Adrastos - 17th Harvestwatch 1383
Wolvsbane, Trifectorate Confederacy
"There is no glory in facing a friend turned foe, for whether amongst a forest's twisting paths or a city's winding streets, not all is ever as it seems. Trust not the eye that guides you, but rather what you know to be true."
- Legand, High Inquisitor of Holy Church
Morning began as a dull pulse behind my eyes three throbs that tolled like a distant bell: wake, rise, serve. When I levered myself upright, every joint crackled. A fortnight of triage had twisted muscle into ship rope.
The storage closet I called bedchamber for the night smelled of cedar shavings, stale poultice vinegar, and the faint, hopeful tang of camphor. I savored one long breath, pressed my paw pads together, and dipped my muzzle to the floorboards.
"Yaelin, Dawn Bringer," I rasped into the narrow dark. "Kindle the day within me as You kindle it above."
Across the room a cracked shutter surrendered a single spear of sunrise. I held still, letting the light ribbon down my fur, and pictured each ache stitched closed by gold thread tugged straight from the horizon.
Ritual first. tools before footsteps.
My satchel, scuffed leather soft as old bread, sat on the upturned crate that doubled as pillow and altar. I opened it. My fingers traced the rim of the mortar, finding it smooth and unchipped. The ash-wood pestle, dark with rosemary oil, felt familiar and solid in my paw.
I tested the tin shears against a loose thread; they snipped clean. My vials stood in their loops, a precise march of amber tincture, emerald tonic, and pure water pale as blue ice. I pressed a thumb against each cork stopper, ensuring all were aligned and sealed tight.
Only then did I descend the stairwell. The fifth stair squeaked and the ninth sighed. The taproom below lay quilted in dawn shade; last night's hearth coals dozed beneath ash like fireflies under snow. At the center table hunched Humperdink whose half moon spectacles fogged from the steam of coffee in front of him. Beside him, sat an orc girl in a road worn tunic. A violin rested beneath her arm the way a falconer cradles a hawk.
"Adrastos," Humperdink brightened, "Come, come. Meet Annalise Kane. Resident strings, morale, and trouble."
The orc sprang up "Pleasure's mine!" Without invitation her fingers slipped into the ruff at my neck, testing the texture like a merchant tests silk. "Ancestors, that's soft."
Realization dawned; red rushed to her olive green cheeks. She recoiled, hands up. "Sorry if that was offensive. I just couldn't help it."
Among the Luparic, a touch on the head is a whispered promise of moonlit walks and bread shared at dawn. I tipped my ears forward. "No offense taken. In my homeland that greeting is... warm." I chose the gentlest word. "Is this how your clan greets others?" I reached out and matched her gesture.
"Ye…yes…" Annalise stammered, now the color of a ripe tomato.
Humperdink glanced at Annalise "Well that was… cultural." Humperdink coughed behind his mug. "Now to business: your escapade in the library, has reached noble ears. Lord Puddilock, requested some help with a bonus for time. Firebugs have infested parts of the granary; he wants to find the source."
"Monsters in the grainery?" Annalise's eyes glimmered like rosin catching torchlight. "That's wonderfully horrible."
"Or smugglers in the feed chutes," Humperdink countered. "Either way, coin for the guild and more herbs for my shelves. Adrastos" he peered over the rims of his spectacles "you've been breathing in alchemy smoke for two weeks. Go touch daylight. Learn the city's heartbeat, and interact with the guild."
She clapped once. "I'm in. Music and mayhem make a balanced diet."
Service, not silence. Yaelin's doctrine sang in my ribs. I inclined my head and cinched the satchel's strap. "Then let us go."
Annalise offered her elbow in the orcish fashion; after a brief study of angles, I matched her posture. Her laugh, low and musical, filled the doorway as the two of us stepped into the waking street.
Cobblestones still held night's chill, but roofs caught fire with sunrise. Peddlers lifted shutters; chimney swifts traced ink loops overhead. Annalise filled the air faster than sparrows fill silence.
"When Humperdink came to me with a task and said his apprentice would help I never imagined it would be a walking, talking wolf! Are you a changeling, or one of those beastfolk from across the Azure Reach? Your fur has such depth. Do you oil it?"
"I am Luparic," I answered, easing my stride to match hers. "Born in Caelanth, beneath the banners of the Beast Emperor. My father and I crossed the sea when I was small, we opened a clinic where blue mountains meet pine." Memory tugged: salt wind, canvas snapping, Father grinding willow bark beneath the lamp.
She leaned closer, curiosity bright as dawn. "Woah, what's it like in the United Tribes? Was the journey across the sea peaceful? What's the clinic for?" Annalise fired off the questions one after another, looking me up and down like I was an exotic herb.
"There is much bloodshed in Caelanth. A great war spanning the entire continent drove me and my father to the sea, but once upon the water the journey was peaceful but long." I said, "It is blue in every direction, the smell of salt fills your nose, and the ground moves under you constantly.
My father opened the clinic with our remaining funds so we could continue our worship in Yaelin's name. It is a small apothecary where he treats those unwell." I pause, images of the vast city walls playing out before me, "The village we hail from is much smaller than the one we reside within now."
Her gaze drifted to the silvered Dawnstar at my throat, eight rayed spokes, polished smooth by years of service. "You follow Yaelin? She's quiet on Duskmere to my knowledge."
"Yaelin is never silent." I murmured, "She breathes life into everything you see. The sun rises, there She is. The sun sets, She trusts us to shepherd her flock through the dark." I pressed thumb to pendant, "You say Yaelin is not active, but She responds to those who believe and place their faith and dedication in her."
Dear goddess, please let your grace flow through me so that I may show your glory.
As I completed my internal prayer, warmth flowed through my palms and a soft light followed it. It was not even bright enough to read by, but it was enough to believe by. To remember that she watched over me at every moment.
Annalise looked at me with wide eyes. "Stars above... She just answers?"
"Of course."
"So, I just need to mutter a prayer, and I can start performing miracles of healing?"
"Not quite." I said as I stopped channeling her power. "You must dedicate your life to Her. Spread Her word, help the unfortunate, live in accordance with Her principles. By proving you follow in Her ways with faith and virtue, She in turn grants us but a fraction of Her power to make miracles that belong to the domain of the gods."
"Wow. My magic works a lot differently. Honestly, I'm not quite sure how it works. The magisters know exactly how theirs works, but I just kind of sing... and like… concentrate? Then things happen. It's like I play and something ancient hums alongside me, then I'm exhausted. You know?"
No. I don't know. "Interesting. I have not heard that way working before. Then perhaps melody is your doorway to the divine." I looked up at the tall stone walls we were approaching. Inside was a vast courtyard with several round buildings that stuck out of the ground like a mushroom without a cap. "I think we are here."
Four goblin sentries guarded the archway. Spears served more as leaning posts than weapons; bloodshot eyes and sunken cheeks testified to many sleepless watches.
Annalise marched up, hand extended in that curious human custom. "Morning! Annalise Kane, Guild the Silver Hunt. Lord Puddilock sent us to wrestle his firebugs."
The guard looked taken aback for a second before shaking her hand, "Name's Jerverm. Proof of identification?" His held out a leather hand, voice raspy from years of smoke and disuse.
Annalise rummaged through her satchel, producing a scroll sealed with red wax. While Jerverm scrutinized the ribboned crest, I slipped a dream petal from my pouch, a moon pale blossom Father once called sleep's gentlest hammer.
Jerverm's shoulders sagged as he handed back the writ. "Everything's in order. Follow me."
"One moment," I said, holding the blossom between claw tips. "Steep this in a cup when your shift ends. Ten minutes' rest will feel like a night's reprieve."
For a breath he stared, suspicion wrestling gratitude. Then the petals vanished into his vest pocket, and he muttered, "Much obliged, healer."
Jerverm tipped his chin, and we followed him beneath the arch. The passage opened like a throat into daylight and then the world widened. Field after field of stone throated silos stretched in a precise grid, each crowned with a pulley mast and a weather vaned cap. Grain dust hung in the air like pale incense; dusty dry on the tongue and sweetly bitter in the nose. A few kobolds went from silo to silo with ledgers and chalk. One silo was being emptied into a large wagon. Birds thrummed from roof to roof. A city within the city, built of bread.
For a heartbeat I simply stood, small as a seed in a granary of gods. Enough to feed my tribe for a decade, some foolish corner of me thought, before the realization that I'm no longer with them kicked in and dismantled the illusion.
"So, what exactly is Lord Puddilock in charge of?" Annalise asked, bright as ever, though her gaze roved the lattice of silos.
Jerverm's voice rasped like rope over stone. "He owns the fields of grain from here to the eastern wall, all the city's food that lies here is under his name. On paper, enough to last near two years of rationing." He gestured with the weary breath of someone who had made this speech too often and never believed it enough. "But…"
"What's the but?" Annalise asked.
"It's the same reason the guards are tired." I answered before he could, the weight of it already pressing on my chest. "Outside the wall there's a city's worth of people."
"The wolf is right." The goblin grunted, "Refugees. Villages and towns have been pouring in since the Fall of the Great Wall. Nearly a hundred thousand souls camped in ditches and roadbeds, fires the color of sorrow flicker through the night." He swallowed. "The city holds eighty thousand on a good day. With the ten thousand that came from the wall, we're already overstuffed. Every loft, cellar, prayer hall. Full."
His jaw worked. "We closed the gates. We had to. Command says we ration now or everyone starves after the coming monster wave burns the fields. If we open, we shorten the clock for all of us. That's the math."
"That's awful." Annalise breathed.
"It's reality." Jerverm muttered, hoarse. "You don't hear the damned wails all through the day and night, begging to let just one child through while we open for merchants hauling flour. You don't stand there deciding whether bread gets a price or a prayer. You don't… tell a mother no and then walk the wall 'till sunrise to purge her face from your dreams."
Her words fled her. For the first time since we left the inn, Annalise was quiet. The wind filled in, shivering pennants along the rooflines.
"May Yaelin watch those poor souls." I said softly.
"Your god isn't here." Jerverm answered coldly, without malice, "Only Balu. And she's likely smiling on her scaled throne, counting our foolish comforts. The Wall made us complacent. Now we pay."
Words gathered and broke apart in my throat. Faith has edges, mercy, and limits. Yaelin asks for hands, not wishes; I had two, not two thousand. In that moment, my pendant felt heavier than my satchel.