Curious, he sniffed the woman.
PER +1
Your Scents and Sensibility skill is now level 4!
And he was very surprised to find that she didn’t smell like a human at all. She smelled like that weird, spicy scent he sometimes caught around the windows of the house.
“Uh... thank... you? Who are you?” Celia tried to scramble up, tripped over the knight, fell to her knee again. “I, wait, you’re a stranger. I’m not supposed to—”
The woman bent and swept back her green cloak, offering a perfectly manicured hand. Celia took it, and with effortless strength she hauled the little girl to her feet, before tucking the teddy bear into Celia's arms.
“It’s all right Celia, you can talk to me.”
A pressure in Threadbare’s skull, just a brief one, as the words whispered of warm days in the sun, and the lovely quiet of night in a warm bed, and—
WILL +1
Your Magic Resistance skill is now level 4!
—and suddenly her tone changed. It sounded different. Kind of... smug? Like Pulsivar’s purrs sounded when he was sitting atop the wardrobe and Threadbare tried to join him, but just couldn’t climb the side of it. Threadbare, puzzled, burrowed into Celia’s arms.
But Celia didn’t seem to notice the shift. “How do you know my name?”
The woman smoothed her hands down her green cloak, and the traveling leathers under it that hugged her voluptuous figure. “I don’t have time to go into details, but I knew your mother.”
“You knew...” Celia frowned. “How?”
“It’s too long to go into detail here. Let’s just say your Daddy made some choices, and... cut ties with my employer. We think he made the wrong choice, but he doesn’t listen.”
Celia snorted. “Yeah, he’s bad at that.”
The woman shot a glance downriver. “I have a lot to tell you. You’ve got a choice to make, Celia, and it’s going to make a lot of difference. But we just don’t have time right now. I can’t approach openly, because Caradon’s going to attack me if I turn up. And if we scare him, he might kidnap you and vanish. Like he did last time.”
“Kidnap? Wait, what?”
The woman reached out and smoothed Celia’s frizzy hair. “But I’ve got a solution. We can talk here at the base of the hill, if we can fool those walking scarecrows into ignoring me.” She glanced upriver, at the shambling, brown-coated golem still a kilometer distant. “It’s almost on us. Here, the quest should sum it up.”
And words filled Threadbare’s vision, once more.
ANISE LAYD’I HAS OFFERED A PUBLIC QUEST!
DETAILS: BRING HER THE GOLEM CONTROL SCROLLS FROM YOUR HOUSE
REWARD: 500 EXPERIENCE
COMPLETION: DROP THEM OFF AT THE CHEST HIDDEN IN THE DEAD TREE TWO MILES DOWNRIVER
DO YOU WANT TO ACCEPT THIS QUEST? Y/N?
Annoyed at how they blocked his vision, just when something really interesting was about to happen, Threadbare sighed and thought “Yes!” as hard as he could. The words went away, and he could see again.
But Celia frowned. She took a step back from the woman. And her eyes went wide as an idea struck, and her intelligence, for the first time in a long while, rose by one.
“How did you know about those scrolls?”
“What?”
“Have you been spying on us? Those scrolls are a secret, even to Mister Mordecai.”
“Well, it just makes sense. Caradon’s an enchanter and a golemist, of course he’d—”
Celia backed off further. “No. No, I won’t. He told me never to take them out of the house. And I don’t know you. You could be a monster in disguise.” The orbiting dagger suddenly snapped around to put itself between her and the strange woman, and the toys formed a line in front of her, paws and hands and mitts raised. Threadbare, realizing the tension, slipped out of Celia’s arms and spread his own paws wide, like he’d faced the rats in the cellar.
The woman sighed, and massaged her face with her hand. “Celia. I’m not your enemy. But fine, I understand. I won’t ask you to disobey your... Daddy.” She glanced up and smiled, showing perfect teeth. “Amelia would have been proud of you.” She gave one more look over Celia’s shoulder, frowned as the raggedy man in the distance switched from marching to running, making a bee-line toward the obvious intruder. “It’s not perfect, but maybe we can have a talk later. As long as you don’t tell Caradon.”
“I’m not going to make any promises.”
“It’s in your own interest, to keep it secret. If he learns of me he’ll take you away from everything you know. Everything you ever grew up with.” The woman sighed. “I’ll be out here again in one week. If you want to talk, find an excuse to come out and play. Goodbye, my dear.” And the woman turned and fled across the river, hopping nimbly from rock to rock, despite the high traveling boots she wore.
The raggedy man slowed as it watched her go. Celia stared after her with a mix of emotions, confusion warring with caution, warring with curiosity.
She looked down to Threadbare, and knelt down beside the little teddy bear, put her hand on his shoulder. Threadbare looked back.
“Do you think she was telling the truth? About knowing Mommy?”
Threadbare looked her over carefully. She had that look that seemed to want reassurance. He knew how to handle that, and nodded.
“She didn’t seem to mean me harm.” Celia sighed. “I’m not giving her the scrolls, but maybe we can talk. And if she tries anything funny you’ll help defend me, right?”
Threadbare nodded again. Celia smiled and swept him into a hug, standing up to watch the woman disappear into the forest on the other side of the river, her traveling cloak blending into the underbrush. Behind Celia, the Raggedy Man resumed its patrol, neither taking note of the intruder it had routed or caring. Its orders had been fulfilled. Back to its job.
Celia put Threadbare down, and gestured upriver. “Okay. Let’s try this again. Follow me and don’t go in the river!” Celia pointed at the river, at Threadbare, and shook her head, sending red frizzy hair whipping everywhere.
Threadbare got the message.
PER +1
Not that he’d go back in that river if he could help it, that thing would surely kill him if he tried.
WIS +1
Celia started back downriver again, hurrying to make up for lost time, glancing back every now and then to make sure that Theadbare was keeping up.
He was, but it was kind of tough going. He’d never had to walk across this sort of varied terrain before, and as the trail broke away from the river and went up another hill, he was having to struggle with fallen branches, steep grades, and loose footing, things that were very troublesome for a small toy.
AGL +1
AGL +1
Your Climb Skill is now level 5!
But he managed, even if he did fall behind a little bit.
And then his nose picked up a familiar, troubling odor.
Your Scents and Sensibility skill is now level 5!
Blood.
Slowing, he turned right, pushing through the underbrush to a small clearing on the hillside.
And the gutted fawn carcass, lying broken in the middle of a small tree, weighing it down. Dried blood dyed the spring flowers under it.
“Threadbare?” Celia whispered, from up the hill. This close to the house, she didn’t dare call out, for fear of drawing Mordecai’s attention.
Threadbare moved in to examine the carcass, completely failing his perception check as the branches overhead rustled...
CHAPTER 5: WHERE EAGLES BEAR
At the minute, Celia shouldn’t have worried about drawing the old scout’s notice. Caradon and Mordecai were in the middle of a weighty discussion. The most troubling news was done with, and they were on to more pleasant topic of discussion. Even if this topic was vexing in a way all its own.
“I’m running out of ways to stall her,” Caradon confessed, staring at the bottle of rum he’d dug out of the hidin
g spot in his study. “She’s asking more and more questions, and not taking because I say so as an answer any more.”
“Figured the day was gonna come. Takes after Amelia, that one does.” Mordecai held over a tin cup, accepted the splash of rum with a tip of his hat. “What level is she up to now? Eight? Ten?”
“Five.”
Mordecai squinted at him, and leaned forward in his chair. “Why?”
Caradon sat down heavily, with his back to the woods. “What do you mean?”
“Me youngest is nine, and he’s stompin’ around at level six. Celia’s got two years on’im.”
Caradon scowled. “Yes, but we’re not like you, we can’t run around as we want. We’re trapped up here, so long as he’s alive we can’t risk leaving.”
“Mm. Maybe so.” Mordecai tilted back. “She asked me to teach her to be a scout again.”
Caradon rolled his eyes. “Dear gods. No, of course.”
“She ent gonna be satisfied wi’ just one job, Caradon.”
“And if I let her go after every adventuring job she wants, she’ll fill up her choices before we know it, without the one we need. Then we’ll all be sunk. You know the stakes, Mordecai.”
“I do, but...” Mordecai finished his rum. “Scout’s good fer passin’ unnoticed. Good fer seein’ danger, and escapin’ it. Veeeerrrrry useful skills, wi’ how the kingdom is right now. Verrrrry useful.”
“And absolutely no synergy with her animator job.”
“So what? It’d help ’er get more well rounded. Gi’ her a few wisdom boosts, that's good for sanity too. And hells, if I ever figure out how to unlock ranger, I’ll share the trick wi’ her. And you knows what a second tier job can do, mister Golemist.”
“What it should be able to do,” Caradon corrected, swirling his own rum in a glass tumbler, and staring at it moodily. “Research isn’t going so well. I should have a way to make golems sentient by now. I don’t. Every test fails, they don’t come out right. When the time comes, if we don’t have our army—”
“About that.” Mordecai looked at the empty tin cup, and turned it upside down on the table. “She’s gonna have to meet more people. Learn how to get along with’em. Polish her charisma till it shines, if you want this fing to work.”
“Gods.” Caradon rubbed his eyes. “Too risky. Too risky by half.”
“Nah, lessn’ you fink. Dye her hair, mud up her face, take ’er into town as me apprentice from a family out in the hills, won’t nobody bat an eye.”
“Mordecai, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Then you sure as hell won’t wanna hear this. Right now she’s eleven. In a year or two she’ll get her woman’s blood. And if you fink she’s restless now, what d’ya fink she’ll be like then?”
The silence stretched. Caradon closed his eyes, and sunk back into his chair.
Mordecai broke it. “I’ll teach’er woodlore, get’er some practice in a safe space that won’t kill her, so she can level up. Start ’er off spendin’ time wiff me lads, learning how to be around boys wivvout the downside of puberty muddlin’ er head and loins. And then, once I’m sure she can handle it, I’ll take’er to the town. She has to learn people, Caradon, if we want to win. She has to learn people.”
Caradon studied Mordecai for a long minute. Then he smiled. “And while you’re at it, you’ll introduce her around to the other leaders as well. Let them get a look at her, to settle their worries. To show them that I’m not the crazy old hermit who’s forgotten about our cause, up in the hills alone in his workshop.”
Mordecai coughed into his hand, and had the grace to look guilty. “There’s been talk, Caradon. This last round of purges at the Capital... things are gettin’ tight. People gettin’ worried. I know you, I ent worried, but they... people talk.”
Caradon rubbed his head. “This would give me more time for my research, without having to worry about her. I hate to admit it, but she is a distraction.”
“All kids are. Ever parent needs a li’l time off.” Mordecai grinned. “Benefit o’ being a scout, ya get plenty, out in the wild spaces.”
“Your wife’s a damned saint, Mordecai.”
“Shaman, actually.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Is saint even a thing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe cleric blended with oracle, but I’ve no idea how people qualify for that unlock.”
“Here’s to us that ent saints. Not sorry to not make that cut.” Mordecai raised his cup, and frowned. “Ah, empty.”
“Bottle’s dry,” Caradon sighed, rubbing his hand through his wispy gray hair.
“I brought some a’ the good stuff this load. Lemme go get it.” Mordecai rose and went inside...
...and not ten seconds later, Caradon glanced over as a large bird, easily as big as a human, shrieked with a deafening wail and burst out of the trees with its prey clutched in its claws.
“A Screaming Eagle? Hunting this close to my land?” Caradon frowned, and finished his tumbler. “Have to check the perimeter later, make sure the Raggedy Men are doing their jobs.”
From this distance, with his perception, he had no way to see that the Eagle wasn’t clutching its usual prey.
Still, it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, so at the minute he thought little of it. After all, the Wintersgate mountains had always been home to eagles.
Long before the world changed, almost forty years ago, they were there, hunting and breeding along the spine of the continent, and roosting among the cliffs and towering trees, far from civilization. Even when civilization crept in and they found themselves hunted for the prestige of their feathers, they were too well-established to truly be threatened.
Then the world shifted, but for the most part, their lot remained the same. They kept clear of the bigger predators, struck down intruding aerial predators and prey with swift, terrible strikes, and remained overall the most common apex aerial predator in the region.
But as the years rolled on and the eagles slowly leveled up, inevitably, some of them started reaching their maximum ranks.
As far as scouts, shamans, and other people who studied nature and beasts knew, the Eagle job had three rank-up options.
The first option was that of a Golden Eagle. Found mainly in areas where seams of gold were common, or treasure was simply lying about near or in its nest, the golden eagles had dazzling light-based attacks, and a hard, armorlike skin. They gave up some maneuverability in flight, but could hit like a falling comet if they got a proper diving strike off. Golden eagles were uncommon but sometimes seen in these hills, often followed by prospectors looking for their nest and the nearby seams or hunters who thought they could take one down and make a killing from their feathers.
The second option was Totem Eagle, usually only found where certain monster tribes or human cultures worshipped eagle spirits or a related pantheon. They could deliver blessings unto the faithful, call down rain, and had raw perception boosts that were unmatched in the monster kingdom. At least for most in their level range, anyway. There weren’t any Totem Eagles in the Wintersgate mountains. The cultures that could produce them lived far from here, or had died out in the region long ago.
The third option was Screaming Eagle, and they were pretty much everywhere in the mountains. They were eagles who had focused on their “Piercing Cry” skill and used it at every hunting opportunity.
Like, oh, the one that had come up twenty seconds ago.
This particular screaming eagle had nabbed the fawn from its mother up slope, as they strayed out of the treeline foraging. Its piercing cry had gone unnoticed by the residents of the home nearby, as had the falling deer as it bashed its life out on a high rock above, then bounced to land in a clearing only one hill away from the structure. The eagle didn’t care, and had feasted from it. It was a fat creature, and the eagle had returned today to finish eating. Carrion wasn’t its first choice, but it hadn’t found many other options in the last twenty hours, and it was hungry.
> So when the appetizing little furry morsel had toddled straight into the clearing, the eagle did what it always did. Emitted a piercing scream, watched the green seven and “Stun” float up above its head, then dived in and scooped the prey up.
From Threadbare’s perception, one second he’d been staring up at an unfamiliar corpse, the next second a sound ripped through his ears and he was reeling, he’d lost a chunk of sanity, and then by the time he could move again, some bizarre creature was carrying him off. Off and up.
He hadn’t even known you could GO up. It didn’t seem right, somehow. So he turned his face from Celia’s pale, panicked visage and looked up at the bird carrying him.
Silver feathers mixed with white, on a form that was shaped roughly like an arrow. Its wings were double-jointed, and beat the air with a whistling shriek. A sharp, serrated beak crowned a feathered head, with no visible neck. A series of smaller-beaks, currently shut, lined its torso.
Blood stained its beak. The same blood smell as the deer, Threadbare realized. Then his button eyes shifted to the wings. Those were the reason it was flying, he realized, as they flapped above his head and he felt the wind shift by with staggering force. The songbirds he saw through the windows had wings too, and this must be how things flew. No wings, no flight, no matter how many times he’d tried to jump off the bed in hopes he could fly like the birds.
Well, at least he could stop doing that, now.
INT +1
Perhaps, like so much of his existence-to-date, this was all just a big misunderstanding? Threadbare hugged the eagle’s claws.
The eagle didn’t spare him a glance. But its claws moved back, ripping into the bear’s hide, sending a red ‘4’ floating into the air, and falling away in the slipstream.
Nope, no misunderstanding. Threadbare drew his arms back, called up his own claws, and whacked the eagle right back! Surprised, the bird’s grip loosened, and Threadbare dropped through the trees, hitting every branch on the way down before bouncing off a rock, so hard that one of his button eyes cracked.
But he had no bones to break, or organs to damage, and as he sat up amidst a floating red ‘11’, he eyed the words in front of his face with a bemused stare.
Threadbare Volume 1 Page 8