The Things We've Lost - An Eberron Story
Quick update - The Simple Plan story is finished and I have it in front of a couple of trusted folks for a final review, of sorts. I'll probably post it in episodes in another thread. Here's the first 1800 words of the next one I'm working on. If anyone's still reading, please feel free to provide whatever feedback comes to mind. Especially if you have any suggestions to make it any better. Trying to do a full ~6000 word short story every couple of weeks to get my mind back in the game...
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Kath Orus stood at the rail of the barge eyeing the thick jungle brush at the river's edge a few hundred feet away. Even at near-twilight, the Q'barran air was oppressively hot and heavy. Her pearly white skin, shot through with stripes of silver, glistened with sweat. The silver mane of hair hung limp on her neck. She heard the rustling again, and a small deer stepped lightly down a steep path to the water. Kath's skin prickled, and her wide-flat nose flared. Narrowing her yellow eyes, she pushed down the animal within her, suddenly fearful. The desire to shift and kill had been an almost uncontrollable urge, of late.
"Tiger-girl looks hungry," said the fat, hairy gnome further up the deck.
"Pike it, Verloot," Kath said, whipping her head around. "You think I can't hear you?"
Verloot attempted a bow, but he remained unsteady and slightly nauseous on the gently rolling barge and only managed to bend his neck. The gnome wore too many clothes for this climate, and they were all drenched with sweat. The thin black hair on his head lay plastered, his whiskers, however, stood out like a porcupine's.
"No offense, Kath," he said. "I was only making a little joke."
"A little joke you cannot manage," said the thin warforged standing at the back of the deck.
His rust-red plates looked almost black in the dusk. His green eyes glowed slightly. "They always fill your mouth and our ears."
"Ah, Book has ears, then?" Verloot changed the subject, deftly, though he walked unsteadily toward the warforged. "I always thought the 'forged captured the sound of our voices in some other arcane mechanism."
The knot of armored men slumping in the middle of the deck began to look from gnome to warforged to shifter with uncertainty. The barge captain, a scruffy, squat human, was hunched over his controls, lost in his reverie with the elemental that drove the vessel.
"Just drop it," Kath said, finally, returning to her survey of the way ahead.
Even the steady splash of the churning paddle wheel at the back of the craft couldn't take her mind off of the pulse in the deer's neck. Four moons, mere slivers, cut across the sprinkle of Siberys stones in the bowl of sky above her and reflected in the river ahead, a flat, dark sheet of glass. Something dropped from an overhanging branch with a splash and sped across the river undulating like a great snake. The pattern of its skin, bands of brightness and darkness in the evening, seemed to mesmerize her. Kath's senses suddenly flared and she let out a panicked growl, ripping her thin rapier from its sheath.
Twin tentacles shot from the water directly in front of her, one crashing into the spot where she had been standing; the other wrapped blindly around the railing.
"Arm yourselves!" she yelled, swiping at the grasping member and dancing back.
The deck suddenly came alive with shouting men, the clang of their arms deafening. Kath heard one of the men scream. She hazarded a glance to see him dragged over the side and into the black water. The front of the barge dipped slightly, as the creature pulled itself up above the surface. The blunt snout and bright reptilian eyes were followed by thick shoulders and arms. A clawed hand grasped the railing and the tentacle unwrapped itself even as the other thrust at her. Dodging away, Kath pierced her attacker's striking appendage, crouching slightly to keep her weight centered. The faint moonlight glowed on the creature's jagged teeth.
"Ah, little shifter," the creature bubbled. "A shapely feast."
Its tentacles slammed onto the deck, providing the leverage needed for it to vault the railing. It landed heavily on thickly sinewed legs. The humanoid crocodile's heavy tail swayed, providing balance on the now pitching deck. The tentacles, she saw, emerged from between the creature's shoulders and neck. They were banded, light and dark and ridged with jagged structures.
Verloot, his longsword swinging, yelled for Book, who cowered in the shadow of the barge captain's cabin.
"Give us some support, you rust pile!" he bellowed, slicing away one grasping tentacle.
He rushed another of the creatures as it reached the deck, jamming his sword into its tough scaly chest. The dark water sucked it down with a splash, the unnatural appendages spasming. The men-at-arms shouted fearfully, crouching in a circle and brandishing their long spears and pole arms at the grasping creatures. Verloot stomped toward them shouting.
"On your feet you gibbering fishwives!" He kicked the nearest in the gut and pushed him to his feet. "You took our gold, now do your jobs!"
Already tiring, Kath attempted to duck a slamming attack, and the cruel barbs along the tentacle's edge sliced through the thick leather armor on her back. She rolled with the pain, feeling the animal rise into her throat, and sliced the tentacle in two. The creature roared, advancing like a thundering bull on her prone form. Its remaining snakey appendage raked her across the chest, then wrapped around her sword arm like a feeding python. The croc-man's fetid swamp breath washed over her and she fought the urge to vomit. Twin yellow fires suddenly burned from her eye sockets and she began to change.
The creature dragged her up by the arm and back-handed her out of its own grasp. Landing
lightly, she rolled to retrieve the fallen rapier, raking her sight back over her shoulder. The creature came anew, thundering across the deck. Brushing the whipping tentacle away, she kicked out at the last instant, one leg entangling the croc-man's legs, and the other catching him in the chest as he lurched forward. She thrust the rapier deep into his guts, even as she braced, rolled back and kicked him over her body and over the barge rail. The rapier snapped in her hands as he passed, bloody froth gurgling in his throat.
The men-at-arms, their numbers more than halved, managed to take down the last creature with their pole-arms. The sergeant among them drew back his heavy spear for the killing stroke.
"Wait!" Kath called, standing slowly. The wounds across her back and chest burned, blood flowing freely to pool at her feet. She felt shaky, but pushed this down.
The spear-weilder shrank from her as she approached and Kath realized she was still in her feral form. Relaxing her breathing, she willed away the beast, only to have it seize her more tightly. Not wanting to show the struggle, she flung away the broken rapier hilt and called to her companions in a throaty growl.
"Verloot, Book. Have the prisoner bound." She backed away toward the prow of the vessel until she could calm her nerves.
"Careful of the railing, Lady," Book said, following her. "Perhaps you should stay near the center..."
"Don't." She tried to say this softly, but her snarl stopped Book and the men-at-arms cold. "Just give me a moment."
An unnatural shudder moved through her, and she struggled to remain standing. Her wounds burning anew, Kath placed both arms on the railing and pushed at the Beast. It finally yielded, melting away. She felt her features soften and the claws on her hands retracted into her skin again leaving her shaking and cold.
"You must let me treat your wounds, Kath," Book said, his voice close by her ear startled her.
She nodded, staring up at the racing moons. Tiny Olarune had passed Barrakas, arcing closer to the purple black horizon.
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"How many were there, Verloot?" Kath said, still feeling light-headed from her wounds.
She was reminded of Cyrean battlefields in the Last War. That shaky, expectant feeling after the last of the enemy lay dead and her feral form washed itself out of her mind.
"Four of them," the gnome said. "All but this one were killed."
"We don't know that," she said, looking closer at the prisoner.
Its face seemed off, somehow. The head was slightly lopsided, the ridges on either side of its eyes uneven. The creatured breathed easily, though still had not regained consciousness.
"Poison Dusk lizardkin, most likely," said the sergeant of their men-at-arms. "We've seen an increase in raids over the last season."
The big man brushed his long mustaches down with one hand, trying his best to look officious.
"Lizardkin with these?" Verloot scoffed, pointing to the banded and ridged tentacles. "There's a reason you were slumming around Newthrone without a job. I'm seeing that now."
The sergeant opened his mouth, reaching for the hilt of his dagger.
"These aren't Poison Dusk," Kath said, trying to smooth the situation over. "But, they could once have been. It could be that some Khyber-touched mage has altered them."
The creature's eyes suddenly popped open, and it went into a frenzy, struggling against its bonds. The tentacles were bound in an arcane net, Verloot's prized possession. As it struggled, its face seemed to soften and melt. Kath watched in horror as the reptilian features faded to only hints of a snout and jagged teeth. The tentacles seemed to draw into the body, becoming on vestigal bumps on the shoulders. The man before her was obviously a shifter. Or once had been.
"Let me out of here," he snarled, wide yellow eyes glimmering.
Verloot stepped on his stomach.
"Stop your yapping until we have something to ask," he said. He lay the point of his sword on the shifter's chest. "Otherwise, we'll forget we care what you have to say and pitch your corpse over to the chawfish with your brothers."
The shifter ceased his struggle.
"What has happened to you?" Kath asked with more empathy than she intended. "What...are those?"
"We've been perfected," the shifter said, his short sharp teeth glowing. "The Beast has changed us for the better, sister."
Kath recoiled from his words. Images of her shifter kin dying at the hands of the Brelish army on the Cyrean plains assaulted her. And Uri's painful wounds and disappearance bubbled to the surface of her thoughts. Her breath caught in her throat at his memory. The last days of the Last War took much from her.
Verloot took Kath's silence as his cue to continue the interrogation.
"We're looking for a hunted war criminal, Gruber Thiel," the gnome said, pressing slightly on the hilt of his sword. "He was a Grand Dracolan in the Karrnathi army, and was known to slaughter whole villages to the last child and raise them to supplement his undead forces."
Book, who had drifted up, added: "He goes by a number of aliases, Bebin Durn, Haight, Grogan the Black."
"I don't know anything about him," the shifter said, sullenly. He grimaced as the point of the sword dug deeper into his chest. "We are a small tribe. Lost and forgotten. Driven out from the lands of men and elves and all you other softer races." His feral eyes settled on Verloot's.
"I'll show you soft, you..."
"Verloot," Kath said. "I'll talk to him alone."
The gnome turned a surprised look on her, then shook his head. Sheathing his sword, he gave the prisoner a solid kick in the ribs before stomping away. Kath watched him go, then bent over the shifter.
"Who did this to you?" she said.
"The Beast has clarified all that is right in us," he said, voice straining suddenly. "You'll know his power, too, soon enough."
His shift was almost instantaneous, tentacles ripping from his flesh and shredding his bonds. One of the appendages encircled Kath's throat in an instant, dragging her into the air. Polearms thrust in from every direction, and Verloot's charging swipe took the thing's head off. Kath dropped heavily to the deck, her head lolling. Book crouched by her side.
"Kath," he said softly. "Lady, are you okay?"
She stirred finally, pushing herself up and nodding. The fresh wound on her throat oozed blood.
"Let's just get to Whitecliff and find that bastard Thiel," she said.
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