Chapter 008 - Ash and Water The Seventh Thread

# Chapter 8: Ash and Water: The Seventh Thread The shadows from the tavern lamps had barely receded before trouble sought the assembled knights of the square table once more. Jarlaxle arrived with the dawn, a tempest contained in velvet and wit, though even his flamboyance was shadowed by sombre tidings. He posed the question before anyone could ask after his scarlet-streaked side: “Menzobaranzen,” he said, the city’s name lingering on a hush, “do you know what’s become of it? They say a death fog swallowed it whole. Some swear there are spirits wandering within. Not only the dead—something more restless.” No voice in the hall could answer him. The fog’s legend had grown on the wind: thick, directionless, bearing strange echoes at night. Yet for Jarlaxle, mere rumour was never enough. He leaned forward, his gaze bright with calculation. “I’ve seen Myconids passing, ferrying corpses—dozens at a time, in and out, as though each laden form was seed for their own silent garden.” He waited for a response—received none—and so pressed his claims further, each observation stacking like coins before an uncertain wager. “You’ve not noticed scorch marks along the ground?” he asked. “Here and there along the edge of town, as though something burned through with acid?” The hall was silent. “Nor the cubes? There’s a tide of gelatinous cubes moving—more of them than I’ve seen in my life. Drawn toward the Underdark, by some foul compulsion. Strange, even for this age.” His gaze sharpened, reminiscent of the gambler’s glint bereft of luck. “I think the Myconids are harvesting more dead than ever before. Too many for any ordinary purpose. They may be raising an army in the dark.” This last was uttered softly—not an oracle’s prophecy, but the speculation of one who had survived among shadows and treacheries. Having cast his worries like seeds, Jarlaxle made as if to vanish by magic but instead walked quite theatrically aside, producing from beneath his cloak the motley trappings of a Myrkulite—a pale mask, a blackened scarf marked with white sigils. When the transformation was complete, he was unrecognisable save to those who watched for such performances. As Myrkul’s silent disciple, he swept from sight, voicing only his intent to return to Luskan, where death and uncertain allies awaited. When the doors fell closed after him, ordinary rhythms pressed in again like surf against the stones. Those rhythms, though, were soon to be fractured in their own way. Near the battered wizard's tower, a flickered quarrel of activity caught the morning eye. Fergal could be seen, hunched and intent, carrying blocks of granite and weathered stone out from the fallen tower and making pilgrimage toward the distant grey line of the shore. Graxen, sharper-eyed than most, sidled by, his tone dry with recollection. “I heard him say he’d build a shrine—Umberlee’s own temple, to watch over these drowned coasts.” No one argued his account; nor could they yet say what truly worked in Fergal’s soul. Before these smaller mysteries could find their answer, the party was drawn by another concern. The news from the duck pond had been as persistent as the questions from Jarlaxle—the kobold Squeeb, ever the mischief, was up to something that warranted inspection. They left the tower’s shadow and found the beach whipped by salt wind, the sun barely bright enough to split the mist. Squeeb, diminutive and raucous, had massed his ducks—a makeshift gaggle that he declared, with chest out and voice high, would serve as his crew. “Captain Squeeb,” he proclaimed. “And you—” he pointed with pride to a quacking mallard—“First Mate! You’ll be quaptain once I retire. Mark my words.” The bravado did not go unchallenged. Qwimby, as ever custodial where dangerous implements were concerned, began to instruct Squeeb on matters of gun safety. A heated debate grew, the words escalating and gaining edge. Squeeb, pride stung, declared his intention: “Then we’ll settle it like officers—duel at dawn, if you dare!” Before Qwimby could find patience or amusement, the quarrel caught the ear of Karissa. She watched, the smallest curl to her lip, and reached down to pet Squeeb with what might have been affection in anyone else but was, on her, a patronising ruffle. Squeeb, perhaps sensing the insult, perhaps merely wild with unchecked spirit, snapped—there was a flash and a cry, and half of Karissa’s middle finger was suddenly gone, lost to the kobold’s jagged teeth. The silence that followed barely lasted a heartbeat. Karissa, white with fury, struck Squeeb with the full force of her anger—a closed fist, heedless, savage. The kobold crumpled beneath her blow, the spirit driven from his small, scaly body in an instant. The ducks scattered, squawking in confusion. Panic seized the beach. Ellette, swift to sense the gravity, turned heel and ran toward the shore, calling out for Fergal by name. Graxen, for his part, made for Squeeb’s ducks, seeing one—Squeeb’s chosen first mate—waving with distress and clutching the gun at the heart of the quarrel. He reached to disarm it, but the duck’s frantic flapping moved faster than wisdom. The gun fired, the shot missing Graxen but singing the air, all feathers and chaos. Fergal, guided by Ellette’s urgent voice, crossed the stony beach. He knelt at Squeeb’s side, muttered prayers to gods above or below, and worked to stem the flight of life from the kobold’s battered chest. In time, his hands stilled the trembling—Squeeb, for now, was not dead, though the pallor never quite left his scaled cheeks. There was no pause for relief. Steve, maybe out of righteous anger or cool calculation, shouldered Karissa roughly and shoved her into the surf. She landed in the shallows with a gasp, the salt stinging raw flesh, the panic of cold water overtaking her rage. Qwimby waded in to the rescue, but found himself caught amid Karissa’s struggling, his limbs ensnared as she scrabbled for footing and breath. Ellette, recognizing a second tragedy, gathered her power and with the invocation of flight, swept over the water. She caught Karissa before the undertow claimed her and drew her back, rising with magic above the splashing, dragging her to safety upon the sand. A hush fell at last, broken only by the battered breathing of those saved and the plaintive quacks of the scattered ducks. Karissa sat on the shore, her hands shaking, fingers clutching useless at the wound where her middle finger had been. The wetness of her hair and the taste of salt on her tongue brought a new fear beating in her chest—one that would take root far longer than any physical hurt. From that hour, the notion of drowning troubled her dreams, and resentment for kobolds kindled in her heart, sharp as the memory of Squeeb’s teeth. The sea’s grey swell washed blood and feathers from the sand, but the day’s chain of madness lingered in the eyes of all who had witnessed it. Where Jarlaxle’s warnings of death fogs and marching dead had seemed distant, the violence of smaller hearts had arrived all too close, all too quick. In their mouths, there was the taste of salt; in their thoughts, the echo of Squeeb’s name and the questions no morning could bring to shore.