and then lifted the basket with some difficulty and worked his wings into the straps, wearing it like a rucksack.
“My sword, if you trust me with it,” he said, extending an open hand to Ferry. The lucario gave Prim an inquisitive look. She nodded at him, and Ferry relinquished the huge leek to its rightful owner, who promptly stashed it in the big basket on his back as though it was a crude sheath.
“Well!” Lauchs exclaimed, flashing a broad smile. “I suppose we’re all ready for the road then, eh?”
“I don’t think so,” Ferry said. Lauchs raised a bushy black eyebrow. “We’ve agreed to let you live. That doesn’t mean you get to skip away from this town without facing the consequences of your actions.” The lucario’s blood-red eyes fixed themselves on the wooloo remains. “You’re going to compensate that farmer for twice the worth of the wooloo you slaughtered. I saw that coinpurse of yours. I know you have the gold for it.”
Prim found herself raising her eyebrows too. She was growing irritated by Ferry’s terseness more than ever, it seemed, and yet at the same time she felt herself shrinking before his assertive presence. Wasn’t she supposed to be the one leading him? She thought back to their interactions with Mertens, with the innkeep. Ferry’s terseness had been the very quality that had saved her from sputtering like a fool when she could find no words. His sense of justice now prevailed when she might have erred on the side of excessive sympathy otherwise. How was she meant to feel? How could he be so crude, so brash, and yet so driven and dutiful?
Lauchs gave Ferry a pensive look, then sighed. “Very well. I suppose it’s only fair. You two caught me red-winged, after all.” He pressed a hand to his forehead, and then ran it down his face, pinching between his eyes. “It will run me most of my gold… But it can’t be helped, I suppose. Better my purse than my head, eh? Ohoho…”
Prim felt uneasy about returning to the farmer after the crude send-off Ferry had given him before, but she supposed there was no way around it. She surveyed the table and, having found that everyone’s meals were eaten up, stood. “Well, let’s go, then. If we want to make good progress on the road today, then we have no time to waste.”
Ferry listless, Prim uneasy, and Lauchs sheepish, the three of them walked back into the woods and towards the farm, leaving Lauchs’ camp and the alabaster remains of the stolen wooloo behind.
- - -
Mertens’ eyes started at Lauchs’ splayed yellow feet and then traced upward, past his gleaming armor; past his wide, sheepish grin; past the great leek blade shooting straight into the air from his rucksack. Finally they settled on the white flag flapping a good four feet above the duck’s head, the green leek emblem occasionally flashing through the folds of the fabric. The farmer did not seem terribly impressed.
“You have brought him back,” he said flatly, refocusing his gaze on Prim.
“Yes,” she said. “We have decided that he will pay you twice the value of the sheep he stole, as recompense.” The farmer opened his mouth to respond, but Prim continued. “We’ll be escorting him out of town, too. You won’t see him again.”
The farmer shut his mouth, then evaluated Lauchs suspiciously. “Well, he’ll be a problem for the next farm he stumbles upon, I think. But so long as he isn’t my problem, I suppose…” Prim sensed that he was dissatisfied with the verdict, but as he’d said himself, it was the duty of the wanderswords to dole out punishment for their captives. Mertens had thus far demonstrated respect for their order—she would be surprised to see him refuse their judgement now.
“Well,” he added, “I’ll place the value of the sheep at ten gold.”
Ferry exhaled forcefully through his nose. “Be reasonable,” he said gruffly. “I’m no friend to the duck, but he at least had the decency to return the sheep’s wool to you. The meat alone isn’t worth more than five at best.”
Mertens gave Ferry a coy look. “Let’s call it emotional damages, then.”
Ferry’s face contorted with rage, but Prim gripped his shoulder firmly before he could react further. “That’s fine,” she insisted. “Mertens, will you accept fifteen? You deserve your recompense, but we have days of travel ahead, and Ser Lauchs’ money is as useful to us as it is to him.”
“Now, I don’t know about—” Lauchs butted in, but Ferry shot him a nasty glare, and he shut up promptly.
“Very well,” Mertens sighed. “Fifteen, then.” Lauchs wasted no time counting out his gold, verbally noting each piece he extracted from his purse. Once he reached the agreed-upon amount, he dumped it into Mertens’ cupped hands and gave the farmer a winning smile.
“Terribly sorry about all the trouble, old fellow,” he said. “I hate to have caused you any distress. But a duck has to eat in the end, hasn’t he? Ohoho!”
Mertens stuffed the gold into his pocket and stepped back, completely ignoring Lauchs’ comment. “May the wind always be at your back, Wanderswords.” He gave one last glare at Lauchs before shutting the door.
“Well, I think that went rather swimmingly, don’t you all?” Lauchs asked, placing his coin purse back in his rucksack as the group made their way off the farmer’s property.
Ferry glared at Lauchs from behind a scowl. “Bastard,” he spat forcefully, as though the word were sour. “I don’t care if you’re a pain in the ass. That farmer tried to shake you down, just because you’re a mon and he thought he could get away with it.”
“Ferry,” Prim said with a gentle sort of firmness, “Lauchs had stolen his property. He was right to be angry. I thought he was quite nice to you last night, pouring you a drink and all.”
“Yes, quite nice until I posed the slightest inconvenience,” Ferry shot back. “The bastard didn’t care about anything I had to say. He didn’t change his mind until you spoke up. Figures, of course, seeing as—”
“My friends!” Lauchs cried out, clapping his wings together. “I paid the man, didn’t I? Let us put it behind us. There is no room for quarreling on the long road ahead of us.”
Ferry growled something unintelligible, but that was the end of it. Prim breathed a sigh of relief. It was almost blissfully silent as they made their way to the Lanceroute, save for Lauchs’s whistling. Even though the whistling grated on Prim’s ears a bit, she was so pleased with the peace that she allowed it. The sun was hanging directly overhead now, shining its rays pleasantly below. A gentle breeze pushed at their backs, and Prim couldn’t help but wonder whether God had heard the farmer’s blessing and willed it into being. She couldn’t have asked for a finer day to walk.
Eventually they found themselves walking through the town, and Prim occasionally stopped to buy an item from a streetside vendor—a block of cheese and a couple apples here, some dried meat and a bottle of wine there.
“Excellent thinking, my lady,” Lauchs said. “One can never be too prepared for the road, eh? Ohoho! Perhaps I’ll do some shopping myself.”
“You’d better hold onto your gold, old duck,” Ferry said. “You’re paying your own way, or you’re sleeping under the stars when we make it to the next town. If you get hungry on the road, you can just take a bite out of that ridiculous sword of yours, can’t you?”
Lauchs’ eyes became dinner plates. “Why, I’ve never heard such a preposterous thing!” he huffed. “A sirfetch’d’s sword is sacred! A gift from the Goddess, an extension of oneself. To eat it, why… That would be like taking a bite out of your own arm!”
Prim swore she saw mirth in Ferry’s eyes. “Such things are not unheard of in times of desperation,” is all he said. Lauchs burst into a hearty laugh and gave Ferry a good, healthy slap on the back. Prim was astonished to see that, though he tensed up, Ferry did not otherwise react.
“Oh, I think we’ll have good fun on the road together, the three of us,” Ferry remarked as they left the town limits. The Lanceroute stretched out before them, an endless ribbon of smooth dirt reaching in both directions until it disappeared into the hills. “Good fun indeed.”
hey guys, another chapter at last! hopefully it hasn't been so long that no one cares anymore, lol. super glad to finally have this one out, i think the next couple will be much easier to write. fun stuff coming up! like i said in my review responses above, i'm going to spend some time before the next chapter tuning up what i've got and taking everyone's suggestions home. hopefully by the time the next chapter comes out, the entire fic will be much more cohesive and polished... perhaps even worthy of a re-read!? but for now, we've got this. hope you guys enjoy!
The Man in Red
The three knights embarked on the Lanceroute when the day was half spent and the sun hung at its zenith in the sky. Dusk was upon them when they reached the small roadside village, the one that the shouting was coming from. By then, the darkness was almost complete. There were only three sources of light penetrating the inky blackness of the night.
The first was the wan glow of the moon, just the faintest of slivers perched in the murky sky. Prim was glad to have even that much; fighting against Lauchs with nothing but the starlight to guide them the night before had been a disorienting experience.
The second source of light was the warm flicker of an unattended campfire. The flame undulated pleasantly, undisturbed at the center of a ring of makeshift chairs—barrels, boxes, a stump. Sometimes a log would break and fall into the embers with a crack, prompting a brilliant, skybound shower of orange flecks. It might have been a peaceful scene, Prim thought, for the deaf and unobservant.
The third source of light was the stark, galvanic radiance of the emerald flames shooting from the druddigon’s gullet like vomit ablaze.
One soldier screamed harder than most, and Prim watched him as he flailed in slow motion. His sword arm was drenched in the flaming green fluid. He swung his flaming arm wildly; his sword clattered to the floor, the sound of steel on stone ringing through the courtyard. Drops of fire flew this way and that, onto his boots and toward his fellow soldiers, sizzling and crackling wherever it touched. A few drops landed on the broken blades on the ground—no doubt shattered by the druddigon’s exceptionally tough hide—and it burnt even through those. The other soldiers backed away from their fire-flinging comrade frantically, their eyes wide and dancing with reflections of emerald flame.
A ways behind them stood a man in all red, a fine crimson cape at his back and a tall red hat adorning his head. Red, the color of bishopry. The man bore no sword, and his garb seemed like it might burst into one huge flame if a single drop of the flaming liquid touched it…
Prim knew about dragonsflame. It was insidious stuff. Once you had it on you, there was nothing you could do but try to contain it and let the fire run its course. Hopefully the injuries would be salvageable. Even trying to wash it off wouldn’t do you much good—water just created more fuel for the flame. In flinging the stuff around without a care, the floundering soldier posed a threat not only to himself but to those around him. It would be best to restrain him, if possible…
The druddigon roared, yanking Prim back into reality. “Ferry, I need you to restrain the one with the flaming arm,” she said. The lumbering dragon was making its advance toward the scrambling soldiers now, but Prim managed to pry her eyes off it, looking to Ferry for acknowledgement.
Only he wasn’t there.
She searched around for him desperately, eyes moving as quickly as she could make them, but he was nowhere to be found. Her mind buzzed. “Someone restrain him!” she called, the words flying from her lips before they’d fully formed in her mind. The soldiers snapped out of their stupor and approached him cautiously, trying to stop his frantic movements without coming into contact with the flames leaping off him. Prim didn’t have time to wait and see how it went.
“Lauchs, I need your help,” she said quickly, her heart leaping. She drew her sword, and the sound of it caught the druddigon’s attention. It took several steps to swerve around towards her, thanks to its undersized legs. Small targets.
Druddigon were dangerous foes, but not particularly uncommon in the Callousian lowlands. As a result, Prim had undergone quite a lot of training about dealing with druddigon specifically, but it was all theory. She’d never seen one in person, and it was smaller than she’d expected. She thought it had the proportions of a much larger creature. Normally she’d be pleased to have a smaller foe, but it wouldn’t do her much good in this case…
She tried to Due to their sticky and prodigious flames, she recalled, they only became more dangerous the longer they were agitated. If left to rampage for too long, they could incinerate entire villages. It was essential to take them out as quickly as possible…
“I need you to distract it,” she said to Lauchs, making her way toward it.
Lauchs quacked in surprise. “D-distract it? Pardon, my lady, but if this is part of some plan for a roast duck dinner, I’m afraid I must decline.”
“I won’t let it hurt you,” she said. “Just trust me. Quickly, please.”
The druddigon stood up straight and balled its fist as Prim approached. Its glowing amber eyes locked with her blue ones, the depths of its throat beginning to glow that eerie green…
Whap!
The dragon snorted in annoyance as a giant leek collided with its face. Rather than breaking like the other blades had, it simply wobbled, as if it were made of rubber. Steam rose from the druddigon’s nostrils as it snarled and smacked the leek away. Now that its attention was captured by Lauchs, Prim was free to make her way behind it.
It was said that no blade could penetrate the stony hide of a druddigon. But if that stony hide covered every inch of the druddigon’s body, it would be unable to move. Trapped in its own flesh, like a statue given life. As with any suit of armor, a druddigon’s defenses had chinks in them, exposed areas around the joints that enabled the creature to move.
Prim gripped her sword, heart in her throat.
Here’s hoping I don’t miss…
She plunged her blade into the back of the dragon’s leg. It let out an ear-splitting roar as it staggered, falling to one knee as black blood spilled from the other. It craned its neck back towards Prim, jaws frothing with flame. All she could think to do was drive her boot into its back, forcing it forward. Fire splashed upward as its head collided forcibly with the ground.
Lauchs skittered out of the way, quacking hoarsely as a good-sized blob of flame made a puddle where he’d been standing moments before. The druddigon began spouting flame like it had no other choice—and indeed it didn’t. Prim had to finish the job, now.
She plunged her sword into the dragon’s good knee to ensure it couldn’t get up again, then extracted it and clambered onto its back. She pushed its head forward with her boot, and suddenly its fountain of flame was directed downward—a puddle of green fire rapidly spread beneath it. Druddigon had natural resistance to their own flames, but that resistance was no match for direct, persistent contact. The druddigon shrieked and writhed in pain, nearly knocking Prim off its back as its wings beat wildly.
If I don’t kill this thing now, I’m going to die.
I’m going to die.
She plunged her sword into the back of its neck. It writhed for another moment or two, or maybe a thousand, Prim couldn’t tell—and then it fell slack. The only sound to be heard was the crackling of the flames that remained.
Prim took a deep breath, then pulled her sword out and wiped the black blood it had gathered onto her pants before sheathing the blade.
Lauchs, as always, was the first to break the silence.
“Quite the job you’ve done there, Lady Primeveire!” he exclaimed as he placed his sword back in the basket on his back. “I’ll admit, I doubted you at first, but never again!”
The man in red spoke next. “God’s peace be unto you both. We owe you our lives.” The soldiers broke into assent, though their voices were hushed. They still seemed haunted by the one among them who did not speak, and instead sat a ways off, cradling a crispy arm and choking on sobs. She was glad to see he was alive, at least. Most people who felt the bite of dragonsflame were not so fortunate.
“You owe us nothing,” Prim said. “We were merely doing our jobs.”
Most of us, anyway, she thought sourly, wondering where Ferry could have gone, and why.
“Ah,” the man in red said, “but jobs are often performed in exchange for payment, no?” Prim didn’t protest as he fished out a coinpurse from his robes and counted out an appealing number of coins.
“Many thanks, bishop,” Prim said as she accepted the payment.
“Oh, how rude of me not to introduce myself,” he said. “I am Bishop Andre, of Chevret.”
“Chevret!” Lauchs exclaimed, walking up to them. “We’re just coming from Chevret ourselves. Quite the coincidence!”
“Indeed,” Andre said mirthlessly. “And to whom do I owe the great pleasure…?”
Prim opened her mouth to respond, but Lauchs beat her to the punch. “Ser Lauchzelot of Fetscheim at your service, hedge knight of the court of His Royal Majesty King Henry IV of Circhester,” he said, extending a wing. Andre didn’t seem quite sure how to shake it, but he did his best.
“And I’m Primeveire,” Prim added, feeling quite content to leave all the decorations off her name.
“Well met indeed,” Andre said. “These soldiers are my company,” he said, gesturing at the soldiers, who barely responded. “They’re accompanying me back to my hometown. Seems I should have brought a wandersword along with me, too… But it seems God has forgiven my oversight, and blessed me that you might come to the rescue.” His smile was warm but weary. “I bring news from Dendemille, if you’ll hear it. The church seeks wanderswords to employ.”
Prim arched an eyebrow. Dendemille was just a quarter day west, by her reckoning. The church paid wanderswords well, on the rare occasions that they were hiring. “I’d be very interested to hear more,” she said. “Lauchs, could you find Ferry for me? He should be around here somewhere…”
Surprise washed over Lauchs’s face. “My, I’d hardly noticed he was gone! Some partner I am, eh? I shall get to looking straight away, my lady, worry not.” He gave a stiff salute, and waddled off.
“Soldiers,” Andre called. They looked up at him, still seeming tired and despondent. “I will be off for a short walk with Lady Primeveire. I shall call if I require your assistance. You’ve earned some rest, soldiers—please take it.” They nodded and settled in back around their campfire, which was a fading flicker now. One of them still sat off to the side.
“Now,” Andre said, walking away from the fallen druddigon at last. Prim fell into stride with him. “About that job…”
- - -
Lauchs did not find Ferry right away. He did not find him after fifteen minutes, or twenty, or even thirty. The town was not all that large. It only took him the better part of an hour to scour every alley and walk the perimeter of the village, shouting Ferry’s name and praying for a response.
It took him longer than he preferred to admit to realize that clambering around town shouting loudly should have ruffled a few more feathers than it did.
Come to think of it, hadn’t there just been a fire-breathing dragon rampaging in town square? Weren’t there emerald flames flying this way and that across the courtyard? Why hadn’t that roused anyone from their sleep?
He approached a house and surreptitiously peeked into the window. It was hard to see in the darkness, but it looked like a single room, and there didn’t seem to be anyone in the bed. Hm… He moved to the front door and raised his wing to knock, then hesitated.
Knocking on someone’s door at this hour was inconsiderate in the first place, but in Galar, doing such a thing would earn him the same admonishing it might a human. Here, he feared he might be attacked for such a thing. The humans of Callouse weren’t terribly tolerant of mon, he’d come to learn.
But he’d helped rescue this town from the clutches of a fire-breathing dragon, hadn’t he? And wasn’t he standing here, decked in shining armor? If someone lashed out in anger, why, he could simply flee, and he was quite sure the soldiers would prevent him from further harm.
Yes, that would do. He knocked after all, not just once or twice but repeatedly. Half a minute of relentless hammering passed before he gave up.
Not seeing the harm at this point, he pushed the door open, and it gave without resistance. “Hello-o-o?” he called, waddling into the room, his armor chinking with each step. “Ferry, are you there?” He didn’t suppose the odds that he’d find Ferry in the first house he checked were particularly good, but, well… why not try?
There didn’t seem to be anyone in the house. That wouldn’t have bothered Lauchs by itself, but in conjunction with the town’s lacking response to the dragon attack, he was beginning to grow uneasy. Where was everyone?
He left the house and shut the door, then moved to the next one and hammered on its door, too. No response. He poked his head in and searched for Ferry, calling his name. Nothing.
The next. The next. House after house with no residents, no Ferrycloth, nothing. Just a thin layer of dust coating every surface, and the occasional cobweb in the doorframe. Just what kind of town had they stumbled upon?
As he continued to search the houses, he began to look for signs of disturbance too. A broken window, perhaps, or overturned furniture. Maybe a footprint in the dust, or a broken dish. But there was nothing. Some of the homes were orderly, some of them were messy, but none of them seemed abnormal, at least not to Lauchs’s untrained eye. What had happened here? Where had everyone gone?
Lauchs pushed open what felt like the millionth door. Surely he’d investigated nearly the entire town by now. At this point his investigation was haphazard—he poked his head in, gave a look around, and said, “Ferry?” He barely gave time for a response before ducking out.
But this time, one came.
“What?” came a gravelly voice. Lauchs practically jumped out of his armor, both in surprise and in exuberance.
“Ah, Ferrycloth! Is that really you? By the forest god!” he exclaimed, stumbling into the cottage. Sure enough, Ferry was there, huddled against the wall with his knees pulled up against his chest, his crimson glare boring into Lauchs from across the room.
“What do you want?” he snarled.
Lauchs gave him a look of bewilderment. “Whatever could you mean? We were fighting a bloody dragon out there, Ferry, and here you are in some random house halfway across town! What in the green world are you doing here?”
“Does it look like I want to talk about it?” Ferry barked back. “Do you think I hid away here because I’m feeling sociable? Fuck you. I’ll meet up with you two in the morning. Just… leave me alone.”
Lauchzelot did not budge. Instead, he walked toward Ferry, then put his back against the wall and slid down next to him.
“Ferrycloth,” he said softly. Ferry didn’t jerk away or snap back; he simply remained silent. “We’re both mon, you know. We may not look the same, but we are identical before the eyes of men. Our struggles are one. You don’t have to be so on guard around me, dear friend.”
Ferry gave him a sideways glare. “Don’t try that bullshit with me,” he growled. “We’re nothing alike, and you know that.”
Lauchs cocked his head. “Pray, just how certain are you of that?” Ferry remained silent.
“The fate of your people is the world’s worst kept secret,” Lauchs said. “The fate of mine was kept a bit quieter, I’m afraid. Fetscheim is located in the northwest of the continent, on the shores a day by horse west of Cromlexia. It’s been my people’s ancestral home for as long as history reaches… Fetscheim has always known a Fetch’d king. But these last few decades, the empire’s advance has known no obstacle, has it? I’m sure you know better than most.” Ferry looked up and stared intensely at Lauchs, his expression a hybrid of perplexion and interest.
“My father was King Bertram the Blessed, the last king of Fetscheim. He is dead and gone, I'm afraid, and now a man rules in his stead. A petty duke or somesuch. My brother, rightful heir to the Forest Throne, is held in the dungeons of Shallour. My mother, my cousins, my nieces and nephews… It’s no mystery to you what happened, is it? No puzzle why I’ve spent the last decade separated from my beloved homeland, wandering Galar, servant to a foreign king.” Lauchs paused. Ferry was looking at him intently, and it was only then that Lauchs noticed his eyes were growing quite moist. He cleared his throat loudly. “That day... I shall never forget it as long as I walk this green earth. You know the feeling, I presume.”
Ferry still had no words to offer. Lauchs couldn’t manage offense. “I don’t tell you this so that you pity me, dear Ferrycloth,” he said. “I know you hate the way I live my life, with a smile on my beak and a drink in my hand, but I have found a way to live happily in this world, even after everything I have seen. I tell you all this so that you understand. You need not live your life in bitter solitude.”
There was a long silence after that, certainly longer than Lauchs would have liked. There was nothing to distract him from the memories he’d unearthed now. With a sigh, he made to get up, his armor clinking as he moved.
“The high priest came to my village himself,” Ferry said at last. Lauchs slumped back onto the ground, looking to the lucario. His head was buried in his arms again, but he didn’t stop talking. “He stood there in his damnable fucking robes, whistling while everything I knew burned. When we arrived here, I saw the dragonsflame and the man in his church garb, I smelled the smoke, I heard the screams… I felt like I was there again, trapped in that moment. So I ran, and I hid.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”
Lauchs placed a wing on Ferry’s back, and he tensed up momentarily, but didn’t resist. After a moment, his body relaxed, and he drew a deep breath.
“It’s okay, Ferrycloth,” Lauchs said. “I won’t tell Primeveire. She doesn’t need to know.”
Ferry looked back up at Lauchs one more time, his red eyes brimming with emotion. “... Thank you.”
“Not a problem, Clothy, my good chum,” Lauchs said, flashing a wide smile.
“Don’t fucking push it.”
Lauchs chuckled to himself as he stood, legs buzzing with pins and needles. “Well, we’d best get back out there, if you think you can manage it,” he said. “She’s worried about you, you know.”
Ferry didn’t say anything, but he did stand up, and they left the house together and made their way back down to the town square.
“She was quite magnificent, taking down the druddigon,” Lauchs mused. “I barely helped at all. You’re lucky to have such a powerful partner.”
“Partner?” Ferry echoed. “You mean warden? That power won’t do me much good if it’s used against me the moment I disobey.”
“Ah, nonsense,” Lauchs said, waving a wing. “Your qualms with the system have nothing to do with her character as a person, dear fellow. If that were true, it wouldn’t reflect well on you, either, would it?” Ferry glared at him for that.
“There’s a man who was wounded fairly severely by the dragonsflame,” Lauchs said, changing the subject as the orange flicker of the campfire came into view. “I’ve never been terribly sharp on medicine. Goes straight in one ear and out the other with this old birdbrain, oho. I don’t suppose you could treat him?”
Ferry nodded curtly. “An oran and rawst salve should do the trick. Haban too, if they have it.”
“Ah, Ferrycloth, Ferrycloth,” Lauchs said. “How fortunate we are to have you…”
- - -
The summer air was uncomfortably sticky and warm, even despite the late hour. Sometimes a breeze would push against them as they walked, freeing a few strands of hair from behind Prim’s ear, and she was grateful for it.
“I wish I could tell you I was revisiting my old hometown on happy terms,” Andre said wistfully. “But the truth is that this time, I’m returning against my will. It might surprise you to know that just a week ago, I was Bishop of Dendemille.”
Prim raised her eyebrows.
“What do you know of this region?” Andre asked as they walked.
“Not much,” Prim admitted. “I’m from the west. Our training camp was out in the wilderness, east of here, but they didn’t teach us much about the area. Not much paid work to be found here, after all.”
Andre nodded. “Unsurprising. Even though the empire has grown in these last few years, Chevret remains on its frontier,” he said. “I’ve lived here since I was born. Back then, it was only a small church, and a few scattered farms a few miles apart from one another. I was never much for farmwork, so my path in life has always seemed rather clear to me.” He looked wistful as he spoke.
“I felt much the same way as a girl,” Prim said. “Still do.” Andre gave her a look of mild interest, but she didn’t care to elaborate. He didn’t press the matter.
“I assume you’re familiar with the city of Dendemille?”
“Of course,” she replied. Dendemille was the largest and oldest city in the empire east of the Aquacorde River. Still smaller than any western city, but because the population of the east was so diffuse, the Duchy of Dendemille comprised the largest swath of land of any duchy in the empire.
“It may surprise you to know that until last week, I was bishop of all Dendemille. The largest bishopric in the empire,” Andre said. There was just a drop of venom in his voice.
“Impressive,” Prim said. “It’s an honor to meet you, your holiness.” Andre squinted, apparently not one for frills or flattery. “I take it you’re returning home after being unelected?”
“Not quite,” he replied. “Last week, the high priest relieved me of my post unilaterally. A very unusual thing indeed. I’m returning to my tiny hometown to preside over the church there instead—quite the fall from grace.”
Prim wasn’t sure what to say. Was he inviting her to ask him what he’d done to deserve his demotion? That felt rude.
“No reason was given, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Andre said with a frown. “He even thanked me for my service. I suspect the dismissal had less to do with me and more to do with my replacement. That’s what I wished to speak with you about.” He stopped and sighed, then gave a look around. “Have you noticed anything strange about this town, Lady Primeveire?”
Now it was her turn to take a look around. It was almost silent, save for the occasional flutter of a woobat or venomoth overhead. There wasn’t anyone else in sight, though the warm glow of the soldiers’ fire was visible in the distance behind them. She wondered to herself whether Lauchs had found Ferry yet.
“Nothing in particular, no.”
Andre frowned. “I passed through this village just three years ago, the last time I visited my hometown. Back then, it was bustling with activity. Today when I arrived, there was no one here. It was as if they’d vanished without a trace.”
Prim’s pulse quickened. Now that she thought of it, it was odd that no one had come out to investigate the commotion earlier. Why hadn’t she picked up on that sooner? Wasn’t it her job to notice such things?
“The man the high priest replaced me with is called the Violet Inquisitor. He’s the one hiring wanderswords. I have never heard of him, much less seen him, nor have any of my fellow clergymen. My sudden replacement with this mysterious man… The empire’s expansion since the ascension of High Priest Doran… I can’t help but feel like it’s all related. Part of me wants to relate the emptiness of this town to it, too, though perhaps that’s merely my paranoia talking...” He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “I apologize, I’ve been chatting your ear off. What do you think of all this?”
Prim bit the inside of her cheek. What was she supposed to say? It all sounded like a lot of political chatter to her, the exact sort of intrigue she’d joined the Wandersword Corps to escape. She’d dedicated her life to the simple pursuit of putting steel to flesh. When the squabbles of men became involved, her interest waned. So what she really thought was that it was well and fine for Bishop Andre to speculate to his heart’s content, but she wanted no part of it. More than anything, she was disappointed he didn’t have more to say about the job.
She couldn’t say that to the man that had paid her, though, could she?
“What do I think?” she echoed. “I think… that it’s outside the scope of my post to investigate this matter for you, your holiness. And, with all due respect, I’m not sure what it matters to you what someone like me thinks.”
He simply smiled, to Prim’s surprise. “Ah, you’re quite right. Terribly sorry myself,” he said. “Let me put it another way. If I may ask: when you swore your oath of service, to whom did you swear your service?”
“The realm,” Prim answered promptly, wondering where he could be going with this.
“Indeed. Unlike the rest of us in this world, you serve no man, no king, no church or god. I am bound by the vows I took, but your choices are your own. I simply ask that you keep that fact close to your heart, and my words in your mind as you take this job. Would that I could investigate this matter on my own, but… Well, leaving it in the hands of an able wandersword is the best peace of mind I can hope for, I fear. If you ever found yourself in Chevret again, it would do my pride some good to hear if you’d learned anything.” He smiled. “I can only hope that my information helps you make that decision more wisely.”
“Well, I give you my thanks,” Prim said, unsure quite what the bishop was expecting of her. “So this job… The Violet Inquisitor, at the Church of Dendemille.”
“Yes.”
Prim nodded. “Thank you. I shall take your words to heart, Bishop Andre.” She could tell by his expression that the bishop sensed her indifference, but he didn’t press the matter further. Instead, he smiled and nodded back.
“Thank you, Lady Primeveire. My life is in your debt. I suppose we should return to the others now.”
They walked back to the fire together wordlessly, their boots clicking on the stone and Andre’s cape swishing as they went. When they arrived at the fire, the soldiers were all seated around it looking quite a lot more relaxed than when they’d left them. Lauchs was telling some fanciful tale, his gestures dramatic and his face bouncing between exaggerated expressions. The soldiers seemed glad for his presence; some of them smiled, and many of them had mugs in their hand and color in their face. It took her a few moments to spot the one with the injured arm—now it was all wrapped up in bandages, and he sat with the rest of them, looking almost pleased to be there.
Ferry was there too. Anger flared up in Prim’s bosom—where the hell had he been? She had half a mind to demand answers from him now, but that would have to be a discussion for another time. It wouldn’t be right for her to admonish him in front of a crowd like that. He had some serious explaining to do… but at the very least, he was safe.
“They look like they’re enjoying themselves for a change,” Andre said. “I’ll leave them be. God’s peace be with you and yours, Lady Primeveire.”
“And with you,” she replied. The bishop bowed slightly, then retreated into one of the houses without a word.
Prim made her way to her partners and seated herself next to Ferry. He recoiled when she sat, his eyes betraying both fear and annoyance. “We’ll talk later,” she said, and he nodded solemnly.
Once she put Ferry out of her mind, she found herself almost enjoying the fire despite the heat of the night. She didn’t particularly relish its warmth, but as she sat with the others, absently following Lauchs’s story and surrounded by half a dozen cheery faces in the shadow of a hard-won victory, she thought to herself that moments like this were exactly why she had given her life to the Wandersword Corps in the first place.
Yet the words of the bishop persisted in her mind. The high priest. The Violet Inquisitor. She didn’t know what it all meant, and didn’t want to care, yet the thoughts wouldn’t leave her mind. She pushed them away the best that she could—couldn’t it wait a day?—but the task became increasingly possible the more she tried. Was this her fate? To never enjoy the present again, consumed by anxiety about the future?
She let out a sigh and remembered something that she’d been told on her first day of training: one can never be fully at ease when their work is unfinished, and the work of a wandersword is never finished. Wondering what kind of life she’d chosen for herself, Primeveire stared into the fire.
