As we sit around the campfire this midnight, I speak up, I come to tell you a story that should stick with you, provided you aren’t already wasted up to your eyeballs!“Just get to the story, Cal! The last one still goes around!” one man in the homeless camp spoke up with a slur in his voice. And I wasn’t one to say no to telling a banger, so I’ll begin with the Starrise!
[Erifala~Awerla the 16th~ 6:24 AM]
[Starrise Over Tetala]
During this morning the moisture in the air made that crimson glow so much brighter than usual, the Nation of Relamia below felt blanketed in that red haze like it was never going to let up on the tiny yet burgeoning fishing town of Tetala. The capital of the small island. Every morning was a slightly different, but no less relentless, light storm of crimson. It was the reliability of my drinking an enormous glass of water first thing in the morning.
Like the Planet of Jistoa’s violet colored, mana filled sky cracked open, like something had lost its patience and flung an axe straight into the firmament, making it crack and shatter open, gushing like blood over one salt worn rooftop in particular.Each house near the eastern residential district looked like it had been cobbled together from whatever the Trasifis Sea felt like vomiting up in the last epoch or twelve. Except for one, as the red light crisscrossed the alleyways as we arrive upon three family members, and the noise of a particularly rowdy fourth member, the two on the porch and the third were overshadowed by the shadow of the awning. The Sevendust family. The mother and father held each other closely in the doorway for a moment.
Syrus and Anna Sevendust slowly let go and stepped apart whispering the same things they always did, in a tone so low it could barely travel farther than a few inches, a private conversation these two particular adults had a need to have time and time again, which wasn’t surprising considering Syrus’ deadly line of work.Folksoutside of Tetala, Hell Relamia, they called the place a quaint little island good for one visit then never again, Bunch of folks with poles in the water, and a massive taste for energy drinks. The truth of the matter is that’s propaganda flooding the televisions of those people of Alura and Mezetia. Spewed forth by a nasty hand in hand deal by the shady bastards at the tyrannical Central Government and the tourism industry. Those sickos decided a long time ago Quaint was code for… Concrete beaten as thin as a two by four by centuries of intense storms, and some monster or another always crawling out of something. Steel and plastic that came from sources long sense forgotten, and who the fuck cared, really, to ask anymore?
And on every damn surface, scars worn like trophies of honor, it was like the town collected them on purpose. And the freakiest part of that statement is that they kind of did. These hardy survivors had a knack for being Kamis’ favorite scapegoat when something went wrong.
I’ll be on the up and up with you, I wouldn’t wish living in Tetala on that guy who ran the scam. No, actually, that bastard would probably enjoy being torn apart by monsters. Hahaha.Because much like him, Tetala is a bit of a dump. And likely drunk in an alleyway somewhere.
But the denizens of this fair town, and this is probably the part where the tourism industry was spot on, probably by complete mistake. And you may need to sit down for this part, In spite of its general dumpiness, the people of Tetala, love their often strange little town, with the specific irrational devotion discord mods give to their hobby, they’d decided long ago, around 400 years, this little piece of Jistoa, was theirs end of conversation.
After a long kiss with his wife Anna, Syrus turned to his eldest son, and stretched his fingers with the crack of hands that had been fighting a very long time, before pulling a cigarette from his coat pocket, putting it between the wiry whiskers in his beard, which totally obscured his lips, and lit it with a flame from the tip of his finger before making eye contact. “Zakary.” He spoke in a calm if restrained tone, one expected from someone used to barking out orders, for a longer time than it could be reasonably expected to deliver a conversationally toned briefing, continuing “Except for your answer right here, right now on this porch, you are to enter monk mode, and keep up with me, it shouldn’t take longer than 20 minutes for us to reach the southeast gate. And another 20 to reach the path to the ruins. Now let’s get moving. We’re burning starlight!”
But the skyline didn’t sparkle like one would expect, quite the opposite, that reddish light crawled over everything like it had somewhere to be and wasn’t apologizing for the mess it made on the way there, Painful and vivid, like some idiot tried to scrub trauma across broken glass or taken a piece of steel wool to the town’s collective face and called it a merry morning... But Tetala held the fuck right on! Claws deep! The way it always had, the way it always had for better, or for much worse.
You could almost feel the population flinch every time the eastern horizon lit up. Not consciously, not even dramatically, just that small collective brace, the instinct of a place that had learned to treat merry indeed mornings as suspicious until it has proven otherwise. Zakary sighs and says, “What were we going to the ruins for again, Dad?” he asked in that innocent but curious tone.
And the ocean, alright, let me lay this one out for you, and please, let me land.
If you have thalassophobia or any relationship with large bodies of water that could be described as complicated, skip this next paragraph.
The Trasifsis Sea is a horribly dangerous expanse of ocean, diving farther than anything reasonable has any place to be. And it’s filled with some scary shit straight out of your local museum, this includes, but let me tell you, it’s far from limited to just sharks large enough to have opinions about politics and hold their own bloody ass elections. Krakens, easily growing to the size of school buses operating on motivational science, have had trouble making sense of or fully cataloging for millennia. And I know you paleoheads would consider me remiss, if I didn’t mention the mighty Dunkleosteus, which have been extinct here on earth for three hundred and fifty million years, and apparently didn’t get the memo here, And the occasional Basilosaurus gets close enough to the shore for a meaty snack, Imagine a massive carnivorous serpentine whale with jaws powerful enough to crush a man whole. And yes, when I say carnivorous, I’m not playing.
Coquina, pebbles and half rotten fish carcasses on Welen’s beach, with a kind of resentment only an ocean could express, it carried every traumatic memory of the island beneath the waves and hadn’t forgiven a single one of them.“You forgot already? Don’t concern yourself with it, son. Lets just move, Your mother told me what’s for lunch, and I'm personally in a hurry to get back,” Syrus answered. The answer seemed copacetic enough for young Zakary, as he placed an index finger on his lips and mock sealed them shut, running it across the opening of his mouth in a zipper like motion. Syrus nodded his head studying his son for a moment, taking a degree of pride in the clear stubborn streak the boy was carrying, his eyes reflecting with those ghosts that scream about the crazy things they’d seen, and the unthinkable things they’d seen their hands do, but had developed the peculiar quality of Iron patience that grew from learning the difference between a kid who was genuinely ready for prime-time, or a kid who’s just performing in a rush to get there. “Apparently the zipper inspection is a pass.” Zakary thought as his father turned and trudged forward into the harsh morning starlight, lining up behind his dad, taking wide steps until he got close enough, then matched pace as they stepped onto the sidewalk which ran the gamut of Arrowhead Lane.
It was exactly four full blocks before Zakary’s natural energy from breakfast burning away in his stomach got the better of him, he spots a tin can swirling in the breeze, Four full fucking blocks in his father’s precious monk mode. Which for a ten-year-old boy in Kevlar patched grey jeans, was walking down arrowhead lane just him, and his dad, bursting with that morning vigor that only comes from his mother’s grits and eggs, knowing today they’d be going somewhere real.
As he walked, he took on the determined posture of someone who doesn’t notice everything which means he noticed everything, The can flashed in the red morning light again as he catches sight of a white feathered goose in the grass near a small pond just off the road, it snorted and raised its beak, clearly having opinions on this human and his parent. Hissing and honking in front of a salt worn wall as the morning starlight painted them a deep bloody shade of crimson.
The promenade stood with glass panels blinking and or dead, some of them clear and reading [NO SIGNAL] in the specific defeated way of things that had given up on pretending to work, the smell of ozone and plastic filled the air from a nearby electronics shop, that caught fire during last night crazy lightning tantrum, not a drop of rain, just straight wrath from the skies, and it found a business worth frying.
The air itself felt like it was still processing that crazy ass storm, thick with the aftermath of weather that only Jistoa could produce, and how! Planet Jistoa displayed a casual, destructive creativity, as if it had never been told to calm down.
Then the tin can flashed once again in the morning light, almost as if in invitation, saying, “Come on, Zak, you know you want to.” Almost on instinct he thinks “yeah screw it” and accepts, he pulls his leg back and with a mighty swing the toe of his boot connected with a clean solid kick that sent if flying with a thunk, bouncing off of speed bumps and curbs alike before rolling on down the road in a cascade of glorious clattering chaos.
Syrus lightly growled. But don’t look back. He doesn’t say a word, monk mode still in full effect even after that, still moving forward at the exact same pace, his shadow stretching out deliberately to the length of a telephone pole in the morning starshine. Zakary regained pace as the can bounced once more off a speed bump before being blown into an open storm drain by a passing car, he caught up to his father and just kept walking.
Monk Mode had many rules, specifying no talking, but had not addressed kicking a tin can as an absconsion of the rules apparently, either that or Syrus knew of and expected this, and fuck, you know he’s budgeted the Jisti for it or any other real damage. Monk mode, technically, had specified no talking. It had not addressed the tin can situation. These were different categories. Syrus knew this. And Syrus, that magnificent fucking bastard, had almost certainly budgeted the Jisti for that too.
A few minutes later, as the duo walked onto the docks toward the Promenade, a large wooden structure that stretched half over Welen’s beach like a giant pier, but also acted as a shortcut of sorts into the southern part of town. They found the noise level to be quite high even for Tetala, and that’s the thing about working waterfronts, they were already alive with performance and had been for at least three hours as should be expected when you already operate on the logic that fish don’t have clocks, and have no respect for your business hours. And dammit, neither did the boats that gave chase when they fled.
The morning mist still floated in thick clouds over the surface of the Trasifis, while the Entara cut through in the distance, its white sails waving brightly in the morning breeze, glowing pink in the light against the post Starrise haze. A trade vessel running neutral flags to bring in some food and such, the neutral white flag flying meaning it wasn’t carrying trouble, which was often the best you could hope for in any given Tetala harbor up and down that beach named for Ebeneezer Welen, one founder of the town four hundred years ago.
And, like fucking clockwork, through the noise of the morning, a group of dockworkers ground away, among them Humans, That’s you. If you want a description look in the goddamn mirror, You could use the exercise, because I’m not going to go out of my way to describe a fit version of a species you personally ate yourself out of, You wanna say I insult my audience? Here’s the only time I ever really do it and acknowledge it intentionally. Fat ass. Oh, fuck, I’ve gone off on a tangent... The narrator laughs.
Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Humans, and not alone, working alongside Orcs from eastern Mezetia, A species of hulking humanoids with tusks where the bicuspid should sit in a human’s gums, And their skins ranged from deep browns, to blues and greens some even almost appearing purple in the red morning light painting their already colorful bodies in its crimson shower, each standing between seven and nine feet tall and built like linebackers educated on the concept of being the immovable object given a living body flowing with violet-colored blood.
Alongside the massive orcs worked a race of smaller but larger than life in their own way, Dwarves, the unstoppable force, or so one could say, stout and bearded, skin coming in pale pinks, to shades deep brown, And beards running the length of their bodies, coming in shades running the gamut between black, blonde, and red, the lot of them slinging crates, and stories but each of them carrying the specific energy of someone that takes up more space than its dimensions suggest.
Zakary was only ten Christian years old, but had grown up thus far, adjacent to this, but he still found the teeth in their often crass humor. Good, that meant his sense of self preservation was still functional, he shielded his eyes from the thick molten glow, but it didn’t stay put sprawling right over buildings and onward bleeding It’s way forward rolling inland, Westward toward Aralia another smaller but neater fishing village to the northeast where the hills wore deep browns and greens, and the trees huddled together messily.
Frayborn a farming community where the nearby Lake Wana reflected the sky’s weird mood back up at it, and also the largest settlement on Relamia, And Xelma a shipping hub on the eastern shore hugging the northern wastes, home to, Gorgonopsids, sand-worms and giant scorpions, and sentient Cacti, inaccessible on foot without braving the Haunted Forest where the living dead roamed freely.
The can Zakary kicked rolled down onto the sewer and out to sea, as Syrus nodded his head. Seconds later made a hand signal indicating to remain silent as they entered the promenade, Zakary squinted and through the mist he could see the Entarla a trade ship breaking through this mist Its white sails indicated its neutrality, As a flock of green feathered Cliff Gulls flew over, Loud hungry ass carnivorous things related to common seagulls, each the size of a small child.
Stubborn creatures and dangerous, but attacks on humans? Incredibly rare, the flock tore across the city and out over the sea to hunt Flish, their favorite food. A fish is a fish with long wing-like fins that could take flight for several miles before diving back down into the water.
It was as if the world hadn’t quite woken up, or perhaps it just fucking didn’t want to. Zakary and Syrus passed a row of advertisements as the glass caught the red, snatching it like a pickpocket, some blinked others just sat quietly with the words NO SIGNAL on the screens, The air thunked with heat or perhaps that’s just how the light danced, like genuine Staccato, like someone was slapping a pair of cymbals together behind your eyelids.
The smell of ozone and melted plastic filled the area after last night’s lightning tantrum fried everything worth stealing in the building. The weather on Jistoa was nothing like anything we see on Earth.
Tetala didn’t ultimately care; it was the kind of place that carried scars on its sleeve. And sometimes forgot to bathe, clinging along the western coast, half trying to forget, half daring you to ask, “What the piss happened here?” Some cities get demolition and reconstruction, others get museums… Tetala.. Oh man, Tetala, it developed a mean ass stubborn streak.
Already slinging stories, insults, and singing songs, voices punching through the morning mist, their humor had teeth that made Zakary cringe as he walked by. Their laughter being so rough you’d think they were gargling sand rather than moving crates and barrels of goods.
Just beyond this chaos, a young Felix boy about Zakary’s age ran across the dockside bare footed, A flash of bare heels and wild hair zipped down an alley, vanishing so quickly into the growing crowd you’d think you’d hallucinated him.
Every single Felix is very close to a human in appearance except they have long furry catlike ears, long tails, retractable claws on their fingertips instead of fingernails, and slitted pupils in their eyes. The typical Felix’s skin ran the typical gamut from pale pink to brown, with some even appearing grey.
On the edge of the chaos, a squat old Gnome trader with a thick white mustache and bald head spat “Move, you piece of Junk!” in a high pitched yet raspy voice at his lumpy old drone, the thing hovered just above a trash pile, refusing flat-out to lift off before sparks erupted from Its rotors and it fell in smoke wafting past a graffiti covered cement wall, layered with of so thick you could peel the years away like old dried out wall paper.