The Red Death

They called themselves the Knights of Orin. Named in mockery of a hero of the early Night to earn them undue trust, they said they would bring order to a wrathful world.

Out in the pitch black night, people huddled together in small pockets of civilization to hide from the monsters lurking between them, and came to see others as a threat more likely to stamp them out for plunder than grow strong together. Wild and lawless. The Knights offered an alternative, claimed the noble cause of forging a union of settlements that would aid each other. Share resources, rebuild something closer to the kingdoms long ago, all with the Knights themselves as the guards at the gate to keep those who joined safe.

It was all lies, a scheme to build power and hoard resources for themselves. They were the monsters waiting to burn it all if you refused. Ichta’s home was among those that rejected their rule, and it cost her everything.

Yaret Noros. A mercenary uncaring for the work asked of her so long as she got her due. She earned plenty in her time at their side.

Astor Tallas. A sage, or enough to pass as one in these times. He brought healing and medicine to those under their yoke… but so too did he brew alchemical weapons for their conquest.

Illona Redwing. A skilled assassin who revels in the hunt. She worked in the shadows as a manipulator, removing any that might prove a threat to their might.

Elkoron Alkane. Their rotten heart, one who thinks himself no knight but a king. It was his hand that brought them together, and his hand that guided their wrath.

They were all that remained of the Knights after Victor’s death, the latest to fall in a decade-long hunt. The group had broken even before her work began, fracturing beneath the weight of their own greed, but Ichta did not forget. And Ichta did not forgive.

Rain fell heavy through the forest around her, roaring through the leaves down to the muddy earth. These were the most dangerous times to travel, already so little light to spare now darkened by clouds, and hearing dampened alongside sight. Every step became a risk. Ichta trudged on all the same.

She had set her sights on Elkoron at last, her truest target, and she would wait not a moment longer than she must.

Astor and Yaret were in the wind, difficult to track in their isolation and long renouncing their ties to the Knights besides. There was no need to wait for a grand finale chopping off every finger before turning to the head—she had found where Elkoron was holed up now, and Illona was still by his side. They were long overdue their justice.

He was still playing at royalty, operating a pitiful vestige of his old scheme from the ruins of an old-world castle. The whole city that surrounds it—or its remnants, anyway—claimed as his own. She knew that he must know of her by now, Victor was right enough about that, but so too did she know he was arrogant like no other. He surely thought himself untouchable in the fortress he’d built. 

Ichta had yet to find walls she could not breach. 

Clever, cunning, determined, and nor was she alone: Her pact was spirit-bound, more than just a promise. It offered aid in exchange for her resolve. Subtle guidance, insight into tools and tricks most mortals had long forgotten. It was through this that she came to find the gauntlet, her greatest asset. If the stories are to be believed, it was an artifact forged in an ancient city all the way across the sea before it found its way to her. Spirit magic fuels its power, but not her patron’s—he seemed wary of it, in fact, but it was far too useful to pass up.

To reach Elkoron where he cowered, her plan required tools only a sage could make her. A true sage, no mere apothecary as most who took the name were now. And so, she was granted visions of one who could aid her, an unnatural intuition guiding her path through the dark. 

She arrived now at the gate of the village. Covered braziers sputtered in the downpour, faintly illuminating a weathered stone arch. Thorny bushes lined the walls beside it, and two figures stood guard out front, shielded from the weather by wooden awnings.

“Halt! Taski says halt..!” one shouted.

She was barely half Ichta’s height, the spear she held forward trembling in her hands. Large eyes and oversized feet, long, drooping rabbit ears poking out through her hair. A lopunn. Ichta had seldom seen them in her travels.

“I seek the sage Korellin,” Ichta said. “Nothing more.”

“Strangers are not welcome here. Stranger should not be here,” the other guard said. He was of similar stature and fearful state. “Please leave!”

“Not yet. Take me to her.”

“The Red Death, at our door,” a new voice spoke, raspy and worn. “How troubling.”

Ichta saw antlers silhouetted against the gateway flames. Her hands tensed—for a moment, she was back in her village on its final day. She steeled herself with a breath. This was not her foe.

The tall figure lumbered forward, back hunched and long arm gripping a gnarled staff. Even bent as she was Ichta had to look up to meet her gaze; to the guards beside her she was a true giant. She leered at her from behind a curtain of dark, greying hair. She was old, even for a capreolin.

“They are right, you are not welcome here. I have gone to great lengths to hide this place,” she spoke. “They are only here to shoo away wandering beasts, you are going to frighten them to death.”

“Korellin,” Ichta said. She opened her palms to signal mercy, her chain wrapped and hanging at her side. “I am here for you, but I am not here to kill you.”

“The look in your eye would fool most,” the sage replied. She turned, making a sharp gesture with her staff. “Come, and stay close. Haven is a place of peace. You are armored in teeth, and I will not have you tainting it.”

Ichta followed, passing by the guards without so much as another glance. The sage led her down a cobblestone road lined by rather shoddy buildings, not made by any expert’s hand. Rain gathered in a channel dug beside it and trickled down to safer elevation; warm light peaked out from nearly every window. The village was filled with greenery, bushes and flowers and trees, fireflies dancing around them here and there. She saw a man helping a lopunn hurry to shelter from the rain, elsewhere another mixed group watching her warily from a raised terrace. Up in a high window, she thought she even saw a pixie peering out.

“I knew of your coming,” Korellin said. “Through dreams, none too pleasant. I have been watching the vultures circle since you set out.”

She led Ichta into a cluttered workshop, the entrance built directly into the side of a hill. The patter of rain turned to a dull roar when she passed the threshold. An earthy scent filled the air, floral hints winding through it at times. She wasted no time with pleasantries.

“I have need of your skills. I bring the reagents with me, I only need your help refining them.” She removed a pouch from her belt. “Nolum root and mothweed leaves.”

“How dare you.” Korellin knocked her staff against the ground. Her eyes met Ichta’s in a cold glare. “You bring such awful things here and think to demand I make poisons and tools of war without intent to ever offer anything in return. Do you know what place this is you have sullied?”

Ichta did not answer.

“It is shelter from the dark. I have spent a lifetime forming bonds with the local spirits to keep this place masked from wandering eyes, working magics on the soil to keep our harvest plentiful. It is safe here. It is peaceful here. Yet you barge in without a thought to what ruin you invite along with you. I know what you are, and what terrible spirit looms at your back.”

“I assure you, these tools are only to kill monsters. You do not have to fear Oli—”

“Do not speak its name here!” Korellin hissed, swatting her staff at Ichta’s shin. “I want no further attention than your presence already brings. An orphan taken in by the Court of Swans, but it still honors its blood. Wretched as the wolf.”

“Whatever you believe, he aids me in ridding the world of the wicked.”

“And do you wonder why? The spirits do not care for us, they work only on their own whims. The vulture feeds on vengeance—it aids you because it knew you would offer it a feast, nothing more.”

Ichta did not reply. The sage shuffled deeper into the room, stopping to rifle through a drawer for supplies.

“You have doomed yourself, you know that, right? You chose to answer blood with only blood, bound yourself to it, and so you will have nothing more. The spirit turned you into a weapon at your own request. What do you think will remain when your work is through?”

Vials of powder and strange liquids were placed on the table, joined by a mortar and pestle. The sage lit a fire below a cauldron suspended in the hearth. Ichta remained quiet for a while.

“Ichta,” she spoke at last. “You called me by a name I have made no claim to. I am Ichta.”

“And how much longer will she still be in there?” There was something like pity in Korellin’s eyes. She finally took the pouch. “I will make your weapons, on one condition: You will never return here, nor will you ever speak of it to anyone.”

Ichta nodded. She felt it too, from the moment she entered—she did not belong in a place like this.

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