#ifchi (species)

[yutzen]

Until the Rains Come

The following tale has been compiled as best as I could manage from every fragment I could identify within the various libraries of Ishiss (city and nation). I will readily admit the experience was both thrilling and immensely frustrating: Individual fragments have been well-known for quite some time already, but a number of minor yet notable contradictions prevented the rise of a true compendium, as leading figures I shall not be naming made mutually incompatible versions and declared theirs the most truthful, actively attacking others over assumed lack of veracity. I have done all I could to smooth over the contradictions and provide something closer to a definitive version, fully expecting to draw critique from the aforementioned figures for making such a claim. To them I would like to say: Go ahead. I have so much to tell you. The various fragments were delightfully well preserved despite dating to pre-Refuge times, thanks to the Ifchi’s sturdy paper-making techniques, but different interpretations of their contents only multiplied with time, obfuscating matters that should’ve been far simpler. If any further fragments show up beyond their Exit, I will be retrieving them personally this time.

Many a thread can be drawn between water and life. Both have been so tightly linked as to be synonymous throughout our existence; even those that thrive far from water will always need to carry some with them, and even the most sun-baked peoples must eventually return to it. But more importantly, more relevantly, many a thread can be drawn between water and Being[1] as a whole, not just for that which breathes and moves. As we and all others are shaped from water, Being is not just a state, but a fundamental part of all we know, the bottom-most building block. For all that lives, for the stone beneath our feet, for the air that surrounds us all, and even water itself. Even the emptiness beyond, the void that holds seemingly nothing, is in itself held up by Being; if it wasn’t, nothing could occupy it, for it would not be there at all[2].

The threads hardly end there. Much like water, Being is a limited thing. Just as water bodies of all kinds are surrounded by dry land and by empty air, made scarce in every direction, all Being is strung out in one body after another, hardly ever connected, held up by nothing, pressed down on by nothing, surrounded by nothing at all. True nothingness, that cannot be pushed aside so easily by anything that Is – not without intent, motivation, actual force that such masses of Being cannot usually muster by themselves. And just like water, Being can slowly fade into its surroundings, seemingly dissipating into nothing – except in this case, the nothing is very much literal. Being can slowly seep into the rest, too thin to hold or even be anything, too disperse to do anything more than exist. And just like murky pools in the mud, drying in the sun and steaming away into thin air, the thinner it’s strung, the quicker it can all fade away. Leaving nothing but vapors and cracking earth – or nothing at all, as the case may be.

But what of those that dwell in these pools? Are they to go quietly, dry out and die under the scour of these merciless surroundings? One of the big differences, the proper differences, is in the scale. With puddles strung across the mud, you hardly have much in them. At most, a few striders, a few dozen bogmites, anything beyond the hundred would be too small for the eye to see. Being, however? Even the tiniest drop, barely worth remarking on, could hold millions and millions like us, only vaguely aware the very foundation of their existence is vanishing with every passing year. You and I[3] are not even bogmites at such grand scales, and we are even more helpless in the face of such drying-up than they would be.

There are, however, those that aren’t us. And of them, there is one out there that we know is not helpless.

A curious entity, one that lives in nothingness yet needs Being to thrive. A wandering sort, never staying long in one spot, whether it Is or not. A creature of opposites, one that could only come to exist in the quagmire that occurs where existence and nonexistence meet. In this, and acknowledging its shape would be unclear to us all, I would compare it to a toad[4]. Skipping from pool to pool, diving and digging alike, sifting through the mud made by Being. And just big enough to change the very landscape around it, little by little, one shovel of its webbed limbs at a time.

And change the landscape it does. Just as a creature that is neither of earth alone, nor pure earth, would know best how to shape the places were both meet, this entity can shape its own quagmire with greater results than anything of singular nature. Neither[5] a creature of nothingness alone, Nor[5] one of Being like us, it alone can carve the grand, yet precise shapes it desires into the murky puddles that shape everything. And so it does, with every passing eon, seemingly dedicating all of its endless time to molding this swamp of existence to its own desires.

But what would such a creature desire? What manner of wants could a being so far beyond our comprehension even have, that we could understand? The answer is uncertain, but if I were to take the simplest guess, it would be: Preservation.

Preservation of what, you ask? Hard to answer. It could be its own life, keeping an environment it prefers, or perhaps there is something else to it. Perhaps it is aware of smaller beings like us. We only know what it does: When one of the pools of Being is running thin, when it seeps away into the nothingness, spreading into thin vapors unable to hold even the tiniest smidge of existence, this creature, this keeper of the quagmire, starts carving away the edges that keep it trapped in place, and lets all the Being held within flow freely, away in directions we could not perceive. What forces actually move these flows, we don’t know either, but we know exactly where it leads: To a greater pool.

For the comparison holds, as I said before: Greater masses of Being, much like greater bodies of water, do not dissipate nearly as quickly, and the deeper they go, the longer they can last. And the toad in charge will merge the unfortunate pools of existence into greater ones, forming ever greater bodies of Being dotting the nothingness beyond. Less of them, for sure, pooling their minuscule inhabitants together, forcing them to adapt, but perhaps it’s the price to pay in the face of oblivion – that is, if it even knows they’re there.

How long has it been doing so, one wonders? How many pools of Being have been merged, and come close to drying out again before having to be merged, again and again? Whole worlds blended into one, with their individual strings of history knotted into a singular rope, one by one? Is it perhaps doing this without aim, simply forming ever greater bodies, intervening only when they threaten to dry? Or is there a greater lake of Being somewhere deep, towards which it channels every last trace of existence so that it may last? Perhaps it’s the first of these answers that’s the most important of all. For it would determine the rest, wouldn’t it? If it’s been going long enough… all that’d be there would be scattered puddles, channeled through ever-greater distances into a grand, yet shallow lake, all that’s left of so many different masses of Being. Then again, it may not be so shallow, but the toad is never truly sated with its size. We simply do not know. All we can do is speculate…

And speculate we will. For however long this has been going on, the only thing we know is that it’ll continue. Perhaps until the end of time, when all dries up, even the biggest of all pools, and it’s forced to concede, roll over and die… But I wouldn’t think so. As I said, all Being that dissipates into the nothingness around it? It’s never truly gone. It’ll grow thick with existence, perhaps thick enough to start holding entities again, even if just the smallest of all. Perhaps Being shall coalesce, as the apparent end draws near, and the keeper of this quagmire has but the smallest puddle, the very last inches of a well, to itself…

Perhaps, just like the toads we know, all it needs to do is hold on until the rains come. And perhaps then, as the great string of puddles and pools is reformed, as the cracked earth of nothingness returns to a quagmire of its liking under the storm, it shall finally rest… While the rains last, at least.

[1]Direct translation from the word shurrif, which can double as noun (existence) and verb (to exist, to be), while acting as antonym to the word frush (nonexistent, not real). Every fragment insisted in using it as a noun, with context aiding the translation, and I have capitalized each proper use of the translated word for clarity’s sake. [2]If these passages seem more reiterative than they should, I apologize; part of the problem in compiling the tale from its fragments was that different sources often neglected passages and comparisons that others did use, and completeness’ sake demanded I weave them all together. [3]Unusually, between the fragments I collected, this was the most common, most possible translation. More curiously, not once did I find anything resembling an address to the reader, or the author referring to themselves as a writer; the closest I could find was something that would translate to “my dear interlocutor”, which both hints that these were once meant as transcripts, and baffles me as something anyone would deliberately speak, let alone write down. [4]An astounding number of fragments attempted to specify species-wise, rather than leave it at a more recognizable level. I have opted for the latter, rather than fall into the “scholarly” squabbles of trying to pinpoint individual manners of batracian. Again, all objections on this particular matter can be presented publicly, and I will welcome each and every one. [5]Unusually, the word I translated to “Neither” here often refers to a manner of temporary Exit-like gate to either a distant spot within the same realm, or more rarely, another realm, requiring an individual to “embody” it to function. Said individuals cause an overlap between areas, being “neither here nor there”, hence the colloquial name. While further elaboration is beyond the scope of this volume, the term does not seem to apply 100% here. But the parallels should be clear, and I chose to capitalize “Nor” as well to reflect this. -Excerpt from "Who is the Lord Below? A Treatise on the Radiant and Cthonic", authored by 'the Ever-Restless Nirrhamidh' (assumed pseudonym; author not yet identified and under active investigation)

[yutzen]

A Quick Biological Primer on Subterraneum Citizens

(From the archives again, this time more a lorefile than a story. But I would prefer to rescue this one quickly for the sake of clarity in the future. I will be linking back here often.)

So, if you've been following me for any length of time, been keeping up with certain writing prompt accounts, or generally just stumbled onto the things I've been writing that have the Subterraneum_(Yutzen), you may have a variety of questions. Mostly ones like "the fuck's an Ifchi".

In the interest of giving folks and also myself a reference for the more appearance-based or species-related questions, and keeping track of general biology and capacities, here's a quick (by my standards) primer on each of the Subterraneum's major sentient species. Arranged in no particular order, with names (formal and very informal), basic measures and some elaboration on their looks, anatomy and more esoteric capacities, if any are involved. I will get to elaboration on their nations' actual setups on some other primer in the future, hopefully.

Included is also a quick, but probably necessary introduction on the "magic system" (for lack of better terms) in the Subterraneum, intentionally vague as it may be. The stuff goes deep enough to be biologically important after all.

Anyhow, here goes, hope it helps! And I apologize if any numbers seem ridiculous, which they'll probably be. Feel free to correct me but also physics are a little weird down there.

A NOTE ON AFFINITIES AND AMBIENT ENERGIES: It’s not just creatures that enter the Subterraneum through its various Exits. Ambient energies, background fields and other phenomena have been leaking through the rock for centuries on end, and the ever-present Radiance has blended them together over time into an uneven backdrop of strange, unrelated and even contradictory essences. The residents of the caverns have been affected by these background fields, and have changed to attune to and manipulate them in turn, with varying amounts of success.

The so-called “elemental” energies tend to manifest strongly and directly, by infused terrains and by the various species alike; whether this is part of how the elements work or an interaction (if not direct “preference”) from the Radiance it’s mixed with is unknown. Nevertheless, each of the usual species can often manifest such energies in their own unique ways, and individuals often show shockingly different affinities, even within the same species. Affinities with the Radiance itself vary similarly, though not one species can be said to be untouched by it.

It bears mentioning that the Radiance often interferes with other energies even in the midst of manipulation, adding a dose of unpredictability to the results. Those that can harness this, and tap into the Radiance’s unique metaphysical properties, can reach what is known as one of the ill-understood Sparks: Manipulation of a given element or property that actively, though selectively, breaches specific rules that usually govern it, reaching into metaphysical and sometimes even semantic territory.

Ifchi/Olms

(Singular and Plural are both Ifchi)

Average height: ~1.65 m, with length (including tail) closer to 2.2 m

Average weight: ~75 Kg (including tail)

Description: In truth they’re hardly olms, as most of their traits are closer to axolotls, down to the color variations; it varies on a spectrum, as stories tell of them being two species once that merged together post-arrival with Radiance-granted ease, leaving axolotl traits as dominant - though olm traits have been known to assert themselves in old age. Bipedal, slimy and damp at all times when healthy. They have four-fingered, nail-less hands with little strength, wiry limbs made more for quick movements than strength, and large, paddle-like tails that drag across the ground and let them swim faster than they can run. They have the expected branching frills, growing with age until they sag and droop during older ages; in especially ancient individuals they can even touch the floor. These frills can be a whole spectrum of colors themselves, too, solid but highly variable. The color tends to indicate affinity to ambient fields and energie, for these frills can sense, connect to and work as a focus when manipulating the ambient energies in a given area, Radiant or otherwise. As a result, “spellcasters” are widespread among the species, and their their manipulation of ambient fields oft takes highly recognizable, obvious forms, usually one-off high energy movements that do plenty, but don’t last long.

Ferigozi/Shard Moles

(Singular and plural are both Ferigozi)

Average Height: ~1.4 m

Average Weight: ~70 Kg, mostly (but not entirely) muscle

Description: Stout and bulky creatures on short hindlegs, with powerful forearms and hands bearing oversized claws that can crack solid stone. They have beady eyes and elongated, sensitive snouts that in some strains have extra-sensitive “whiskers” like star-nosed moles do, while others have more proper whiskers running along their snouts. Their eye-sight is lacking even by Subterraneum standards, but they have excellent senses for vibrations in the area, even minor shifts in the breeze. Early in their lifetimes they are almost entirely mole-like, with short, dense and very smooth fur in shades of brown and black; as they age, however, they start developing interlocking chitinous plates like pangolins do, reaching full tesselating coverage around middle-age. Their underbellies always remain furred, however, sometimes necessitating protection. Affinities with ambient energies are limited, and concentrated almost entirely in hands and claws, moving limited amounts of energy with very high precision. Given time and skill, however, Ferigozi can learn to infuse any and all materials with higher concentrations of a chosen ambient energy, with great control over the way they manifest into the material in question; such concentrations can take decades to dilute with a reasonably skilled practitioner.

Bannerbound/Hobgremlins

(Bannerbound works for both singular and plural)

Average height: ~1.7 m, though Bannerbound fluctuations are an exercise on why averages are more useless than you'd think

Average weight: ~70 Kg, with the same warning as above

Description: It’s theorized they started as an abundance of species rather than just one, and that the Subterraneum’s effects merged them into one; with the sheer variance in their forms, this is both likely and near-impossible to actually prove. They are the single most Radiance-susceptible species in the Subterraneum, displaying the changes of excess exposure even during early stages in their lives and going from there even when hardly exposed further. The basic and initial framework would be called humanoid, if the Subterraneum knew humans, ones with glowing eyes all over the spectrum and whose “skin” tends towards single, solid hues; beyond that everything from skin colors and hair to internal anatomy can vary depending on the individual and their affinities. Even things as basic as number and nature of limbs can vary in especially attuned Bannerbound. Their cultural imperative to hide their bodies under multiple layers of garments and secretiveness about their bodies does not help either. This extends into their interaction with ambient energies as well: They are attuned enough to the Radiance that they can infuse specific actions and even creations with the capacity to stretch, and even breach, specific principles and laws. They also have easier access to the Sparks than most other species in the Subterraneum, though their affinities with non-Radiance energies tend to be lower than usual.

Korves/Deep-Crows

(Singular Korve)

Average height: ~2.2 m

Average wingspan: ~4.7 m

Average weight: ~55 Kg

Description: Unquestionable corvids, barely straightened from a theropod stance. Tall, black-feathered and with tough beaks (and necks) that can crack flarewood with a peck. Their eyes are solid in color, often red or yellow, but highly variable in number; anywhere from one to six have been observed, often arranged asymmetrically. By themselves, Korves lack fingers on their wings, with the closest being the dexterous talons they stand on; unusually for the Subterraneum, such growths never came to pass, leaving the limbs only useful for flight and stunning blows. In theory, and in times past, they’ve made do with their legs for tasks requiring fine motor skills, but the species-wide symbiosis with otherwise infectious fungal species in the Valley have given them options: Korves are especially compatible with mycotic infiltration and growths, resisting most harmful effects and taking particular control of the species’ unique structures to the point of commanding its growth and movement. Often inoculated as hatchlings, even the most average Korve can grow finger-like protrusions at the end of their wings that can manipulate objects with a slow, but certain and powerful grip. Other such manipulations have been observed, from carved and immobile growths to whipping tendrils and all in-between, and in rare cases even modification of the symbiote with ambient energies. All this is available to a skilled and willful Korve – so long as their ravenous combined appetite remains sated at all times.

Chelies/Swallows

(Singular Cheli)

Average height: ~1.2 m

Average wingspan: ~2.5 m

Average weight: ~30 Kg

Description: While clearly avians, Chelies are more anthropomorphic (and smaller in all aspects) than the Korves, standing more directly upright. Their wings are thin and thickly-feathered, with flat, claw-like growths on the inside of the wingtip that can grasp like hands would and still fold back into the wing to keep its shape aerodynamic. In addition, they have a similarly bony, though much thicker spur closer to the base of each wing, naturally sharp and often given further edge by the Chelies themselves. Between that, their raptor-like talons and beaks that have lengthened and sharpened with generations, their resemblance to actual swallows nowadays is dubious – though they still retain their red and blue plumage, even thicker and more intensely colorful than ever before. Their need for flight has given them strong, though wiry musculature that grants them speed and agility alike, showing less maneuverability but greater speed than Vezarym in the air. Unlike the Vez – and most Subterraneum species at that – Chelies have excellent eyesight, both close up and at a distance, able to pick out details and movement even in the most spore-choked of caverns. When it comes to ambient energies, they seem entirely unable to affect inorganic materials, or themselves for that matter: Every effect they can induce through their claws and spurs is a “slow burn” applied to other living beings. This is most often applied in their well-known fungal gardens, manipulating otherwise mundane species into something else entirely.

Troxi/Quillskinks

(Singular and plural are both Troxi)

Average height: 1.3 m, with length including tail closer to 2.1 m

Average weight: ~45 kg (including tail)

Description: Skinks is not necessarily the right term, they have too many hints of theropod (and maybe even kobold) in them to truly call them such, but they are reptiles nonetheless. Troxi always have long, whip-like tails that can be shed and regrown, almost always longer than the rest of their bodies, their eyes have invariably slit pupils, and their scales are always in patterns of three different colors. As a norm, their bodies and limbs are toned and slender, with small, yet rough scales. However, this is but a guideline: Variations and mutations – scarce at first, yet reliably transmissible unlike Bannerbound alterations – have made themselves present startlingly quickly, putting the species in biological flux since the establishment of the Republics proper. It’s speculated this is the same process of accelerated “evolution” that affected all previous dwellers, though all projections hint that it’s happening far faster than expected, for unknown and oft-speculated reasons. Whatever the truth may be, Troxi can be seen with different scale patterns and types, spikes along their sides, variable tongues, among many other possibilities. The newest generations even exhibit one uniform change in comparison to their forebears: The emergence of a pattern of colorful feathers along the ridge of their backs, never equal between Troxi yet always present. It’s this newest alteration to the species that’s given them their informal (and sometimes unwanted) nickname.

Shumhaq/Sandhusks

(Singular and plural remain the same)

Average height: ~0.9 m (length including tail is closer to 2.1 m)

Average weight: ~85 kg

Description: Semi-upright arthropods like the rest of their “family”, Shumhaq are closer to arachnids than insects, and closer to scorpions than spiders in that regard; they are the tallest of the Hive members, with the hardest exoskeletons as well. Their framework varies relatively little compared to other Subterraneum species: Six strong, chitinous legs their bulbous, armored abdomens stand on, a scorpion tail that stretches back complete with a sharp stinger, and an upright, armored half with an eighteen-eyed head with grinding chelicerae. Their grasping limbs are “concentric” pincers, with a large, crushing pair surrounding a smaller, more dexterous set of pincers that fit neatly within sockets at the base. Their stingers secrete toxins, with variable but powerful effects that can be affected by the infusion of ambient energies – the only manipulation of such Shumhaq appear capable of – which change how they affect biology and even inanimate materials. Much like other Hive members, they have different castes, but they vary very little in comparison, simply altering their anatomical proportions; mostly, their stingers and their claws tend to be inversely correlated in size. Shumhaq as a whole are, in fact, particularly hardened against any altering and mutating effects, whether Radiance-related or not – it is suspected their genetic sequences and general anatomy have “hardened” in response to such exposure to the point of “burning out” any capacity for further change.

Syhaq/Candlebees

(Singular and plural remain the same)

Average height: ~0.7 m (length is closer to 1.8 m)

Average wingspan: ~2 m

Average weight: ~60 Kg, though often heavier thanks to wax production

Description: Semi-upright arthropods like the rest of their “family”, Syhaq are undoubtedly bee-like in look and physiognomy; they are the shortest of the Hive members, and often the portliest. They all have iridescent wings, fuzzy, stout abdomens striped in black and white, four furred legs to bear their weight, and four-fingered hands at the end of two chitinous limbs, as well as oversized compound eyes with unusual white bioluminiscence. Their antennae are often thick and a foot long at minimum, and the main source of the beeswax Syhaq are known for: They’re used to both secrete the substance in significant amounts, sculpt it as it goes, and even infuse it with varied elemental energies that create different “recipes” with very different properties. This is far from the only place this wax comes from, however; their entire bodies are almost always covered in the stuff, clumping together if not groomed, and in certain overproductive castes they often form stiff “tendrils” (much like planthopper nymphs) that the Syhaq can sculpt to their leisure for different purposes. Another anatomical matter that depends on the caste is the presence of a stinger; not all of them have one, and in those that do its effects can vary from a simple, empty stabbing weapon to an injector of powerful paralytic toxins.

Zivhaq/Flayer Bugs

(Singular and plural remain the same)

Average height: ~1 m (length is closer to 2.7 m)

Average weight: ~45 Kg

Description: Semi-upright arthropods like the rest of their “family”, Zivhaq are the longest, slimmest and most anatomically complicated of the Hive members, most resembling a blend of centipede and praying mantis. Their elongated, wingless abdomens stand upon dozens of long, sharp legs that stop abruptly once the thorax begins – from there, four more limbs sprout, two of which end in four-fingered hands while the uppermost pair ends in sharp, scythe-like extremities that can be tucked almost completely into their bodies. Their faces have flat compound eyes, elongated, flexible chelicerae and long antennae that split apart into multiple shifting protrusions. The entirety of their frame is highly flexible, and Zivhaq have a highly developed kinesthetic sense that gives them excellent control of it. They can squirm through gaps mere inches in diameter, curl themselves up tightly and stretch their own limbs to almost twice their size. This combination is the result of unique adaptations for the sake of disguising themselves as other species: Zivhaq gain their nickname by the capacity to use discarded exoskeletons, pelts and actual skin of other creatures to impersonate them, by crawling and puppeteering such exteriors with their abundant extremities and highly flexible vocal apparatus. Such capacities have naturally pushed them to the fringes from the expected paranoia, making their societies highly secretive. This has made the deeper details of their anatomy, including any ambient energy manipulation, very difficult to publicly discern.

Nirhaq/Longbrook’s Moths

(Singular and plural remain the same)

Average height: ~0.8 m (length is closer to 1.8)

Average wingspan: ~3.5 m

Average weight: ~25 Kg

Description: Semi-upright arthropods like the rest of their “family”, Nirhaq are entirely lepidopteran, closest to moths but still bearing elements of butterflies when it comes to their wings; their anatomies are the most enigmatic of the Hive members, with little study in comparison to the others. Standing upon four fluffy legs, with elongated and thickly-furred abdomens, and six-fingered hands at the end of two fuzzy limbs at their thorax, they tend towards darker colors in both fur and chitin. They have large, compound eyes that shine in the dark with elaborate patterns, curled antennae that twitch and twist, and dexterous proboscii with tiny chelicerae at the end that can slowly snip off solid food. The most intriguing part of their anatomies is their wings: Moth-like or butterfly-like, with the occasional merge of transparencies and opacities between them, they always bear elaborate patterns that shift at the Nirhaq’s will, and have a variety of instinctual displays seemingly kept in their “genetic” memory, which can be expanded further through learning. It is here that their intrigue lies: These Hive members have instinctive access to a variety of supernatural symbology and “languages” that bypass mental filters on perception and directly “tell” the brain to perceive certain things, imposing audiovisual illusions over their forms that are partially at the Nirhaq’s control. This makes them the most secretive of the Hive members, often passing themselves as citizens of other species throughout their lives.

Vezarym/Thrumhorn Bats

(Vezarym works for both singular and plural)

Average height: ~2.4 m

Average wingspan: ~5.5 m

Average weight: ~45 Kg

Description: Tall, slender chiropterans with enormous wingspan and powerful footclaws, graceful in flight and upside-down yet always hunched by the weight of their wings when standing upright. They have arms beneath their wings, an additional pair of limbs with vestigial membranes of their own to aid in steering, and actual (if delicate) hands. Their snouts are closer to fruit bats, though unusual protrusions from their noses are very common, and their needled fangs work on meat and mushroom alike. Their eyesight is decent, but very short, aided by their bioluminescent eyes (usually but not always yellow) when it comes to perceiving what’s right in front of them, but falling off mere meters away. Vezarym have appropriately huge ears with “concentric” growths within that seemingly aid in focusing sound, aiding their pin-point echolocation alongside their powerful lungs and bony throat ridges that serve as both amplifiers and protection. Sitting between their ears are short horns shaped like a lyre, that thrum with sound both emitted and received – this is believed to aid in both echolocation and regular listening, but it’s theorized they are also fundamental in ambient energy perception and manipulation. Said manipulation is always subtle, never forceful, seemingly resonating and either amplifying or dampening a given element (or several) in the area, with stronger effects when working together: Multiple harmonizing Vezarym can completely shift a place’s elemental alignment for however long their ‘song’ lasts.

Toskars/Shard Badgers

(singular Toskar)

Average height: ~1.9 m

Average weight: ~120 Kg

Description: Heavyset creatures, taller than the Ferigozi while keeping similar (initial) musculature. Their tough and unruly fur is always vertically striped, often black and white, though there are some who can have very light cyan and/or deep, dark blue instead. They have somewhat oversized hands and feet on relatively short, though muscular limbs, with tough (though blunt) claws upon all digits. Toskars are not wholly badgers, and even in their early lives they show some seal-like traits like webbing between their fingers and a layer of insulating fat under their hides. With age, their fur grows thicker and tougher still – with time, the fur on their backs starts to harden into chitinous, sharpened quills that bristle when the Toskar feels tense or threatened. More pinniped traits start manifesting more intensely as well, with males and females alike growing further, bulking up and often growing thick, quilly mustaches; some select castes even develop small tusks where their fangs once were as they reach middle age. Their affinities with ambient energies rarely manifest more than a few inches outside of their bodies, with no clear focus organ or limb. Much like the Ferigozi, they can learn to infuse material with such energies, but such infusions rarely last beyond a few hours. However, they find the manipulation and infusion of energies within their own organic material much easier, letting skilled practitioners empower their bodies in unpredictable ways.

[yutzen]

Midnight Alight

In an upside-down forest of lichens and mold, clinging tightly to the dangling, dripping flora, a swallow and a skink crept their way from one stalactite to the next, with one eye always fixed on the rolling, dusty expanse below. One flew between them with ease, a streak of red and blue that flitted from one to the other and dug her spurs into the moss to survey the next flight, while the other practically submerged into the mass of lichen, with little more than their turquoise crest poking out from underneath. There was half a mile between them and the dunes, and they knew not even the “sand” that shaped them – a deep, sodden layer of fuzzy spores and other drifting detritus flowing from the forests to the North – would soften their fall if they slipped off the ceiling… But they hardly worried; even the one that couldn’t fly had a grip that would hold tight on bare rock, let alone these gnarled, overgrown fronds. “Don’t start slipping now, I don’t wanna have to catch you.” Even the Cheli’s whispers were shrill, almost unwelcome in this breezy silence, and her sneer only made them worse. “You and that rifle of yours that’s gotta be half your weight. They’re gonna hear you all the way in the fucking Lakes with that thing!” “You’d be surprised” was the Troxi’s reply, calm as they could manage under the strain of moving upside-down. “Besides, isn’t this a distraction, miss Chitwy? Better for them to hear the shot, make them realize it?” Chitwy hung from her talons to face them, fixing them with a scowl before she deigned respond. “If you actually nail the shot, you don’t need the noise, it’s a bigger giveaway than anything else! You’re lucky this place barely has any echo, we’d be found real quick if it did.” “Again, doesn’t that make the distraction better? We’re not the ones piloting a whole airship through the stalactites, looking for two little figures scrambling through the moss.” The skink was barely even looking at her, their eyes wandering all over the land beneath, admiring a landscape they’d never seen.

This is a far longer story than usual, and I'm not sure it's gonna fit in here in its entirety. You may find the rest in: -AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66111994 -Dreamwidth: https://yutzen.dreamwidth.org/9271.html

[yutzen]

Off the Beaten Path

Target is believed to be in the Western side of the Lusterhills. A token force is to accompany the Tracker to facilitate apprehension, though they must be informed to prioritize mobility over protection, as the target is believed to be alone and highly mobile. After capture, the target is to be brought in alive for trial. Recommendation to set off as quickly as possible to minimize possibilities of escape.

It had all gone completely, utterly wrong.

It had been going wrong for months already, but only now could Qarretzu see it. In the moment, they hadn’t even come close to considering signing into the Legionary Exchange would’ve led to getting marched across these rolling hills of stone so flat it almost seemed polished, but there you had it. Looking back, starting their stint by having an altercation with another Legionnaire, let alone with the quartermaster and the… higher up that defended him, could barely remember that one’s rank, had to earn the Troxi a spot in someone’s shitlist. Even if they were right then and continue to be right.

But the trip from that, to asking to leave and being denied, to leaving anyways, to this bit? That was more of a blur. Hard to decide what they could’ve done differently there, would’ve meant mostly just… not being Qarretzu. Maybe, in the end, they really just weren’t cut to be in any kind of Legion. Even one away from the capital and all its crowds. And in the end, thinking they could even be one cost them what little they had, and this would be the last moment out in the open before they got imprisoned, slammed in together with a bunch of dangerous strangers, never to see the outside world again… not even this subterranean wilderness, let alone what laid so far away now.

The skink turned to their captors, one of them holding the leash to their neck like a damned animal. The Legionnaires were to be expected, at least, even if they seemed underprepared for the occasion. Almost insultingly so, barely an ounce of metal on them. Even for fellow Troxi, packing light as they usually did, they didn’t seem ready for an actual fight, which made the smug look they got in return from one of the five sting even worse. But their current, likely temporary “boss” was the bigger problem… Literally in fact. The Shumhaq that held the chain was barely taller than the skinks, but far wider, and far stockier, with an exoskeleton that was almost bulbous with what Qarretzu could only assume was muscle, not knowing what exactly Hive sorts had for muscle. But with massive pincers like hers, and that stinging tail in the back that could stab right through their chest, it was clear she had plenty of it, neatly packed in a shell of pitch black chitin…

…And she caught her looking, with those compound eyes shifting their tones into the best impression of a scowl. The sandhusk twisted the pincer that held their chain, giving them a sudden yank that forced them to stumble closer, and almost fall. “Whatever you’re thinking of, don’t”, she warned, before taking the lead once more with the other five – two of them giggling – trailing behind. Couldn’t even get one glance past this… tracker of theirs, could they?

It would only keep going downhill from this moment forward, where they’d miss these limestone hills, wouldn’t it? Just because they might be the last bit of the outside world the Troxi ever sees before being locked away for desertion, somewhere in… It didn’t matter where. Somewhere in the Gyre, with dust creeping through the bars being the only thing to remind them that there’s still a Subterraneum out there. Damn it all…

Nothing else to do but march. And look about with wide open eyes, trying not to tear up so these last visions would be as clear as possible. Something to remember in the dark. These windswept limestone hills – or were they swept by rain instead? It had to be both, there were creeks cutting deep into the stone, carving their way in through the years and making slopes and even little cliffsides in the process. The group was walking right next to the top of one such little cliffside, and if they looked at the bottom, past this flat of stone that almost shined, they could see the tiniest stream of running water, glistening under the meager light of their lamps…

…with two fairly large figures – comparatively speaking – right next to it.

Qarretzu blinked, then immediately faced forwards, only side-eyeing the two at the bottom. It wouldn’t do to be spotted this time, these captors were impatient as it was, but they had to make sure this was at least a possibility. Even the most remote. They were neither Troxi nor Shumhaq; rather, they looked like some very distant strangers indeed, an olm and a shard-badger, with the former seemingly fetching water off the creek. But they’d need to lean in to get a better look, as they were all passing right over those two…

They heard the chain on their neck jangle, maybe from a single misstep, a simple error in coordination. It should’ve been minor, but under their watchful eyes, and in this moment where they’d gotten distracted again, having no idea there were people down there? With both danger and opportunity opening at the exact same time? When this may be the last chance they get to be anything other than a prisoner? They didn’t even think about it.

And so, feigning a stumble, and yanking the chain as hard as they could manage to get it off the husk’s distracted grasp – successfully, thank the Lords – Qarretzu sent themselves soaring off the little cliff, cried out well past the edge of it, and braced for impact, hoping not to hit their head, but knowing either way they’d land right next to these two strangers. Nothing left to do but hope-

And, as they found out upon contact with the ground – thanks to a very audible crack somewhere within – try very, very hard not to scream. Easier said than done, of course, all they could do was limit it to several seconds of agonized groan, twisting in place as the other two just stared at the suffering skink before them. Several seconds of silence, with the Toskar raising one webbed finger as if to say something, but not finding the words for a stranger that had just fallen on them out of nowhere, and was squirming in pain right before them, unable to say anything.

Right, damn it, they needed to actually say something, even just one word! With some effort, they twisted themselves onto their back to actually see the two, getting a better look at them – and a better feeling of where the pain was coming from at that – while taking a sharp breath and holding it, trying to focus…

What they saw was some good news at least: Neither of these two looked like they had official business of any kind. No badges, no uniforms, weathered clothing, really mismatched species… Hell, even individually they didn’t look the part. By the glasses and the tunic with the fancy color, the Ifchi might’ve had money or status, once, but by the wear and tear on both that was probably in the past. And the Toskar was straight-up wearing a patchwork of different armor pieces, kludged together for coherence in a way their eye couldn’t miss; even accounting for his unusual size wouldn’t lead to that kind of improvisation if he was being backed by anyone. He could well be just like Qarretzu, another soldier on the run!

But when the time came to release that breath, they jolted at the distant sound of falling pebbles, quickly turning back towards the sound – before the flash of pain that followed nearly made them go limp. Yet even now, out the corner of the eye, the skink saw a distinctly arachnid figure crawling down towards the creek over a distant passage to make her way towards them. They couldn’t see the other five, but they had to be coming right along, too. Damn it, they hadn’t seen that passage! Misfortune to go with the fortune of these two being there, but…

All this skink could do was turn back to the badger and olm, wincing, and hiss out through battered lungs: “Help me…!”

Both of them looked at each other; the Toskar looked more baffled than anything, but the Ifchi seemed concerned, almost like she’d been threatened; she glanced around, and when her eyes focused up the creek and spotted Qarretzu’s pursuers, seemingly relaxed, as if expecting something bigger. Promising, perhaps? Or was she just resigning herself…? “Just our luck, isn’t it, Askalim?”, she finally said in a low, refined tone – confirming the skink’s guess – with more irony than any fear or irritation. No fear, that was a good sign! Hopefully…!

The badger’s response was to step forwards, in front of her, and in front of them in turn, sparing the skink a disbelieving, slightly irritated glance. As if he still couldn’t convince himself this entire situation had just fallen on him out of seemingly nowhere… They could apologize for imposing later, when they weren’t about to get locked away. If this worked, at least, but even if it didn’t, they tried, and that had to count for something. It’d be all they’d have left by then…

Still, soon as the Toskar stepped forwards – with a stride suggesting they would’ve gotten shoved aside if they dared stand up – and crossed his bulging arms, the Ifchi was there, right behind him with fingers tented, and gills flared… It was easier to get a better look at the two as they took up position, watching the approaching party with wariness, but no actual fear.

The former was big even by Toskar standards, for sure, and wearing this… patchwork of metal for an armor, that let some quills show at the back of his neck; young, but not that young. Still fluffed, with fur striped black and white- no, it was a light cyan almost like snow, still a strong contrast. Green, oddly piercing eyes, very judgemental from the look he shot at them. Experienced fighter, by the scars, but hard to tell if he had any formal experience or it was all… this kind of thing. He stood at the front with crossed arms, not reaching for the oversized, roughly-made axe at his side yet…

The latter, though? That one was intriguing. Finding Ifchi this close to the Great Dust Gyre was always an endeavor, but this one seemed straight from one of their big cities! At least some time ago, that wine-red dress had seen way better days. Intriguing palette, too: Violet eyes, scarlet gills, and a pitch-black body that abruptly turned white from the tail onwards. Qarretzu didn’t know olms came in those colors at all. And her attitude was interesting too: She looked more insulted than anything else, every movement practiced and filled with a worrying confidence…

And when they found themselves standing before the tracker and her five momentary cohorts, it almost seemed like it could go either way… But then again, the skink didn’t know the whole story. All they could do was let it play out, and perhaps steer it a little.

Of course, the tracker was the first to speak, crawling right ahead of the other five. “I’m going to request you hand over this Troxi you have. This one is a criminal, a cunning one. Don’t believe anything you’ve been told.” Opening strong, it seems, with a pointed glare at the “cunning criminal” in question.

But the Toskar just turned, staring long and hard at them with one raised eyebrow – the same eyebrow the Shumhaq could see – then turned back to her, just a little incredulous. “This one?”, he answered, clearly skeptical… making Qarretzu hope that was just a bit, they weren’t too bad a legionnaire, right?

One of the five in the back cut in, snickering: “Believe it or not! I guess when this one can’t cut it as an actual soldier he just had to go cutthroat instead!” And there it was. Neither a he nor a cut-throat, and already this smug little bitch was-

“Legion’s more of a ‘ranger’ thing than ‘soldier’, don’t you think? And I always thought this one looked more like a she.” Oh for Lords’ sake that one was wrong on both accounts too! Just had to sound all teacher-like about it, too! Getting caught was bad enough, but getting dragged back by these idiots-

A glance at the two wayward travelers stopped that thought in its tracks. The big guy seemed deep in thought, especially after a glance back at the “criminal”; seemed to want to hide something in his expression with that glance. Maybe they’d been right in thinking this was some kind of deserter too… But it was the Ifchi that stepped ahead. Looking serene, almost a little haughty in fact, and speaking with an impeccably polite tone: “If you wouldn’t mind, may I know what, exactly, is this one’s crime? In this state they’re in they barely even look like a common pickpocket, let alone some dangerous outlaw.” Great. While pointing out this ragged getup of theirs was useful, it was hardly any less embarrassing, even knowing there were good reasons for it, like being on the run for way too long for example.

“That isn’t your business, ma’am”, answered the tracker, who looked like she’d narrow her eyes if she had lids on them; the colors there very much looked the part. But she was glancing towards the other five as she said it, as if she wanted them to hear that instead of the olm.

And yet the little squad just couldn’t help it, and the giggliest one stepped forwards, shoving aside the pincer that tried to shush her. She was grinning as she spoke. “Cowardice! He fought his own more than he fought anyone else, and even that was just yelling matches!” They clenched one fist impotently at those words… Words twist even quicker than they spread.

Another one, shaking his head, stepped right in front of her – and right ahead of the tracker’s pincer as well, to clarify: “To be specific, the charges were dereliction of duty and insubordination. Not in that order of course.” Suppose that is the closest thing to true any of these five idiots have said.

Again, the “criminal”’s attention drifted back to the two, if only to stop looking at their fellow Troxi in the face. They were looking discreetly at each other, and side-eyeing Qarretzu in turn, muttering words to each other in a language they couldn’t recognize. Flighty, vowel-laden, they would’ve bet it was Ferigozi if they were a betting sort. Then the Toskar looked back at the five, directly at the five and at the last interlocutor in particular, with an unimpressed look. Then, he snorted audibly, and said: “Sounds like someone fucked it by signing this one up then. No one saw that coming? However many eyes over this in the Republics of all places and no one saw that one coming?” He even crossed his arms as he stood back with a sardonic grin… before glancing back at them for just a moment, a glance that came just in time before they could get more offended than they already were.

But it seemed this last pencil-pusher that’d decided to clarify was even more offended. Maybe the big guy really was a soldier. “Performance during testing and field performance are very different things, unlike what you’d believe, and just because this one couldn’t-”

That was as far as he got before the Shumhaq lunged like black lightning, crossing the distance in moments, to pinch that Troxi’s jaws shut with her inner pincers, the outer ones lingering menacingly to remind him to shut up lest he get them sheared off. The other four were startled, for sure, and even the two at Qarretzu’s side seemed a little put off. Faster than she looks, and they knew it, though at least the two found out without getting captured by her.

And yet, the tracker’s glare was directly fixed on the Toskar. Daring him to try something, her other pincer raised in the air. Her mandibles opened only to hiss out three words, low and furious: “Hand. Them. Over.”

A stand-off, then. If this was to end in Qarretzu’s favor, then this Toskar better be even more capable than he looked, because that match was rough enough as it was, and with five others… That, or the Ifchi better have something to surprise them. Either or. None of them was looking, though, so they took the moment to roll onto their belly, just in case they needed to scamper. But they couldn’t hold in the grunt of pain from landing right on a fracture, which made the Shumhaq turn to them-

Which was exactly the right distraction to provide, for the Ifchi to indeed prove she had a surprise for them, in the form of a blinding pillar of flame and heat that exploded from her hands and gills with but a single motion, blasting sideways into the six captors with a roar that drowned out every other sound. Ifchi could do that!? They’d heard of plenty of things they could move and control, but it was usually just water, and in less cataclysmic manners; this lady just went off on them like a volcano, so fast and hard they didn’t even hear the screams! Oh, no, wait, there they were. Very weak, barely a gurgle somewhere in the roaring of the flames, but there they were, as the silhouettes of the six were all that remained in the smoke, the smaller ones still ablaze and falling one by one, while the biggest one-

Lunged out of the flames, thoroughly singed and covered in crackling chitin, yet utterly furious, going right for the one that burned her. The olm was fast enough to flip her tail in front of her, trying to catch her pincers in thick flesh and bone that was presumably expendable – but not fast enough to pull her hands away from said tail before the pincers caught them alongside it. They could see them dig into her flesh, hear the cracking of bones big and small and a groan of contained pain that was slowly failing the “contained” part. They could witness, a moment in, what looked like digits falling off, leaking and covered in blood as the claws dug past them…

With the Toskar shoulder-slamming the tracker right off, raising his iron axe and burying it into the softened chitin of her chest, right where a bonier sort’s lungs would be. Driving it in deep, as deep as he could, until the blade just snapped off its shaft and was left in place.

As Qarretzu scampered through the chaos for something, anything to do, they kept the fight in the corner of their eye as it proceeded. The wounded olm, doing her best to stop her own bleeding with mutilated hands. The sandhusk throwing herself at her new opponent, trying to stab him with her tail only to find the heat had softened her stinger until it bent it half against his helm. The ensuing struggle as she went for him anyhow, trying to grab him with her pincers only to get both caught on the shaft of his broken axe. And all the while, they scampered through the scorched remains of the five legionnaires that thought this would barely need any preparation, as the two fought it out…

Finding the burning remains of the affronted one, the one that apparently made Qarretzu worth saving, they found a spear to his back… A softened spear whose shaft had bent on impact with the ground. Wouldn’t do, especially with an upper half still very much ablaze making it hard to retrieve. When they glanced back to see if they still had time, the olm was backing up towards the water, and the Toskar was trying to bend the shaft upwards and around, perhaps attempting to trap both his enemy’s pincers in one place. Yep, still time.

On they went, as the adrenaline of another’s battle let them keep going in spite of the fall. Already they could see none of the other four had survived the blast either – and if they did, would’ve preferred not to – leaving them ripe for looting whatever was left… which wasn’t much, clearly. The bitchy one had gotten it especially bad, and they couldn’t tell if she had even brought a weapon along or not. It was all just a heap of ashes and burnt bones. Darn it.

Then, a sharp sound from the fight; they, and they saw the handle had either been snapped or shorn in half, leaving a rough cut as the Shumhaq grappled with the Toskar, one pincer on his helmet and the other on his wrist.

Clearly, they needed to hurry, and so they did. Scurrying towards the one with the teacher-esque voice, they found that one’s body was mostly spared, catching just the head and shoulders. Obviously not nearly enough to survive, but enough to hope for something as they turned the corpse around… And found it was their lucky day: A repeater rifle, strapped to the back, with only the tip anywhere near affected by the heat! Truly fortunate, especially when it was perfectly possible for the ammunition inside, or anywhere else on this unlucky casualty’s clothes, might’ve cooked off just from being too close by. They took it right off, and started checking if it was loaded, pausing only to check on the tactical situation: The tracker couldn’t quite clamp on the badger’s helmet, trying again and again to grasp it, but could try and crush his wrist, undeterred as he stabbed her with the broken shaft again, and again, and again. Even breaking past the chitin and digging it in as deep as he could wasn’t stopping her…

Focus. A quick inspection into the chamber, and they found there was indeed one round. But was it the only round in there? A quick check of the magazine, as fast as they could manage, showed there was at least one other, but before they could even turn it around to look deeper, they heard a scream. Their hands busied themselves with putting the magazine back in and working the whole mess back together, as they watched the Shumhaq finally gain some purchase on his helm – and his head – and start squeezing. He let go of his half of the iron handle, immediately trying to yank that pincer off his head, failing to do so, while his other hand was busy getting its wrist crunched, little by little, held away from it all. And even as the quills on the back of his head started emitting little sparks of light, and she saw tiny puffs of smoke rise from the tracker, she was undeterred. She’d crack his skull open, right in front of his wounded partner. Just needed to get through the helmet first…

So Qarretzu did not allow it. They threw themselves back against the nearest boulder with an agonized grunt, bracing their back to it and hefting the rifle into position, just as they had before it all went to hell. Just as they had well before they even signed up for what would become perdition – if they missed this shot. One hand on the grip, another on the trigger, flicking the safety off, cocking their head on their side to set their gaze upon the sights, and the round, compound target right behind them, tilt the thing a little to compensate for the scorched barrel-tip…

BLAM

The first thing they noticed is that the thing had one hell of a kick, even more than its size would suggest. It cut right through the adrenaline to make those fractures hurt all over again, to the point it was hard for Qarretzu to keep their eyes open… And yet, they did, to notice a second thing: Their shot was right on the mark. The tracker’s vice grip was broken, and both pincers were busy trying to hold in the sudden, searing pain of having an entire “eye” blown right off her face, ichor leaking down her forearms. The Toskar backed away immediately, and started pulling off his helmet almost desperately, staining his own hands with blood in the process…

Then she turned her head back towards the Troxi that just shot her, glaring as best as one compound eye could. “YOU…”, she began, rumbling like an incoming avalanche as she swiveled on the spot, showing her scorched, cleaved and gouged front. “They said they wanted you alive, but they won’t need *any of your limbs.*” Then, she ducked low to the ground, one claw in front of her face and the other held high. A massive target, but an armored one, and as far as they knew they might only have one shot to take down this plated behemoth with no clear weak spo-

And as she lunged one more time, the Troxi realized there was a clear weak spot. Under the pressure of actual battle, and their adrenaline spiking, all they could do was rely on their reflexes, lower their aim, and fire at it.

BLAM

The bullet shot across the creek in a cloud of smoke and fire, towards its chitinous target, this oversized tank of a Shumhaq. One bullet would not be enough to stop her, not if it was forced to crack her plating; there wouldn’t be enough left in it to give her pause… Unless, of course, it found an opening in it. And of course, the Toskar had been so kind as to carve one out himself with the remains of his axe.

And so, it went right in there, plunging right into the flesh beneath in a splatter of ichor. The tracker seized, tripping and falling as her legs failed her momentarily, and held one pincer to the wound, and another to the middle of her chest. She started scraping it, inner pincers jabbing into her exoskeleton as if they could find the bullet that had gone so deep in and refused to come out, not even through the other side. And, after a gurgle and a spatter of blue through her mandibles, the Shumhaq just crumbled, limp as an unstrung puppet.

Then, silence. Nothing but quiet, groaning breathing and the whispers of the creek that flowed in their midst. But they were alive… as far as they knew, they were alive.

The Ifchi was the first to break the silence, her voice pained, yet utterly sardonic: “Those of you who yet live, please raise your hands. Or what’s left of them.” And to go with it, she raised one hand herself… One bloodied, utterly mangled hand with only a thumb and an index left to it, though one that was at least not bleeding anymore. The Toskar followed, raising a far more intact claw – though a glance at the pincered wrist it was on made Qarretzu wince. Still, live they did, and so they finally raised their own hand – showing their own bloody injury, an abrasion on their elbow taken during the fall. They were lucky the damn thing didn’t snap backwards.

She raised her brow at the sights before her. “Mm. Better than I expected for how that was going. Definitely nothing permanent”.

The Troxi finally found some words, now that they’d settled with their injuries and heard something that they couldn’t let pass. “P-permanent…? But your hands…!”

She turned to face them, unfazed. “This?”, she asked, raising them both before her, showing the other hand was in an even worse state. “I’m Ifchi. This’ll grow back”, she said, before smirking and pointing with the index she had left at the scorched scatter of five, just to add: “That won’t.”

“I didn’t know-” was as far as Qarretzu got before coughing up and groaning in pain. No bloodstain on their hands, thankfully.

The Toskar held his head in both hands, wiping traces of blood from his temples. “Ush, just because you can grow those back doesn’t mean you should just shrug it off. We ought to get back to camp now. We got Vi and Zee this time, but we gotta see ‘em.”

“Ush” looked at her mangled digits once more, and sighed. She’d had it worst and still she seemed far less bothered than him… Or them, for that matter. “Suppose we should, this was only meant to be a water run after all. They had to hear that. She’ll be… less than happy about it all.”

“Eh, maybe not. We made it through, we got the water, and we got a surprise.” Wait, surprise? What did he mean by that? Were they the surprise!?

The Ifchi turned to look at them, catching that startled look, and smirking slightly. “Mm~. I’d say you and us haven’t agreed to a thing, but everything this husk here said sounded so typical. This was Askalim’s idea”.

Their big, slitted eyes drifted back to the water again, unfocusing. This was a jump off the frying pan, but had they landed on the fire, or not? Who were these two, anyhow? The other five got toasted without a thought while they got saved, so they weren’t gathering Troxi in particular, and they didn’t try to round everyone up, or run away, or hand them back over, so it couldn’t be… terrible. Not compared to prison, at the very least. And where would they even crawl if they were just left here? Lost, too close to the law for comfort, and without any food, not that they needed much…

Our of curiosity, they tried to get up, only to find themselves faceplanting on their looted rifle, groaning in a brief spike of agony. Their legs were still weak, and refused to keep them up. From this beaten position, they looked up almost pitifully, and mumbled: “...f-fine, b-but… what do you all even do…?”

“Askalim” was the one to go forwards, picking the skink up effortlessly – and a little painfully – and hefting them into his arms, while putting the rifle away on his pack. Seems that was theirs now, hopefully they could get the barrel fixed somehow… Nevertheless, he answered: “Little bit of everything by now. It started at just a little border-jumping, sneaking goods around where the law wouldn’t see them, but then Vi joined in and we stretched a bit towards bounties, and then things went from there.”

“Ush” joined up with him in turn as they started to walk downstream, keeping her tail above the ground. “Not so much, it’s still almost wholly smuggling, we simply range further than most. In both work and territory.”

“D-did you say territory…?” Qarretzu piped up, suppressing a cough. Smuggling… that was manageable, suppose they already were an outlaw just by existing, but did these people get to wander far? Did they get to see the lands, like the Troxi once intended…?

The Toskar smirked. He motioned with one claw, as if outstretching a map, as he replied. “Been all over the caverns. Never thought I’d see the Hollow-Lands, yet soon as I started there I was.”

The Ifchi leaned in, adjusting her glasses with the one finger she could use for it. “In fact, I believe Ziv wanted to take us Southwest after this. And we just came out of the Gyre, we didn’t have to spend long in there this time. Thankfully.”

All over the caverns… the words rang in their head. This would be a tough living, alright, but they’d barely need to see a city again. Or rather, not the same city all the time, every time. And if they wandered from nation to nation, place to place, cavern to cavern? If they could see it all in time, and all they had to do was play their part, and maybe actually take a shot every once in a while?

“...s-sold. I’m sold. That shot was a good resume, right?” They could only hope so, it did at least cut down on their injuries, if not save them outright.

“You mean both shots”, the Ifchi replied with a raised brow and a smirk. “Close as I am with Ziv, I dare say in her behalf, it was well above expectations.”

The Toskar nodded, and spoke, though in a far more serious tone. “They were gonna squander you, little fella, just like I got squandered. I know what you were getting thrown into, I’ve been there.”

“...d-don’t have to s-sell me further on it.” They allowed themselves a smile, the first one in a long while… and decided, after this all, they may as well. “...since we’re in this… my name’s Qarretzu. N-nice to meet you two… a-and thank you. T-thank you so much”.

“Might do well to rest your voice for a while, Qarretzu, you may have struck a rib. But the pleasure is mine. Call me Usherrimi.” The olm offered a smile of her own, warmer and less barbed than the last few.

“Askalim’s mine. Welcome aboard, feel comfortable saying that. Just try not to move much on the way, we’ll get ourselves fixed up”. The Toskar was powering through his own wounds fairly well, though perhaps they were not quite as terrible. Then again, maybe these two were just used to this.

Nevertheless, they stilled on his advice, moving only their head as the now-trio made their way towards the camp, letting this Askalim wade through this creek that had saved their life. With water glistening in the light, meandering across the limestone and pooling here and there…

Out of curiosity, lowered their gaze towards one of the stilled pools at the side of the creek, illuminated by the meager lamps they had… It was just a quick glimpse in an imperfect mirror, but all the colors they knew were still there; dark green for the back, the dulled cyan for the neck, chin and underbelly, that bright, feathered crest, with its bright turquoise no amount of dust and grime could cut through, and those big, slitted blue eyes, just as the day they set off… and just as the day they last looked in a mirror, right before all of this. Still them, all in all. In spite of being a criminal now, from the looks of it… Still the same bright-eyed Troxi that wanted to see the caverns, and get away from the hurly-burly of the Republics and their crawling, overburdened cities. And in spite of everything, they might still get to do it after all.

…maybe all had only gone a little bit wrong.

Tracker Rhyvadush returned 39 hours after search parties were dispatched (due to failure to show up at appointed rendezvous). Immediate medical attention required and provided, still ongoing due to gravity of her injuries. Squad accompanying tracker confirmed lost from unexpected enemy action. The full transcript is in progress, but enough has been provided to begin immediate identification efforts, in order to find the target, the culprits and any links they may have to known organizations. Suggesting focus on the Ifchi pyromancer, as this combination is rare enough to significantly narrow possibilities. Rhyvadush has sworn to collaborate in any and all future efforts to find this particular target, as well as the culprits and associates.

[yutzen]

Where the Heart Is

"There you are! You’re going to give me a conniption running off like that! Are you alright? I smelled smoke, and I got very worried. Smoke in the lakes is usually terrible news! Oh, thank goodness… I know it’s very little smoke, but you have to understand, any smoke here, where things so seldom burn, it could mean- What? ...Usherrimi, you didn’t grab any matches from the house, did you? Because if you did- Usherrimi? Ushi, please, slow down and tell me what you did, okay? It’s fine, it’s fine. Nothing bad happened, so long as you’re okay, it’s all okay… Oh! Oh… I’m sorry, Ushi, it just slipped out of my mind. I know you wouldn’t do that! I had a student who did once, is all, and I panicked at the thought… ...pardon? Nonono, it’s not dangerous, it’s a fine little fire, and with the crystal here it won’t spread, but… you said you made it? By yourself? Without matches, or tinders, or anything else...? Ushi, it’s not that, you don’t know what it means to- Usherrimi, no. Something that you can do is never a bad thing. You didn’t burn anything down, you didn’t hurt anyone, including yourself, this is fine. Okay? Good. Because what I wanted to say is… This is actually pretty rare! We’re not especially close to fire, not even here, but at your age, and enough to start this one here, that’s… It’s remarkable! Very remarkable! Actually… Can you show me? Just a little spark if you can, okay? If you can’t, that’s fine, these things can be tiring- OH GOODNESS…! Ahahah, this is fire! They’re like little candles on your gills! And- Ow! Oh, it does burn! Wait, you haven’t burned yourself have you!? Okay, good, good…! Just making sure, these are tricky energies to manage, but you’re doing it so well… It’s amazing! I knew it! Oh? I meant, I knew you were a talented young lady, I could see it from the start. Ahaha, no. Talent is talent, no matter where it lies. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, okay?"

“Something up, Sherry?”

Usherrimi – the “Sherry” in question – felt a long-fingered claw lay on her shoulder right as that question snapped her out of some old, old thoughts. The Ifchi’s gills twitched in surprise, but she took her time to actually turn around and face the one who asked… Yep, there she was. Ziv-Ziri was there, her gleaming yellow eyes looking down with great concern. “Usually you’re first up for getting the campfire going, but I found you, well… here.”

Here. Right. When Ziv told her she’d be getting the whole gang together, she didn’t think much of the place she’d pick for such a widespread group. She thought it’d be nice, in fact. She’d never been to the Stonelit Meadow before, and since it was close enough to the Lakes, she expected a little nostalgia. The sodden ferns waving in the warm breeze and the faded lichens that crunched under her steps were familiar enough, but they were thick here, not quite what she remembered…

But when she climbed the last hill and found herself standing before a great quartz monolith, glowing with an inner light just like the ones she knew, and with many more dotting the distance, as a tiny stream of tepid water ran right under her bare feet, just like the ones back-

“Sherry! There’s not something with this crystal, right? Not… burning or anything? You’d know those more than I do, so…”

Of course she would. These luminous crystals, warmed and grown by the streams far beneath, were just like those in the Lakes. Shining down on her with the same light that lit her lessons with her tutors as she perfected her gifts, the same light that let her read her books beneath the surface and get lost in others’ worlds with no one to bother her. Stones like these were the first – and once, only – witnesses to her own light, to the flames she could bring forth… And it was right under a monolith like this one, so much like this one, that she lit the first flames she’d actually share. Her tutor Neshuri had been so proud that day…

“I…”, she began, but the words that’d follow just wouldn’t come out. The Ifchi’s gaze fell to the ground, almost wishing she could close her eyes. ‘I thought I could handle it’, Sherry thought, clenching both her fists, ‘I thought walking away from Ishiss, wandering the caves would do it, would cut those strings that pulled from waters I left behind, and yet here, here…’ Did those strings just never snap, and she’d just managed to ignore their pull, or was taking a glance at just… this, a simple glowing rock, knit them back together? It brought back some old things, the oldest of all, she was a child back then! Right by the weakest spot, yet somehow the most vivid, it had grabbed her and dragged her into all the rest, right down to the last day before she left towards Ishiss. And there she was, the wayward mage, left feeling like it had pulled her heart all the way back to the Lakes.

“How do you do it, Ziv?”, the axolotl muttered under her breath, staring at the shimmering ceiling of the cavern, and finding it, too, brought unwanted reminders.

“Do what, Sherry?”

Sherry swiveled towards Ziv-Ziri, almost startled. Damn it, she forgot she was a bat and had the hearing to match! There had to be an out of that little conversation… Or, at least, a way to breach it gently. She knew Ziv’s parting had been outright acrimonious, so while she may understand, it had to be a far bigger hole in her heart. It only made sense…

First, dismissing the question she shouldn’t have asked. “Nothing, nothing, just… stray thoughts is all. Just taking in the sights, mm?” Sights… That’s one route. She did like this place – that was, in fact, the problem – and it was only right to let her know. The little smile that came next was more genuine than the olm expected. “You sure know how to pick a scenic route, Ziv. Or meeting spot, rather. You have a talent for that one.”

With a grin and a flick of her ears, Ziv-Ziri let out a little giggle. “I know, right? I’ve been here once or twice, I can’t linger around too much ‘cause they’ll find me, but it’s nice for a stop when you don’t have anything to hide. Can’t say I’ve seen any border guard, or even bounty hunters, either! Uh, not counting Vel, I mean.” After that digression, she stepped closer, and leaned in with all her height, her grin turning sly. “And besides, I knew of a certain someone from the Lakes that would appreciate a few sights like these~”

And with that, Usherrimi’s smile faltered, barely even staying on – which in turn, made the bat’s own turn to a slightly baffled frown. “And you were right on the money, Ziv”, she said, before noticing said frown and feeling she’d been caught. Time to salvage this, she hoped: “Look, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the sights. It’s just… You really did hit close to home, it’s just… Too close? Does that make sense? Please tell me that makes sense.” That last one almost came out unprompted, blurted with unbecoming nerves, and if anything it made Ziv look concerned…

“It would make sense to me, Sherry”, answered a different, far deeper voice. The two found a pair of black, beady eyes when they turned, as a familiar Ferigozi crested the hill to join them. “Too great a reminder, I bet. Made you think deep enough about ‘home’ to bring back all of those reasons you left.” The old mole offered a tired, bitter smile as he closed the distance with the other two.

The axolotl answered before the bat could intervene. “First, I was asking Ziv, but, late for that. Second, that’s not what I meant at all, Vel, this isn’t about why I left.”

But Velardi, as usual, was undeterred by that, still with that small smile on his snout. “Was it, though? You said it yourself, a closer reminder of old comfort… Followed, right after, by the thought ‘why am I not there?’, wasn’t it?” He set the indistinct lump of steel he called a weapon against the earth, elongating it until he could use it as a walking stick, and leaned upon it with that sagely smirk of his – with no seeming notice of Usherrimi’s souring expression. “Well, Sherry, in business like ours, home is often the place we can least return to, and honestly, we should hardly want to. Very easy to remind yourself of why you’d never go back.” Then, those tiny eyes narrowed as the mole almost hissed: “Remembering why it stopped being ‘home’.”

With raised brow and narrowed eyes, Sherry didn’t hide how unimpressed she was… But after a deep breath, she softened her expression. “I’m gonna be honest, old man… The reasons are the least of it. Becoming persona-non-grata… You could say it was my fault.” With a flare of her gills, however, her next words filled with hatred: “But I don’t regret even a moment. They knew what they said, they knew what they were doing, they knew what they made up about ME, and thought they’d get away with it ‘cause they were staff. Fuck them, and fuck their academy.”

When the fire died down, all she could add to it – after a heavy sigh – was: “I’ll give you one thing: The part where something in Ishiss, the city, all the way North, is what cost me my spot in the Lakes… That part hurts. Even if it means you get to be wrong about it.”

The Ferigozi was given pause by said outburst, raising his brow even if his placid expression remained. “Ah. Mm, a little more different than I thought… But not quite as different as you would think, Sherry.” He approached the glowing monolith as he rambled, tracing the stone with one claw. “It’s all Ishiss, I’m afraid. The price on your head, or what I assume is one, it’s not the only thing that stretches from border to border… So are the failings and flaws that made sure there was one. Think about it long enough, and you’ll remember all the little red flags, all the indications it wouldn’t be so different, given half the chance… Another easy mistake to make, forgetting that. Why, even I made that one, once.” He looked into the quartz, lost in his words, almost as if he expected to find something in there…

Yet before Usherrimi could pounce on the chance to reply, before she could voice her affronts at the idea her home was anything like the capital, Ziv-Ziri quelled her with a hand on her shoulders, and stepped forwards to answer instead, disapproval all over her face. “Vel, come on. You’re making it sound like she should hate the place, what the hell!? Can’t someone just miss the place, the things they liked about it? The reasons they didn’t leave until they had to? ‘cause I know I do mine.” Then, with eyes narrowed to glowing slits, she leaned all the way down, face-to-face with the mole, before her expression softened, just a little, as she spoke with actual concern. “I know there’s something like that for you too, Vel. There had to be. You’re gonna tell me there isn’t anything you miss from the Kingdom?”

He looked into her eyes, before his gaze turned distant. And with that, Vel’s smirk turned wistful, before falling to a seldom-seen frown… And then, an even-rarer scowl, his claws scraping along the monolith as they balled into a fist, lips pulling back to show needle-like teeth that rarely saw the light. For once – as far as Sherry knew – Velardi of An-Vescaria was caught out with nothing to say, as he looked back up towards the two, turning from one to the other as the gears ground in his head, treading old ground. And in the end, all the mole could offer were four words, almost spat out rather than spoken: “Like I said: Once.”

Silence would’ve followed, broken only by the droplets falling from above and the gentle whisper of water through the lichens… Were it not for the heavy, ironclad steps that sounded up the hill, as the biggest of Ziv’s entourage made it up the hill, casually resting his huge, webbed paws upon Velardi’s shoulders as soon as he made it there. He tried to whisper, yet all could hear the words that brought a quiet sigh from the mole: “Vi, you’re doing it again.”

Sherry could feel the tension drain off the conversation, even if the interaction before her left her a little perplexed. Vel was never touchy as far as she knew – a hard thing to avoid when Ziv’s around – and yet there he was, leaning back into the mountain of bristles that was Askalim. But then again she’d never seen the mole get like that before. With a convo she started, with this moment of weakness of hers. Time to plot out an apology, she thought. “...ssssorry, didn’t know there had been… an incident, there. Or that it was that bad. Sorry.”

Velardi smiled once more, yet it didn’t reach his eyes at all. “I should apologize, Sherry, for losing my temper. I’ve had more time than any of us to get over such a thing, to think of my old place in the Kingdom without flaring up, and yet here I am…”

He didn’t see the shift in the Toskar’s expression when he said that, but he sure felt the squeeze to his shoulders. “Vi?”

“Yes…?”

“You remember what I told you, back in the Empire, with the captain and everything after him, didn’t I?” He leaned down, just to make sure the mole was facing him.

“In detail, yes… So-called soldiers like him, I met far more than I’d like, but you-”

Askalim stopped him with a single finger against his snout. “No, not the point. What I’m getting at is… Knowing that much, and knowing me, if you heard anyone tell me I should just ‘suck it up and get over it’, you’d pluck their ribs out, wouldn’t you?”

It caught Vel by surprise, but he found his answer quickly this time. “It would be tempting, I’ll admit. Very tempting, if they had the details. And if they called you what we know, I’d happily add their heart to it.”

“Right. And now, with that in mind”, the Toskar said, one digit propping up the mole’s snout to look up, “think a little about what you just said about yourself.”

Sherry and Ziv shared a glance, with plenty to say to each other yet fully aware this was a bad moment for it. Looking back to the mole and badger, they could see Velardi struggle with his words again. “Noted”, he began, lingering on the word, before adding a half-hearted “much as your case is different…”

For that, the badger immediately rounded him to speak face-to-face – you could almost see him resisting the urge to lean down to speak at his level, but it didn’t stop him from once again propping Vel’s snout up to look him in the eye. “Let’s retread: You did what they asked, you stood head and shoulders above the rest, you went above and beyond for all a Ferigozi’s supposed to be, only to get fucked over for it. Doesn’t sound all that different, does it?”

And now Askalim leaned in, softening his almost martial tone before Velardi could reply. “Look, I caught a bit of your convo, Zee didn’t make it hard at all.” He glanced at the bat just to catch her embarrassed grin, then continued. “I get why you’d take things like you do… It’s a stab in the back, after doing everything right. But it wasn’t the Kingdom that held the knife, was it? Just as it wasn’t the Empire that buried one into my back. It was captain Valkut – Worm take his ass – and everyone that believed him. Just as in your case…” He stopped, once again glancing at the others present. “…up to you if you tell them, but I won’t.”

Then, a smirk from the badger. “But it didn’t really stop you from being exemplar, did it?”, he began, and the word seemed to freeze the mole in place. “Ha. That one always gets you, doesn’t it, Vi? But I mean it. Way I see it, you took the right lessons, everything your home would’ve looked up to, and took it with you… Like I’m trying to do with mine. Because… Yes, I can’t go back. I am still an outlaw… But I know what a Voskan ought to be. Even one in this business.” He finished with a jab of one finger against Vel’s chest: “Just as you know what a Ferigozi ought to be… And hell, somehow, in this, you’re making it work.”

And, little by little, that sagely little smile was back on the mole’s face, making Usherrimi realize she was actually kind of missing it. “...heh. I did always say you were a sergeant at heart, Askal, that much has never left you.” Then, Vel turned back to the other two – demoted to a mute audience as they’d been – and his smile got sly in turn. “Why, you even perform well with an audience. Well, Sherry, I suppose that might’ve brought you more answers than I could?”

But Askalim just blinked in confusion at that, and interrupted before the olm could reply. “Wait, this was about her?”, he began, before actually addressing her. “Didn’t take you for someone with homesickness, honestly.”

Finally given the chance to speak, Usherrimi began… With a long and bitter sigh. “Neither did I, Askalim, neither did I right until I suddenly was. Fuck, I thought I was over it…”

Ziv pounced on her chance as well. “Yyyyeah, no one ever is, Sherry.” She laid a hand on the olm’s slimy shoulder…

Before clenching it as she was startled – along with everyone else – by a shrill, chirping voice: “SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, BOSS!”

Ziv-Ziri barely had the time to step aside before a runaway Cheli practically crash-landed onto the spot right next to her, claws gouging the lichen layer on arrival. And yet, she had her usual grin to greet her. “Chi! Didn’t hear you arrive! I mean, I rarely do, but this time especially…!”

With a couple flaps and a few sweeps of her claws, Chitwy’s feathers were tucked neatly back in place,“That’s ‘cause I was quiet, quieter even, didn’t want to miss a thing here. Soon as I saw Embers over there with that look on her face I knew I’d want to hear this.”

Violet eyes rolled in their lidless sockets, as an unimpressed Ifchi cut in. “Glad to hear someone is having fun with this little moment.”

“AH-AH-AH.” Sherry found the swallow right in front of her quite suddenly with a clawtip pressed against her snout. Her gills sparking flames at their ends as a reflex. Not that the bird cared, despite her dry, mossy wear. “This isn’t about ‘fun’, Embers, this is about you and this heartache of yours. Better to bring this up here before it becomes a problem on the job.”

A low, throaty chuckle coming from behind Chi turned both their heads to find a smirking mole. “Didn’t know you cared this much, miss Krivru, I’d heard quite the opposite before”, he teased…

To that, the Cheli started numbering on one free claw. “One, fuck whoever said that. Two, believe it or not I like it here. And three, professionalism. You should know, Whiskers, especially if Quills there with you did tell you about his blowout back in the Snowdrifts.” Askalim’s brow furrowed at the comment, but before Vel himself could raise an eyebrow she interrupted herself: “I don’t mean the part where he killed the guy, if anything we need more of that. Cleanses the soul. I mean the part where it froze him in there and locked him in when we had six other guys or so surrounding us! Yeah, sounds like a problem to me.” Then, she swieveled back to Usherrimi, who didn’t bother hiding her judging stare. “Also four: This was about you, he’s just the example. And while I can’t guess how things could go wrong in your case, let’s make sure it doesn’t. And besides, think Whiskers’s covered already.”

The olm glared. ‘What would you know about this, you’ve never been kicked out. You never lost it. You can return any time, with someone waiting for you, knowing there’s a point to it. You can fucking fly home, right now, and no one would stop you. What would you know about missing anything.’… All this ran through her head, but she did not say it. She just sighed, looking down, holding back these aches and letting reason prevail when it told her, perhaps this little hunter had something to help. Perhaps she didn’t know the whole story, and it would aid her to know. When she fixed her gaze back on Chitwy, it had softened somewhat, and she could speak in a calmer tone. “Fine then… I heard these two already, and much as I’d like Ziv’s take, you jumped the line, so tell me: How do you do it?”

Again, a claw raised to her snout, though at least the swallow had the decency not to touch her this time. “Ah-ah, not the right question, since this isn’t just a me thing. When you roam the caverns far and wide, when you’re a hunter like me, you work with many that’ve been just like you, or him, or that one” – pointing at Sherry, Askalim and Velardi in succession – “who’ve been thrown into the outskirts and worse because wherever the law treads is off limits to them. And I’m not gonna lie to you: At the campfire, and with a drink or two, they always drifted back there. Back to whatever house they had, even if they would’ve hated it months ago. I get it: It hurts.”

Sherry raised her brow, letting out a held breath. “So it’s not uncommon then. Helps to know… Much as I didn’t even need to be drunk to feel it. Or get to the campfire.” Right, that was usually her job, even if it was little more than being a showoff it felt good to have those honors… And right now, she had to wonder just how much of that feeling was ruled by those days she had been rudely reminded of. “Still, you said it yourself, better to bring it up here. Let me rephrase then: How did they do it?”

Yet again, a claw raised to her snout, almost poking her with one sharp talon. “Did you miss the ‘not just me’ bit? Pah, no sidetracking! Here’s the outline.” With one quick inhale, and raising her wings in the air as if stretching out paper for display, Chitwy began. “Home isn’t a place. No, it’s not one place. Like I almost want to say it’s more of a when than a where, but that wouldn’t be right.” The olm raised one doubtful brow, but didn’t interrupt yet. “When you get down to it, ‘home’ is more of a feeling than a place – feel right at home, and all, that’s what I’m going off here. You have to find that for yourself, out there, that’s what smothers those aches you’re having.”

“So far, so utterly vague.” Sherry pushed her glasses back against her eyes with a faint scowl.

The bird lunged at her for that, actively jabbing her clawed finger against her snout – and narrowly pulling it away before she could grab it in one sparking hand. “I WASN���T DONE, EMBERS.”, she screeched out, before another quick, sharp inhale, and a long sigh. “But fine, I’ll skip to that, since you’ll get it that way. Lemme… what’s the word? Condense.” Chitwy backed off, wings clasped in front of her beak as she paced, ignoring the Ifchi’s indignant glare…

Before she swiveled in place, and turned back to face said glare. “A personal example, you look like you need it. I know, the Pact won’t kill me on sight or anything, but the thing is: Home? It’s not always a roof, a garden you made all by yourself and a bed with someone waiting on it. It can be that, it has things you yearn for, that you want and get. But sometimes… Often, even. To me, ‘Home’ is often just…” Those big, sharp eyes closed slowly, and a rare smile graced her face right behind her beak. “…the wind against my feathers, heavy with whatever the breezes stir in the cave. The echoes of untamed wilderness, with no bustle to drown it out. Pristine sights, untouched by road and country… The feeling of finding something, sometimes someone, that no one else was supposed to find. Of tracking it and hunting it down…” She opened her eyes, glancing at the group, one by one. “…knowing whoever’s at my side knows what they’re doing. That they see it all just like I do. That they get it. And that whether it all goes right or wrong, they will have your back.”

After letting it linger for a few seconds, with no one to interrupt, Chitwy turned back to Usherrimi properly, and resumed, calmer than the olm had ever known her. “That’s where I feel at home. And of those sorts that kept drifting back to what they’d lost during those long nights by the campfire… By morning, they remembered what they had out there. What they sought and found in those faraway places. The reason why they stayed out there, on hunts of their own… Even if they didn’t always know what it was.” One last time, the bird pointed at the olm, finally keeping a polite distance. “You don’t know what it is right now, but you have it, you’re still with the Boss and everyone else here. Start from there.”

From there, just a moment of silence, and Usherrimi found herself looking down, and back at the monolith, starting to wonder… What had kept her in this track, rather than trying to hide away in the nation’s outskirts, in some dark river somewhere? What made her stay away with her head held proud, rather than trying to bow to the city, begging for forgiveness? …Other than the fact that was pathetic, of course, she had to leave aside matters of self-respect. She had to be enjoying some of this, she knew she was. They’d caught her smiling before, and some enjoyed making a fuss about it. She just needed to put her finger on it, right…?

Much as her actual fingers were back on this glowing monolith before her. Its light was still soothing, even with all its reminders. Again she was lost in thought, and by the time she realized she forgot to actually answer, Ziv had already done so for her, with a “Wow! Chi, you’re actually a pretty good speaker!”… Debatable, Sherry thought, but it didn’t address the point either way, didn’t it. The bat then stepped right between her and the rest, with one hand on her shoulder – a hand she didn’t recoil from, this time, despite feeling just as sharp sometimes. That was something to think about, wasn’t it… Maybe that was the avenue of thought she ought to pursue, once she had some time to herself, and she didn’t have Ziv prattling on about how much of a pleasant surprise it was to see this admittedly feral Cheli being so insightful, as she was now…

…though when that shoulder-squeeze tightened, and she picked up the slightest hint of a giggle in the bat’s voice – she knew that one well after all this time – she turned around, just in case, deciding those thoughts could wait…

And she did so just in time to see a wiry figure in a rainproofed coat right behind Chitwy and her smug little scoff, with a pair of striking green eyes beneath the drooping brim of his hat. Just in time to hear him utter, with a lisping voice that was just a tinge too loud, “Don’t think y’got th’ whole tale there, lil’ hunter.”

Right, that accent of his. This “Liyon Pinweave” was one of the newest in this little… enterprise, as Ziv liked to call it, but he was already damn unmistakeable, especially for one of the Bannerbound. Recognizable enough that even Chitwy managed to remember who he was before she tried to rake his face, but after she sprung in flight, startled into a shriek that sent her twenty feet into the air. It got the tiniest smirk out of Sherry… But she couldn’t help but widen it as soon as the Vez with her started outright cackling at that. Oh, she was in on it, wasn’t she? She would’ve heard Pins coming, but didn’t say a thing. Maybe even distracted her. “Heh. Hah! Oh, Ziv, you’re evil sometimes, you know that?”

“Turnabout is fair play, greeheeheeee~!”, she practically wheezed out in response, as her own laughter made Askalim belt out one loud “HA!”, and even made the mole crack a wider smile he felt the need to hide behind a claw. And once the Cheli landed right in front of her to glare at her, and perhaps yell at her own boss for that little scare… The scowl on the bird’s face just made her cackle even harder, to Chitwy’s resigned displeasure. “Fuck’s sake boss. I guess I earned that, I know I was loud about it too but STILL.”

Pins joined the group proper once his “victim” had landed again, and the moment died down. “I’ll be apologizin’ fer that one”, he said, “that bit of braggin’ had me mighty tempted. But it ain’t th’ reason I wanted t’pipe up about it all. ‘cause I was hearin’ all of ya on this-”

Sherry outright hissed her interruption: “Yes, again, without warning. Is everyone in this enterprise of ours going to just eavesdrop on this? Ziv, have you hired anyone recently, so that I may know before they just show up having heard this little convo?”

“Uh, no, that should be it. I swear I didn’t plan on this, I didn’t know…” Ziv lowered her head, just a little. “I really didn’t know, actually. Sorry.”

“Th’both of ye can hash that out later, yeh? I ain’t about to start mockin’ or anythin’, but I did have a bit to add.” Already he was striding closer to Sherry herself…

“Of course you do”, she bitterly replied. “Everyone in here just seems to be bursting with advice today, just for the occasion…”

Again, a clawed grip on her shoulder – both her shoulders this time – and the friendly voice of Ziv-Ziri. “Sherry… We’ve all been through one measure or another of this. And no one wants to see you like this… Not here at least. And those who would, I think you’ve toasted most of them, hee…!” After a little chuckle at her own joke, she sighed, and rounded to face the olm properly. “Sometimes it just comes out all at once, when you get a reminder, right? Like just now. It had to be bottled for a while…” Then came the sharp-toothed smile. “I did have something to say too, even if you don’t wanna hear it anymore, but I don’t think I’m that good a… consoler, I guess? Not the sharpest tool in my skillset? So I was leaving me for last, but if this is too much…”

“No, no, it’s not…!” Sherry blurted, almost in a slight panic, but swallowed, cleared her throat, and continued with more composure. “It’s not too much, just… Needed a moment to pace myself. Hard to remember to expect help out there. And in here, in fact. But… No, I’ll hear it out.” And from there, the lightest of whispers, not even coming closer to Ziv to say it, but knowing full well ears like hers could catch it, and no one else’s. “I think yours is the one I’d need the most. I don’t care if you think it’s terrible, Ziv.”

And taking a moment to smile warmly – and then a little smugly when she saw Ziv practically melt into one of her widest grins – Sherry turned around, and faced the Bannerbound. “Very, Mr. Pinweave. What did you have to offer?”

“Pins is fine, y’know”, he said, making Sherry’s smile a little smugger still, “but I’ll give what I got. ‘cause y’see, ‘s a bigger thing than any one fella, bigger ‘n you or me. Can get big like a whole damn country, ‘n I know it ‘cause it did. To us.”

“You mean the Clans…”, Sherry replied before the others, though there were mutters she couldn’t pick up among the other three. Right, the Seven were more attached than usual to their ancestry, to their time before the caverns and the land outside their Exit. Far more attached, at that. But the comparison seemed unfair, to compare a whole nation to just her. Could an entire country miss something, was it enough of an entity to feel such a thing…?

“Yeh, th’ Clans.” Out came his gloved hands, starting to enumerate as he listed out what he’d expect of those gathered. “I know V’lardi’d knows Zau, ‘n maybe Sofize.”

“They do good business with a mole like me, much as Sofize likes to obfuscate the way they do things, and Zau’s little… Proselytizing problem.” Seems Vel sure did.

“Ashk’lim’d fer sure know Norrish-”

“Yes, yes I would, and the fact they kept showing up baffles me.” Why and how a Clan kept sending raids across that patch of caverns would baffle more than a few, Sherry would admit.

“‘n our hunter’d been t’ Vesh, knowin’ ‘em ‘n what they’ve got down there.”

The little bird grinned at that. “Oh they are fun, some of the best tours of my life~.”

“Anyone’s ever touched th’ Consortium’d know Vesnor, but I know our bossh’s been wheelin’ goods t’Zau ‘n Heese.”

“And also Vesnor, in fact!” Ziv grinned, proudly. “The silk bans were their idea but they sure kept buying!”

“‘n as someone from th’ lakes, I know ye’d hear some less ‘n fond words ‘bout Issouf.”

“...I will give you that one. Mother had some choice words about the Rishim Aquifer.” Sherry could remember those rants very clearly, and the less of Father and his words on the incident, the better.

“Mill-Iron Aquifer if y’ask ‘em. But ye know ‘em all between th’ lot. Good, makes it easy. ’cause it lets me get t’the gist.” With a motion within that coat, Pins cracked his shoulders and neck very audibly. “Y’see, I’m a Sofize hob, ‘n even as a hob I don’t always get th’ other six. ‘n you don’t always get th’ ones y’see. Might not get ‘em at all even. But if y’gotta get one thing ‘bout th’ Seven, it’s th’ common thread. Th’ Urul Peaks. Th’ frozen land on th’ other side. What we all lost, ‘bout as lost as it can get. Turns out y’can miss somethin’ y’never even knew. ’n so, the Seven work with that lil’ weight on ‘em. Whole damn history with a home that’s dead ‘n buried, pretty damn literally. ‘s one of th’ first things we all learn…”

“Followed by how y’deal with it.” With that, he raised the brim of his hat, and one could tell there was a smile beneath that scarf… Much as it would be a crooked smile with a sharp tongue, as some there would know. “Y’see it in all Seven, th’ common thread of it. Home ain’t quite one place, Chitwy got th’ gist of that one. ‘s somethin’ you bring with yerself. ‘cause it ain’t just vistas ‘n buildin’s ‘n landscapes, there’s plenty of non-material there. Th’ ways folks were with each other, th’ things ye praised ‘bout it, th’ stories ‘n lives of th’ place, that’s th’ real heart of it, th’ parts that aren’t luggage ‘n land. Ye pack it all up… ‘n then set off with it in yer pack, knowin’ they can’t get it off ya. ‘n when you set roots again, wherever it is, however long y’have in there… y’get to unpack it. Get to be it. Show it, praise it, let ‘em all know that’s what made ya. ‘n by layin’ it down, by puttin’ it out there, by bein’ it all… Even a windy, sand-choked hellhole will be a little more like home, every day. ‘n even a campfire with folks y’ picked to be surrounded by, ‘cause they’d be right at home with ya, can be like th’ place ye lost, in th’ ways that matter.”

…huh. Once again, Usherrimi caught herself looking down at the lichens beneath her feet, eyes unfocused, with no real answer to that. Pins didn’t exactly have a way with words, but there was enough to parse, there. Enough to pick through, and get the base ideas. At the very least… She now knew more or less why the Bannerbound were the way they are. It was hard to understand missing something you never had, and so, she – whose only thought on the lands the Ifchi lived in before the caverns was that it was a monument to her species’ mistakes – had never thought of how doing so would shape a nation. But down to the individual, and realizing she was now stranded from something both beloved and impossible…

“Wow! You’re actually a pretty good speaker- Hee! Not pulling that one twice! But I mean it, though!”

“Might’ve been cheatin’ seein’ this is somethin’ most hobs get, but ‘s what I got. Hope it helps, yeh?”

Maybe it wasn’t so impossible. If she brought along the parts that weren’t old slate rooms, glowing monoliths and steamy water between her fingers. It was a place where talents were seen and recognized, maybe she’d have to do that more for others, as they were doing for her. A place away from cold judgment, away from disappointed eyes of those who saw her through a skewed lens… A place where she was free, too, wasn’t she? Where light and flame were welcome, where she could actually roam, and see a little more beyond walls of black and sodden stone…

“You’re missing the whole POINT of being in a new place! You can’t just impose yourself like that, where’s the thrills!? The discovery of things you’ve never seen, all the things you haven’t even TOUCHED!”

“Burnin’ ‘n buildin’s a whole ‘nother business that-”

“Okay that’s kinda true in ways, but in others, none of that means tearing everything apart, and besides, you need a place to settle even if it’s just to sleep once, right?”

Roaming, right… She’d seen far more of the caverns, of the Subterraneum as a whole, than she’d ever dreamed about. And she had always wanted to see more… Granted, some places had been a little disappointing, but even the Great Dust Gyre of all lands had a charm of their own. And she hadn’t regretted it one bit. One of the pleasures she never got… There was something to that, about the road. But it didn’t mean she couldn’t bring a bit of her home along in every path…

“Some things must unfortunately be changed, miss Krivru, if only because they will be the end of you if you don’t. Though that is true even of a land you live in all your life, isn’t it?”

“That’s the thing, Vi, not changing it means letting it fester, it’s something you need to work on. Even when it’s your very own home you need to work on it, and some of it’ll be ugly. But when it’s done, when you leave it all better than you arrived…”

“Hey, just one person can only do so much there, but then again, I’ve found after a little bit it’s never really one person, right, Sherry?”

…not just a bit of home, a bit of her, in fact. Because throughout it all, she was still Usherrimi Neshi Anei Var. The same that refused to be pulled off her own talents just to beat her head against disciplines she hated. Who strode into the academies of Ishiss ready to rock their foundations, thanks to one tutor that actually knew how to teach. A teacher who actually knew what to do with her… She was the one who refused to bow to anyone, especially those who taught her such in the first place. Who refused to bow her head even if it meant being nothing more than a drop-out, a criminal, in the eyes of those who’d demanded it. Even if it meant striking back at the ones that thought tormenting her and ripping into all she held to her heart just for the sake of some “experiment”… Even if it meant making examples of them, and never seeing the ones that made her who she is, ever again, for good or ill… No matter what, she’d been her, that much was true, no matter what anyone else thought. Even if it meant having to leave them, leave those that welcomed her, once, twice-

“Sherry? SHERRY!”

She made a startled yelp, suddenly finding Ziv-Ziri was practically in her face, a mere inch away, and with her voice rattling her ears. “...sorry, Ziv, just needed to process for a moment, is all… Where were we?”

Ziv looked just a little concerned. Less than at the start of… This, but still. But then, a little smile crawled onto her lips, and she turned to the others. “Guys, and the one gal, you mind setting up the camp? Right over there, the dry spot next to that little stream down there! We’ll get there when it’s time to light the actual fire, okay? Just need a little moment is all!”

“Yeh, sure”, said Pinweave, his very voice a shrug, before turning around and walking away without a word.

“About time, boss! I’ll get to that right away!”, followed Chitwy, immediately taking flight to beat the others to the spot.

“As you say, Zee, I’m gonna grab our stuff, we left it all the way down.” Off went Askalim, in a fairly different direction, his stride unperturbed.

“I’m sure you two’ve got plenty to ruminate on, after this all, don’t you? Why, I know I have my share.” Unhurried, Velardi followed the badger, with a strange smile on his face.

And as soon as they were alone, without a word, Ziv laid one clawed hand across Sherry’s back and urged her back, to walk just a little further away, behind the glowing monolith that had started this whole… Affair. The olm was just a little weirded out by it, but walked forwards, looking at her in confusion. Once in its (nonexistent) shadow, she finally turned to face her… And sighed, looking around. Was she unsure where to begin…?

“Feeling better, Sherry?” was the first thing Ziv said, at last, once she found the words.

It’d be the polite thing to say yes, but here, with just her, she could be a bit more truthful. “…A little, Ziv. Just a little. I think I still need to process that whole… Affair. It’s a lot. And honestly… Honestly, I think this is the first time I realized this was an actual problem. Does that make sense?”

“Oh, it does, Sherry, it really, really does. And I kinda wish I had seen it earlier.” All of a sudden, the bat looked slightly uncomfortable, conflicted even. “Sorry, I really didn’t know it stung so much…”

“Neither did I, Ziv, I said that already. It just… Hit me. All at once, and I didn’t even know it was waiting there.” Once again the olm’s gaze drifted down…

“Still feels like I should’ve seen it coming, you know? We’ve been in this longer than any of the others…” More conflicted still… Right before she looked back into her eyes. “But better late than never, right? Right…? Now we both know…! And… Oh, lords, what I wanna say is gonna sound so selfish, I’m sorry, Sherry…”

That didn’t seem right. And she wasn’t afraid to say it, along with some other thoughts along the way. “That doesn’t sound like you at all, Ziv. I want to be the judge of that. Say it, you’ve been quiet long enough and it doesn’t seem fair to me.”

“Okay okay, so, how do I put this…” Ziv-Ziri started pacing, fretting with fingers interlocked, trying to keep her eyes on Sherry’s throughout. “When I got thrown out of the Consortium, I was… Terrified. Even by the time you met me. I just kind of stapled a smile over my face and kept going while I could, for several reasons, but one of the big ones was… Well, after everything, getting split away from the friends I did have back there, and family, one of the things stuck in my mind was… “I’m never gonna meet anyone that understands me ever again”. ‘cause every other place is so different, and sure, I’m pretty good at reading others, I could adapt and I did, but…” Her pacing quickened, and her voice rose in volume and pitch. “Sometimes you just want someone to understand you, right? That can see a bit more than just a saleswoman, or a smuggler now I guess. Nothing but business associates from here on out, Ziv-Ziri, have fun dealing with yourself all by yourself! No one out there has what you need anymore!”

Usherrimi could almost feel Ziv’s voice quivering now, she hid it well at first, but now it seems either she couldn’t, or she wasn’t even bothering anymore… But on the bat went: “And at first, I kinda… Kept thinking that, for a while. Though you helped a lot there, because we were on pretty similar boats, but with others… I thought Vel just had enough time to get over everything, but I guess he’s just scarred so thick you can’t reach him – or at least I can’t. I misread him a little there, but even then! And then, Chi just doesn’t have the same trouble, nowhere NEAR, even if she knows those who do, she still has a partner somewhere in the Pact and everything! And then Pins is… Pins. I guess he had a lot more to say on the general level, if not on the personal one, that surprised me, but they all surprised me, and that helped… More than I thought it would, right now, but I’m getting sidetracked.” From there, a sigh, as those big yellow eyes looked down, and closed. “And Kal… He was hardened, and even just learning the name of the guy who screwed him over was hard. He was closer, we could relate a little, but his case was just… Different, he had a face to give his woes, and I think that kept him going. And when he just stumbled into a reckoning in that castle, after that, he’s been… Calmer. It’s helped him. And that’s something I don’t think I can get, or ever will…”

The Vez turned around to face her again, but couldn’t quite look her in the eye yet. Sherry didn’t remember seeing her like this, ever. Not this deep. And it concerned her, outright worried her. Ziv needed to speak this piece, didn’t she? “And… Sherry, I am so, so sorry, but you asked for the truth, and you’ll get it. At first, I saw you so… Not stoic, but… Solid. Steadfast! That’s the word. You were handling all this so well, I thought. Our starts into this whole… Life, they were so much alike, but I… Sorry, I thought you were handling it so much better, way better than me! You were like an anchor sometimes, keeping me grounded on things, and I asked myself, more than once, ‘how does she do it?’” Those words, those exact words, made Usherrimi’s thoughts stumble. She asked that about her? She felt a pang very, very deep in her chest with that, losing her breath for just a second. “But I kept hiding it and never asked, and I never knew. I guess I was getting comfortable, getting used to it, and with the things folks did understand, it was enough, it felt nice, but the depths still stung a little, I thought I just needed time! So I never asked…”

At last, Ziv looked at her straight in the eye, with a hopeful, almost trembling smile and eyes that could barely focus. “But you get it, right? I’m sorry I never realized, but… You get it, right…?”

Usherrimi wanted to say ‘Yes, I get it’. And she attempted it. But what came out was less than coherent. She tried again, with better focus, but what she said was barely passable as a ‘Yes’, before a sharp inhale- was that a sob? Her eyes were almost burning, so it checked out- Was she crying!? Right in front of Ziv, right now!? After she called her an anchor to her own pains!? Pains like hers at that!? No, she couldn’t, she had to stay strong, she had to stay strong for her, she knew how this hurt now and if Ziv had been hiding it all this time, while she, the fool, had been too deluded to realize it hurt, she didn’t have the right, she owed it to stay strong! She couldn’t cry, she couldn’t cry-

No can do. There she was, the mighty and steadfast Usherrimi Neshi Anei Var, brought low by a sobbing fit like she’d never experienced, one that made it hard to even stand. All she could do was try not to fall to her knees, lean on her pressed-down tail for balance, and cover her face with her hands so Ziv didn’t see her like this. She didn’t need to. Hearing her sniffle and struggle with words, and seeing just the teardrops that made it off her face, was beyond enough. But few could hid a fit like this, and an Ifchi least of all, with how those tears streamed. Lords damn it all, she couldn’t do it. And in the midst of this all, she couldn’t see how Ziv took this. Maybe she’d blame herself, or maybe she’d just broken the pedestal she’d been put onto, but either way, she’d disappointed her. That was the worst part, she’d been an anchor and the one time she’d found out how deep it went she blew it, and it only made her sob even harder-

“Sherry? Sherry, it’s fine- actually, come here.”

Familiar words said by the one usually receiving them. And when she opened her eyes, she saw Ziv with her arms outstretched in the exact same manner, too, even through the blur of tears. The Ifchi would appreciate the irony later, but right now, all she could think to do was to lunge towards the bat, and wrap her slimy arms around her cloak, sobbing openly into her chest and immediately staining the whole thing with her tears and slime. Almost bowled the bat over with her mass, but she couldn’t hold back right now. She needed someone who understood, and she was needed as someone who understood… The clawed hands pressed against her back, pulling her in so she could be embraced properly, only confirmed it.

Minutes passed, and neither of them let go. Sherry could barely hear Ziv’s little sniffles over her own breakdown, no matter how much she tried to muffle it against the fabric, and the soft fur she could almost feel beneath it. All the while, the bat laid her own head between Sherry’s frills, where she could definitely feel the fur getting slimed up, but she didn’t care one iota… Lords below, she felt like she was messing everything up just being there right now, and yet… Much as she wished she’d known it sooner, that behind that smile was a common wound, or that she herself had said wound, they knew it now, and selfish as it sounded, knowing someone hurt the exact same helped a little-

...that’s what she meant, wasn’t it. Selfish, in a way, but if Ziv-Ziri felt any better from it herself, in any way, it was worth it. Maybe she really did get it, after all…

And so, the sobbing died down to mutual sniffles, then to silence, broken only by soft breathing and the distant dripping of the caverns, with chatter from what’d be their camp once this was done. Everything that had been bottled up, coming out at once… They weren’t empty, but it was manageable, now, pouring out even in this growing quiet.

“Feelin’ any better, Sherry…?” Ziv was the first to break the silence that had settled.

“Think so”, she answered, before having to swallow just to continue. “S-sorry about that Ziv, so sorry…”

“Sorry about what, you did nothing wrong…!”, the bat answered, almost a little startled by the insinuation. She lifted and pulled her head back just so she could look her in the eye.

And the olm almost wilted under it, despite the kindness in that gaze. “Y’called me an anchor, y’said I was helping you, and here I’m just… Jus’ findin’ out you hurt like me and I’m the one breakin’ down-”

“Shh.” One clawed finger over her snout muted Sherry. “You needed that. More than I did. You held strong way longer, and I…” She sniffled again. “…it means something that you opened up like this, y’know?”

“’cause you get it! You always got it! Fuck!”. Unable to make herself let go, she just shamefully rubbed her face against the cloth to wipe some of her tears. “And I didn’t know… And here you are, opening up to me. Just this… Spoiled drop-out way in over her head who couldn’t read others for shit as far as you knew, j-just some newt with barely anything, who almost dragged you down, a-and you took me in, and you helped me, a-and you j-just- you just let me shine…!” It took effort not to hiccup right then and there.

Something about that made Ziv pause, almost as it if confused her… And then, she put both her long-fingered hands on either side of the olm’s snout, and leaned in closer, where she could see the little streaks of tear-stained fur under those big, glowing golden eyes of hers, gleaming like beacons to her… “Sherry, why wouldn’t I? I meant… Honestly, because you prefer that, honestly at first you paid your dues, so I had to, but then I saw what you could do… A-and then I saw who you were!” Something about the tone she said that in got to Sherry, who leaned back to look into her eyes properly, and her face as a whole, listening quietly. “You dealt with everything in stride, you’re good at what you do, too, and… It’s a spectacle, watching you work! It’s like everything some blowhards in Ishiss claim to be, but you don’t brag, you show! And it’s so… Pretty, too! I honestly kinda like how you look with your gills lit up, you know…?”

And that got to the olm even more. She’d love to have a sly little boast to offer, but right now, all she could do was listen, unable to see her own starstruck gaze – it’s not like Ziv’s eyes could reflect it – getting a little lost in her words.

“A-AND I MEAN- You’ve been pretty clever too, and so honest, and it’s so rare to see either, let alone both, and I can just be straightforwards with you with everything in our business, and I should’ve known it applied outside it too, but still…!”

The bat was getting warmer, Sherry could feel it. Part of it may have been panic from realizing what she just said, and trying to slide into something else, something more… Publicly acceptable, maybe? But part of it had to be something else. Could she relate to that, too…?

“A-and you have an eye for places, too, you really do have a traveler’s heart, I’ve liked that from the start, you know…? Though you’re pretty knowledgeable in general, I don’t think I ever told you that, but I should, because it’s like… Like those stories I hear here and there, of those roaming sages and wizards even, wiser than any of the ones from towers, a-and I always liked that thought, even if it was through my filter, of traveling artificers and traders of secret wonders, you know…?”

Usherrimi found herself leaning closer, ever closer, almost standing on her toes just to look deeper into her eyes even as they looked about as she tried to ramble away from a truth she wasn’t sure she should’ve said, burying it under her honest thoughts that only made it stand out more… Lords, those eyes. And that smile she had, when she meant it, when she let her teeth show without a care for tweaking how it looked. And that soft fur of hers, that felt like it shined even in the muddiest, bleakest holes in these caves. Closer still, and with wider eyes and mouth slightly agape, as she thought back, upon all those outings, all those times whether alone or with the others… Ziv had a light of her own, she shined as well, as herself, unashamed and bright, in a way that…

In a way that… Oh Lords…

“A-and I guess I just like how you’re you, if that means anything…? Like you’ve made all of this so much easier even when everything goes smoothly, you know? A-and, I mean, it’s just- Sherry? What- mmh!”

One last inch up, and their snouts met. Then their lips. In a moment, a single, fiery impulse, Usherrimi just went and planted a kiss, right on the lips of what until moments ago had been her boss and friend. With closed eyes, she couldn’t see her reaction, all she could do was feel the warmth, the rising warmth, and hear the silence that set in as their breathing stopped… No, it wasn’t quite silence, she simply stopped hearing anything that wasn’t each other, and she could swear she could hear the bat’s rising heartbeat-

Usherrimi pulled away, as reason came screaming back into her mind. What had she done, what the fuck had she done!? “Shit shit SHIT Ziv I’m so sorry I AM SO SORRY I DIDN’T- PLEASE DON’T-”

But she stopped, almost biting her tongue, as she saw the bat’s expression. There was no anger, no disgust, there were just a mouth agape in surprise, and those eyes, those great, glowing, tender eyes… Wide as could be, and… Starstruck? Pupils wide, and with just the slightest hint of new tears at their edges-

A rush of movement, pushing Sherry back on her feet. A lunge from above. And she felt Ziv-Ziri’s lips pressed on hers by her own volition, and reason, sated, stepped back to let everything else take over. To let their embrace tighten once more, and feel each other’s heartbeats and warmth, with everything else, even the monolith that shone a spotlight upon their encounter, fading into the background. With closed and teary eyes, and their ears focused on naught but their breaths and hearts, they let their other senses take over, melting into each other, slime and fur meeting with little more than joy in it. Feeling one another, with fingers that trailed along their backs, grasping each other in search of more. Tasting one another, as the bat started to give in, slipping the tip of her tongue into the axolotl’s mouth, pushing against her thick tongue, feeling each and every one of those tiny, sharp little snaggleteeth that she loved to see whenever Sherry truly smiled…

And in the end, they parted, with Usherrimi’s gills stretching wide as she gasped for air, and Ziv-Ziri simply smiling as she took in a deep, longing breath, smiling at the olm… Who, at last, smiled back, with glistening eyes. And with still-flared gills, that refused to stay put, her breathing heavy and heated…

“Sherry… I really wish we weren’t being waited on, because I would’ve liked to keep going.”

“…Same, Ziv. I could’ve gone for hours there, that felt… This is…”

“Shh, I think you’ve told me all I needed to know… You need a minute to calm down a little~?”

“...actually? Yes. You can always claim the stains were water, but I can’t face them this… Flushed.”

“Hee~! Nah, if you won’t hide it I won’t! Still, they can wait a minute longer!”

“…Actually… I have an idea to pass that minute. Want to help me with a cairn, here?”

“O-oh, you’re gonna mark the occasion? Like, to the whole Subterraneum like that? I-”

“I feel it’s right, you know? And besides… This quartz right here, lighting up the dark… I was fond of them then, and what can I say, after this, I’m fond of them now. It feels right to mark it, don’t you think?”

“...yeah, yeah I do. Look, that one could make the base, wanna help me with it?”

“Like I always have… Like I always will~.”

[yutzen]

Trial by Fire

(Another from the archive, another prompt (by Make Up A Wizard back on Cohost), another main line story, another little something for Ziv and Sherry alike.)

Wizard who believes all guards are bastards

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"Oh, no, I met Sherry pretty early on actually, just a bit after getting thrown out! In a way, she was a customer, 'cause she needed a way outta the Spires - you looked SO lost back then! - and I thought 'hey, having a hitchhiker helps a bit, right? No one hiding stuff picks up hitchhikers, they'll probably think I'm gullible!' So after hiding what she paid, she hopped on, and... well, sometimes bad luck and bad decisions work out pretty nice! Say, Sherry, why don't you tell 'em?"

"Yeah, go right ahead sir, have a look!"

Along a wide road of smoothed stone, flanked on all sides by pillars of black, geometric basalt, a roofed iron wagon had been stopped in its trek. The sparking bulbs at its corners and the luminous rods held by those surrounding it were just about the only lighting in the cavern, aside from very distant specks of a tower-laden city left far behind - though distant rock formations seemed silhouetted by the faintest of red, as if the very earth had a glimmer of its own.

The driver, a mostly chiropteran figure stood tall in front of her belongings, showing only her yellow eyes and a big, fanged grin; nearly all the rest was covered in a long, dusty cowl that almost reached her ankles. She motioned almost theatrically towards the back of her vehicle, now that it had its back compartment open. "Oh, right", she said in her high-pitched voice, "I did bring some white-welt in those jars over there, got a brother that loves that tea. That's not a problem, right?" She asked with a lilting, cheery tone, knowing full well that wasn't a problem - that laid elsewhere, entirely out of sight, in places where she hoped the armored fellows she was talking to wouldn't imagine existed.

The driver then briefly turned her ear towards her restless traveling companion, wearing a similar cloak - though visibly oversized for her stature - that showed even less under all the fabric, no matter how tightly it stuck to her heavy form. The only thing visible under the cowl were the shape of a wet, rounded snout and the pin-prick reflections of every light before her, glinting off rounded goggles somewhere in the dark. 'Lords below', she wanted to say, 'I really hope you know what you're doing', but even the tiniest whisper might be heard by the three Vezarym that had stopped their ride for inspection. All Usherrimi could do was trust this smuggler, this "Ziv-Ziri", and be ready to act if it didn't work out... And once the Vez herself had made sure she was staying put, she stepped aside and let them pass.

The silvery helms of the three guards, pointed and featureless, betrayed no emotion, not even a glance at each other. The one in the fanciest armor - a thoroughly articulated getup that even had scales worn over the ridge of his wings, and had protection all the way to the ankles - chirped an order in their language to a subordinate, who immediately stepped towards the back of the carriage. The two persons of interest stood back, watching the guard's thin breastplate shimmer in the lights as he made it past the others, and started to rummage through their belongings, between sharp clicks of his tongue.

Another chirp from the (presumed captain, and the other guard spoke up. "Where are you heading, ma'am?", she asked Ziv-Ziri, without a glance or an ear turned towards her company.

"Straight to Tov-Riki! Gonna be staying there for a while!" Ziv-Ziri's smile was sharp and sure as ever as she fed them part of the truth; she'd stay there 'a while', and then keep going well past the Hollow-Lands, with her (and her real cargo's) true destination deep in the sands of the Gyre.

The guard spoke up again, as the captain took notes. "Do you have a residence within Tov-Riki?" It sounded intrusive, but in the Consortium, such questions were expected.

And so, the bat already had an answer: "Not mine, but my brother Lemniz lives there! Gonna be staying with him for a bit of a family vacation!" Made sense - aside from the part where Lemniz was neither her brother nor an actual person - that little town was one of the few places in the Consortium with a river you could swim in without being swept away.

But then came the elephant in the room: "Who's the individual traveling with you, ma'am?"

To her credit, her answer neither wavered nor skipped a beat, but it painted an unflattering picture. "I picked her up along the road! She was walking straight towards the Hollow-Lands, and I thought, 'hey, she could use a lift!' This place is bad enough with help, you know?" And again she turned her ear towards the Ifchi, before everyone's gazes followed, including the one previously looking in the trunk... and, as accorded, Usherrimi said a quick, low-voiced greeting in Ishiss' language - though she added a touch of Riverside accent of her own accord. Just in case. Wouldn't do to sound like she's from too far away.

"I can translate if you need", Ziv offered. That one also felt like an improvisation.

"That won't be necessary, ma'am". That guard's tone was was less than promising, but a scolding was getting off easy. "Picking up strangers on the road is dangerous business, traveling alone as you are. You could've been in serious danger."

This smuggler had a reply for that too at least: "I mean... yeah, I know, but she was also alone, in the middle of this place, and I mean... look at her!" Straight for pointing at her near-penniless, ragged, frowning self, huh. Usherrimi didn't even try to hid the dour look on her face from that one, maybe it'd even help move things along quickly. The smears of ash on her slimy face - even her skin being black as coal couldn't hide those - sure drove the point across, too. 'Trust the professional', she repeated in her head, drowning out the rest.

The armored Vez tried, and failed, to hide a snort. "I get what you mean, ma'am, believe me, but I'm serious. Appearances are deceiving..." She paused, and leaned in for a few words she thought the olm wouldn't understand, "...though I'll give you one thing: Looking like that, stranded around here, don't think this one's even got a spark in her." Now Usherrimi had to hide her expression, looking down and trying not to flare her gills in offense.

Ziv-Ziri could only plaster a smile on her face until she could move on; they all might as well just play along. So far so good, even the one sifting through the wagon seemed just distracted enough to miss things, and that meant they'd probably be off and away from this soon enough... But there was a look in the captain's face that wasn't amusement, or stoicism. Ziv hadn't noticed it yet, too focused on the "friendly" one, but behind that helmet, Usherrimi could see the gears in his head were turning. Was he catching on? No, his ears were fixed on the Ifchi, like he thought she wouldn't notice just because his eyes were elsewhere. She knew how bats worked, and the clicking of his tongue gave him away...

"Don't be so sure, sergeant", he said at last, yet again in the Consortium's tongue, "spark's got nothing to do with it. Prowling around the Spires, pretending to be lost, right before giving some tourist doe eyes to hitch that ride to the Hollow-lands? Right through the Deltas?" The captain shook his head, huffing in what sounded like disdainful amusement. His next words were proud, almost smug, as he placed his hand on his subordinate's shoulder: "What you have here, sergeant Tikriz, is a spy. Eyeing claims, spotting mines, and sifting through the silt to let everyone know just where Consortium digs are, and just what they've found. I'd bet you fifty Crowns I could find a chip of gold in some pocket of hers, one that belongs to us." The other two looked at him with inscrutable eyes behind their helmets, as he leaned back on spread wings, humming. "Ah, the miners won't hear a thing, but the Dredger's Guilds... they'll want to know about this."

Usherrimi tensed, clenching her fists under her cloak. Just like that, everything had gone to shit in less than a minute, and over... this, something worse than she could've even imagined. And the worst part, the part she couldn't get out of her head, and made her blood boil, was... Had she been wandering odd places? Sure. Was she making deals with a smuggler? Unfortunate but true. Was she a wanted criminal? ...criminal, maybe, wanted, yes, if you counted Ishiss. But was she a spy? Some prowling rat out for others' lowly, material secrets, crawling in the mud for others' gold of all lords-damned things!? All for someone that already had plenty of it already, and would scarcely give her any!? This slanderous fabrication is what she was going to fucking prison for!?

To accuse Usherrimi Neshi Anei Var of something that venal needed an answer, whether this shiny son of a whore meant it or had some other motive, as these enforcers always did. And yet... she couldn't give it, could she? All three had turned to her, rounding in, already surrounding her, and this smuggler would just-

"Oh come on." Said smuggler derailed her train of thought right then and there, cutting in with a sharp voice. "No luggage, nowhere to drop her off, no knapsack, no anything, and hitching a ride in this thing with me? And you think she's some kinda spy?" She approached the captain, that smile of hers shinier than ever in the light, before turning towards the other two for sympathy, for an audience to convince. "Come on, doesn't that seem a little... silly, maybe?"

Alright, so this smuggler wouldn't just throw her into the fire, despite having everything to lose from it. At least someone had her back, even if she was a damn near stranger... But no good deed went unpunished, going by the captain's reaction: He immediately loomed before her, uncomfortably close, with one claw at his side already reaching for his weapon. "Oh?", he said, trying to hide his affront under a thick layer of sarcasm, "is there something wrong with my assessment, ma'am? A problem with the judgement of someone that's patrolled these Spires for a decade, mm?" He glared right into her eyes, and only pulled away once she shrank back from it. His next words had that certain smugness again, pointing with his thumb at the luminous city far behind them for emphasis: "How about we officially find out, then? You two and your wagon will be coming with us back to Tak-Fizun, this will need an investigation proper, wouldn't you agree?"

The Ifchi didn't need to be in this kind of thing for a decade to know panic when she saw it, brief as it was. The smuggler, chatty as she was, had brought up this would probably be the last time she'd be around the city. Was she wanted in there already? Maybe even one of those exiles she'd heard about - not a punishment where she came from, but the Consortium supposedly did that - and if she was found in here she'd be condemned? She'd have to be either bold or stupid to still do business nearby, but that did mean she might be in even worse straits than Usherrimi was. And all for trying to help her! Could've thrown her under, and she didn't, and this is what she gets! Oh, this was a disaster...

On the plus side, and the thought made her smile, this was perhaps the one scenario that let her go ahead and do what she did best.

The three were focused on the smuggler, what with the crack in her facade being impossible to ignore. Two of them were together in one spot, looming over vulnerable quarry as "enforcers" liked to do... She'd have to trust the smuggler with the third. Conveniently, perhaps, she was already backing away in fear, towards her own wagon. Perfect. The olm set her open hands besides her hips, the little sparks in them and on her gills hidden by her cowl...

"Actually", she said - in their language with the poshest accent she could muster - and waited for the two to turn around in shock...

And Usherrimi thrust her hands forwards, enveloped in a blinding flash. From her once-unassuming form, a ruinous wave of heat and force barreled forwards, cracking the stone beneath and before her, and turning her cloak to ashes in an instant - leaving a wine-red tunic, lustrous and shining in the light. The blast's targets weren't so lucky: The fire and fury crashed into them so fast they barely had the time to feel it, sending them- no, shotgunning what was left of them across the road and its pillars. By the time anyone present could be deafened by the blast, only a scatter of bone and molten metal spread through the Spires remained of sergeant Tikriz and his captain.

Falling to her knees, and still smoldering, Usherrimi grinned, raised her eyes towards the detritus of her art, and screamed into the dark: "HOW'S THAT FOR A FUCKING SPARK!?"

With that, she turned to the two Vezarym that remained. Ziv-Ziri looked shocked, horrified even, and from that slight convulsion, maybe oughtright nauseous. Not unexpected. Hearing the clicks and slides of something metallic, she turned to the other-

Usherrimi threw herself back reflexively, thrusting her white tail in front of herself before the extended spear that plunged right through it, and into two of her ribs, could reach something far more important.

She grabbed the spear as tightly as she could, but the thing was slipping between her slimy fingers as the remaining guard flapped his wings in an attempt to force it further in. Locked in a struggle, she couldn't even try to muster further flames right now: A blast like that took a lot out of her, she needed a moment, and even if it hadn't, concentrating was far harder with a telescoping spear digging into your chest. All she could do was keep sliding back and struggling, watching her tail bleed, seeing the hate in the glowing eyes behind the mask-

Before they went much wider and fearful... and then, blank. The olm saw a spatter of blood that wasn't hers, and glanced to see a sharp, metallic tip, far shinier than the armor of anyone present, emerging right beneath the helmet's jaw guard.

Ziv-Ziri's gloved hand shoved the third guard aside, sliding her knife out of his neck, and reached in to yank the evoker back to her feet with a single, panicked pull. "We gotta run, we gotta get going fast, they had to see that all they way up there, hurryhurryHURRY!" As she got back to her feet, Usherrimi couldn't help but notice she was trying really hard not to look at the body, or her own knife, stashed between her now-bloodstained robes so haphazardly it was worrying. No time for that though. Nothing left to do but slam the trunk shut, get back in the wagon, and get going. The engine thankfully roared back to life pretty quick, and after shutting the lights to make them harder to follow, off they went... But not after Ziv had to brace herself after making the mistake of looking back at the mess they made.

"What a mess... how did that happen!?" Ziv-Ziri broke the silence after a few minutes, once they had veered off the beaten path. "I was doing so well, and then that guy just... where did he get that idea!? Are you a spy? I mean I'm not judging but-"

"No", Usherrimi answered, almost curtly. Her next words were much softer. "No, probably just an assumption. Or an excuse, and a deal with this... dredging guild. He got it in his mind that we had to go. Or I had to go and you had the impertinence of questioning him. We were damned either way."

"...yeah. And we're damned now." It took actual effort for the smuggler to not slam her head into the steering in frustration. "I'm twice as screwed if I ever get caught here, and now you're screwed too 'cause they had to see that."

"Twice, you say... you already were. And I already was, otherwise I wouldn't be here." The olm couldn't help but shake her head with brows held high. "This just seals that deal, doesn't it? Still sounds like something of a change of plans for us both." She then reclined in her seat... allowing herself a small smile. "On the plus side, we're neither dead nor in prison."

And there was Ziv's smile again, now with some actual sincerity to it. "Yeah, we are... Thanks for saving my ass back there, with the... sorry I screwed up and it had to come to... that, but... thanks."

"Look, I think we can both agree those two had to go. Though..." The olm mused, and turned to face the Vez. "Thank you, in fact. It would've been easier for you to just let them take me, but you went and spoke up even if it meant pissing them off." She saw Ziv's interruption coming, and cut in: "I don't care if it didn't work, you did."

That one gave the smuggler some pause. "I mean... what kind of Vez would I be to just leave you out to dry, right? It's now how I do things in my enterprise! Even if I'm the only one in it, hee..."

Usherrimi raised a brow, mock-unimpressed and with a sly smile. "Oh is that how you're going to play it, Ziv? Transactionally? Makes me wonder why they hate you... But I guess it indebts me to you for the attempt. And for the help with that last one."

"It's more of a mutual debt-", the bat began, before narrowing her eyes with a muted grin. "Oh, you're playing me, aren't you? Well, you got me!" Turning back to the road, she sighed... and then, glanced back at Usherrimi. "Though if you wanna put it like that, I could use more like... what you just did, if we're both screwed."

"Looking to turn it into an enterprise of two then?" The olm snorted, but didn't actually drop her own smile. She did need a living, and more importantly, smugglers went places - roaming these caverns for secrets would be so much easier... and she'd have a boss that had her back this time. "Mm... I warn you, subtlety's not my finest suit. But if you don't mind that, and have a spot that needs some of my Art..."

And to drive the point home with that theatrical flare Usherrimi seemed to love, she stretched out her gills and lit their tips with violet flame to match her eyes, as if she were a chandelier...

"...then, in your terms, you got a deal, mm?"

[yutzen]

Reminiscing by Candlelight

(Another from the archives, back to two of the earliest members, having a quiet moment adrift. Prompt by Impressions of Detail back on Cohost)

Candles in paper boats, set adrift on the blackness of an undergroud sea.

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"Come right onboard, Ziv. More than big enough for the both of us. Yes, right over there, to keep it balanced- no, right over there, you're not that heavy and you know it. Don't start. Mind the candles, the idea's to light them deeper in."

"Surprised? ...Yes, I've never been much of a traditionalist, haven't I? There's reasons for that. But this... this I can respect. Long story."

"...you sure about that, then? You're asking for the full story, you get the full story, you know I got Vel beat at rambling with the right topic."

"Lending an ear like yours, you sure spoil me, Ziv. Alright, where do I start... One thing about history, usually when you look into how a thing got started, how a given custom or group was founded... it hacks at the mystique of it. You get these beginnings that are stupidly mundane at best. And at worst? You find origins you should be ashamed of. Feats of heroism that inspired entire holidays, you look into it and you find exaggeration and fabrication. Entire people invented from whole cloth, and those who did exist were barely worth noting, if not outright cowards, or even thugs with cleansed names. You look at families that brag of their lineage, and you ever so rarely find anyone close to decent, with the biggest braggarts having their ancestors slathered in lies. And that is disheartening enough, mm?"

"Less than the Western kingdoms, but it still happens, yes. I get the feeling they're trying to make up for how little they have to brag about in themselves when they do that. Now, me, I don't have that problem... don't look at me like that, the Consortium isn't a kingdom and I barely even know who your mom is, let alone any of your ancestors. Do Vezarym just not look back...?"

"Anyhow, back on track. Lineages, events, holidays, and all the fabrication to go with them, that's problem enough. But those are just pieces of the whole matter. After that, you look at the whole. You look at your own country, the nation you're told you should be proud of... and you find that it began with a cataclysmic fuckup that all present should've seen coming. You find ancestors that were either so idiotic, or so awful, that they invited a horror to ruin everything they had. You find their mistake is haunting you and everyone you know to this day. You look over the horizon - that exact horizon right over there in fact - and see the consequences, looming right over you and everyone you know. And you think... did they even deserve to make it this far? To found a nation all around fleeing their own self-inflicted ruin? And asking that when you're nominally a part of said nation, and definitely one of their people... it takes the wind out of your sails, you know?"

"You don't need to- ...alright, fine, come here. Only because no one's seen us here. Just mind the balance. I'm fine, I've made my peace with it so far. It's why I'm doing what I'm doing... is this just an excuse to squish me? Don't-"

"Okay, good. I was getting to that, in fact. This encroaching, toxic darkness the East is infamous for, you know that one, yes? It's right over there... And, in fact, we could row to it right now if we wanted to. No, we do not want to, because we have better things to be doing than smashing every source of light we see, don't we? The thing is, said darkness wasn't always here in these caverns. It followed us here, after my ancestors tried to run from it. After calling it to begin with, mind you... And that last part is important, because it meant they also knew what they were dealing with."

"Mm~. It has everything to do with it, Ziv. You all keep forgetting that regular old darkness is just a lack of light, while whatever is spilling out the Exit to our old lands is something beyond that. Something that actively fights the light, even as it's fended off. Get deep enough and you can see it smother it out like someone pinching a candle's wick... which is a really appropriate metaphor now that I said it. Except that this darkness can't chose not to try and put the light out, because it's a force in itself, and like just about every tutor in Ishiss will tell you, forces will always mindlessly do what they do... that sounds better in my language, by the way."

"Good, you're catching on. The thing is, it's not steady: sometimes it pushes forwards, and it's good to be forewarned when that happens. So this all started, long ago, with some sentries that wanted to see it coming and have time to retreat and sound the alarm. So all around the edges of our territory, the border sentries would space out slow-burn torches, one after the other, and see when they flickered and died to know when it was time to raise the alarm. Hence the saying, Ushir-Ruq, "flame in the dark", when you've got something that's meant to fall first and act only as a warning..."

"...you've heard that one before?"

"Ziv, you have a talent in adding people to my shitlist, you know that?"

"Let's just leave the thoughts about toasting to me, mm? And leave them for later, I meant this as a wind-down. So, where was I... flames in the dark, right. So, the thing with Ishiss, it's got water borders too, and this particular lake is enormous. And the sentries couldn't just plop a torch in the middle of the lake for obvious reasons, and so, they instead resorted to setting candles afloat. Back then they were propped with cheap, light fungiwood, because they didn't need that many, just a few that'd stay put in this place..."

"Yes, the paper came later, right with those that weren't sentries themselves, it was cheaper for them after all. Some of the fishers and moss-farmers that lived by the lake saw these displays, these lights in the water, and for one reason or another started to add their own. Maybe they wanted their own warnings... or maybe they thought it was a pretty sight, watching these flickers of flame drifting in the still waters. Can't blame them if that's what did it... but soon enough, everyone who set out into the waters pitched in their own little paper boat with a candle of its own. And since we're Ifchi after all, everyone sets out into the water at some point or another, and so found these lights, and added their own..."

"It's a big lake, but I guess it did get crowded around the shore, because the border guard put some limits on it all, from what I could track - they got lifted ages ago, but still, it stuck. One candle per name, it was... and since this was paper, they kept track by simply writing said names on the boats. And then those that still wanted to keep the dark at bay or just look at a horizon full of candles, they started laying some for those that weren't there. Maybe it was an excuse at first, "you can't prove they didn't come and laid theirs down" while turning around and telling their pals, "all those lights are mine". But maybe it did start out laying a candle for someone who couldn't take to the water that day, and someone had the idea of laying one out for an old friend that couldn't take to the water, because they were too far away... for one reason or another. Maybe they aren't Ifchi, maybe they've moved to the other end of these caverns... or maybe they passed on to whatever comes next, if anything. Whatever the reason, you lit a candle in their name, and set it to sail in the dark. Because you hadn't forgotten them. Because you knew they'd be there with you if they could."

"Hand me a few, we're right in the spot for it. They're prettier up close, mm?"

"I don't go into Ishiss a lot anymore, you know exactly why. But the lake's big enough to get lost in, and what attention is just another boat gonna draw? Another one adding to the layer of lights that keeps the dark at bay, or at least under watch? No, it's peaceful here. No one's ever given me trouble out here, boat or not. It's... quiet, here. I've spent hours just looking at the ceiling, watching the quartz crawlers passing by, shining down on me... And honestly, adding a candle of my own, it's something. A little help to everyone down here, and a spit in the face of this darkness that tries to threaten us. Someone's gotta tell it to go fuck itself. And one for everyone else, mm? It's... well, more insults in the face of this stygian nightmare, sure, but it's... nice, to set out a pretty reminder. A light for memories' sake. A little acknowledgement for those that aren't here..."

"'Usherrimi Neshi Anei Var'... And that's mine. Yes, that's the whole thing, before you ask, you know how we are, but I feel if there's any place to use the whole name it's here... Now, I've been adding one for you for a few years already, care to do the honors this ti- GHOUF"

"TOO TIGHT-"

"Gah! Lords below where the fuck did you get a grip like that!?"

"Right, right. Look, I just... knew it's something you'd want to do if you weren't running all over the underground all the time, mm? It's the least I could do, like a bare minimum. It was about time you joined in on it, don't you think? Plus, I was never sure if Ziv-Ziri was the whole thing or not. And besides... I know you have a far more names to set afloat than I ever would. "

"Yes, that is in fact why I brought this many. I wasn't sure, so I overdid it just in case. Set as many as you can think of, it'll answer a few questions of mine. Here, a pencil... And a light~"

"You know me, Ziv, I wasn't about to not show off. And besides, looking into the water like this, with my gills like their own candles while the lake's still as a mirror like this... it's a treat of its own, mm? Still, take as long as you need, I can do this for hours if I want to..."

"...don't think I've ever told you this but I really like your handwriting. That might've been another reason, looking back."

[yutzen]

The Hard Way

(Another from the archives, and another with the crew, this time introducing our favorite scorching axolotl. Inspired by a prompt provided by Make Up A Criminal on Cohost)

Smuggler who is losing track of all their secret stashes

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"It was somewhere in here, I swear!"

Amidst a haze of spores thicker than the morning fog, a tall, cowled figure practically crawled across knots of hyphae and slippery stalks that crunched under her paws, the packets in her cloak weighing them down. A chiropteran figure, almost but not quite a proper bat. The thick scarf she wore around her snout hid her nose, but it couldn't hide the yellow glimmer of her eyes - giving away just how weepy they were. "Right around the big ivory cap, the one with the notch", she said with a sniffle, pointing towards an off-white mushroom cap nearly a hundred feet tall, "go fifty feet to the North exactly! And then just find the little red murch I myself cut an X into! Well, myself, where the hell is it!?"

Her companion followed behind on steadier, calmer steps, with her gloved hands behind her back. An axolotl - for the most part - whose slimy skin was pitch black, save for a dragging tail so white it was near-transluscent. She wore a long, wine-red tunic bulging with loot, woven from a lustrous, near-resinous material the mud just couldn't cling to, though she walked barefoot otherwise without a care. Thick, round glasses covered her eyes, reflecting her luminous scarlet gills as she watched the cowled chiropteran scrounge through the forest. "Ziv, you don't expect a simple cut into the fungus to last, yes? I've told you before, this forest is quite lively."

"I KNOW HOW LIVELY IT IS, SHERRY! I learned my lesson the last time! Two weeks shouldn't be enough for it to be gone, right? Right!?". Ziv-Ziri was outright clawing her way through the mushy underbrush looking for anything that looked red, growling where she would once be humming as fungal remnants clung to her ears and horns. "Got my clothes proofed that time, too. And I buried it in a metal box this time, 'cause I learned that lesson too! 'cause there's nothing like having to dig through the mud for worms to drive a lesson all the way in."

Usherrimi, or rather 'Sherry', tilted her head in liew of a raised eyebrow. She pushed her glasses up into place, a measure of expression for violet eyes that had no lids to narrow. "Care to tell me what you buried your vitals in last time?" the Ifchi asked, brushing a slurry of spores and slime off her nose.

"Leather", Ziv answered, not even bothering to hide the shame in her voice. "It usually works for shorter stays, but you said it: This place is lively, and that includes the part where its fungus eats things, including leather and the stuff inside it! "

"So you forgot leather usually comes from something that used to be alive, yes? Common mistake." Sherry turned her head as she looked around, keeping one branch of glowing frills helpfully aimed at her boss. "But it shouldn't be common with the deals you've made with Pact fellows."

"It isn't now. Even with how much they pay for what little stuff they actually ban, I didn't work with the Pact of Krawgry until pretty damn recently. For reasons that should be pretty damn obvious!". As her voice rose, so did her arms, motioning towards the thick fungal rainforest and everything that came with it. "I feel like I'm packing half my weight in spores and mud right ab- aah, AAAHCHOO!". Sneezes were meant to unclog, but with a scarf in the way, all this one achieved was making things even worse for her.

Sherry slipped a thick (and slimy) scarf of her own from her many pockets, handing it over before she spoke. "The mud isn't so bad, honestly, though I will give you the spores, albeit for... different reasons. So you've switched to metal, then, to avoid that kind of incident?" Her voice was calm throughout, dropping to an almost insidious neutrality for the next question as her tiny, snaggled teeth betrayed her intent: "And then you lost it anyhow?"

"I did not lose it!" Ziv shrieked, digging her nails into a stalk. "Not for that long anyways, I found what was left! It would've been fine if I got there in less than a month, but whoops! Turns out some of the mushrooms here can sprout, peak and die in less than a month! I had to buy a mycology manual in Pact territory, from a Korve that just laughed at this, to know what to mark!" She groaned, rubbing her reddened eyes - only to groan even louder as the spore-laced mud on her gloves made things worse. "By the time I got there again, I found out even flarewood rots in here, and you wouldn't think so with how much resinous crap is in it. And I got to go hungry because of it."

"Flarewood", the Ifchi repeated, just a little incredulous. "You'd think something grown by the light of molten earth would last a little longer. An actual shame, that." She ran her fingers down her frills in thought, expecting and finding no spores on them. "Must've been a feast for whatever actually ate it."

"Someone sure ate well!" The bat's voice was as sarcastic as she could manage. "No snacks, no water, no bolts, not even bullets! There were just scraps in there!" She didn't even notice her companion's head-tilt as she went on. "That one's happened every time! With the leather, with the flarewood, with the glass too! Every time it's opened something just ransacks it even if it doesn't eat the rest!"

"Glass", Sherry asked again, just as incredulous yet ever so slightly familiar. "You mean that spot with shards where we stopped earlier-"

"Yes, that was me, and I found it just this time." Ziv tried to flash an utterly unhappy grin, but her new scarf got in the way. "Because last time a witherhorn just went and dropped dead on it! Every last ton of it! 'Stand right under the blunt stalactite and then walk three minutes South, and dig under the rock with an X in it that I also carved myself, right next to the vile and smelly mushroom that will bury it and break it and ruin it', PAH." She lowered the scarf just enough to spit at the ground, learning that lesson at least. "Now I learned, though. Heavy as it may be, murder as it may be on my back and my pockets, metal's gonna be the only thing that works." She trailed off, looking around at the underbrush she'd so fruitlessly searched. "Or so I told myself this time..."

The axolotl(?) could only shake her head, rubbing her own forehead in disbelief. "Suppose a red murch would survive something like that too. And nothing I know would feast on metal just like that..." With one hand, she covered her eyes while the others took the glasses, rubbing them against the tunic to clean off the residues. "Everything you've learned about this place, you've learned the hard way, haven't you, Ziv? You're practically a scholar of Mycon's Valley by now with that many mistakes to learn from." She allowed herself a lopsided smirk with the smallest hint of pointed teeth, once she put her glasses back on. "Wonder what we're gonna learn this time?"

Her boss - and friend - turned to her, and all she only offer was not a sardonic grin or a furious snarl, but a pout and a very audible whine. Even with the scarf on, she could see it, and those eyes hid nothing either no matter how much she'd blame on the spores... To that, Sherry only sighed deeply, and opened her arms wide. "...fine, fine. Come here. Only because no one's seen us."

Ziv often pounced violently on the chance for a hug from an associate, and this time was no exception, even with the slog of mud in the path there. The embrace was tight and messy, as it always was in Mycon's Valley, and as it always was when an Ifchi was involved. "How a ruptured pipeline of emotions like you managed to become a blockade runner is an actual mystery to me, Ziv, but somehow you make it work." Before the blockade runner in question could say anything about having good associates, Sherry cut in again. "And do not say anything about paying me extra for this. This one's on the house."

"Too late for that..." were the words from a fanged mouth that was smiling once more beneath its scarf. "It wasn't just terrain and danger, I also hired you because you're like an anchor in moments like these and I kinda expected this to happen by now. Patterns are a bitch."

The Ifchi sputtered, ending the hug to hold Ziv-Ziri by the shoulders with a baffled look. She tried to berate her, but couldn't find the words, and dropped the issue with a sigh. "You really are a Vezarym, exiled or not."

"Come on, you know I'm more of a Vez than anyone in the Consortium by now, the f-" Her reply was cut short by a squeeze on her shoulders, and a sudden, lunging movement from Sherry towards something in the mud: A cherry-red splinter of fungal "wood", much like the murch they had been looking for. And once Ziv saw it too, she could only expect the worst.

Once their search narrowed to the ground, and they knew what to look for instead, a clear trail was found across the mud. First, splinters. Then, five-clawed footsteps and a dragging tail between them, with a few more splinters all around. They both followed quietly, their steps light and kept away from the sucking mud. And once past a thin curtain of filaments hanging from the caps above, in a clearing of smashed stalks, they found...

A beast. A sturdy, shining shell on four thick and scaly legs. A tortoise, big as a horse and three times heavier at the very least, with what looked like shimmering iron lining the rims and patterns of its shell. Its beaked head had a pointed metal horn like a rhino's, one that reflected Sherry's light as the thing turned to face them with hostile eyes... showing the remains of a metal casing stuck in its mouth, which was brought back inside it with a slurp and audibly chewed on and swallowed. Scattered ration wrappings and torn-up cartridges laid all over the ground, yet with much fewer pellets and bullets than one'd expect from such a scatter. And right besides a splintered red stump that had been cleaved in half by tremendous force, there was a stack of crossbow bolts... all their heads bitten neatly off.

So that's what they would learn this time, thought Sherry as she turned to Ziv, gauging for her reaction... and she saw eyes flaring with actual fury, hearing the sound of teeth grinding together and an unnerving hum from her ridged throat, as the Vez reached into her cloak and pulled out a long, thin knife of silvery-looking metal, long as her forearm yet thin as a finger. "Alright then. Fine. Okay. Plan B: We kill and eat that thing."

At long last, Sherry allowed herself a grin, with pinprick snaggle-teeth on full display. She opened her arms, with hands stretched wide, as her frills started glowing brighter and brighter, hovering as if weightless; at the tip of each branch, a small flame like a candle's own came to life, lighting the Ifchi up like a dangerous chandelier. Betraying some actual joy for once, she chuckled to herself, and replied: "I thought you'd never ask~"

[yutzen]

Party-Crasher

(Another from the archive, that I want to get in here before we get to my main crew/protagonists. Prompt provided by Make Up A Criminal back on Cohost)

Pirate who has gone into local port politics

This was supposed to be a routine speech. Brief summary of what the last period had entailed, an outset of what was to come, the usual promises, all in a day's work for the overseer of a busy town like this one...

But the enormous black-iron airship that emerged from the darkness above made a mockery of the idea.

The alarm fires were ordered lit, and the searchlights they powered immediately turned to the vessel above - a schooner from its size, dented and scraped yet tinkered beyond its start - casting its shadow against the cavern roof. The meager crowd that surrounded the podium grew as the sandstone spires emptied out, letting their cloth-buried populace out into the streets to witness the arrival of a dangerous sight, already far too familiar to some. Ballistae and cannons were pointed, trains were primed to depart the many rails that criss-crossed the settlement, and down below, all held their breath in silence, hearing only the thrumming of the vessel's engines...

Until a growing cackle broke the silence, somewhere from above. High-pitched and hissy, and audible to all bellow thanks to something amplifying it. One spotlight saw something and focused it, followed by the others, and spotted the voice's bearer, a short, though elongated figure holding a conical object in one hand and stretching the other one out towards the town. "Come on, Silks", she said, "you know you ain't got the balls, cannon or otherwise."

Wellrey "Silks" Rattlevoice, the overseer in question, recognized that voice, no matter how far he was under his layers of fine, imported silks. Glass-covered eyes turned towards the speaker, narrowing as the airship lowered enough to nearly scrape the tops of the city's taller buildings. That's where he saw the captain of the vessel: A strutting green lizard - more or less - in a sleeveless black vest above a tight white shirt, her bottom half hidden from view by the railings. "And we all know whose fault the cannon part is, don't we?", she continued with a grin, one made very visible as she walked from one end to the other, presenting her side. That long, toothy mouth was visible even at this distance, as was the streak of feathers along her spine, emerald in color and flared from apparent excitement, all the way down her tail - which ended in a hook of shiny steel rather than the usual feathered point. She had one pink-colored eye pointed right at the overlord... Before she turned to face him directly, letting both- no, all three of her eyes glower right at him, the third nestled right above her snout. "Oh, you would've made it so easy, wouldn't you? Just blasting this place open and taking what's inside?"

"Three-Eye" Villiq. Thief, train-raider, extortionist and pirate captain of the Gyre. And that ship had to be the King Charcoal, her current and favorite vessel, hovering right above the town... with cannons pointed upwards, away from all, and not even trying to fire.

The Troxi captain continued to speak into the amplifier, letting the entire town hear. Her voice was mocking, sardonic even. "But I have a problem there, Silks. We all have a problem, and I'm including everyone down there with you too. Hello to you, by the way! You all want to know what problem I mean? What's stopping me from busting open one of those trains of yours, knowing you wouldn't have the guns to stop me?\~" Her next words were, for a change, straightforwards, and her tone betrayed genuine anger as he near-bellowed into her amplifier: "Simple! THERE IS NOTHING LEFT! There's not a lot left to snatch up when the fancy fuck in the silk wraps steals it first, isn't it!?"

Already Silks could feel some (though not all) eyes on him from that statement, and already he was raising one finger pointed directly at the captain - but whether he meant to protest or order fire, he was quickly interrupted by the captain once more. "Don't waste your breath, big guy, because I know what I'm talking about. I know about your little lighting project, for example. Keeping these streets of yours lit up, pretty dark for a rail joint like this one, right? Wasn't it supposed to start a couple of weeks from now?" She allowed a brief space, to allow for murmurs and pondering, before continuing with her predatory smile even wider. Her eyes were cast into the distance, towards two large, boxy buildings. "Figured I could use some of that myself, see what else ya got in those big warehouses of yours too! So one of my mates here went to have a look. What'd you find, Shemli?"

And she passed her amplifier over to a slender, copper-green ifchi with blindfolded eyes, who flared yellow gills as he took it to his mouth, and pronounced like he were passing judgement: "Fuck-all." A pause, and once the captain felt enough time had passed for processing motioned for him to go on. "Empty boxes fulla packing fluff 'n sand everywhere. For weighin' I bet. All I found was these pieces o' shit." At that, he rose a clear, glassy orb held by silvery clamps. Tightening his grip on it, the orb lit up... with a sad, red glow more fit for nightlight than the public, which could barely be seen as more than a dot at their distance from the ground. "Yeah, feel scammed, don'tcha? I felt too, 'n I basically walked in 'cause yer guards don't give a fuck. Coulda lit things up better without even tryin' all by myself." And at that, to demonstrate, his gills flared further... and sparked with actual lightning, tiny but crackling and luminous, outshining even the spotlights that pointed at him.

With a laugh, his captain snatched the amplifier away from him - her hook-tipped tail swooped in and snagged it back into her hands. "You got it there. Guy like that sneaked into your stuff, how's that feel, old friends? Yeah, guess he thought he wasn't getting enough of a cut with your tax money. Ohoho, and I forgot to bring up that has been running out! Can't stop dipping into that, can't you\~?" Now, that tail-hook was pointed straight towards the railyard, that gordian knot of steel at the heart of the town - full of rails, yet bereft of trains besides a few. "You see that over there? Don't see a lot of actual trains there, do ya\~? And don't see much of the business and goodies those trains actually bring around, right\~?"

Villiq's lilting voice got a poisonous edge as she paced from one end to the other of her deck, spotlights tracking her the entire time. "Don't be fooled thinking that's a one-off, lads 'n lasses, 'cause I'd know. My job is to open those like tin cans after all, but wouldn't you be disappointed to see that your pantry's so suddenly empty? And you grab the one can that's left and it's also empty!?" Speaking through gritted fangs, she snapped her hook at the railing as she turned around, staring three holes through the overseer's head even from this distance. "I know that's your fault. I know your fucking tariffs, doubled and tripled on train and cargo alike just for passing through! All so you can pocket it, right\~!? And you can watch your own damn town starve, because every train in the Subterraneum suddenly has to dodge this place like the plague lest you loot it, right!? Leaving nothing for US to even make a simple living from, RIGHT!?" The now-furious captain smacked the railing with her device, sending a resounding clang of metal that echoed throughout the cavern, making all above and below wince... Before she pronounced, with a seething whisper, once it had died down: "If this had been a plan to starve me out I'd at least respect it, you big oily fuckstain."

The silence grew awkward, the captain bereft of her usual cheer... before that smile came back, more evil than ever, and she straightened her stance once more. "I know what some of you are thinking. Invoke clan rights, call for overturn, overseer re-selection, blablabla. I know what those that thought that would think right next too: 'Oh, if only Shacklecracker hadn't passed away in his own home, if only he hadn't broken his neck down the stairs in an accident, he would've stood a chance!', am I right\~?" A dark chuckle filled the cavern, echoing throughout. "There's one bit you're mistaken about, actually, and that's the 'accident' bit, just like some of ya suspected! And how do I know that, you might ask\~?"

Before the collective gasps could start or end, and before she could look to her side, the amplifier was snatched out of her hands by a single, spindly limb far longer than she was, emerging from a large bundle of black-dyed linen that hadn't been spotted, until now. The thing was held to a single, begoggled opening on the clothing, and the hollow, raspy voice that came out was one that briefly stopped the overseer's heart:

"She knows because it was me. On overseer Rattlevoice's orders, I myself reached out to break Shacklecracker's neck in my hands."

The silence captain and assassin enjoyed up there, with only the thrumming of the engines for a backdrop, was delicious. But rather than drop the amplifier, the Bannerbound killer had one more thing to say: "See the bright side of it, overseer: You won't have to pay me the other half you've owed me for months already, you cheapskate." And with that, they pushed the device with one disgusted motion right back into Villiq's hands, with enough force for her to almost drop it.

"...uh, thank you, Harwile. ANYWAYS!" With her dose of poison delivered, the captain's cheer was more genuine. "For those of you who thought that, who I'm sure is just about all of you by now, I have a solution, a proposal, like our batty pals in the West would put it. Rather than a dishonest, hidden, slimy scoundrel, I propose a big step up: A honest scoundrel! One looking for the wellbeing of those she'd take from, for she seeks the success of her targets, to take as her own! Clear and open! I propose: ME!"

Three-Eye Villiq motioned towards herself with her hook, posing dramatically with one palm towards the ceiling - and her surrounding crew aided, motioning towards her with varying degrees of enthusiasm. "For my promises count for something, as those who I promised to end could tell you - if they weren't dead! I want you to succeed, because your success is mine - in every way of the word! Put me in that ballot, and I promise you: You will finally have luxuries worth stealing, and even after I am done, even after I am sated, you will have way more than you'd ever have under a certain oily, slimy, silk-wearing, tax-sacking, two-faced, hoarding...!"

Her ramble came to a stop, as she went to point at the Overseer - and found the podium utterly empty. She scanned the immediate area, finding no trailing silk to give him away either. Only after she turned to further streets did she find those familiar bandages trailing in the wind of their sprinting bearer, who wasn't stopping to look back. Not after the lights he should've long replaced came to an end, not after the streets beneath his soles turned to naught but sand, and not after the darkness of the Great Dust Gyre seemingly swallowed him without a trace.

"...huh. Runs pretty fast for a guy his age, doesn't he?" Clearing her throat, the captain hastily brought her grin back on. "ANYWAYS, let us add 'cowardly' and 'town-deserting' to that list, too! I wouldn't abandon you in your direst straits like he just did - after all, I'm here, aren't I\~? So I'll keep it simple, and quick, and not waste your time like he would have. Put me on that ballot, and I promise you: There will be more than enough wealth to go around, for me and you alike! Safe and sound from all hands, talons and general graspers that aren't ours! 'Three-Eye' Villiq is the name to remember! CAPTAIN, OUT!"

And with that, and one last audible drop of the amplifier onto the deck, the King Charcoal ascended out of view, the spotlights upon it the whole time - until they, too, were put out, letting the vessel drift away. The last thing the populace heard coming from it that day was a distant cackle, and the captain's mirthful words: "HOW'S THAT FOR A CAMPAIGN OPENER, AM I RIGHT~!?"

[yutzen]

Rock Bottom: The Subterraneum and its Known Exits

(Another lore document rescued, though this time also an experiment in revealing it through in-universe documents.)

There is a hole at the bottom of the world. Of every world. Not everyone finds it, for few are desperate enough to find it, and fewer still even know it’s there. But it’s always the same hole, and it leads were all holes lead: Deeper still.

While given Subterraneum citizens are often acquainted with the particular Exit that defines (or at least resides within) their nation, often they just know an Exit is a passage of sorts leading somewhere else. And at the most basic level, they would be correct: An Exit is a passage to another place - though calling what lies on the other side a different realm would be far more accurate, often very different and almost always terribly hostile.

Among the more learned of the caverns' citizens, it's believed every last living creature (or at least an overwhelming majority) has its origins in one of the many Exits in the Subterraneum, including every last sentient species. Everyone down here has ancestors they can trace back to a place found on the other side of one of these interrealm openings. Not all Exits have provided recognizable creatures, and of course, there are always more Exits to be found, but at the very least each of the nations' species has an origin in one.

And this is where their name comes from. Among the academic sorts, an Exit is called such because it let their ancestors escape a world that was no longer inhabitable for them, finding refuge in these strange caverns. And among the more cynical, it's merely an ironic name: Sure, you can leave the Subterraneum, an Exit is right there, so long as you don't mind trying to survive a place that's even worse than this underground hellhole.

But beyond that, the average citizen doesn't know even close to the whole story. Some territories even try to hide details about their corresponding Exit from their own population, for reasons known only to them. But from those that are known and talked about, from the many fragments spoken and written about them, perhaps there is enough to put together something coherent.

Below lies a small compilation of known Exits - by no means all, but perhaps the most important - with some data to establish their location, and who they're most important to. Dates will be provided by Nixian Age (NA) calendar for the sake of simplicity, being one of the few dates our nations can agree on. And of course, I will call the Tower by the name it deserves, rather than the one they demand. Beyond that, better to let the experts say their piece.

Rhundish, "Where the Light Was Snuffed"

Location: Lightless East (clearer location unavailable), Easternmost border of the Ishiss Magocracy (Ifchi territories)

If only we had known how a wish can be twisted…

Our world was a luminous place. Quite uneven, with cliffsides and mountains running with rivers, and great canyons that streams had carved open over the years. Rivers, lakes, and oceans alike dominated much of the landscape. We were the ones that hid in caves and riverbeds from the sun while it was out. It scorched our skin, and it scorched our eyes, even back then we simply could not close them to the light. We thrived where we could, and survived where we couldn’t. Of course, there were those that thrived in the sun, in those long, long days, and yet weren’t driven off by the dark either. More than once were we run out of our own refuges by them… And, of course, this did not seem fair to us.

A cabal formed, deep in the shadows that sheltered us. Our ancestors were tired of being harried, of running from the light and those they saw as its ‘subjects’ of sorts… Subjects of a sun. Resentment does strange things to someone’s thinking, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, this cabal was steeped in the darkness, and soon they began harnessing it, back in times when we all harnessed water, and few could reach beyond it. We had the potential, but not the refinement or the wherewithal, right until the Lightless Brotherhood came to be.

They started as protectors, fighting back against the light’s intrusion, but aims deteriorated, just like everything else… The Brotherhood was tired of merely preserving what we had, and finding even then they couldn’t always hold fast. We were all tired of hiding, but they tired the quickest of all. They wanted a victory. But when the very nature of the land stands against you, when you’re fighting a fact of existence in a world like ours, you can’t win… Not without help.

And so, they asked for it. No one fully remembers how they managed to reach out far enough to be heard, night after night, but one day, they were heard, by something that promised the end of light. And soon after, on the last day… Right where the sun should’ve been, the Snuffing Sun rose instead. That great black eye in the sky that even the starlight couldn’t get past. Night fell, and dawn never came again…

Trying to escape the poisonous darkness became our priority, as the light-dwellers turned by it tried to hunt us down for daring to do so much as light our gills. Once again, we had to take refuge in the dark, the untainted dark that was merely an absense of light that we’d be forced to illuminate. We crawled and dug, further and further, looking for anything that could keep us going one more day. Even just more buffer space to light a torch in, and keep the eye’s baleful stare at bay… And now, here we are.

Rhundish is one of the least visited Exits of all, and with good reason. There is plenty that still leaks out of what’s left of our realm, making the Lightless East what it is. We know very little of what remains there… And perhaps it’s best we do not know. Even if we could one day reclaim it with the greater and stronger luminosities we’ve found here, I’m not convinced we should.

--Sunlit Archmage Arrami Qirimil. Taken from "Advanced Light and Luminosity" classes taught by the archmage at Ishiss Central Academy, 239 NA

Shumorich, "the Drowned Realm"

Location: Uncharted heights above Lake Migrushatuth (Northern Crystalline Lakes), Southern Ishiss Magocracy (Ifchi territories, contested with Candlelit Hive)

In spite of being one of the more important water sources in the realm, Shumorich remains an enigma. There appears to be a seamless transition from the realm’s stone to the Subterraneum’s own, one we have not yet reached, leaving only the slow deluge that filters through the rock and into the ceiling. Much of the cavern system is irrigated, when not outright flooded, just by the waters that manage to pass through this apparent barrier. It is only by triangulating the flows and seepage that we’ve determined this is indeed one Exit, rather than several with similar characteristics, or a body of water from a theorized True Surface. But beyond that, we know little.

The Ifchi of all creatures would know of a place that feeds entire lakes and rivers just with the water that seeps out through the stone walls, and yet that is precisely the problem: It is far too much for us or anyone to actually look there. It is almost certain the water pressures involved are ones that would make digging under the Southern Sea seem paltry, if we ever made the breach. Even the deepest echoes cannot reach deeply enough to paint us a decent picture. And so, we have been cautious, and let the question hang until we have a means to answer it.

Such inaccessibility, of course, leaves other questions hanging. As an Exit, such a passage is supposed to allow entrance from elsewhere entirely into the Subterraneum, an escape to those desperate for it. And yet, we see no such thing in this case. We’ve only observed solid rock, utterly untouched by excavation, or artifice for that matter. Its very existence would strongly imply there was once someone on the other side, yet the leakage from this theoretical realm has formed bodies of water that’ve been there thousands of years before any of us. This leaves an additional question of who was supposed to enter the Subterraneum here. Is this an Exit that was laid out, yet never found, doomed to rot like those it awaited? Or was it found and used, so long ago that it’s been plugged shut, and its users are long gone, far before any of our times? We know, after all, Exits never truly close, so we cannot discard either possibility.

There is, however, a third theory: That the Exit was laid out in advance, and those that could find it are yet digging their way here, if they have even started. We simply have no current way to confirm the idea, but we cannot debunk it either. The main argument against it, of course, is the ‘age’ of the Exit, seeing entire geographical processes have come and gone thanks to its presence. For such a thing to happen, there would either need to be a massive temporal discrepancy between Shumorich and the Subterraneum, or a manner of ‘foresight’ on the part of the phenomena that open Exits in the first place… And, perhaps unfortunately, we have seen evidence for both such possibilities, albeit in much lesser form. And so, we cannot discard this idea either.

The only way to truly have an answer will be to one day breach into Shumorich, and see for ourselves. But that day will only come when we are certain we won’t poke a hole in the realm that’ll sweep us all away and drown the caverns themselves in the process.

--Dowser Mirru Qilish. Excerpt from his book "Advanced Dowsing Techniques for Waterlogged Terrain", first edition, (self-)published in 210 NA

Ilcazón, "The Last Castle"

Location: Stygian Spires (clear location unavailable), Southwestern Kingdom of Ferigoz (Ferigozi territories)

This place is not the first sanctuary we tried to find. Back when our first home burned, and I say that because that’s the only word that’s survived to this day, many saw it coming. And one in particular, the Castle’s Lord, saw it fit to make a refuge for himself and those he deemed worthy to ride out the apocalypse in luxury. A self-constructing, self-furnishing and self-expanding castle of his own design, embedded in a realm all to itself with nothing but a singular entrance in what was once our world. He had the greatest minds and claws he could contract on its creation, drained so much of what little we had left to ensure it could last forever… but he ran out of one thing no one can buy or leverage for: Time.

The burning pressed on him, and in the end, our ancestors caught on, in their mad search for a place to hide or flee into. And on the day his material manor was breached, he and the others fled into Ilcazón, only to find out two things: One, there was no way to shut off the entrance. And two, it was one way only, with no exit.

With his guards easily turning against the rest of his entourage, that particular rebellion was over quickly. The Lord was deposed and beheaded, his name struck from our history, while we kept the tale of his folly, of the good he did for the worst of reasons. But they were all still stuck there, in an overburdened refuge that kept stretching itself thin in reaction to the influx of more and more people, trying to accommodate them all. It frayed at the edges, with halls and tunnels that passed through the void, with nothing outside the windows, not even fake gardens like the central halls did. Soon, we were scrounging the place for sustenance, burning furniture for cooking, raiding the pantries like ants when the clock said it was time to restock, stretching the place thinner and thinner as we delved deeper and deeper for more to tear down and repurpose. And all the while, paintings and statues of the Lord seemingly taunted us, even after death. They are ever more taunting nowadays, with how much we’ve been changed, while his visage remains the same year after year… nevertheless, looking for cellars with the supplies we needed in our times of need, we found an earthy wall. A truly natural wall, at odds with the rest of the manor. And carving through that wall, eager as we were for anything that wasn’t this constructed mockery, we reached the Subterraneum.

I am indeed aware this means we found our way here in the depths of a world within a world. Perhaps it simply counted as another layer of depth, to the rules of this place; perhaps it made it easier, rather than harder, to open the way. All I know is… the world above the Castle, our world, we’ve yet to find it again. Perhaps we never will. But I hope one of us does, one day, when those still left in the old world find the same need our ancestors did… At least, if any remain by now.

--Librarian Imaldu of Tajarrosa. Excerpt from speech given to the Guild of Historians in Frazeral, 233 NA

The Urul Peaks

Location: Ironbound Keep, Capital of the Urul Peak Clans (Bannerbound territories), North of the Great Dust Gyre.

SEVEN CLANS, SEVEN BANNERS, SEVEN PEAKS! That is the refrain everyone knows, and I apologize for the volume but we all know I had to. There are, in fact, seven peaks out there, in this ill-called Exit. But there is a lot I feel I need to clarify today, for the public and even for some among ourselves, because in this ever-shifting cavern and with our even more ever-shifting populus, we need some anchors. I’ll let the facts be those anchors.

What do we know? That there’s seven mountains, partially buried under a thick layer of snow and ice back in what was once our realm. By now, I believe they’re all that stand, though I can’t assure that. We also know that the Seven Clans, as they stand, which came from the land that once surrounded each, as well as the mountain itself, obviously. Seven nations that survived, I cannot assure anyone else did, but it’s safe to assume they didn’t. And seven peoples that made it to the Subterraneum, more or less all at once – together enough to become more or less one biologically once its depths did what they do.

But there is another fact you might not know, which is shameful, because it will help you understand several things from this point forwards. Some of you might have already asked: ‘How is one clan not dominant over the others? Surely the clan that owned the actual peak with the actual passage would have an advantage from the start, rolling forwards? After all, there is only one Exit, no?’ And therein the thing: That’s a factual mistake. It isn’t one passage, one Exit, if I get the definition right. There are seven.

Seven Exits, to seven peaks, in one realm. Seven groups of survivors that had the exact same idea in one world, and with almost entirely the same result: They arrived here, practically in the same place. The actual Exits are close enough that it is entirely possible to arrive at the wrong peak if you don’t navigate them right, close enough together to pass themselves as one. Yet still separate enough for groups using different ones to miss each other until arriving into the cavern itself – though that one may be a spatial mismatch.

And here’s another thing, one our predecessors had to know: The peaks themselves are not even in the same mountain range. By our measurements they are thousands of miles apart, in different landmasses altogether. Yet they all lead to the same rough region, pouring all seven ex-nations together into one. How this happened is pure speculation, obviously. Maybe it’s simply how Exits work, the metaphysical distances translate to actual distances. Or maybe, just maybe, something saw it fit to pour out seven different peoples, all fleeing a world freezing for reasons we cannot even remember, seeking warmth in the guts of their mountains, yet altogether different… Into just the one.

Seven clans, seven banners, of what was once seven nations in a world that died. Do you get it now? We don’t even know why it died anymore. We’ve become something else, so detached that we’ve forgotten how we even looked once, and we’ll continue to change. Even more than everyone else, down to our very insides. But we all need our anchors, something to remember what we were, and that is what we have.

--Clan Representative Volfan Passkey, of Clan Zau. Taken from high-level diplomatic exchanges with newly-formed Nixian Republics, 19 NA (leaked on 189 NA)

Skybound Ruins

Location: Sunken Wilds (Northern Mycon's Valley), Northern Pact of Krawgry (Korve side)

The old tales of our old home… I’m afraid they’re not quite as interesting as yours. But let me paint you the picture nonetheless.

The stories, they don’t go especially far. There are myths, of course, of us blooming from the cold body of what should’ve been our creator, of us Korves being meant to sweep dead worlds clean so they may grow anew, and so on. But I know you brought me here for the facts, or what’s closest to them. And as far as our stories go, and what meager writings remain from the era… is that we awakened to a world that was already long ruined.

Towers of grey and blue, glass and stone scattered all over, with their very bones – for lack of a better word, mind you – so utterly rotten it took us decades upon decades to figure out what they were once made of. Those towers once had other things, there’s always scraps and traces of what we can only assume was someone leaving behind greater things, once. Very, very long ago, when they still stood.

Those who made them were very thorough in making our world their own, before we came to be. Miles, and miles, and miles of land were covered in stone and glass, and old, rotten metals too, among other things – not all of which lasted beyond traces it took your help to identify. But even the very ground beneath us was choked on the stuff, any and all dirt that might grow anything smothered beneath it. It’s one way to kill a world, though one can only wonder if they meant it or not. All we really know is that it worked.

What happens when something dies? It leaves a corpse, this should be obvious. And that entire place is a corpse. And what happens to corpses? They rot, that should also be obvious. But what’s less obvious is what kind of thing can rot a corpse so huge? An entire realm, even? That answer’s still unclear, but somewhere in it, we come to pass. From the looks of it, the evidence we’ve picked up on, we weren’t always like this. Tall, fungal and awake to begin with. It’s hard to figure out which of those came first, and which ones came later, though it would stand to reason our minds were the last thing to improve. The one thing we can be truly certain of, is that it took a long, long time.

How long, you might ask? Long enough that even knowing it was those same predecessors that carved the path here and opened the Exit, you all have no idea who they are! We didn’t open it, we found it open! All the usual commonalities weren’t there for our entrance. We didn’t dig, we explored what was there. We weren’t desperate, we were simply doing what we always did, breaking down what was left for ourselves. We simply… walked in here. And here we are, to find out predecessors died off all over again.

Shame, really, this place has treated us well. With its life, its changes, and its particular fungi, it feels like we’ve reached heights we couldn’t even think of.

--Ambassador Ir Chir Grawakty. Excerpt from the talks that led to the establishing of the Pact of Krawgry, 722 years before the Nixian Age.

The Niyon Expanse

Location: Sporedunes (Southern Mycon's Valley, bordering the Gyre), Southern Pact of Krawgry (Cheli side)

No, the place does not ‘thrive’ without us! It’s simply not dead like all of yours seem to be. But it lost us. They threw away what we were, and they don’t get to regret it now that we’re this!

Right, right. Let’s take it from the beginning. From the beginning we remember, because up there, they will never tell you. No one up there will ever admit that once they shared the land with us, that we shared the shadows with them before they burned them away.

We were closer to the mountains and the underground from the start, this is true. But they were refuges to everyone! To us, and to the Yorrivy. Those would be “they”, yes. Bigger than we were, and still bigger even now, and they always had sharper claws, and a curved beak that could snip a neck. And these big, round eyes that gaze right through you, too, that can’t miss a thing – if you think we have good eyesight, they have us beat. Duller colors than we ever did, though, all browns and blacks, and never as light on their wings as we were. Faster, too, they were made for open sky. They owned the open sky, like we owned the caverns.

This was the arrangement at the start, at least. We were all just trying to survive after all, and after that, just thriving where we did best. But as it turns out, some were a little better at thriving. The cliffsides and plains, the mountains and the valleys, all that was under an actual sky rather than a ceiling, the Yorrivy claimed before we could. But that was only natural. It might even be fair! We were pushed into the corners of the world, sure, and into the darkness in general, but we found a good living there. As we did here, the Subterraneum has seen as much. We don’t need much!

But, turns out we couldn’t have that. There were just too many of them, and soon enough they started pushing right into our corners too. And they didn’t have enough light, either, because as they ran on ahead they came up with lighting far before we did! They liked it, loved it, so much so that when they started encroaching into the places we had claimed and we had made livable, they brought them along, and pushed everything we had away. With lights that ruined our gardens even then. Ours, but never theirs. And they kept going, with more of them, and ever brighter lights, until the caverns were all we had left!

And then they pushed just a little further still. Until we had to make our own. Until we had to put these to digging out new corners into the world because those that had been laid out for us were under searing towers of light, outside and inside. Until we found the hole in the world that led us right here, where we could finally find some reprieve while they turned the land to nothing more than light and perches.

...yes, they’re still there. No, they’re not welcome here. They better have a damn good apology for us all if they ever want to be. But they don’t get to forget us, either. We’re making sure of that.

--Ambassador Onn-Wirckem. Excerpt from the talks that led to the establishing of the Pact of Krawgry, 722 years before the Nixian Age.

Terranova, "the Land Unborn"

Location: The Glass (Central Great Dust Gyre), Eastern Nixia Republics (Troxi territories)

The place we came from is just one huge mystery. How we got there, who was involved, if anyone, where we got the name, and why… there. All questions, no answers. Yet there we were, stranded in the middle of a world that wasn’t even entirely born.

It was all just cold rock, you know? Cold and battered rocks, wind that carved them and the sky above us that never seemed to still. Just as it ever was, and same as it is to this day. Sure, there is water, there’s rivers and even lakes, as well as the rain that comes whenever a storm sweeps by, as they always do. But that’s it. You find nothing alive, no ferns on the rock, no moss, barely even stains upon the cliffs! Only the lakes show any promise, and at best you get this green slime. It’s nothing you can do anything with… Most importantly, it’s nothing you can actually eat. And it remains a lot like that, because so much of what lives here just dies under the sun, on those days where the skies are clear.

Irony of ironies that we hardly need water now that we have actual meals, isn’t it?

How did we even survive, you ask? We barely know, either. Clearly we had something to keep us alive, at least at first, because we made it this far. True, before we came down here, before we grew our feathers and got everything else this place grants its arrivals, we needed even less sustenance than we do now. We were ready for a desert, which is why we’ve made something of ourselves in the Great Dust Gyre. But this was excessive, even for us. There really was nothing…

...I’m getting sidetracked. What we do have are the bits and pieces our predecessors brought, some of them at least. We brought actual, forged metal down here, we had it since the apparent start! Yet not all of it was purpose-made tools. There were those, but there were also scraps. Pieces of a greater whole, beaten into more useful shapes. Some of them even have writing we’ve yet to decipher, and we’ve found a couple cases where one piece joined another, like a very old and weathered jigsaw puzzle. With that, and with those spoken tales too old to date, we can presume we had an actual structure to give us a start, wherever it is that we did start. And it stands to reason that, in desperation, we had to take it apart.

...the desperation. The tales tell plenty of that. And so many of the tools are just for digging! Shovels, ersatz picks, anything to carve the path down. To search for something, anything, because one group, our group, got the desperate idea there may something other than just more rock beneath everything. It’s easy to think we were just mad with hunger, but to last this long just digging, we may have been running out of whatever sustenance was in that old place, but not yet starved. And still we got that idea… Still we got so desperate to look downwards for more, of all directions. And just like all of you, we found this place. The Subterraneum.

...is this how it always is?

--Speaker Aqalexi. Taken from speech during the foundation and recognition of the Nixia Republics as a political entity, 0 NA.

Vharyduq, "the Barrens"

Location: Emberdeep (Southwest Great Dust Gyre), Eastern Burnt Hive (Shumhaq territories)

There is nothing there.

It is either very lucky, or the complete opposite of a coincidence, that the passage to this Exit keeps caving in so tightly. To even visit the Barrens, you must bring your own air, and lock it tightly to yourself, because out there, you have none. I’m not saying there’s poison in the air, or just no oxygen, I’m saying there is nothing one can breathe. Just nothingness that will suck what air you brought right out of your lungs.

Once you take care of that little problem, however you make it work, you find the nothingness continues. There is no sky, just the stars day and night. There is no welcome, nothing is alive there. The most you get is sunlight and a landscape – and for the most part, it’s all just barren rock. Sure, there’s ores, but most of them you find so much easier here. It’s hard to think it may ever be worth it. And yet sometimes, if you go far out there enough, if you scour widely enough, you can find other things… Leftovers, for the most part. Crumbled structures, all of them crumbled and hollowed out of anything that looked like it might’ve been alive at any point, and now, slowly, ransacked of the rest…

One thing of note as we find those buildings that weren’t quite so damaged, they all looked like they could close tightly, once upon a time. Maybe they too had their own air, way back when. But they were all torn open to some degree, and the more we look the more it seems it happened at around the same time. By what, however, we have no idea.

Finding this Exit has been harrowing for the Hive, because by process of elimination it’s the most likely candidate for our origins, among the ones we know today. Most of them aren’t even wholly physical! And yet, when one looks upon Vharyduq, you have to ask: Where are the traces something like us ever lived here? At times, in fact, it’s closer to ‘where are the traces anything at all ever lived here?’, thanks to the sheer lack of remains. We know nothing rots in a place like that, by now, and yet there’s nothing! Not even bones!

The most damning part is the fact we have no tales or memories of such a place, written or spoken. Or, in fact, of any place before the Subterraneum. We were already splitting at the seams by then, one Hive becoming four, you don’t forget something like that… and you don’t forget where that split began: Right here, in our territory. All the more reason to believe we came from Vharyduq to begin with, that all of us did.

Somehow. We might’ve not even been awake before then, so whatever we used to be is gone now, without memory. Further gone than the dead themselves, because nothing and no one remembers what that was like… If we truly came from there, then all we can be sure of is that they could live in such a place, but not thrive. Not anymore, otherwise they wouldn’t have come here. Even something without a whole mind to call its own can feel desperate, can’t it…?

--Hive Speaker Ghyrrividiq. Taken from inter-hive communications, date unknown (leaked from Tower files during the Bellbound Pronouncement of 199 NA)

Rhyvady, "The Sea of Lights"

Location: Lake Rhymaryq shores (Crystalline Lakes), Eastern Candlelit Hive (Syhaq territories, contested with Ishiss Magocracy)

This is not the place we came from, not by far; nothing of true, earthly flesh could have come from such a realm. Even now, we cannot truly enter it – not in our entirety. The only journey one can undertake into the Sea of Lights is spiritual, leaving one’s material form behind at the very edge of the Exit itself… From the outside in, all one sees is a wall of light, a luminous barrier where one simply cannot push through. Yet with the right mindset, and with a hard enough push, one keeps going further in. And from there…

A spectacle unfolds before the senses, if one could call them so. A translation, perhaps, of what resonates against one’s very soul and is carried back to the mind, which is forced to interpret it? Or perhaps one carries every sense within, even as the flesh is left behind. But it’s all, for lack of a better word… utterly luminous. Still shapes of what seems like pure light, millions upon millions of dots of luminosity, stretching towards infinity in all directions, that try to dance, but cannot. Like a force from within pushing against an innate stillness, unable to overcome it, no matter the direction. You see the forms waver and shimmer as their dots struggle and fail to move… Anywhere at all, I believe. With very particular exceptions, no one has ever seen them uniformly pick a direction. The rest is all… nothingness, a background light that’s uniform in all directions, it seems, or more shapes in the distance. And no matter the distance, whether so close you almost think you can touch them, to so far away it would take lifetimes to reach them, you can always see them quiver.

Even now we hardly understand what most of these shapes are, even those that remain still in perpetuity. Interacting with them has proven difficult, when one’s capabilities within this realm are so different. Where even what you can do is a mystery. But some we understood. We know enough to be aware that some of the shapes left behind are… corpses, of a sort. Of what was once a scattered pantheon, so long forgotten even the ones who dreamed them to life have passed on, and the question of whether this was their paradise or just a refuge remains unanswered. Even in death, they remain luminous… And even as the ashes of ashes, even after eons of decay before and after the end, they retain… something to them. Even today, trying to look further into their being is dangerous, yet the more one can delve without being burned away, the more one can find about what was once their domains…

Much of this is but speculation, of course. And the rest is what one could call a witness account. For one remained alive after it all, emaciated and agonized, yet enduring. Our Lost Light… was the very last of them all. So far gone to have forgotten those that gave them life. But never completely gone… And now, never to be swept away by oblivion. For we remember the Light now.

--High Luminary Rhyvvy. Excerpt from Tri-yearly "Sermon to the Light and the Haven", 51 years before the Nixian Age.

Murrhuvyq, "Diamondhall"

Location: The Flarewoods (clearer location unavailable), suspected Northern Sundered Hive (Zivhaq) territories (Southeast Consortium in "official" mapping)

I am very aware how concerning you think this whole place is. And you should be. But never so concerned that you should just barge in without some context as to what it is, and this damned tunnel’s presence as a whole. And besides, it’s about time you heard us out for once, don’t you think? Even nowadays you don’t do that enough.

First things first: This isn’t our Exit. Whether the Burnts are right or not is a story for another day, but this isn’t it. In fact, we had no Exit, in this slice of territory that we actually managed to claim for ourselves. Or, at the very least, not any that we knew of, which is an admittedly important but most likely irrelevant distinction. It’s possible that there are blocked tunnels, or hidden corners, one of them holding an Exit that we never found – but with our thoroughness in checking, the chance such a place exists is low, and the chance anything has moved through a corner so hidden, ancestors or not, practically zero. As to Murrhuvyq, well, that Exit showed up well after we started writing things down. It made its presence damn clear.

What do we know of the place itself? Its history is something of a mystery to us, because the only thing that lives there – for a given value of live – is a proven liar. And that thing, the entity in question, is Diamondhall itself. There is a mind behind those crystalline growths you’ll see soon enough – the samples we have here are visibly duller because they’re not a part of it anymore. And it’s a mind in search of resources, carbon to be exact – which is why we called it that, and why it’s not a good place to be organic in without protection.

That’s an important detail. Nothing breathing came out of this place, long ago, pursued by a cataclysm of coal-eating crystal. All of that was gone before it got here. We’ve checked, too: Nothing left but empty caverns and structures, subsumed centuries ago. Caverns that might’ve been natural once, and geometric things that left us wondering, way back when, if this was a creation of the crystal or something covered up and consumed. We found more of those in our deepest looks above – we’re not going to apologize for wearing your constructs for this, they and you don’t get special treatment – standing under a blinding sky, once we emerged from those depths. We learned what a sky was, those days…

And on our deepest expedition yet, unsanctioned yet indispensable, with the very crystals seemingly acting out against us, we found something else – something Diamondhall tried to hide them from us. We found more than a few statues that looked just a little too lifelike.

No, there were no peoples escaping this cataclysm into the Subterraneum. The cataclysm itself is what came out of the place. It took us a while to realize that, embarrassingly long before we remembered the common thread in all those tales of yours. It ran out of what it needs. It started crawling deeper. It got desperate. And thus, it found this place – and for whatever reason, the place let it in.

--Expedition Leader Rrhavaduq. Tower communications, date unknown but presumed pre-131 NA due to territorial shifts (leaked from Tower files during the Bellbound Pronouncement of 199 NA)

The Highest Forum

Location: Northeastern Red Plateau (clearer location unavailable), suspected Bellbound Hive (Nirhaq) territories (Tower territory in "official" maps)

I am quite aware the territory this particular Exit is in remains under Tower control – barely I might add. But it is us that know it best. It’s us that have worked with it the most. And it’s us that they and their Vaults bring about to study what’s inside. Much as “inside” is something of a misnomer.

To clarify: We didn’t come from there. We’re not creatures of pure mind, we’re material, and if one could even call the Forum a place, it’s certainly not a material one. And that granite wall that forms the edge of the Exit had to be as utterly impenetrable back then as it is now – we’re not fully sure why it is that way, as an aside, but the space immediately beyond that either can’t support matter or isn’t actually a space, so there’s plenty to theorize with.

Anyhow, to elaborate: The Forum isn’t precisely something you enter. You’re always here, never moving on beyond it – no spiritual journey or whatever else, like the bees have with the Sea of Lights. No, everything stops right there, at that wall… Except for a few things, mainly energies. What lies on the other side has proven capable of budging the wall just enough to transmit kinetic energies, and on certain wavelengths there are very minor spikes and lows of radiation that can have no other source. And the important part isn’t the power involved, which is minimal – we often need specialized equipment or sharpened senses just to pick it up. It’s the patterns.

It’s why it’s us that get to work with this passage. What flows across this barrier is information, passed in those languages what’s left on the other side can use – and the linguistics involved were perhaps the most complex the Bellbound Hive’s had to tackle. We’ve got a fairly good idea of what these entities are, but for most of them we cannot confirm anything for the moment being, other than the fact they’re incorporeal and entirely sentient, though to what degree is still uncertain.

...and here comes the part for which I will ask you not to write anything down. Note how I said “most”. And take a moment to remember, for just a second, how Exits usually work. How they come to pass, what’s needed for them to open, as far as we know. What your species needed to be, and what they attempted, in order to get here? The entities in there had to be there too.

And it is such that we know that some of those beings are, in fact, closer to a language than a species. A language where the individual words and pronunciations are, in a way, alive. And that in this material realm, their perception becomes their location, so to speak – we’re still figuring that part out, they do not completely mesh even with our malleable physics, and those parasitized by them are never safe because of it. We know this because some such beings, which we call Burning Names, are very much loose in the Subterraneum this instant. Someone overheard them at the Exit, someone understood them enough, most likely one of ours, and we’re still tracking them down to this day.

--Archivist Vhurrodym. Interhive communications, date unknown but presumed pre-199 NA due to territorial shifts (deliberately leaked from Tower files in 203 NA, presumable reprisal)

Tirravzi, "Ashenwind"

Location: Stygian Maw, Western Hollow-lands. Central Consortium (Vezarym territories)

I’m afraid the time’s come to put the old tale to rest, no matter how close it may be to all of our hearts. The thought that we, and we alone, know what the True Surface is, that Tirravzi is the all-consuming, imprisoning layer that keeps the Subterraneum’s peoples bound where they are. I’ll explain why in a moment.

So, Tirravzi. The ash-choked expanse every Vez is told about in their youth. We all have a very clear image of it: The flaying winds, the searing heat, the black skies lit only by the thundering storms that cover it all, the bare, steaming volcanic rock, just about everything a Vezarym could do without. All of this was right above our old home in the caverns, where we once thrived, until the crawling ashen dunes, the smog and simple resource depletion drove us to starvation, and to depths alien to our ancestors. Depths that led right here, while the caves that were once our nation were, in the words of some, “consumed” by Tirravzi… It’s here that my point of contention lies. There was no “consumption” by the ashen expanses above: It was always the same place, dying from the outside in. It was all Tirravzi.

Now that we’ve finally resumed incursions into the ashen lands, into the ruins we left behind, others beyond the Consortium have been able to take actual measurements with actually refined instruments. More than enough to let us know things simply don’t line up with the old interpretation. The ambient energies have proven too different, the spacial incongruities Exits are known for have been more or less pinpointed, and most damningly, the geology – down to the very movements of the earth – simply doesn’t match between sides. And recently, with those brave souls that have reached what we initially called Tirravzi finally able to bring back data of their own? The geological processes do line up, and the ambient energies are the exact same, once Subterraneum interference is accounted for. And with zero spatial phenomena to interfere there… Well, the conclusion is obvious, isn’t it?

In the end, we should’ve seen this coming. Exits don’t open directly to the surface anywhere. It’s a fundamental part of how Exits function. They have to be deep below, they have to be dug out, they are rock bottom, and the amount of tunneling to even get there is indicative of it. And I don’t see how Tirravzi could be an exception to that rule just because we started already underground. We may have been closer to begin with, but it still wasn’t the bottom. In fact, even the idea we were closer is debatable: The distances needed have never been established. Maybe our ancestors had to dig even further than they would’ve needed, with further death in the path, just because they started deeper, and thus skipped so many of the easiest layers without realizing.

In the end, we were never special – not particularly so. The Vezarym are, in the end, just the inheritors of another set of dying, desperate ancestors who sought sanctuary deep below, having run out of any other options, that thus ended up in this place where all such seekers go… Though, perhaps we are special in one thing: In every way imaginable, both historically and culturally, and probably even biologically, we had a remarkable head start.

--Sub-Minister Mizirr-Targiz. Excerpt from potential alliance talks with the Nixian Republics, 100 NA

Var Ortanum, "Downpour"

Location: White Canyon (Southern Talar's Snowdrifts), Southern Voska Empire (Toskar Territory)

Hah! We can hardly call that our world anymore, can we? Not after this long! Too much attachment, I say, when the Subterraneum’s got all we need and more… Still, if you want to hear of Var Ortanum, the place we left behind, then I’ll tell you the gist.

Barely anything’s left of how it was before it became the Downpour we all know. It wasn’t a cold land at least, from the old tales few of us even knew what snow was before we got here. The descriptions are muddled beyond that, other than constant mentions of green – we’re fairly sure they meant greenery, as in, plants that can only thrive under light. Still, muddled, and sometimes even contradictory.

Not a lot of detail’s left on how it started either; from what’s been gathered it wasn’t especially sudden, but it wasn’t forewarned either. Rains came and went, sometimes you had droughts, and sometimes the opposite, right until at some point the rain started and just never stopped. Even then it fluctuated, but it was never lighter than a constant drizzle – and that’s true even today. The more intriguing part of it though, is that the storms are different from place to place, also going by both ancient accounts and our own reports, with precipitation varying in both amount and form…

One thing we haven’t found yet is any evidence for some of the older tales. There is one recurring image of lightning storms so fierce they burned towns to the ground and turned the very earth to glass. Where constant strikes burned everything down, no matter how much rain poured on the flames. We’ve yet to find that. The boldest of our scouts in that place have heard distant rumbling of what might be thunder – emphasis on distant.

Now, on our ancestors’ escape from the Downpour, and our entrance into these caverns, that’s simpler… We’re going by our own records on the matter, noting that the feats of that time are ones we still can’t replicate, and that includes the lynchpin of our ancestors’ plan. For you see, they thought the Downpour would eventually end. That they just needed a place to hide and ride it out. But they also knew it would take a long time. So they decided to… put themselves on pause, from what we can gather. Using some manner of bodily control, and some manner of external aid – still haven’t figured out what – they would slow their very bodies down to such a crawl, they’d sleep for years on end with barely a twitch, and still wake up at the end, right as rain!

As you can deduce from our existence, it worked. But as you could also deduce from our appearance and the fact we are down here, not completely. As it turns out, their deep hideaway was just deep enough to be in the Subterraneum, right past the edge – you can imagine why. And… Maybe they miscalculated, or maybe something threw off their math in here, or woke them up early. But woke up they did… And they either couldn’t or wouldn’t go back to sleep. The accounts fall apart almost completely around that time, so it’s likely something woke them up, and wouldn’t let them do so.

And now that we’re Toskars, we still can’t go back to sleep. But why would we want to?

--Runesmith Vorrai. Diplomatic talks during formation of the Royal Accord with Kingdom of Ferigoz, presumed 900 years before Nixian Era at a minimum (leaked 215 years before Nixian era)

"Breach THREADBARE", Graywall Prison

Location: Tinrotted Plains (clearer location unavailable), presumed central Tower territories.

First of all, it is imperative that no one working under the Custody’s flag refers to the gate into the Graywall as an Exit. Technically, it is inaccurate, and more importantly we are actively striving for it not to become one; to call it such is admitting an unacceptable defeat.

Second of all, some elaboration on why this little mistake is so common. With the way the Graywall is set up, pocketed into a space of its own, it’s terribly close to fulfulling one of the key conditions: That an Exit must lead outside. In fact, it’s very easy to mistakenly think it’s already fulfilled. But there are important distinctions to make, and the most important of all is that this is not another space, outside of the Subterraneum itself – it is a piece of the caverns’ own space, stretched into a much greater expanse and filled in with the virtually endless material that surrounds us to establish its confines. A delicate process, but entirely doable with the right tools. The fabric of space can be tailored like any other…

However, like any fabric, it can also rupture if it’s stretched too thin. Then it would lead outside. We must take utmost care at all times that this does not happen.

One of the troubles with such a thing is that the other conditions that must apply for an Exit to manifest are unfortunately quite applicable here. Depth requirements are unfortunately already fulfilled, seeing the entrance has already been excavated; all the physical work is long done. And more importantly, the desire for survival, the desperation, hoping against hope, all the roiling determination of seeking out something, anything that isn’t the certain death that encroaches… This is a prison. Populated by the most capable, the most resourceful, and the most gifted among those who see their fellows as little more than more material, of some kind or another. And their unfortunate creations, for that matter. It’s a condition so easily fulfilled we must always assume it’s in play.

Now, I know those not yet in the know are wondering why a definition that seems merely academical remains unfulfilled. Let me get to the heart of the matter. An Exit is more than just a definition. It is one of this place’s very concepts, as utterly defined and solid as the concepts of gravity and heat – though one hopes not nearly as universal. Worse still, as much as we can bend and even transgress such fundamental concepts in the Subterraneum, doing the same with the rules behind Exits is far more difficult. One might even be tempted to say there is an active resistance to such attempts, as if it were a building block of the realm itself… or, perhaps, a law being consciously enforced.

And so, we are forced to play along. We are forced to limit inmate selections, dampening all data-harvesting initiatives. We must tend constantly to the very fabric of space around the area, knowing just a singular tear might ruin our work. And we must endeavor, more than any other prison in existence, to keep a singular entrance to the complex, with standards that would consider even one tiny screw-hole too many to be unacceptable.

Because Exits, in ever subtle ways, always flow back here. And because Exits, fundamentally, cannot be closed. Not completely, and not ever.

--Deputy Warden Nifar Blackspark. Presumed briefing to Warden Corps. Date lost in decryption, presumed late Clan Age/early Pact Age due to naming conventions and context. Leaked during Third Gilded Raid by Consortium mercenaries 305 years before Nixian Age.

"Breach STYGIAN"

Location: Uncharted depths beneath Niqalix River sector (Northeastern edge of Hollow-lands), Tower territories (contested with Nixia Republics)

Raiding a Breach is always rough, ya know. Tower higher-ups are real keen on keeping things under wraps whenever they find another Exit they can keep to themselves, but they can’t keep everythin’ hidden. This one had been under wraps for a long while, so we guessed they got a lil’ complacent, and it was best to strike quick ‘n hard. No matter how much further it was from all the others, from most of the known caverns even, they had to be hiding somethin’ around there. The leaks we got only made it more temptin’, too: It wasn’t just pretty far off, it was old. Older than any other we folks of actual countries would know. They’d be bringing their best to that, so we’d have to do the same.

No one down here is a stranger to diggin’, but the excavation to get there was still the hardest part, in retrospect. Wasn’t just a matter of distance, plenty of that though, the stone got harder the deeper we went. I’m guessing that’s where the real pressures start kickin’ in, but I’m no geologist, couldn’t tell ya. We figured the Radiance would be pretty damn thick down there too, so we came prepared for that, just in case.

Well, when we finally made it there, things seemed underwhelming. At first. The damn thing was barely even guarded, nothing but some silicate constructs roamin’ the place that didn’t even try to stop us. There was plenty of instruments, measurers and stuff, we made bank on that at least, but no real defenses, no real teeth to it. And the actual Exit was more covered up than sealed. Just a thick slab of polymer on it that we just slid aside and nothin’ else. And what was right behind that?

Nothin’.

It took a moment to figure out it was more than just a perfectly black wall. Or less, rather. A wall is somethin’ that exists, it’s in the way of you getting’ somewhere. But it took an actual look at the stuff we snatched from the Vaults to realize that wasn’t the problem here. No, there was no wall, and in fact, there was no somewhere either, or so the equipment said. Soon as Imlu tried to stick a hand in there thinking she’d get it back anyhow… nope. Not even a feeling of somethin’ there, just the very tips of her fingers stoppin’ cold right then and there. And that was it.

Not a total bust for sure, I’ve showed you the equipment already. Came with some intriguin’ data too… See, when you try to measure on somethin’ that ain’t there, you get some real madness in the results, and piecin’ it together was a mess of its own. But the clocks ‘n stuff from the Quartz Vault was the most bafflin’. We were getting’ actual results, rather than what you’d expect from tryin’ to check the time in Nowhere. Or maybe we did get exactly that… ‘cause the Clocks? Spun forth a bunch and didn’t move anymore. The Parallel Timers? Our side damn near burned out, other froze in place. Worst of all, the Synchronic Hourglass? Voided itself on the lords-damned spot, all the sand slammin’ down at the bottom so hard it broke.

Time wasn’t just stopped in there. It was over.

--Raider Nikramat (presumed pseudonym), Frostbound Initiative agent. Date unknown, presumably very recent. Excerpt delivered personally to me during the last month (250 NA, for posterity's sake)

Beyond this, I personally know of no other. I will provide further editions of this file as I obtain further information. May these pointers serve you well.