Heart of Oak

Two weeks westward and the dense forests gave way to rolling grasslands. Hills peaked and dipped giving a sort of wave-like appearance to the land. Horses roamed about, trotting and galloping freely. Bison and deer grazed the lands without worry or fear. Falcher stepped onto the grasslands and took a deep breath. “Finally out of that damn maze,” he grumbled to himself.

Not too far off was the outskirts of a walled city. Made of stone and mortar, it stood tall and menacingly to any unfamiliar with it. “That must be Huma. Looks well built.” Falcher pulled up his belt and his rapiers clanged together.

It was another half day to the city from the edges of the forest and much of the grasslands were grazing lands for the wildlife with some farms dotted around. It was a calm and quiet summer day. Although, as he walked by the small family farms he did notice something odd. They were staring at him not with curiosity but with disgust. He thought to himself, Perhaps they’re not used to seeing wolf-kin?”

Regardless, he continued onward. The closer he got to the city, the more humans he saw and the more unsettling looks he received. The concern was beginning to set in. Perhaps there was more to these looks than simple ’ew it’s something unusual’. His eyes darted between the various humans he saw. The kids were pointing, only to be redirected away by their mothers. He paused in his walk. The situation was about to go from bad to worse and he wasn’t sure how to come off as friendly to these people. An attempt nonetheless was made as he slung his guitar off his shoulder and held it loosely in his hand.

First, he strummed a quick chord to gather attention on purpose. Once he was sure he had everyone’s attention, he began with a little folk tune he knew well, “Of Wolves and Sheep”. It was a largely upbeat and happy tune that he didn’t sing. The lyrics were a very dark contrast to the jig itself. At first, it was the kids who smiled and started shuffling and dancing. Then a few adults bobbed their heads. It was catchy.

When he finished, he stood and grinned, holding up his instrument in seeming victory. The crowd that had gathered was no more than thirty farmers and their families and largely they all clapped and celebrated. After a few minutes, they returned to their work and left Falcher alone.

“Good to know these people trust musicians,” Falcher mumbled to himself and continued on his walk. “I wonder what those glares were about at first. Surely travelers are a thing in this place?”

However, it would only be a few minutes before he’d find himself accosted by some knightly-looking men. Bearing a red and gray tabard, these plate metal soldiers approached Falcher with their poleaxes on display. “Hold it, Werewolf”

“Werewolf? I’m a wolf-kin not a-” Falcher was immediately interrupted.

“We don’t care. We don’t want you, you hear. Turn around and go back to the fucking bone dens in those forests.” The first knight said aggressively.

“Whoa now boys,” Falcher countered. “Let’s not be hostile. I’m a traveling bard looking to make some coin in your fine city.”

“Your kind are not welcome here.” The second knight gave Falcher a rough shove. “This is our kindness, go and don’t come back.”

The shove set Falcher into fight mode. He stepped back and drew his rapiers taking a readied fencing pose. “Now gents, I don’t want to fight you. I only want to make some coin.”

The knights looked at each other. “Who’d you eat to get that gear?”

“Eat?” Falcher raised a brow. “I don’t eat people.”

“Liar!” The second knight shouted and swung his poleaxe.

Falcher stepped back again. “I am a wolf-kin, not a werewolf. If I was a werewolf, how am I still looking like a wolf in broad daylight?!”

The first knight lunged and thrusted the pointy end of his metal stick at him. Falchersidesteppedd it and jabbed back, landing a poke into the knight’s left pauldron. “I’m faster.”

The second knight grunted and swung again only to be deflected by Falcher’s off-hand and challenged with a stab to the chest. The second knight stumbled backward. He wasn’t bleeding. It hadn’t pierced his armor. “I want those blades, thief.”

“Over my dead body.” Falched sprinted forward and took several quick stabs, keeping the distance too close for the soldier to use their heavyweight weapons. With each pinprick, the soldier spent more and more of his energy trying to not fall over whilst the other was forced to stand back and watch less as he caused collateral damage to his ally.

The second knight slumped to his knees, thoroughly exhausted from the spinning and constant backtracking. Falcher stood above him, pointing the pointy tip of his rapier at the gap between the helmet and chest piece. “Will you two back off or will I have to prick you both to death?”

The first knight took a long look at his incapacitated ally. There were several dozen pin holes throughout his entire armor suit but none showed any blood. “Who are you and why have you come?”

“I am Falcher, I am just a traveling bard looking to make some coin. I just so happen to be good at fencing.” He explained, keeping his real reason a secret.

The first knight took a deep breath. “Know that your kind has no place in Huma. You’ll find no inhuman bastards here.” The knight removed his helmet, revealing a brown-haired human.

“Is that so?” Falcher sheathed his rapiers into his hip frog. “A truly unfortunate reality.” He said, walking past the both of them.

There was a crowd at the city gates consisting largely of non-city-dwellers, many of whom were hauling carts filled with wares for the market. At the gates was another group of guards who appeared to be checking the carts. If the first two guards were any indication, he needed to find a way to slip inside undetected. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a dark green woolen cloak and covered himself in it and then merged into the crowd.

Slowly, he began to work his way forward until the guards were only a few feet away. He tucked and ducked behind villagers, seemingly slipping through security undetected. On the inside, the crowd was even bigger and the city streets were packed. There were almost a thousand if not more people just in the market area and they were loud. Falcher bobbed and weaved, eventually escaping into a narrow alleyway.

Down here it was much darker between the densely packed buildings and interestingly enough, people were sitting and idling. They appeared disheveled and defeated. Falcher turned around and peered out from the tight passageway. It was as if this was a different world, one in which the market goers and city dwellers knew not of and the locals didn’t interact with those from outside this alley.

He turned around again only to find another grisled human staring him down. A six-and-a-half-foot human wearing rags and bearing a blade dripping with some weird liquid stood in front of him.

Falcher lifted his head and snarled, bearing fangs. The homeless man took a step back and bowed. He stepped forward and the man slouched down to the ground. “I will not interfere with the Suranites.” He mumbled to himself repeatedly.

Falcher was now more confused and knelt. “Who are the Suranites?”

The homeless man raised his head and spoke raspy. “They’re the followers of Sura. The great Clan of Sura?”

Falcher shook his head, “I’m not familiar.”

“But you’re a werewolf, surely you are.” The man argued.

“I’m a wolf-kin, not a werewolf.”

“The Clan of Sura, or Suranites, is a group of people who worship the goddess of the hunt, Sura. She is the queen of the werewolves and all her followers are thralls to her will. The Clan runs a fairly large underground organization in this city given how close it is to the forest.” The homeless man explained.

“Is that why the guards attacked me?”

“Could be. Look.” The man stood up, leaning against the wall. “I’m guessing you’re not from these parts?”

Falcher nodded. “My home is two weeks east of here, in the forest of Oakengrove.”

“Don’t know that one.” The man shrugged. “Either way, there’s an important detail you need to know. You’re in Huma territory. The Empire of Humanity doesn’t care much for anyone who isn’t human. They worship their emperor as a sort of god-king and this one is a really nasty piece of work. Past thirty years, he’s called no less than 18 inquisitions to purge anything that isn’t fully human.”

Falcher took another look back at the busy street market. “That explains the whole crowd being exclusively human.”

“That’s by choice and force of will. Very few actually support it but the last peasant uprising ended in the total erasure of seven cities worth of peasants” The man grunted, shifting his weight onto the other foot. “They refer to it as humanitarianism. There’s an actual church here dedicated to the worship of humanity as a species. Not even a god, just humanity and its ideals of supremacy.”

Falcher stayed quiet for a moment. “And no one challenged them?”

“If they did, they failed spectacularly. The library of Akan has some history books. I’d recommend going after nightfall though when everything is closed, fewer people about.”

“Is that how you travel?”

“Yeah. I raid the warehouses for scraps whenever I can. It’s barely a life but it’s still a life.” He once again slouched and sat down. “Ever just bet on this one sure-fire thing to sell?”

“Can’t say I have. What was it?”

“It’s a silk spinner. A device used to weave cotton and silk into threads more efficiently than anything else out there. Unfortunately, I sold it to the wrong person and they out-produced me and stole my opportunity. I lost my chances and ended up here.”

“That sucks.” Falcher sat down beside him. “Why not leave this city?”

“They tax you on the way out the door and the doors are only open at certain hours of the day. Everything is so thoroughly watched around here, the alleys are the only safe place for a washup like myself and the few escaped slaves.”

“Slaves too?” Falcher groaned. “Are they human too?”

“Some yes, mostly of the criminal variety. Those that aren’t are foreign species like Tasaki, Goblins, Ratons, and the like.”

“This is a very bad place.”

“But it’s safe. For them at least. In these walls, no one lives in fear of goblin armies pillaging, no hostile nation laying siege, and all those people out there.” He pointed to the hundreds of passersby, “This is the safest place they know of, even if it is a little morally corrupt.”

“And you’re perfectly okay with this?”

“I have my qualms but I’m one of what? Two hundred out of a city of nearly a million? A sacrifice of a few to preserve the many as the old adage goes.”

Falcher patted the man’s shoulder. “What’s your name?”

“Gabriel. Gabriel Holmer.”

“Falcher.” He held out his paw and shook Gabriel’s hand.

Night fell and two hours after dark, the city was mostly silent. There was still some noise in the markets as vendors wrapped up everything and closed up shop. Houses were still alight with candles and lanterns and the people inside were chatty over a homemade meal.

Falcher stepped out onto the city streets and looked over his shoulder. “You coming?”

Gabriel shook his head. “I have a limited window to catch tonight’s supper. Go, I’ll meet you later.”

Falcher nodded and pulled his cloak over him. The library was a little ways away, some twenty blocks to the other side of town. The city streets were empty except for the midnight patrols who were few and far between. “I guess safety breeds complacency.” Falcher ducked into alleys to avoid passing patrols with very little difficulty.

During his idle moments between mad dashes, Falcher studied the guards. They were exclusively human, just as Gabriel explained. Huma held a weird sense of uniformity and Falcher was unnerved by it. They displayed tabards displaying the crest belonging to the royal family. While poorly illuminated by the torchlight, it was a soft gray and darkened gold featuring a blue flower with red thorns in the center.

Just as the torch-bearing guards walked passed, Falcher sprinted down the street. Hearing the pads of his feet, the pair of night guards about-face and saw only the waves of his cloak before losing him to the darkness of the night. “Damn thieves,” muttered one of the two guards.

Falcher made it roughly three blocks down the road before diving behind some closed-up market stalls. There were four city blocks between each cluster of patrols and each patrol only had two members in it. He peered down the side road and sure enough, his guess was correct, two guards roughly four blocks down. He remained hidden until this patrol passed. “I hope this library is unlocked,” he quietly muttered to himself.

Repeating the pattern of dashing three blocks and waiting for the next patrol to pass, Falcher eventually reached the footsteps of this library Gabriel mentioned. It was a massive structure made of stone bricks and marble pillars. Blue-dyed paint placed elegantly striped patterns on the columns. Bold and beautiful dark mahogany doors guarded the entrance to this well-endowed library. Brass handles larger than wine jugs begged Falcher to pull on them.

Falcher approached the doors and pulled. Begrudgingly, the heavy wooden doors creaked open enough to allow Falcher to slip inside. Similarly sized brass handles were on the other side of the door. He took glances around the place. Before him was a library of incomparable proportions. Wall-to-wall books, hundreds of rows of double-sided bookshelves, multitudes of reading desks with snuffed-out oil lamps simply waiting for another knowledge seeker to read. Falcher had free reign of the place, as long as he stayed quiet.

He lit one of the oil lamps with some matches he found on one of the reading desks and carried it with him. Holding the oil lamp to the books, he began reading the words off the spines. Many of the books were in a dozen different languages, some even featuring alphabets completely unfamiliar to him. However, this also meant a portion of the library was now completely unreadable. Focusing on the books he could read, he began his search through the historical section in hopes of finding something that would explain Huma and its origins. Eventually, he stumbled across one ’Huma; the land of Humans and their Tenacity.’ It seemed to be a promising read.

Falcher plucked it from the shelf and set it down on a reading table. It was a larger book, some five hundred pages in size. He flipped it open, starting his read from somewhere in the middle of the book.

“…yet despite the turmoil of now forty nations under one crown, the Empire of Humanity endured its darkest hour. With a new emperor on the throne, belonging to the house of Gildroy, a distant relative of the Unomaliks, the Empire of Humanity became known as Huma. A long journey awaited the newly crowned emperor, one which would require him to finish what his predecessors couldn’t, a proper unification…”

Falcher paused. “Forty nations? That’s a feat if I do say so myself. Huma is not a nation to be trifled with then. I wonder if this has the current monarchs.” He flipped the book over to its last page and found a publishing date written: Cold Sun, 128 of the 5th Era. Falcher let out a heavy sigh. It was two eras outdated, not to mention three hundred years. If Huma had unified three Eras ago, that would mean this was one of the most stable countries on the planet, or one too stubborn to fall apart. Falcher closed the book and ventured down the shelves again, finding another book to read, ‘The Eras of Man, Beast, and Elf; A Timeline of the World.’

He quickly pulled the book down and set it alongside the other. It too was a very big book, slightly larger than the previous one. He opened it to an entry somewhere in the middle and began reading.

“…The eras are marked by major events, changes so extreme that civilization can no longer go back. The first era was marked by the formation of civilization itself and the invention of writing. The second by the rise of the beastmen and man’s age of the sail, the third by the unification of Huma, and the fourth by the arrival of the adventurers. The fourth era truly changed how society worked. Man, beast, and elf suddenly found many of their kind unable to die but rather re-awaken somewhere else with everything in their possession still in hand. A phenomenon inexplicable to modern sciences and even the priests of all cults and religions. The rise of the adventurers saw the gods of this world disappear without a trace, forcing humanity, along with the beast and elf alike, to rely upon only themselves to survive a world now littered with hostility…”

Falcher leaned back. “A world marked by major changes. We’re in the seventh era which means this book too is outdated by three of those eras. I bet the time span of each era is inconsistent too.” Falcher continued to scan the book and found a diagram towards the back, showing major events. Most of these events seemed to be the rise and fall of nations, their kings, and other minor events like wars. But it did show a timestamp for the change of era. The first era lasted roughly five thousand years, the second another ten thousand, the third was only five hundred years and the fourth was still counting at the year 1292.

He stood up and turned back to the shelves. “There’s a world of knowledge buried here in a country filled with hate. I guess some things just never change.”

He continued to peruse the history section of the library, finding more and more interesting reads. The books had a very distinct bias in favor of humanity, despite many being whole eras apart. It wasn’t just the nation that was stable, the people were also completely unified under the mindset that their way of life was simply better than the rest of the world. Yet, strangely enough, they turned to isolation instead of conquest.

Then suddenly, he heard a noise from the far side of the library. Someone had opened the front door. He hastily spun about, his rapiers lifting and knocking the oil lamp to the floor, causing it to shatter the glass and spill the oil everywhere. Then the flames caught on. It was too late to stop it. Falcher grabbed the handful of books he had pulled and made a break for the back door if there was one.

The noise caught the attention of some guards who were responding to a claim that someone was near the library. The bright light of the now spilled oil fire drew their attention to the library.

Falcher had a window of opportunity, literally speaking. The windows of the library opened outwards enough for him to crawl out and he did just that. With his back to the wall, he shuffled down the narrow alley and peered out just in time to watch a dozen more guards run into the library.

He looked back through the window. The accidental fire he caused had begun to spread and consume the wooden desk and even started to lick the bindings of millennia-old books. He watched in horror as the guards frantically ran around trying to find ways to cull the flames. “I’ve committed murder most heinous, I’m so sorry.” He quietly muttered before taking off down the alley, unnoticed and without a trace.