Mazera Mega Story Thread

To: No-longer Archangel Cassiel, Leader and Teacher of the Grigori Nation

From: Archmage Jarsun Agyth, Highest Mage on the Board of Magical Trade and Resources, Economics.

Greetings again


I apologize about the earlier deal. I did not have a clear head at the time. We will indeed trade you knowledge of the ether for mana. I hope this deal satisfies you.

Sincerely,

Jarsun Agyth


PS. Dude, low blow. p)

To: Archmage Jarsun Agyth, Highest Mage on the Board of Magical Trade and Resources, Economics.

From: Cassiel, Leader and Teacher of the Grigori Nation and Meanest Negotiator This Side of a Lunnotar

Salutations! Finally!

We accept your generous offer of instruction.in the ways of the ether. We eagerly await being able to ship out the first load of fire mana.

To our mutual profit and advancement!

Sincerely,

Cassiel

PS: Please enjoy this complimentary casket of the increasingly famous Grigori beer in honor of this agreement. I hear you can't get it put it on and take it off a Lunanian ship these days before it's been drunk by the sailors. Maybe it's our secret ingredient?

It was unusual for a Grigori force these days to go so far into Yokaido-occupied territory for a raid. It was even more unusual that the men doing it were heavily armed and armored, not lithe rangers skilled at sneaking and fighting through the woods they were in now. It wasn’t that they were entirely unstealthy: these men had been among the refugees that had fled this area in the initial invasion, and they knew which valleys made the best hidden paths. Their armor had been painted akin to the bushmen, and they had lined their joints with Amurite silk to reduce the sound of their travel.

Travel they should not even be on, in fact. One reason this raid was so unusual was because these men were not ordered to do it. In fact, standing orders were to not do it. But these men had heard whispers from their officers’ quarters, put two and two together, and decided that the regs could stuff themselves. They were Grigori, the gods be damned, and they wouldn’t leave their own behind enemy lines.

They marched in silence, stopping every few minutes to listen around them. One such time they stopped, just in time to catch the caw of a raven. A shudder of anticipation ran through them, and one of the men leaned closer to their leader.

“You think it be him?” he whispered. “You know what they say about him and his companions…”

“I hear a lot of things,” his commander, a man named Jenkins, replied. “But this one I believe. We’re probably close enough that his pretties will tell him where we are.”

“Then should we keep moving, or hold and let him find us?”

“We will-“ Jenkins began, but was interrupted by the loud… roar? Hiss? He could never quite decide. The loud outrage of what was unmistakably a midgarsomr. A large and angry one, by the sound of it. They could hear not only the beast, but the sound of hundreds of wings of birds taking to flight.

“We move!” Jenkins ordered, breaking into a jog up the hill and into the next valley over. As they crested the hill, they took in the sight before them. A massive Midgarsomr, easily the size of a small house or three, was racing down the other slope, chasing a man who was running for his life. The man was cradling something wrapped in linen to his chest and his face wasn’t visible, but the cloud of birds pecking at the Midgarsomr’s hideous and burned visage gave them all the clues they needed.

“Carrow! This way!” Jenkins yelled. Carrow looked up at the sound of his voice and saw them, and ran towards them. He drew his sword, undoubtedly something mithril captured from the Yokaido, and Jenkin’s eyes widened.

‘He thinks we’re the enemy, and is going to take as many out as possible!’

“Carrow, we are here to rescue you!” He tore off his helm, revealing the short blond hair underneath. The Yokaido, for some strange reason, invariably had black hair, and kept in ponytails when they went to war. Seeing the friendlier face led Carrow to run just as fast, but no longer as threateningly. The Midgarsomr was frighteningly enough.

“Men! Positions!” he shouted. “Jerimiah by me! As we practiced!”

On the crest of the hill, the nine men assumed their positions. Jerimiah and Jenkins stood eight paces apart on the crest of the hill, while the rest were aligned on the blind side. It was a tactic that had been learned through death and loss. It was a tactic that guaranteed death and loss, in fact. But it also gave the best chance of victory and the fewest deaths.

“Keep running!” Jermiah urged Carrow. “Run between us!”

Carrow did, nearly leaping over the crest. “You better be prepared to run,” he warned, but Jenkins watched as the Midgarsomr raced up the hill coiling for it’s first strike. Which would it take first? Him or Jerimiah?

The snake chose Jerimiah, lunging with an open mouth and swallowing the man whole. Jenkins hoped that seeing a fang go flying had been Jerimiah’s work and not his imagination, but he had no time for that as he unleashed a brutal slash against the beast’s side as it went over and across the ridge.

The beast landed on the reverse slope already crying in pain, pain that multiplied as the seven men behind it sliced its face with abandon while it recoiled from the landing. That was the technique of Midgarsomr-slaying in these lands: two men on a ridge lured the snake to lunge over, whichever one not killed striking the beast. As the beast recoiled in pain in the air, its landing on the blind slope would temporarily stun it. And that was when the prepared men behind it would attempt to slay it.

Two men stuck slashed its eyes, blinding it. When it opened its mouth to scream, others would duel its fangs, seeking to remove a set from the serpent. A lucky occurance was if they removed the top fangs alone; the first Midgarsomr slain, though a mere child compared to this one, had been when it’s bottom fangs had pierced its own skull.

But usually the final blow came from the man who had been spared. Leaping from the hill, Jenkins yelled as he landed on the writhing snake. Confident in his own ability not to stumble or be thrown off, he ran and jumped along the scales to the beast’s head, landing with his sword sinking into the beast’s brain. It shuddered and writhed, throwing him off in its death throes as it could not do in life, but eventually it’s head fell with a crash.

Sent flying as he was, Jenkins expected to die on impact. The men on the hill were always volunteers, men who knew that if the snake didn’t devour them, its death throes would likely finish the job. Even those who attacked its face were in danger; as he flew, he saw that at least one of his men had been crushed by its head.

But something impacted Jenkins before he hit the ground neck-first, changing the direction of his momentum and his body position so that he was spent sprawling into the soil before coming to a stop. He couldn’t move his arm and breathing hurt, but he was alive.

“Thank you,” he gasped to Carrow as his men come down to greet them. Already they had recovered the dead that they could, poor Jerimiah was beyond recovery and would only receive a epitath stone at home, and they carried their war trophies. A pair of the Midgarsomr’s fangs would serve as proof of its defeat in some Grigori museum or even in the Palace itself, and the poisons in them were much sought by Grigori medics and alchemists alike for completely opposing reasons. The eyes, or what was left of them, would serve as spell components.

“Just returning the favor,” Carrow said. “I’ve had more than enough encounters with that particular beastie, and this time I thought my number was up; I’ve been on the run from that one for days. Though I am curious why a patrol is this deep in their territory…”

“A little birdy told us you were in need of help,” said one of Jenkins said. “So we came.”

“Without orders, eh? Good men, good men. I assume you can also escort me and my package back to safety?”

The men looked curiously at the linens in Carrow’s arms. When it moved and a small snake head poked out, the men reflexively went for their swords even as Carrow gently coaxed it back in, though he threw some gobs of meat in.

Seeing their looks of fear and suspicion, Carrow explained. “While hiding behind enemy lines, I came across a snake pit not quite as guarded as it should have been. They were handling some newborn snakes, and I, being the compassionate ranger that I am, liberated them.”

He looked back at the Midgarsomr behind them. “Little did I know, these were the kids of that one there. She was beyond their control, and has been hunting me down for days. Almost had me, too,” he said, absently stroking the pouch with his prize. Then he turned to them. “Just what unit are you from again?” he asked. “The way you fight, you could even slay dragons.”

“Dragon Slayers?” echoed one of the men. “Psh. Dragons are imaginary now a day. We don’t kill nightmares from some child’s dream. We kill real monsters.”

“We are the Serpent Slayers, Champions of the Grigori.”

The Khazad capital was deserted.

Granted, that was the only reason Hamlyn Ka was back. After the crackdowns and persecutions of nonbelievers began, he had been one of the first ‘encouraged’ to leave. At the point of a sword and even sharper words that still weighed on him. He had been warned to never return, and he had never intended to.

But now… the home he had grown up in was deserted. The silence of was deafening, cliché as it was to say. There remained nobody to prevent him from returning.

His companion looked at him with some concern. “Are you going to be alright, Hamlyn?” his Austrin companion asked.

Hamlyn cleared the cobwebs from his mind. “I am, Raida,” he said, giving her a grateful smile. They had shared many roads, taverns, and tents over the last year, even as they had both wandered for their own countries. But they were still close.

“Do you think anyone’s gotten in yet?” she asked, looking at the fearsome gates built into the mountain. With no one to guard them, prying them open would be a matter of time. But with no one to guard them, they couldn’t be opened easily except from the inside.

“A few,” he said. “Locals who know the in ways. Maybe a merchant or two with a private in way. But I think we might be the first national force to reach here.”

She nodded. “It’s probably only a matter of time before the HIppus occupy this place. My people have sent our swiftest to try and come and occupy it, but… if it comes to it, I’m not sure we could hold it, even if we did arrive first. We can only pray.”

“We can only hope and work towards it ourselves,” Hamlyn contested gently, but they shared a smile. Hamlyn was an early advocate and believer in Cassiel’s philosophy, even before the Age of Rebirth. Raida was an Austrin Empyrean, one who shared similar ideals for different reasons. The two of them always had something to discuss on the road.

“Anyways, how are we going to get in?” asked Raida. “I certainly don’t know the secret ways, and I doubt we have the time to search.”

“Follow me,” Hamlyn directed.

---

“A sewage entrance? Really?” Raida asked with a skeptical eye as they looked into a cave in the side of the mountain. “Isn’t there another way? And shouldn’t it be too filled for us to go through anyway?”

“No and no,” Hamlyn answered. “I suppose there might be other ways, but this is the easiest. And because no one has been adding to the filth since… whatever happened, the levels will have had time to drain. It’s probably shallower and cleaner since it’s creation.”

“Joy,” his companion said, blowing loose hair out of her eyes. “But don’t you dare complain when I smell like something a dog rolled in.”

---

They had made it in easier and cleaner than they had expected: because maintenance and repairs were expected, the Khazad had built a service lane above the expected level of filth, which had made a cleaner and faster route for Hamlyn and Raida. When they got back, they both agreed that they would recommend such a system for their respective empires. But for now… Eventually they emerged into the city and took stock.

“So it’s true,” Raida whispered as they looked at the empty streets. Only sewer rats had re-colonized the city so far. “There’s no blood, no signs of fire or violence, nothing. They just… left. Like the Alfions. An entire race… disappeared.”

Hamlyn threw her a look, but she didn’t see the former Khazad’s look. “There are still the Luchirp,” he simply said, and turned to walk off.

Raida trotted to catch up. “Yes, but, you know what I meant. They aren’t Khazad-“ she finally realized her mistake, and placed a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry, Hamlyn,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to say that you-” She paused, tried to come up with a better way to say what she meant, and finished with “Hamlyn, I don’t care what anyone else has ever said to you. I think you are one of the best Dwarves, no, best men I have ever met. I mean it.”

“Good… Bad… maybe that Runekeeper was right after all; I’m just a traitor,” he said. “I mean, look at me. I’m here to rob the graves of my own people, people I grew up with. What does anything else matter?”

Raida tried to say something, but couldn’t. Instead, Hamlyn just kept walking on.

“Come, let’s do what we came to do.”

---

They didn’t bother going to the vaults. While there was unquestionably great treasures of gold there, and possibly magical artifacts as well, such trinkets would be impossible to take away with them in any real amount. No, the most valuable treasure wasn’t the heaviest or the shiniest, but far less material.

The entered the palace, walking through the servant’s entrance and going straight through the Throne room. It was all neat and orderly, as if they had been expecting this on one level or another. Not even a convenient explanatory note was left on the throne. Everything was just… there. War reports neatly stacked here, the last roundups of nonbelievers there. Tidy and organized, but left as if expecting to come back at some point.

They would look through those documents later, to see if any clues could be gained. But they had more immediate priorities.

“This is the Royal Technological Library,” Hamlyn explained as they walked into a mammoth cavern of stone rows. It was almost a library, one you could spend a lifetime lost in, except that instead of books and bookcases there were only bookcases of stone, on which letters and diagrams were chiseled into the rock itself.

“This room was commissioned by our first king as a place where even the most fundamental technical knowledge was to be recorded and stored as a precaution in case a catastrophe like the Age of Ice were to occur again, so that knowledge would be as lasting as the stones it was carved in. The fundamental basics of all technical and magical knowledge of the Khazad is stored here, even if understanding the applications and uses were left to society to develop. Here we can see the culmination of their knowledge up to the point they left.”

Both Hamlyn and Raida took off their packs and took out sheets of paper. Though only a tiny fraction of the size of any library shelf, these sheets were mage-crafted by the Amurites and Khadi, able to store and remember dozens or even hundreds of written items on each page. Ideal for books and government documents, it also came in handy elsewhere. Such as putting it against a stone wall and rubbing a graphite pencil across it, leaving a record of what was carved beneath it. After filling a page just so, they would move the page over, refresh it, and do it again. They had many such pages, and Austrin and Grigori messenger hawks alike were surely on their way with more.

Starting at the end of the cavern on the basis that the most advanced would be the latest added, the two settled into a comfortable patter. Raida took the higher writings and diagrams, while Hamlyn took the lower.

“So, do you understand what these mean?” she asked eventually. It was all dwarven to her, though what little she had picked up had allowed her to identify some of the earlier ones they had passed: processes of mining, diagrams of sea craft, the justification of the God King. Others, though, had been beyond her limited means.

“Not entirely,” Hamlyn said. “Some I recognize, but I think many of these later writing are in code. But here,” he said, pointing at one area he had taken care to copy twice, “I recognize it as an early dwarven description for mithrill, possibly how to find it.” He didn’t object when she immediately copied that section on another paper. “But some of these others? I have no clue what saltpeter is supposed to be good for, but I know that one was mostly in code. Lord knows how we’re expected to decode it, unless the key is somewhere in here. And here?” he said, indicating another area he had covered earlier, “you can tell that these came after the fanatics seized power. They aren’t coded at all, but advertise of all the ways they celebrate Kilimorph and Her blessings.” He shook his head. “Fanatics. Like any other religion would have similar claims and blessings. I doubt we will get much from them.”

Raida looked at that section with a critical eye. Her companion might be a committed agnostic, but…

“The Agreement is still in effect, yes?” she asked, even though doing so brought a pause and suspicion to her friend.

“Of course,” he answered slowly. “Cassiel promised that our people would share knowledge freely, just as you aided us. I have no reason to doubt he is recruiting dwarven citizens for translation even now. Why do you ask?”

Raida gave a smile to defuse the mood. “Our people have different needs, that’s all,” she said. “Even if you don’t get much good out of their religious developments, I think learning from them, and their mistakes, would benefit the Austrin.”

Hamlyn accepted it, and the air calmed. They worked until sundown, finding shelter in the palace. After exiting the city the next morning to receive new paper from the messenger hawks and send the previous days copying to home, they returned into the city to do it again.