Red Wishes Black Ink

With all his champions dead, King Mudt trudged doggedly southward, toward the encampment of Infinzel. The coward Cizco Salvado had chosen a valley amidst the southern mountains to hide, knowing that Mudt's many enemies would bleed him along the journey. Despite this adversity, King Mudt had survived. Perhaps he had underestimated just how much hatred the world's champions held for Orvesis. Cowards, all, who would never have dared defy Mudt were it not for the damned whims of these gods. He would have his revenge upon them. Gods and man both. King Mudt swore this to himself.

Rage fueled King Mudt as he crossed the island's approximation of the Gen'bi desert. The heat of the sun could not match King Mudt's temper. Sweat dripped into his eyes and his muscles creaked. King Mudt had taken to traveling with his sword held before him. He would be ready for the next ambush.

In this state of agitation, King Mudt crested a sand dune and saw a solitary figure stood atop a dune to the east. Here it was, then. His next opponent. Good. He wanted to kill.

The shadow descended his dune as Mudt did his own, the two on parallel paths for a time, until the other man began to angle his trail to intersect with Mudt.

"I see you, bastard!" King Mudt hollered. "You would've done better had you hid from me!"

The other did not respond and, as he drew closer, King Mudt recognized the smaller man's misshapen head. He wore a mask.

Yes. The Crying Otter. Mudt remembered this fool. He had been waiting for Mudt once before, in Ruchet, outside the villa of the sorceress Kayenna Vezz. The assassin had warned Mudt not to kill that traitorous witch, a presumption that Mudt would've punished with death had the gods not gotten in his way. What had the assassin told him? 'When we next meet, I will not speak at all.'

King Mudt chortled. "You will beg, boy!" he cried. "You will beg like your woman did!"

The assassin maintained his silence.

King Mudt charged. His first overhand strike was true and should have cleaved the assassin's skull in twain, but Crying Otter turned to mist before Mudt's eyes. He reconstituted behind the Orvesian king and slid his knife down the back of Mudt's leg, slicing through armor, then muscle, blade screeching against bone.

Mudt fell to one knee. He stabbed out with his sword and, this time, felt flesh split beneath his edge, but could not see the damage because the assassin had driven his knife into Mudt's eyes, one after the other, jab-jab, precise.

Clutching at his face, Mudt barely felt the assassin's blade glide across his throat.

Did King Mudt have time to contemplate his own death in those moments? Did he consider his mistakes? The failures of his own brutality? Or, did it all happen too quickly, so that King Mudt did not even know he had been defeated and thus lived forever, in his own mind, as a conqueror? We are left to wonder. He died ugly, in the sand, to an audience of one, and the gods smiling on.

In the end, Crying Otter did speak.

"For Kayenna," the assassin whispered.

Thus ends the tale of King Mudt, who died before reaching his enemies from Infinzel, and whose incompetence would have doomed us to total annihilation, were it not for the intervention of another.

--Record of the First Granting and Dawning of the Second Age

Lyus Crodd, Scribe of the Dead Kingdom of Orvesis

Uicha de Orak, Wildcard of the 6th Renown, representing the Forgotten One, following in the footsteps of kings

Lavicta, Elementalist of the 10th Renown, Gen'bi Nomads, a guide

Samus Bind, Inquisitor of the 9th Renown, Candlefast, exercising professional discretion

20 Blossum, 61 AW

The Gen'bi desert

40 days until the next Granting

By the tickle on his chest, Uicha knew that his [Greater Regeneration] had kicked in. Just enough to keep him stable. He tugged the hood of his black cloak forward, shielding more of his face from the sun. Sweat slicked his back, his arms, his legs, with an itchy layer of grit floating in the perspiration, even though every inch of him was covered in cloth. Four days he'd been traveling in the Gen'bi desert and he'd already forgotten what it was like to be comfortable. He pictured his father walking the land barefoot in order to make it his own and winced at the idea of hot sand scalding his toes. Uicha badly missed the ocean.

He should've never listened to the inquisitor.

Dunes of golden sand rolled in every direction, each one as featureless and dull as the next. They took a circuitous path through the dunes, trying to stay on the shadowy sides when possible, even if that meant never traveling in a straight line. Uicha worried that he wouldn't be able to find his way back alone.

He wobbled in his saddle, though the horsasis he rode upon kept up its steady, measured gait. Uicha had never seen one of the creatures before. Slightly taller than a horse, with coarse, tan fur, and two soft humps that Uicha settled between. He had fallen asleep slumped forward against one cool hump and reclined backward against the other. The horsasis didn't care either way. Rubbery udders protruded from the animal's humps from which Uicha could draw warm but clean-tasting water. Such a creature seemed too good to be true in the desert, and they were. As Lavicta told him, the Gen'bi had wished them into existence.

"Hold up, now," Lavicta called from behind.

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Uicha picked up his reins, but the horsasis had already responded to Lavicta's command. The Gen'bi champion pulled level with Uicha and sized him up with her sharp green eyes. She must have seen him wobble. Although she had swaddled Uicha in a cloak, the Gen'bi woman herself did not wear so many clothes. Her tough bronze skin was covered by patchy, salt-stained leathers and swathes of ward-weave silk. She favored a wide-brimmed black hat instead of a hood, her crimson-dyed hair poking out in tangled chutes. Uicha thought she looked more like a ranch hand from Ambergran than how he'd imagined a nomad.

"You getting sunburnt?" she asked him, peeking under his hood. "You had water?"

"I'm fine," Uicha replied.

"An outsider that the sun don't touch," she said. "We got a prophecy about that."

"Really?"

"No." Lavicta pulled Uicha's canteen from the side of his mount and thrust it at him. "We don't got any prophecies at all."

As instructed, Uicha took a drink of water. He had been traveling with Lavicta for weeks now and he'd gotten the impression that she didn't like him very much. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea to go with her. He had been worried that Samus Bind might still try to make him a prisoner.

Now, Uicha realized, as he slugged down lukewarm water drawn from an animal's bulging hump, that maybe Bind had found a way to keep him captive after all.

14 Rainest, 61 AW

Bask, one of the Flamingo Islands

36 days ago

An incessant, thick dripping kept Uicha from slipping into unconsciousness. He had been dizzy with pain, but now his body felt oddly numb. There was something that he needed to do, wasn't there? He had to take care of that dripping. There was a leak he needed to plug, otherwise the ship would sink. Uicha strained to get himself up, but bending at the waist made the two halves of his body feel like they were sliding apart.

The leak was from his guts, Uicha realized. He was split open. Beaten badly. His blood pooled beneath his sweating body, soaked through the thin mattress, and dripped slowly onto the wooden floor below.

Samus Bind sighed. "Well, I suppose I won't be getting my deposit back on the room."

When the inquisitor spoke, clarity flared in Uicha's concussed brain. Battar Crodd had done this to him. He'd put Uicha through a new kind of violence, different from the drugged cruelty inflicted so casually by the archmage Ahmed Roh.

That had been the violence of champions. The violence of the island that awaited Uicha.

Samus Bind had rescued him from Crodd. They had escaped through a magical doorway that Bind had drawn on the beach and spilled into this small room. Bind had wrestled Uicha onto the narrow bed and checked over his injuries. Uicha had been in and out of consciousness while Bind worked, applying some poultices from his satchel, feeding Uicha a paste with his smoke-smelling fingers, hovering his hands over Uicha's convulsing chest. Uicha had been too weak to fight against him.

"Stop trying to sit up," Bind said. "You're just going to bleed more."

Uicha was still too weak to fight, but he had to at least try to get away. He was lucky to have woken up when he did, before Bind could finish his work. He was sure the inquisitor meant to do what Roh had done—dose him with poisons, bind him with wards, and never let him wake up. Not until Bind had delivered him to the Magelab.

He had been justified in his killing of Ahmed Roh. Uicha would stand by that. Although, he regretted the candles who had died as a result. Uicha hadn't known about the disturbing arrangement between the Magelab and Candlefast, where two candles died for every mage. Somehow, he didn't think the Magelab would really care about those innocents, even if they were the ones Uicha felt guilt for. The mages would want justice for their dead champion and, if Roh had been any indication, Uicha couldn't trust them to treat him fairly. Uicha would be kept prisoner, tortured, experimented upon. He wouldn't let Bind bring him to them.

"You aren't going to die, if that's what has you so upset," Bind remarked. "I've taken precautions and dulled your pain."

"I won't…" Uicha mumbled. One of his molars wiggled and he worried it would come fully loose and fall down his throat. He coughed and tried to sit up again. "I won't let you take me."

"Ah," Bind replied. "That is the next conversation."

The inquisitor had stopped hovering over him, so Uicha needed to turn his head to find the man. Bind sat nearby in a wooden chair, a lit smokeroll dangling from his fingers. Behind him, a set of folding doors were open, letting in white sunlight and ocean air to freshen the room that was otherwise pungent with the coppery odor of Uicha's viscera. The balcony overlooked a beach of white sand. That meant they were still on the Flamingo Islands.

"Once you rest, your Ink will restore itself," Bind said. "You'll heal and your gifts will return. Telekinesis, a gargoyle, the ice magic. An impressive collection. Frankly, I don't look forward to fighting you. It's a losing proposition, one that your friend Battar Crodd hadn't entirely thought through. He brutalized you today, but what about tomorrow? The next day? Day after day of fighting an antagonistic teenager. I've heard Crodd used to be a teacher so perhaps he has the patience for that. Not me."

"I'd kill him," Uicha murmured. "You, too."

"Would you?" Bind leaned forward to study him. "Is that what you're going to do with this power of yours? Spill a lot of blood? I'm not sure that's in you, Uicha de Orak de Ambergran."

"Wait and see," Uicha whispered.

"I will." Bind tapped ash off the end of his smokeroll. "Regardless, this is exactly the attitude that puts me off taking you prisoner."

"I'm already your prisoner"

"You're in my rented room, bleeding everywhere," Bind replied. "And I'm stuck with the quandary of what to do with you. If anything, I'm your prisoner."

The words echoed in Uicha's mind. Kayenna Vezz had said something similar, before Uicha threw himself into battle with Crodd. The sorceress was absent now. As usual, she offered no counsel when it mattered.

"I'm sure there is a method that would render you unconscious and helpless," Bind continued. He scratched his stubbly jaw in consideration. "Yet, I bet Ahmed Roh took similar precautions, and look where they got him. Dare I attempt to do what an archmage failed at? The mages themselves would scold me for such a presumption."

Uicha's head hurt too much for so many words. He draped his forearm across his eyes, the sunlight behind Bind making him feel suddenly nauseous.

"What are you saying?" Uicha asked.

"Truce, is what I am saying," Bind replied. "I'm not going to take you anywhere against your will. You can recover here, safely, without worrying about the Orvesians. I will send for your grandfather and your things, and you can be on your way."

Uicha's breathing slowed down. He wouldn't put some underhanded trickery past the inquisitor, but if that was the case, it seemed like a strange tactic to bother with so much talking, given Uicha's condition. Still, he wondered what was in it for Bind.

"Why?" Uicha asked.

"My favorite question," Bind replied. "Curiosity, for starters. The Granting is coming soon, and I want to see what will happen. I am suddenly under the impression that we mortals don't know all the rules."

"For starters," Uicha said. "What else do you want from me?"

Bind's chair creaked as he leaned back, looking out across the ocean. "There's someone else looking for you," he said. "Besides me, besides the Orvesians. They don't have many connections in the civilized world. Unlikely to ever catch up to you, without a little help."

It took Uicha a moment. "The Gen'bi," he said. Curse had told Uicha that the Gen'bi knew his name and he'd seen one of their champions—a woman named Lavicta—out on the ocean during the hunt for Ink.

"One of them arrived in Flamboyance just a few days after you, though by now I suspect she's as lost as ever and ready to go home," Bind said. "I'd like to arrange a meeting."

"Do they…?" Uicha blew out a long exhale. "Are they going to try to hurt me?"

"My young friend," Bind said, and Uicha could hear the sly smile in the man's voice. "I think they're going to worship you."

After that, Uicha slept. The brutality of the fight with Crodd and whatever remedies Bind had applied, plus his decision to trust the inquisitor, at least for now—all this combined to shut down his exhausted body. When he awoke, his Ink would be restored and, hopefully, his [Greater Regeneration] would have made him whole again. Uicha slept the dreamless sleep of the peaceful dead, and he didn't mind that at all.

Except, he did shudder awake once. Perhaps because the light in the room had shifted, or because Bind had gently pushed aside the scraps of Uicha's shirt. Uicha sensed that he was being studied.

His eyes opened to slits, Uicha saw Bind making a sketch in his notepad. As the inquisitor walked to the other side of Uicha's bed for a different angle, Uicha caught a glimpse of the drawing. It was his symbol for [Disloyal].

Well, he could have it, Uicha thought. What did he care?

Uicha went back to sleep.