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cuppakasha · 2 years

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I wrote a collaborative short story with my friend about a homesteading half-dragon cowboy. It was pretty much paragraph-by-paragraph, so I'm pretty happy with the overall consistency!

--- The Korv's Gulch Incident

A black knife collected dark soot from under my cracked fingernail. Smoke hazed the warm-tinted lantern overheard.

"I ain't got nothing," Rho-Odi said, tossing his hand to the table.

"I'll check," said Eriat.

I glanced at my cards. A wyern triple and a couple of drakes.

"Raise ya ten," I said, and tossed my chips to the middle.

Eriat snorted, tapping his back hoof against some of the mess kit near their applebox table. The dingy copper pans rang out hollowly—they didn't have any advice to give the old mare on this game of blackbrand. He eyed the line of face up cards on the table, then back to his hand, then up to my face to meet my gaze.

"Get on, now. Ya gonna check again or drop?" I winked. Eriat was good, but could be easily riled.

"Check, ya liar. And damn yer mom too." He tossed in the ten coins.

Maurice flipped two and laid them faceup on the table. A kingfisher came first... another wyvern next. I glanced at my hand to confirm what I was seeing.

"Raise ya," I said. "Twenty."

It was a still a big bluff, but Eriat didn't know that. From the other side of the table Rho-Odi snorted and shook his head.

Eriat grumbled, increasingly agitated, and swished his tail back and forth. "Damn fool. You ain't got nothing," he said. But he hesitated, staring at his hand, readable as a book in my hand.

"Fine, I'll raise ya," he said finally. "But you know I ain't betting no twenty coppers."

"What else you got that's worth that much?" I asked.

"Oh, don't pretend like you don't know."

“Lighten up, you old ass, it’s just one shot of moonshine. You said it yourself, worth about twenty coppers. And that's if someone’s feelin�� generous.”

“Ride me, Ruvik. You know how damn well how much it’s worth,” Eriat glowered, then turned to fish something out of one of the woven satchels on his back. He started muttering again, as he usually did on the touchy subject of his magic-infused moonshine: about bad deals and bad blood, the streets of Ironrunnel lined with wolves and racist slickbacks, the accursed Sir Jack Nackard (“damn whoreson, maggots take that swindler!”), how his liquor should be worth at least three times as much…

“…everyone was fine with magic when they thought it was from humans,” he grumbled. “Now I’m haulin’ a wagon with a jackass,” he punctuated by slamming a shot glass onto the table, rattling the chips. “Maurice, deal the damn river already."

“Yessir, comin’ up,” he smirked, barely containing a toothy smile on his scruffy face. With a flick, he revealed the final card: seven thunderbirds, glowing red under the hazy lamplight. I hummed and crossed my foot— yes, I did have a good play and not an absolutely mediocre hand.

“Check,” I said calmly, throwing in another twenty coppers. I look across to Eriat, strongly resisting the urge to grin. He’s absolutely crestfallen, clearly having banked on that river after getting reckless. His eyes dart to me and back to his cards, again and again. I can see the calculations running through his head: Does he have a straight run? Two pair duchy? Badlands flush? No, he's a fool. But is this worth a second shot of shine just in case he's got that magic hand…

Maurice reached an avocado colored hand under the table and stoically pulled out a black crystal.

"The eye of onyx," he said.

"Aw, hell yes! Don't even matter if you were lying, Ruvik, you scaly bitch! Whoo!"

"No way," Rho-Odi said. "Lemme see."

Eriat flashed Rho-Odi a glance at his hand and they shared a laugh.

"A wrym of stix," said Maurice. I cursed quietly and took back out my knife to scrape dirt from a new fingernail.

But Maurice reached for something under the table again. "The talon of sapphire."

I shot a look at the cards, and then a look at Eriat who had lost some of his enthusiasm. I grinned and flipped my cards upright.

Rho-Odi lost himself to a fit of cackles, his grey beard shaking as he slapped the table.

I reached over the table and shoveled the pile toward me.

Eriat, dumbstruck, threw his hand on the table. Three wyrms and the onyx.

"Liar...damn liar! I knew it! I'm gonna hang and skin you by your draconkind taint!"

Eriat slammed his hands onto the table. I reeled and fell backwards, coins sliding off onto my prone body. The three of us erupted into laughter, guffawing as Eriat trotted away past the lamplight and into the darkness behind the wagon.

"I suppose we're calling it," Rho-Odi said, offering me his clawed hand. I take it, coppers clattering from my chest onto the dirt.

"I suppose we are, but the centaur still owes me a drink."

"You already robbed the old man, Ruvik," Maurice said. He started to gather his cards on the table. "Y'know, there's this scripture from the monastery that comes to mind. 'Leaveth boiled water to cool lest you get burned, and do not be-ith a cunt.'"

"Wise words," I chuckled, sorting out the cards left on the table into their suits before stacking them the way Maurice likes them: black wyrms, red thunderbirds, yellow kingfishers, blue wyverns, green drakes..."I'll help clean up the mess from supper, that ought to get me on Eriat's good side."

"Hope so," Rho-Odi said, untangling some of his beard from his chipped jaw scales. "We got a job to finish tomorrow, and still a fair amount of walking between here and Vorkstead. I'd prefer it be without added grumbling and curses."

----

I stuffed away the last of the cookware into its respective satchel when Eriat beckoned me from the corner of my eye towards the back of the wagon. He was still scowling when he lifted up a loose board in the bed, revealing several glowing glass bottles neatly tucked away and sealed with waxes and corks. "Now you get to choose one, and I mean one shot of liquor. Otherwise it could mix down your gullet all wrong and we get an accident like last time."

"You had to bring up Lubbarillo."

Eriat flicked his flaxen tail and looked away, pretending to be disinterested. "Just don't mix the H'siri cream with the salted crumberbean this time."

I tipped a couple bottles to read the labels. A bottles or two of fuegoshine, one with gold flecks, one without, and a bottle of Songs of Sirenity. The sunwash spilled golden light over four bottles of sludgy irredescent cream... probably distilled polar camels milk.

A sour taste in my mouth, I moved on to sifting through the 1oz bottles set aside in a crate.

"Gently, gently," Eriat said. "Those are in alphabetical order and if Diamanda sees one out of place she'll turn my feet cloven."

I spotted a bottle toward the back corner while he complained and reached for it, the 1 oz bottles forgotten. Unlike many of the shines in the collection, this one didn't glow, but it was reflective, catching the spill of warmth from the fuego and sunwash.

It was metallic blue and pink, like tempered steel turned liquid.

"Ah, I knew it," Eriat said. "I knew you were gonna go picking that up."

"Is this blood blend?" I asked.

"Yeah, it is. And you wanna know how much that goes for? Fifteen gold. Fifteen a shot."

"Done," I said.

"No, not done. I can't give that too you."

"We agreed to a shot."

"We agreed to a shot worth twenty coppers."

"Not specified."

Eriat stamped a hoof, and the nearby crickets silenced suddenly.

"I knew it. I knew you were gonna do this," he said, and he whipped a shot glass from a stack of clean ones.

"I want it to go, if'n ya don't mind."

Eriat nearly knocked off his hat when he slammed the shot glass back in it's place. "Oh, to go now. He wants it to go....gotta get a fuckin' bottle... not specified...."

With annoyance, but without a drop spilled, Eriat filled a 1 oz bottle with blood blend, stoppering it with a cork, and then dunked it in wax.

"'Preciate it," I said.

Eriat couldn't even bring himself to reply and he stomped off toward his tent.

I pulled out a rag from one of my belt pockets, wrapped it around the vial and stowed it away carefully. I returned to find Rho-Odi tending to the fire and Maurice retiring to his own tent.

"You still good for first watch?" Rho-Odi asked.

"'Course."

"Don't drink during your turn."

"No promises."

The older draconkind shook his head, throwing a branch onto the fire. "Just be sober until Maurice takes over. We're close to town but still in Korv's Gulch, hate for the job to get botched when we're so close to payday."

The vial suddenly felt heavier, and I remembered a fortuitous fifth of whiskey tucked away in my tent— we'll see. Perhaps a celebratory drink is in order for an uneventful job well done.

Rho-Odi and I sat in companionable silence for a while before he turned in with Anveria. I stood, stretched, and double checked my holsters.

Everything in place, I took first watch by walking a short distance up the gulch, stopping at my tent to grab the remainder of my whiskey.

Just above the campsite, and out of the glare of the dampening campfire, the stars shone, glittering like a smattering of fairy dust against black velvet. The dry, sweet smell of a distant alfalfa field drifted on a still-warm summer breeze. I sat on the grass, and tried to write in my pocket journal, but it was too dark, and eventually I gave it up in favor of sipping my whiskey.

After an hour or so I spotted a dark, wobbly shadow trot back to his tent. Eriat returning from an extra drink or two no doubt.

For a time, it was quiet.

I don't know why they didn't see me. Maybe I was too cloaked in shadow from my position, or maybe my scales reflected too little light.

Either way, a wrymling slithered directly by me, holding a curved blade in each hand. A bipedal companion followed further away, and since I was now looking for them, I spotted a snaking movement coming from a different direction, left of the tents.

I ducked low, hastily scrawling a rune in the dirt at my feet.

They slithered through the grass towards camp, curving around tumbleweeds and cacti like flowing bends of a dark river. They were close enough that I could hear various buckles tap against scaled hide, its breathing like the hiss of a silent steam machine. Quickly, carefully, I traced another curved line in the dust, then darted my eyes up to find the other intruders. The biped approached quickly, and I lost sight of the wyrm by the tents.

Fuck. I needed to fire a warning shot real soon, but I'll be wide open as soon as I do. I kept drawing, almost done. Just connect the horseshoe and clover, when you feel where you started drive a line straight down...

"Hmm?" said a husky humanoid voice, close. Unwilling shivers crawled up my spine. Weighty, spurred steps clacked closer. The brush crunched underneath. Closer, closer...

A final dash, and the earth grew warm under my gloved fingertip. A dark smoke poured forth from the completed rune, an inky and impossible darkness. It wrapped up my boots, my legs and arms, until my entire body was covered in starless void.

I unholstered my pistols and fired into the sky.

All at once my pistol produced an earsplitting crack, the rune on the ground flashed brilliantly dispersing the cloud of inky smoke, and the smoldering campfire burst back to life in a fountain of angry red sparks.

I confirmed that the spell had taken it's full effect, and then the whole camp was swallowed in impossibly thick smoke, clouding my vision.

The voice that I'd heard just before the spell started shouted behind me."What the- Radigan! Can you hear me?"

Radigan, whoever that was, may have answered, but other voices were responding now. Didn't matter. I was busy.

I knelt in the dirt at my feet and dipped my fingers in ash in the smoking trail where the rune had once been. I hastily marked a rune on my bare forearm, my sleeve pushed back.

I grit my teeth and muttered an ancient word.

Pink flames ate my flesh in the shape of the rune, searing my arm, and turning my muscles icily numb.

I blinked to adjust to my new vision. Around me, heat signatures lit up in the smoke. Red, orange, and blue shadows in the haze. The sparks of the campfire were like a beacon now.

I spun, locked onto a humanoid heat signature, and drew my guns. With a flick of my finger I fired once from the left hand and the figure dropped like a stone.

I saw a dozen heat signatures below me on the hill milling around like moths around the campfire.

"Eriat!" I shouted. He was easy to pick out. His horse chest was lit up like a beacon. I picked up my feet and sprinted down the hill, a snake-like form was boarding one of the wagons, though it was still unharnessed.

"Eriat, the wagon!" I shouted. He moved toward the cart with equine speed while I ran as fast as my booted legs would allow me over the clumps of grama grass.

In camp, I could make out several heat signatures, but faces were almost impossible to place in my vision, but I heard Anveria's voice ushering the children behind one of the carts for safety.

"Stay down!" I yelled at them, sprinting for Eriat and the wyrmling on the wagon.

"Maurice and I have 'em here," wheezed out Rho-Odi from somewhere. "Go, secure the cargo!"

The signatures around the cart were beginning to fizzle. Soon, the smoke charm would dissipate too. I sprinted towards the cart, searching again for Eriat. Shots rang out from the direction of the cart, and I saw a short red flash of Eriat duck behind something as he loaded what I assumed to be his shotgun. There was panicked yelling, coughing, clacking of spurs on dry grass, wyrmling swearing and hissing, and whinnying as a couple bandits managed to wrangle a couple loose horses to the cart. Another crack, and my left arm stung something fierce. I yelled out and saw a sickly green hole in my forearm, puncturing through my leather sleeve and even through my few arm scales.

"Ruvik!" Eriat called out, now rushing towards me from his cover. The smoke was a bit thinner now but so were the heat signatures. There was another crack, and I winced. But it wasn't gunfire, it sounded like horse reins. Damn it, if only the heatseek spell would last a bit longer.

"You alright, dumbass?" Eriat halted in front of me, then immediately saw my injury, now glowing a dark emerald color. He grabbed my arm with a hasty grip that caused me to yelp, then ripped off the bandana around my neck. The rest of the smoke dissipated as I had to watch the bandits ride further away on our cart, horses, and the job cargo while Eriat finished my ragtag tourniquet.

My wound burned, and I seethed. They won't get away on my watch.

"Let me go," I growled. "We gotta catch them.

The man on the ground that Eriat had managed to gun down groaned.

I grit my teeth and used my good arm to flip the man over.

"Will you ride with me?"

"'Course," Eriat said. "I'll grab a shot of sunwash. You want one?"

"No, not this time," I said.

"I'll grab mine," Eriat said. "Don't let that guy die, Ruvik."

"Oh, he ain't dying just yet."

I ripped the guy's shirt open down to his breastbone. His stomach bled profusely from a nasty peppering of buckshot.

I dipped two fingers in his ample blood, and then dipped them in my own wound.

I scrawled a marking just above the guy's heart, and then tossed some dirt across it.

With a hiss maroon flames seared his grimy skin.

Cartilage stretched, and bone crumpled, reshaped, unbound, reformed. The man's sin darkened to the color of charcoal, and his face bones ground together with a squeaking groan.

The blood wyvern wobbled on it's new legs and blinked unseeing red eyes.

I mounted up, and commanded it into the sky.

My wyvern, Xedras, shook out his sinewy wings, flinging fresh droplets of blood onto the thirsting earth. Eriat paled at my summon, but took no time to grumble as he downed the sunwash in the time I hauled into the air. Xedras took to his new form quickly as we soared through the night sky. The moon gave enough light to illuminate the stolen caravan and the four bandits - two wyrmlings, a human and a bison minotaur. But they noticed us too, and started shouting to one another as they cursed and fired into the sky. I reigned in Xedras and he pulled back into the air to get some distance. I felt myself slip against the still damp blood wyvern. He could still hear the gunshots, thankfully, but with so many shots focused on us it was difficult to do more than just hold on and pray. We needed something to get in close-

Then a glowing light, cutting across the prairie gulch like golden sunbeams carried forth from a break in a storm. It was Eriat, galloping about two feet above the ground at the speed of a storm wind. I could see that each time a hoof stepped, a puddle of light appeared beneath it like a drop of water breaking a still lake. The old stallion fired his gun at the bandits.

"Go for the flank!" Eriat yelled, ducking out of the way of a wyrmling rifle shot.

I dipped my fingers in my gunshot wound again, searing pain lighting up the wound. With grit teeth, I painted a symbol on Xedras's neck with my fingers.

Then with a nudge from my knees, Xedras tucked his wings and dropped like an arrow from the sky, his blind trust in my guidance complete as he snapped his wings open with a gentle tug on the reins. Just a handful of feet above the ground, I tapped my heels on the wyvern's sides and he surged underneath me until we were on the right flank of the cart.

Two of the men noticed that we had caught up, and one of the wrymlings raised a rifle. Eriat fired from somewhere on my left and the second one ducked behind a crate.

I hissed an ancient word and the symbol on Xedras's neck lit up, flaring with glowing, green smoke. Xedras roared, maw gaping, and a spray of lime colored acid coated the back of the cart. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but it splattered the wyrmling with green slime. He grit his teeth, but then opened them when he deemed himself safe. He took a shot.

Xedras, blind as a mole, took the slug head-on. Blood misted my face, and Xedras screeched as buckshot disintegrated half of his skull.

"Fuck," I said. I tapped his side and he surged ahead, screeching in confusion. I leapt from the back of the wyvern to the canvas cover on top of the cart just as Xedras dissolved into a cloud of dark mist, red droplets illuminated only by the lantern swinging wildly on the back on the cart.

I reached for the my bag and drew out the bottle of blood blend. At the same moment, the wrymling Xedras had sprayed with acid started screaming.

I began to break the wax seal of the bottle when the human driver looked back and saw me. As I lined up a pistol shot at him he veered the caravan left. I stumbled, gripping the blood blend tightly but dropping a pistol in the process. Just when I got my footing the caravan went right, this time sending me reeling off the other edge. I braced myself for hitting the ground, but instead I landed on Eriat’s back. My arm seared in pain but I managed to shift and hang on tightly to his neck. The wyrmling had collapsed, his screams turning to gurgling, but the minotaur cocked his shotgun at us. Eriat ducked and slowed down to get behind the wagon, dodging the minotaur’s fire.

Eriat picked up speed, and I could tell that he couldn’t handle my additional weight for long. I took the moment to finish breaking the seal of my vial and drank its contents. It tasted metallic, but I couldn’t tell if it was the blood blend or the spattered blood mist from Xedras. It went down warm and spread out from my chest down to my injured arm.

Eriat fired at the wagon, making the minotaur duck for cover as he sped up towards the back.

“Get yer fat ass back up there!” he said, offering his arm as support. I gladly took it as I dismounted and vaulted onto the wagon, almost slipping on the disintegrated wyrmling acid goo. In my periphery I saw Eriat speed off towards the front of the caravan in a flash of light. The bull peeked out from his hiding spot. I quickly drew my gun with a flick of my wrist and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Kukulkan, fuck me sideways.

The minotoar lifted his shotgun, put it to his eye.

I used empty gun and laid it flat against the opening of the barrel in the same fluid motion.

He fired.

My gun exploded in my hand leaving mangled metal embedded in my palm. White lightning pain flashed behind my corneas, and shock set in. Violently trembling, I dipped my gloved left hand in the acid puddle on the floor of the rattling wagon left by the man who'd been dissolved. The minotaur scrambled to his weighted cloven feet, dazed. My ears rang like cowbells while I scrawled a messy symbol in the acid, then on the sandalwood grip of the remains of my gun.

The minotaur lunged for me, swinging the butt of his shotgun like a club. I rolled behind a barrel tucked in a corner, and hissed a word at the same time. I blew on my gun as if to light kindling, and an ethereal ghost-like version formed in my hand, repairing the broken pieces. I reached for my gun belt and slotted the revolver with two rounds before I heard gunshots outside and a man screamed. The wagon lurched to the right and the standing minotaur tumbled, rocked the wagon as if it were made of a matchbox.

The blood blend had already started repairing my hand, and the wound in my left arm was almost sealed. I fumbled with the last of the bullets with slippery fingers.

Then I stood, aimed at the minotaur, and fired twice into his thick skull.

He lay still.

"Eriat!" I shouted. "Eriat! Stop the damn horses!"

"I'm tryin'!" the centaur shouted, and the wagon lurched again before it finally stopped.

I stumbled drunkenly from the wagon, covered in blood and slime. My clothes were smoking where I'd touched Xedras's acid and I stripped off my ruined gloves. All the while, the blood bend filled me with a deep sense of steely calm.

Eriat's hooves still glowed like the noonday sun.

"Well, howdy do," he said, considerably less soaked in grime.

I couldn't even bring myself to reply. Grim exhaustion bled into my lagging vision.

We stood side by side for a moment, watching the acid eat away the canvas and wood before we decided to unhitch the horses and extract the undamaged remains of the wagon.

----

Dawn crept up on the plains after the wild night. Took a while to haul back the wagon and clean up the contents from the bandits' joyride. Some merchandise was broken or shattered to shit but most was still in tact.

We pulled out the applebox table again, me and Rho-Odi lounging back in our chairs. I stretched out my arm, still sore as hell even after the blood blend worked its magic. A gentle breeze wafted the smell of the pyre Maurice built- he was no monk anymore, but still felt an obligation to tend to the dead. Even if to me they should've been left to feed the mangy crow griffins.

"Final round?" Maurice raised a brow as his bandaged hands held his deck of worn cards. I nodded, and Rho-Odi gave a sleepy, affirmative hum.

"I'm in," Eriat said, walking towards the table with a round bottle of vigormouth in hand. The other three of us pushed forward our chipped glasses and Eriat poured into them. The clear liquid smelled like daisies and some kind of berry.

"Absolute godsend, Erry," Maurice downed the drink immediately, straight with no chaser.

"Yeah, yeah," he harumphed and took a seat next to us, right by the mess kit as usual.

I swirled the spirit in my hand. I stared into it. "Thanks, Eriat. I'll pay off my tab when we get paid. And I'll pay everything, proper."

"M'hmmm," he said gruffly, corking the bottle of vigormouth.

Maurice dealt the river. We had a long day ahead of us.

#Tales of Ruvik #yeah I borrowed some lines I wrote and repurposed them into other works don't @ me #Eriat is one of my fave OCs #he's an old centaur that's just so pissed at the world and doing his best I love him #original writings #scheduling so I don't chicken out of posting :p #also I'm proud of Ride Me being used as profanity for centaurs lmao #writings

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