"I suggest we check the harbour and find the ship we're meant to board when the time comes." Venamo said as he and Yilka met with Varma outside the Road of Blood's haven.
"Would be embarrassing if we couldn't find it when the time comes." Yilka joked.
"And if we don't find it, I could just swim where we need to go." Varma stated casually.
"Funny. I remember your mother telling me that you've never gone so deep in the wash pond that your feet wouldn't touch the bottom because you're scared." Yilka replied.
"She told you that? I mean... she's lying!" Varma argued.
"Nobody is swimming anywhere. We will head to the harbour, and then we will return to the carriage and everyone who slept at night will stay awake and those who didn't sleep will get to sleep until it gets dim. Understood?" Venamo commanded.
"Understood, captain." Yilka half-joked.
"Good." Venamo said seriously.
"So, Varma. Were you just waiting here the whole time?" Yilka asked his cousin.
"No, Nofa gave me a bit of money and told me to go get some arrows so I can fight too when the time comes. They're fine arrows. Not as good as he ones I make, however." Varma said and tapped her full quiver.
"And where is Nofa now?" Yilka asked.
"She went somewhere and told me that we'll find her at the carriage." Varma answered.
"Well, since we're going there anyway." Yilka said.
And so the travellers headed back to where they had left the carriage, and fortunately for them, the mounts were still there and untouched, but unfortunately for them, their sacks and satchels had disappeared.
"That wicked witch! She took off with everything we brought with us and disappeared!" Venamo shouted when the reality had set in.
"She wouldn't have done that! She most likely went to do something or see something and didn't want our things to be unattended." Yilka replied.
"Yilka's right. Nofa wouldn't do us dirty like that." Varma added.
"She played nice up to this point but when she found a city where she could make money, she had a change of heart." Venamo insisted.
"She wouldn't do that!" Yilka shouted at his brother.
"You can't see the truth in her because you've grown fond of her. Her lack of seriousness should have been a clear sign that she's not to be trusted. You need to..." Venamo was explaining until he was interrupted by shouting coming from elsewhere.
"Last warning! Get OFF ME!" Nofa's voice shouted from somewhere that the others couldn't see.
Yilka immediately started sprinting along the street to the direction of the voice. After turning a corner, he saw a tall and wide bald man with an open shirt and a hairy belly walking behind Nofa and putting his hands on Nofa's shoulders, seemingly attempting to put it in places where he shouldn't.
"If you don't leave me alone right now, I'll make your little pebbles stop working permanently and leave a never ending bad taste on your tongue and..." Nofa was threatening the clearly drunk man with, but before she could finish, Yilka had already sprinted there.
He rushed towards the harasser, jumped and hit his forehead on the drunkard's forehead powerfully, sending him staggering back. Yilka didn't relent, but did the same thing again, hitting their wise heads together for a second time. The drunk harasser was staggering, mumbling and rambling while not even properly understanding what was happening.
"Little fucking bug. Sod off from there. This ain't got nothin' to do with ya." The drunkard mumbled.
Yilka's respond was to raise his cudgel and up and prepare to hit, but before he could do that, his arm was grabbed from behind and twisted into a painful arm hold.
"Do not use the enchanted weapon on a person!" Venamo commanded while twisting Yilka's arm.
"Maniac! Madman!" The drunk hollered and wobbled away from the scene.
Once the drunkard had left, Venamo let go of Yilka and faced him.
"Do you remember what your cudgel did to those trees? You would have destroyed that man!" Venano lectured to his brother.
"I just threatened him. And as if you've never cleaved a man in half yourself!" Yilka replied.
"To defend us!" Venamo argued.
"And I had to defend her!" Yilka replied.
"After what she did you still want to defend her?" Venamo asked.
"After I did what?" Nofa asked from behind Venamo.
"After you stole all we took with us and ran off." Venamo said to her when he turned around to face her and clearly saw his and Yilka's satchels on Nofa's shoulders.
"I went back to the shop to buy a couple of things for the road and didn't want my or your things to be unguarded while I was away! But of course you'd assume the worst of me even after everything. I helped your hand to earn your trust, but that wasn't enough. I helped Varma with her sickness because I couldn't watch her suffer, but that wasn't enough. I gave her all of the remaining repellent because she couldn't protect herself back then, and that wasn't enough to change your opinion either! What more will it take?" Nofa ranted.
"Please don't bring me into this..." Varma added shyly.
"Nofa is right. If we didn't have her repellent and her spells, we all would have been eaten by branch hoppers back there. She could have flown to safety with Blueberry if she only cared about herself." Yilka added.
"Shut. It." Venamo sharply said to Yilka.
"No. I won't shut it! If anyone of us is paranoid about anyone, we won't be able to work together on anything." Yilka said back.
"Fine. I'll trust the witch for now, but if she ever betrays us, I'm going on this journey myself and leave you on your own." Venamo stated.
Yilka didn't say anything back to that. He knew deep down that without his older brother, he couldn't accomplish anything. Remembering the times when Venamo saved his life made it more clear to him.
"We can work with that." Nofa said.
She raised her hand and snapped her finger, and Blueberry descended from above the roofs with Nofa's large sack, and off they went towards where the carriage was left.
"We need to be on the same page." Venamo said to Yilka.
"Yes. We do need to be on the same page. All of us." Yilka said and also headed to the carriage.
48Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFsZFyVlpGS
Once the harbour had been found and checked out, Venamo and Yilka who stayed awake the previous night now had their turn to sleep, and Varma and Nofa who slept the previous night now had their turn to stay awake and near. Nofa decided to pull out her book to spend the downtime with. Varma saw it as an opportunity to start a conversation and seized the opportunity.
"Is that the same book you were reading spells from back at the forest?" Varma asked.
"The very same one." Nofa said and opened the first page.
She took her bottle of red ink from her sack and dipped a quill in it. On the first page was an artistic illustration of goddess Rari holding a dead flower with pedals falling out of it. It was mostly coloured, aside from the goddess' hair, which Nofa started colouring.
"Did you make that picture?" Varma asked.
"Sure did." Nofa answered.
"Do you... worship the goddess of ruin and death?" Varma asked curiously.
"She doesn't demand or expect worship, but she is the mother of my kinfolk, so I pay homage." Nofa answered.
"I heard that your homeland is a barren lowland because your folk hate everything that is living and growing. But on the map that we saw in there the land was coloured in green." Varma said.
"Well, somebody clearly has never been there. Ha. It's a mostly barren land of tundra and rock. Waste of green ink for whoever drew that map. I'd have loved to have seen it myself." Nofa said with amusement.
"How did you end up in our little village? Were you born there or did you come from Rarhea?" Varma asked.
"I was born in Rarhea but me and father left when I was as tall as his leg. Mother fell ill but Wicked magic can't cure any sickness, and nothing grows in Rarhea that could help with her illness. She didn't survive, and father figured that we have to move somewhere that is richer with nature's gifts in case I ever fall ill. Oftentimes when folk in Rarhea fall ill, they either get better on their own, of they just perish. Most of us so called Wicked folk don't really care about our families as much as father cared about mother and me. Usually they only get together to continue the bloodline, but then go their separate ways and leave the child with whoever loses the game. My father and mother were both so stubborn that neither could accept their defeat and kept demanding rematches, so they stayed together for years." Nofa explained.
"Huh. In our house we had so many folk living in one house. We had my parents as well as Vena's and Yia's parents and all grandparents all living in the same house. The famine year took away most of them." Varma said somberly.
"Oh." Nofa only said.
"We weren't the only ones who lost someone that year." Varma said.
"I know. I also lost my father that year. What little we had to eat, he allowed me to have it. Being a little girl, starving and alone was the most terrifying time of my life. Especially when everyone in the village turned me away at the door and told me to go away. I survived by digging up tree roots from the edges of the forest and boiling them to get the nutrition out of them into a very thin and bad tasting juice. It wasn't much, and by the time the Holy people came to end the famine, I was as thin as a carpet. I imagine many others were too." Nofa further revealed.
"In our house they also let me have first dibs on whatever little we had. I felt guilty for it for many years after the famine and blamed myself for the all the deaths in our family, even though everyone kept telling me that it was the way it had to be." Varma revealed.
"Don't blame yourself for it if that's what they themselves decided to do." Nofa said consolingly.
She went to give a side hug to Varma who was next to her but stopped herself, not being sure if Venamo would be fine with her laying a hand on Varma. She refocused on her book instead when Varma made the decision herself to lean against Nofa's arm.
"You're a kind soul despite what anyone says." Varma said sincerely while looking at Nofa's book.
"I really want to be." Nofa replied.
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Once the day became dim and the market stands started closing, it was the right time to wake up the sleeping passengers and direct the carriage to a secluded location. They untied their mounts from the reins and walked them to the harbour where they stopped by the ship that they were instructed to find. Torches and lanterns on board the ship were lit, but nobody seemed to be on board.
"Did we come too early?" Yilka asked.
"Don't ships have an inside as well? Let's knock." Varma said and shot an arrow at the side of the ship.
And as she predicted, two men came from under a trap door onboard the ship. It was the same two men they spoke with at the nearby home base.
"Who's the Wicked lady?" The Fifth asked from the onboard the ship.
"I'm with them! Hello!" Nofa answered and waved.
"She's not part of the deal. She hasn't done any sort of a task for us and proven her worth. And neither has the little girl." The Fifth insisted.
"I can do this... Jeppeli Tepeeli!" Nofa said and shouted a spell in her language.
"You can do what?" The Fifth asked, but then he saw that the wood he was leaning on was rotting and crumbling as if it aged a hundred years in a moment.
"She's handy. And of course if you don't let her come, she might give the whole ship that treatment. She really doesn't like to be rejected." Yilka threatened with.
The Fifth turned to the man beside him.
"We've been had. Do we let them in?" The Fifth whispered to the other man.
"These are the first worthy recruits we've had in a long time. We can't afford to not let them in." The other man answered.
"The lady can come in! And so can the girl." The Fifth relented.
"Yay!" Nofa exclaimed.
"You made the right call." Yilka said.
A board was lowered for the travellers to enter along with their mounts. Venamo went to tie the mounts to the mast and the others went to the side of the ship to gaze into the lake. The carriage was left to a safe spot near the harbour and the sacks and satchels were also carried into the ship.
"Is this what they call an anchor?" Varma asked curiously while gazing at a thick metal chain at the side of the ship.
"Yes." Venamo said nonchalantly and seriously.
"You think Blueberry could lift this thing to the surface?" Yilka playfully asked Nofa.
"She could lift the whole ship and carry us where we need to go." Nofa promised.
"If she was that strong, she could just carry us anywhere we need to go if make a chain with our hands." Yilka joked.
"What an idea! Why don't we try that?" Nofa asked.
"I'd rather not. But Varma mentioned that you went somewhere while she went to get more arrows. What did you go do?" Yilka asked.
"Ah, I wanted to show you earlier but let me show you now." Nofa said and started digging her large sack that was down at her feet.
She pulled out a dark grey ingot and a roll of black rope.
"I went back to the shop of my friends and bought these. This here is an attractistone. When just the right amount of pressure is applied to it, it can pull metals to it. Like this." Nofa said and started squeezing the ingot.
She squeezed until her face was red but nothing was happening.
"Are you sure you didn't get tricked?" Yilka asked and smirked.
"Oh shut it and give me a hand here... Or two..." Nofa said.
Yilka also put his hands on the stone and started squeezing with all of his strength but still nothing was happening. Nofa angled the ingot into a vertical position. Nofa and Yilka locked their fingers together and squeezed the ingot with their combined grip strength and then Yilka noticed something. The sword on Venamo's back was being pulled towards the stone but couldn't escape from its sheathe, and the coins in Nofa's pouch were also trying to escape their confinement to get to the stone.
"It works!" Yilka explained and kept squeezing.
"It works?" Nofa asked.
"Look!" Yilka exclaimed and looked at what was happening.
"It works!" Nofa exclaimed and saw what Yilka saw.
They both stopped squeezing and caught their breath and then simultaneously noticed that their fingers were locked. Their eyes met and both slightly smiled at each other before Yilka let go of the ingot and Nofa put it back in the sack.
"Anyway, the other thing I bought was this." Nofa said and showed the roll of black rope.
"It's rope." Yilka stated.
"But it stretches! You saw how they used it back there, yes? I figured that if I tie the attractistone into the end of the rope and then dip it down into the lake, the pressure underwater might just squeeze it hard enough to pull all metal to it. That way we might catch the poet's necklace from the lake. And because the pressure loosens the closer we get to the surface, I'd just have to go swim down there and grab the necklace if it's attached to the stone." Nofa explained.
"Are you that good at swimming?" Yilka asked.
"Oh, I'll tell you. I'm quite the waterbeast. If only you saw me swim my fast laps in the washpond back home." Nofa promised.
"I wish I would have." Yilka replied and gave a cheeky smirk.
"I bet you do." Nofa replied and then realised what Yilka meant and got silent.48Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjnS1PyKTsS
Their attention then was drawn elsewhere when Venamo struck his Defiance to the floorboards between Yilka and Nofa.
"You two are not serious. We are heading into enemy territory and you two are playing around. With an attitude like that, you are walking right into the beast's gullet." Venamo warned seriously.
"A little bit of cheerfulness might just raise the moral around here." Nofa replied with.
"A light heart will only make you underestimate what's ahead. Instead of joking around, we could be training. Yilka, take your stick." Venamo said and raised his sword.
"You want to train with the weapons that we have? You remember what happened when your sword collided with our attacker's enchanted mace? We shouldn't do that. Not here." Yilka replied.
Venamo looked at his sword and the white glow went away from it. Then he put his hand on Yilka's cudgel and the white glow went away from it as well.
"Now let's train." Venamo said and pointed the tip of his blade at Yilka's hip.
"Fine. Let's train." Yilka said and pulled up his weapon.
They touched the tips of their weapons to see for certain that nothing happened, and indeed, nothing did. Venamo held his sword in an angle with the tip pointing towards Yilka.
"Attack me. Take a swing at me." Venamo requested.
Yilka tried to take a swing, but Venamo merely pushed his sword forward and stopped it before it hit Yilka's throat.
"Shit." Yilka only said.
"Try again." Venamo requested.
This time Yilka swung his cudgel at the blade of the Defiance to break Venamo's defense, but Venamo predicted it and raised his blade to avoid the hit, and then pointed the blade at Yilka's throat.
"Shit!" Yilka shouted.
He tried again. This time he went for a swing, but he knew that Venamo would thrust his sword forward, so he avoided the thrust by spinning to the side, and in the same motion he swung his cudgel at Venamo's back. But Venamo saw it coming and crouched, making the cudgel go right over his head. Venamo then sprung up and spun around and pointed his sword and Yilka's defenseless throat.
"Good tricks. Try again." Venamo said.
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The brothers trained even as the ship got moving on the waters of Kemioe, parallel to the shore but still far enough away that it couldn't be identified by anyone on the shore. Once it got dark, the travellers had gone to sleep, but Yilka was still awake, swinging his Beast Slayer at the air, imagining an armed opponent for himself. Of course he was getting no real practice that way, but he was getting himself exhausted. Once he got exhausted, he leaned on the side of the ship and put his weapon down. When he was resting there, he noticed an interesting contraption on the stakewall. It was a queue of lenses lined up one after another, all held up by thin metal rods that attached them to the stakewall. He looked at the lens that was behind all the other lenses and looked into the lake. Thanks to the queue of lenses he saw a lot further than he otherwise would have, but didn't see anything interesting at the lake. He went to the central mast where the mounts were. There he saw that Nofa and Varma were asleep while leaning on the soft animals that were also asleep. Elsewhere he saw Venamo sitting on the floor with his back against a stakewall, seemingly asleep as well.
"Suppose I should sleep as well or I'll hear lecturing the first thing in the morning." He quietly said to himself and went to sit down on the side of the ship.
Early in the morning however, everybody on the ship and along the shores was awakened by a monstrously loud bellow coming from the lake.
"What was that?" Venamo shouted as he sprung up.
The Fifth went to look through the lenses on the side of the ship and looked into the direction of the sound.
"That there is a massive tentacle!" The Fifth called.
"What is happening out there?" Venamo asked.
"Nothing that interests us." The Fifth replied.
"Let me take a look." Venamo demanded.
"No, it's nothing that concerns us." The Fifth insisted.
Venamo pushed him out of the way and looked through the lenses himself.
"That must be the Father of waters who lives in the lake. No other creature could have such a large tentacle. But what are those boats around it? They're throwing spears at it!" Venamo said as he was looking at what was going on.
"Whatever they're doing, our priority is elsewhere." The Fifth insisted.
"The Father of waters directs the rains and the flows of rivers and they're trying to kill it! Those boats must belong to the Crown's forces and we have to put and end to what they're doing!" Venamo said and pointed his sword at The Fifth.
"He's right! Part of what we came here to do was to stop their attempts at killing the Grand Beasts." Yilka seconded as he came to look as well.
"Tell your fellow there to turn the ship. We are changing directions." Venamo ordered and poked the tip of his blade at The Fifth's neck.
"Fine, fine! Turn the ship!" The Fifth relented and gave the order to turn the ship.
And so the ship was turned to where spears were being thrown at a large tentacle. Before the ship could reach the scene, a second tentacle came from under the surface and swung around blindly, not hitting any of the attacking boats.
"What did they do to even get the massive creature's attention? I thought he lived at the bottom unable to come up." Varma questioned.
"It doesn't matter how they did it. They must be stopped." Venamo replied.
As they got closer to the scene of the action, entire chunks of the big tentacles came off, and two more revealed themselves from under the surface.
"It's losing the fight! Those arrows are doing unnatural amounts of harm to it!" Varma pointed it out.
"They must be enchanted then. No doubt that they are the Crown's forces." Venamo added.
"I can try to rot their boats from over here, but I'm not sure if they are close enough." Nofa said.
"Try it anyway." Yilka told her.
Nofa repeated Jeppeli Tepeeli, the spell of rot and looked at one of the boats, but as she did that, a white flash and white mist came from the enemy boat. The boat was completely unharmed.
"Even the boats are enchanted!" She then exclaimed.
One of the healthier tentacles was ready to smash down on one of the boats, but the soldiers on the boat jumped in the water and flipped the boat upside down. When the tentacle smashed down onto the capsized boat, the boat was once again unharmed, but the tentacle was now limb, its bones seemingly broken.
"Give me that bow, Varma!" Venamo demanded.
Varma didn't argue, but took the bow off her shoulder and gave it to Venamo along with an arrow.
Venamo aimed at one of the spear throwers and hit perfectly in the centre of their back, but the arrow only bounced away.
"Damn this. Their armor is enchanted too. I have to hit them in the head or arm. Another arrow. Now!" Venamo demanded and received another arrow.
He aimed and shot an arrow at one of the throwers, right in the throwing arm, making the arm useless now.
"Another." He demanded.
"That was it. That was all the arrows I could afford with the money that Nofa gave me!" Varma replied.
"Well, go get the one you shot at the side of this ship earlier! Now!" Venamo ordered.
Varma went to where she remembered shooting the arrow earlier and found it when she peeked over the edge. It however was not within reach for her.
"Could somebody hold my legs while I reach for it?" She requested.
Yilka and Nofa rushed to her while Venamo kept his eyes on what was happening in the battle. Varma reached over the edge while Yilka held her left leg and Nofa held the right leg. They dangled her over the edge and they had to lower her really low in order for her to reach the arrow. She got a grip on it, and as the others started pulling her up, the ship took a sudden right turn without warning. The sudden turn took Yilka and Nofa off guard and caused them to loosen their grips, and Varma fell down to the water with the arrow in her hand.
Yilka and Nofa both shouted her name as they watched her fall. Yilka jumped over board to go get her.
"What was that turn for. We are not there yet!" Venamo shouted at the nameless man at the wheel.
"The battle is hopeless. They have enchanted weapons and armor." The Fifth answered the question instead.
Venamo wasn't having it, and jumped over board to swim to the boats of the Crown's forces himself. When he reached the nearest boat to him, he pushed the two men on it off the boat and into the water and threw their spears into the opposite direction. He dove off the boat and intended to swim to the next one, but then he was grabbed by one of the two remaining working tentacles. He was raised high into the air and squeezed from his middle section, and he knew that he had to free himself. He pulled his Defiance from his back, enchanted it and then sliced a piece of the tentacle off to free himself and send him falling into the water. When he fell into the water and under the surface, he opened his eyes, he saw that the fish of the lake were eating away at the Father of waters. Colonies of fish, big and small, were all working together to bite off pieces of the big creature's flesh as if they were controlled by something. The Father of waters was a large and wide creature who was like a ball with four large tentacles and the ball's entire skin was covered in smaller tentacles that were hopelessly fighting off the hordes of hungry fish, but losing. Venamo knew that he couldn't fight them and he didn't want to be next, so he swam to the surface.
"That's the last of them! It's defenseless now! Let the fish finish it. Everybody out of here!" A voice shouted from one of the boats, and the remaining boats started rowing away in a hurry.
All four of the tentacles were floating on the surface, completely lifeless, and the pained bellows of the lake's creature were getting rarer and quieter. Before the last boat left, the man on it threw a yellow fist-sized diamond into the water and then rowed away as well. Venamo dove back under the surface to chase after the diamond, curious about what it is. He saw that the diamond was sinking faster than he could swim after it, and he was running out of breath, so he gave up and returned to the surface once again and swam back to the ship defeated.
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