“We can’t afford losing any more men, Red Sage,” spoke Jillian Sommer, the first colonel under General Elbric’s command.
“We couldn’t get more funds from the last Council, and relocating our soldiers costs time, money and planning. I believe we need to let them know that their requests are absurd and we simply cannot do what they ask,” Reeve Bingham, the captain in charge of protecting Mokuba peninsula, chimed in. Captain Bingham was a relatively quiet fellow, his character often misconstrued because of his unsociable disposition, but Admiral Lozenhyme liked him even more for that. He was one of those who did their duties quietly without seeking recognition. As the matter pertained to his defense line, Captain Bingham wasn’t going to stay quiet this time.
“How likely is it for Rogath to, let’s say, invade us, if we just turned down their requests? Any idea, Captain Bingham?” Reynhart said, his tone slightly interrogative.
“Rogath surely has more men than we do, but Gatimore’s aggression towards Rogath should prevent the empress from considering invading us, I believe,” Captain Bingham carefully answered, touching his thick beard.
“The thing is, however, Captain Bingham, that Gatimore’s not particularly friendly with us, either,” Admiral Lozenhyme followed up after him, “for us to rely on sheer luck that the Rogathian empress would decide against waging a war due to Gatimore is a bad move. The only thing we can count on is ourselves.”
“Yes, very much so,” Reynhart responded. “Even though I hope that the empress is smart enough not to smash through every piece of land around her, it’s been successful for her new empire, and she’d probably want to keep that momentum going. She might even think that her soldiers will outnumber and outperform us and Gatimore all at once.” One of his scraggly brows made a recalcitrant arc, which was typical of Reynhart when he had to make a decision he didn’t like.
“Do you have any idea, Red Sage?” General Elbric said with his booming voice.
“At this time, we shouldn’t give Rogath a reason to put another foot in our government. If we can’t come up with a plan to refuse their requests, we are going to have to agree on at least one of the two requests,” Reynhart replied.
“Red Sage,” General Elbric spoke, “we have fought with our lives at the border to guard our pride, to keep Sarum as a kingdom ruled by one and only king. Why should we give that up now? What makes this Rogathian woman have a right to pull our troops from our own land? The treaty after the Gatimorean invasion? A true Sarumese would choose an honorable death over a life of humiliation.”
“Anyone can say what you said, General. It’s good to speak of honor, but honor without power is vanity. Many tribes of the north fell before Rogath because they weren’t tactful, glorifying their defeat as honorable deaths. We need to be smart and manage this situation,” Reynhart replied with a reproachful tone. Of course Reynhart, too, would choose a death over humiliation. That was the easy thing to do; it was much harder to bear his name tainted, see his people die and nourish his very enemies that killed his men. To bear through them all and to come back to surpass his enemies were what a real Sarumese should do, if that and a death were his only options. Reynhart had the same mindset as Elbric’s before, so he understood Elbric’s opposition. If Sarum’s military had the slightest chance of winning against Rogath, Reynhart might have listened to Elbric’s voice, but Sarum had no chance at all without allies. Furthermore, as Admiral Lozenhyme said, Sarum couldn’t go to war relying entirely on its allies.
“Anyone with a better idea?” Reynhart said to the councilmen.
Many Councilmen voiced their opinions. Basically the Red Half Council was divided into yes and no; some suggested giving other things to Rogath instead of pulling the Sarumese soldiers from Mokuba, some suggested sending a message to the empress that she should suffice at Rogathian intervention already present at Mokuba, and some suggested making a treaty with Vandice to attack Rogath first. In the end, the councilmen had to vote by presenting their tickets, which were figurines with each councilman’s name inscribed. Every councilman but the Sage had one figurine. The Sages had four figurines and therefore the Sages’ votes counted four times as that of other councilman’s.
“We have seventeen tickets for ‘yay,’ and twelve tickets for ‘nay’ on sending our troops to Rogath,” Reynhart spoke out loud. In the end, his Half Council had decided to appease Rogath. This was going to be presented at the Council for the king to give his final approval, but Reynhart somehow had qualms about the future of Sarum. The empress wasn’t easy. He just hoped that he was not leading Sarum into her traps.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Chase rode his horse until the sight of Moongrave City disappeared behind the horizon. Outside the city wall was a vast open field with shrubs and trees here and there. Chase noticed that as he went north, the soil was losing its reflective minerals and was getting darker. It seemed to retain water more easily and was also softer. The open field was filled with grasses.
There was a weed called sickle grass, which came up to Chase’s hips, shaped like a sickle with a gentle curve. One side of it was very sharp like the sharp edge of a sickle, and the opposite side was supple new growth, which was how the grass got its name “sickle” grass. It couldn’t really harm someone, but it was sharp enough to give little cuts all over the skin, so people often wore leather pants to prevent cuts. This grass all grew in the same direction; generally, the sharp side faced north and the dull side faced south. Others had to double-check their directions before going through the sickle grass field, but Chase had dealt with it so often back in his hometown that he knew it right away just by looking at them. The sharp side appeared a little darker and edgier but the difference was undistinguishable to untrained eyes.
The field was a carpet of sickle grass, little bushes and some lonely trees. If one didn’t have proper clothes against sickle grass cuts, the sight of a sickle grass field would have baffled him. However, the sickle grass didn’t matter anymore because there were nice new roads that had been recently built by the district, thanks to the Osas.
Chase didn’t know how he had managed to completely improvise everything in Moongrave City. He stopped to think about it and it made him sigh of relief. Hazel’s book was worth all the trouble he had gone through.
‘Ah, that’s how that girl knew my name,’ he came to a sudden realization. ‘Mom’s name is on the cover of the book!’
Chloe surely was a weird girl. Now that he thought about it, he had been lucky that his belongings were stolen by one person. If it was done by a pickpocketing gang of some sort, he might have had a bit more trouble.
After a while, Chase could notice the change of scenery. More trees appeared as small creeks and rivers vamped up the monotonous view. He was getting close to the Giant Maroa forest. There was no definite boundary of the forest but he could tell that he was more or less in the forest now. There were Maroas and little thorny bushes everywhere he looked. The canopy of the leaves cast a mosaic of light on the road which had brought him all the way from Moongrave City. This part of the Giant Maroa forest used to be so overgrown that people had to take a longer path to go around it, but now the new road allowed for a much reduced travel time.
Chase was on rationed food for the trip: beef jerky, pressed lamb cubes, cheese sticks and dried vegetables that he could eat like crackers. It was unlikely that he’d run out before he arrived at his final destination, but he didn’t like eating the same things one meal after another. He was ready to enter a new district.
There were four cities surrounding Central City, called the Guardian Cities, and these made up the Central district. The origin of their names wasn’t very clear but there were couple plausible theories. One was that the cities had been founded and governed by the four Guardians who had served the founding father as the current Sages served the king. The other one was that they served as the outermost defense line to the Central district, hence giving the name “Guardians.” There were inscriptions in the edifices of
ancient Sarum which mentioned a Guardian as the city governor, so both theories were generally accepted.
No one could get in Central City without going through one of the Guardian Cities. The one Chase was going to was the South Guardian City.
From what he had heard, this woodland was going to continue right until he reached the city gate. The Central district was built in the middle of the Giant Maroa forest. There were several large forests in Sarum such as the Mima forest, located south of Sarum where Chase usually went to hunt, and the Giant Maroa forest. If the Short-legged Maroas were predominant in the Mima, the Giant Maroa forest’s most notable feature was the Giant Maroas, which one could easily deduce from the name itself.
A river named Tears River carried abundant minerals from the mountains in Rogath and released them in Sarum’s relatively low, flat land. It left most of its nutrients in the area around the Central district because the river started diverging there and the current slowed down considerably. Tears River and its sub-rivers contributed greatly to the formation of such rich soil of the Central district.
The Giant Maroas were far from being the most common in the Giant Maroa forest, ironically, but they were inarguably the most striking feature of the forest. They were found only in the center of the forest in the shape of an empty circle. They stood like a mountain and the region within the diameter of their shadows had very few large plants that required lots of Metilda’s energy for growing. This meant that around the Giant Maroas, there was an area where only grass and vines and little bushes could be found; this region around the Giant Maroas was where the Guardian Cities had originated. The middle of this circle also had very few large plants so the Sarumese had built houses and important governmental buildings one after another over a long period of time, which later became the capital of Sarum.
The geography of the Giant Maroa forest provided excellent natural defenses against invaders. To use the location to its fullest extent, the Sarumese had filled in the gaps among the Giant Maroas to make what was the tallest wall in the Ippa continent. Chase had heard so much about it; he couldn’t wait to see it with his own eyes.
After a long ride, Chase finally came to the city gate of the South Guardian City. The wall hadn’t been there during Rogath’s invasion of the Central district four centuries ago. The Rogathian forces had conquered all the cities in the north of Sarum. Propelled with high morale after consecutive winning battles, they annihilated all the Guardian Cities. Some had held up tough battles but soon fell to Rogath when the Rogathian forces came from all directions. However, the Rogathian siege didn’t last very long because most of the Rogathian forces was wiped out in the passageway to Central City from the Guardian Cities. After the invasion, the very first reconstruction effort was put to the walls. The devastating war taught the Sarumese a hard lesson and the Central district was now watched with heightened security.
For multiple days in a row, Chase hadn’t had a real meal. He was about ready to go anywhere and devour whatever was served to him. He went to one of the closest restaurants to the city gate.
Chase entered a restaurant named Number 9 whose grassy roof had its name mowed neatly on it. There he ordered a dish Number 9, the restaurant’s specialty with local pink peppers which were fluorescent pink with white stem. These were stuffed with seasoned beef with eel slime on top, which was very rich in flavor.
Chase gobbled them up so fast that he felt a little uncomfortable at the stomach. He took out Hazel’s book to read at the table so he could take his time finishing the Giant Maroa fruits that came on the side. Since the passageway to Central City was right outside the South Guardian City, he thought it would be a good idea to look for some relevant information about it. Every time he opened it up, he was impressed by Hazel’s effort, talent, and knowledge. There was just so much.
“I hope you will be able to fill this in with your own findings,” Chase recalled her saying when he had departed from home. He wasn’t confident that he could do much. She had all sorts of things listed. He could find friendly names like the Rockbacker bats, Harper tiger, Maroas, and sickle grass, but the majority of it was new to him. He flipped through the pages. Her illustrations were phenomenal. Chase wished he had gotten her talent. Unfortunately for Chase, he didn’t get much of artistic talent from either parent so he couldn’t draw too well.
After flipping through several pages, he stopped at one page. A beautiful woman was depicted but she clearly wasn’t a human. She had very long fingers with long, black claws and long feet that slightly curved up from the ground. Her sinewy legs were thick but her waist was tiny compared to the rest of her body, and her lean muscular arms were also very long. Her body proportion reminded Chase of the Kshandyans, except for her dramatically long fingers with those claws and feet. Succubus, it read at the top.
Succubi are one of many sub-human species. They can live up to approximately twice as long as humans. They seem to acclimatize to different climates faster than humans or other sub-human species, which enables them to live almost anywhere. They are found most commonly on the northwestern coast of Rogath. They don’t bear more than one offspring in their lives. Whether it’s a voluntary choice or their limit is unknown. They have sensors that detect synchronized Vito concentration in their prey. Once they find their targets, they seduce them and absorb their synchronized Vito. This can sometimes result in death.
It was written neatly in Hazel’s handwriting. Chase had heard of succubi only passingly. “Sub-human” was a misnomer that had stuck due to a long period of usage. It indicated species that had human-like features such as human-like faces and ability to speak a language. This term had been made when people had just discovered other beings that almost looked like humans but not quite. At that time, humans had liked to think that there was no being better than humans, with higher intelligence, so they added “sub—” to indicate that those species were below humans. Now that humans knew there were beings with higher intelligence and more complex language, the term needed to change accordingly, but it seemed to have stuck forever.
Chase flipped through more pages in the sub-human category. Even Hazel hadn’t seen mermaids yet, it seemed. It wasn’t recorded in the book. Mermaids were sub-humans as well and they surely existed but they avoided any contact with humans. Not too much was known about them. He had hoped this book was going to have it.
A few sections covered various rocks, metals, and poisons.
‘I wouldn’t have believed you if I hadn’t read that book.’ Chloe’s voice echoed in his ears. He opened the poison section of the book. It listed various types of poisons as well as how to extract them from poisonous plants and insects. It explained the effects, duration, lethality and antidotes. The latter half of the chapter was dedicated to the production of antidotes for specific poisons.
Chase looked for the Giant Maroas in the book. She had to have it somewhere.
“Here.” Chase saw the illustration of the Giant Maroas, leafing through the book, and went back to open that page. Hazel had drawn a human figure next to the Giant Maroa to show the relative size of it in comparison to humans. It was so tall and wide that it completely dwarfed the human figure. However, other than its sheer size, it seemed to look just like a regular Maroa; it had smooth bark, no cluttering branches until it reached the top, and branches that went out horizontally until they bent to grow vertically.
The Giant Maroas can be found in the Central district of Sarum. It’s much debated what caused the Giant Maroas to have grown so large. The oldest Giant Maroa is presumed to be four thousand years old. Their blooming season is affected by many factors such as the precipitation and average temperature of the past summer. The fruits are as large as a small fist and have a sweet flavor. Their thick roots grow symmetrically as other Maroas do and grow especially deep, all the way to the underground river. Most of the passageways to Central City were made using the roots as the basic structure.
Chase couldn’t wait to go in there. There was so much fol
klore about the passageway between the Guardian Cities and Central City alone. He’d grown up listening to the stories and it was hard to believe that he was here by himself to feel the stories breathing in the Central district. He fumbled for his portable celestial clock in the backpack. The bead of red, white and black eddies was floating in the peachy pearly liquid. It wasn’t yet Fienorian night but was getting there.
Chase had the last bite of the Giant Maroa fruit and left the restaurant. He had been imagining what Kevin must look like. He was going to find out shortly.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sadie never neglected taking good care of her beautiful wavy locks. Her light brown silky hair reached down her waist and swayed rhythmically whenever she moved. She had five servants whose sole job was to maintain the beauty of her hair. Today her brother was going to pay her a visit so the servants had to be even more meticulous about making her look beautiful.
Sadie was proud that she always tried to look her best. She had only Yulia to compete with for Klaiser’s attention. Compared to the former queens, having one Lady to compete with was actually rare. The kings could have as many concubines in the entire kingdom as they liked, so ten to twenty Ladies were normal. King Ladus of the old kingdom, one of the greatest kings of Sarum who not only exerted his energy on expanding the border, but also on hoarding beauties all over the world had had hundreds of Ladies. To accommodate them all, King Ladus had built another luxurious palace in the island of Foriene, one of the main islands of Sarumese archipelago, which was now used by close and distant relatives of the royal family.
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