LITTLE THINGS - Chapter 0

The town used to be called Sunbake. It was once the easternmost settlement of the kingdoms, a symbol of human determination and perseverance. The soil was poor, the groundwater was almost too deep for the well, and in the summer the sun would shine so bright and hot that clay deposits would develop a ceramic shell. And yet the townsfolk persisted. They grew enough food to get by and provide a waypoint for pioneers looking to find the next big discovery in the wilderness. The people didn’t have much, but they took pride that, on the bottom-right corner of every map, you could find their little town.

Sunbake wasn’t on the maps anymore. No children ran through the streets. The farms were barren, withered without anyone to tend them. The buildings were still there, but the town was gone. No cattle grazed on the grass that didn’t grow. No rats scavenged the ruins that had long been depleted.

The land itself was dead.

So there weren’t even birds flying overhead to bear witness to the first people to walk through Sunbake in many years.

They each wore an obscuring grey robe, but aside from that they couldn’t be more different. They ranged in height from four to eight feet. There wasn’t a shared body type between them. One had long enough arms to knuckle along like an ape. One didn’t touch the ground at all.

Five of them entered the town together, inspecting the ruins critically and pointedly not looking at each other. None of them particularly liked what they would see if they did.

One stumbled on a loose flagstone and tried to catch himself on a fence. The desiccated wood disintegrated under his weight; he might as well have tried to grab thin air. He fell in a clatter of metal and was left sprawled out on the ground, wood dust floating down around him.

“Agh, plfft! Ye gods, it’s in me mouth!” He scowled through his beard as another robe laughed at him. “Aye, laugh it up ye bastard. I’d like to see you fare any better.”

“I’m not wearing a hundred pounds of armor under my robe, Mister Hammer,” the elf said with a hint of admonishment.

“Aye, and when a stiff wind knocks ye on yer arse it’ll be me laughing, Wood.”

Mister Wood smirked. “As you say.”

“Can it, you two,” one of the others panted. He was even hairier than the dwarf, and a snout poked out of the darkness of his hood. “Where’s our illustrious host?”

“My money’s on the one building with all four walls still standing,” Mister Hammer snapped. “Guh, I’m filthy now…”

“You were filthy already, rock smasher,” Mister Wood sniffed.

Before Mister Hammer could get riled up, the largest robe rumbled. “We all dirty. We’s walk tru great big sand place. Not place for staying clean, uh?”

“Just another day for you, hm Mister Stone?” Mister Hammer grumbled.

The shot at his proposed cleanliness was completely lost on the troll. “Dun like the desert. Too hot. Dun like sand. Not good eatin.” He stuck a finger in the ground as he walked and dug a cobblestone up, taking a bite out of it like a cookie. “Bleh. Even der road's gone bad.”

The shaggy one tilted his head at the sight. “Stone, how exactly does a rock go bad?”

“Don’t answer that,” Mister Wood said, as Mister Stone opened his mouth to explain. “I can’t sit through another hour of listening to trundle your way through rock facts in your dull drawl.”

Mister Stone ground his teeth. The sound was enough to set the other’s teeth on edge as well.

“I thought they were interesting.”

“Well, Mister Fang, you’re wrong.”

“And I bet you think trees are a better conversation topic?”

Mister Wood rolled his eyes. “Of course I do, but unlike some people here I can recognize that the others might not, and so I hold my tongue.”

“Thank thunder for that,” the fifth of their number muttered. “You think Stone’s voice is grating, your reedy whistle is enough to make my ears bleed.”

“Mister Hammer, did you hear something?” Wood asked, holding a hand to his ear. “I could have sworn I heard a dog barking. Probably not worth paying attention to.”

Both Misters Blood and Fang growled at that, and Hammer edged away from them.

“Don’t put me between you and two monsters, ye fool!” Mister Hammer hissed.

“Don’t worry, Hammer,” Fang said sardonically. “Dwarfs taste terrible. Too much hair. You’re safe.” He scowled, pulling at his collar. “Speaking of too much hair, it’s way too hot.”

He pulled down his hood to let his ears free, which the others ignored. The concealing robes were a polite fiction, anyway. They all knew who each other were, more or less.

“Why not be human for a bit?” Mister Blood, the orc, asked as they passed into the center of town. An old well stood in the middle of the town square, and without even being fully aware of it they gave it a wide berth, none of them willing to get close.

“Around you lot?” Fang chuckled darkly. “No offense, but I’m not willing to be weak and defenseless around you.”

“Some offense taken,” a sixth voice said amiably.

They focused as they approached the old Sunbake tavern. As Mister Hammer guessed, it was the only building left in town with four walls and most of a roof. On the porch in front of it stood two more robes.

The human among them stepped aside to let them pass, following them inside. “Gentlemen, it is a pleasure to finally meet you all in person. Wood, Hammer. Stone. Fang, Blood. I am Mister Coin, and this is my associate Mister Bone.”

They each took a seat around a table in the center of the tavern. Stone ended up sitting on the floor, the wood groaning under him. Mister Bone remained standing--floating, rather. The others gave him wary looks.

“I see not all our correspondents chose to come,” Mister Coin mused sadly. “A shame. I had such high hopes for Mister Claw and Miss Scale, but the seven of us will suffice.”

“Will we?” Mister Hammer asked. “When I decided to come, I didn’t realize we had a troll, a werewolf, and an orc among our number. How did you join us, can you even read?” he asked, directed at Mister Stone.

The troll gave him a hard stare, then grabbed a second table they weren’t using and carved YES into the top with the tip of his finger.

“...fair enough,” the dwarf admitted, suitably cowed.

“Gentlemen,” Mister Coin said, grabbing their attention. “I assume by your all being here that you’ve given my plan due consideration?”

“For as much effort as it took to get here I should hope so,” Mister Wood muttered. “You have no idea how hard it was to smuggle these four through the Trinity gate, even with the guards missing. How did you distract them all?”

“That was Mister Bone’s doing,” Coin said, gesturing to his partner. “To forestall your next question, he is also how we arrived without going through the Wall ourselves.”

“It was no great feat,” Mister Bone spoke for the first time, and everyone save for Coin jumped at his voice. “Really, your ability to survive the handy shortcut is much more impressive, Mister Coin.” His voice had an eerie quality to it, and it seemed to bypass the ears to reverberate through the bones.

Mister Wood sputtered. He made an abortive motion as though he intended to stand but realized halfway that there was nowhere for him to run. “You’re a wraith?”

Bone tittered. “And you are an elf. And Hammer is a dwarf. We are all of us what we are. And we are all of us here for the same reason.” The front of his robe opened to reveal a pair of unnaturally pale arms. In his hands was a worn, leatherbound tome. He handed it carefully to Mister Coin, who set it on the table in front of himself.

“A wraith?” Mister Blood frowned. “I’ve not heard of that one.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Wood said, still shaken. “They’re reclusive and long-lived. They are creatures of darkness most foul, entities neither alive nor dead. They are… abominable.”

Mister Bone smiled at him. His teeth were almost luminous in the darkness of his hood. “Hoo hoo ha hoo… flatterer.” He floated backwards, deeper into the shadows of the abandoned tavern.

“Mister Bone is a wraith, yes,” Coin confirmed as he opened the book, looking for a particular entry. “I met him some time ago, and none of what comes would be possible without him.”

The others exchanged looks with each other. Some seemed skeptical, others impatient. It was Mister Hammer who voiced their question. “Mister… Coin. We’ve been exchanging letters fer a few years now. I know that we’re all unhappy with the state of Lisiin, but are ye certain that yer plan is the best option? It’s… drastic.”

Coin nodded, accepting the criticism. “Drastic is a word for it, yes. If I was still subscribing to my original plan. You see, gentlemen, I did not call us to this wretched ruin merely so that we might be unobserved.”

“Then why--” Mister Wood began.

Coin cut him off with a raised hand. “King Thoreau is not the man his father was, and certainly not like his grandfather. But he is still the king, and that affords him a lot of power.”

“Know how kings work,” Mister Stone grunted. “Dun like ‘em.”

“You might change your mind after I explain what my plan is. Tell me, Stone, what are your grievances with our leadership?”

“Din you read my--”

“I read your letter, yes. Just to recap.”

The troll shifted, his body groaning from the strain of moving. “...Boss Lady Kimberlite she dun like being rocks. She tink troll need to be big deal, like we not already.” He spat, and a pebble sailed through the window with enough force to break glass, if there had been any. “Troll, rock. Rock, troll. Human say, ‘is what it is.’ Kimberlite say, humans come to troll place, make homes here. Trolls fight, we lose. Trolls wanna stay, gotta be human, uh? Humans come, dey see troll tryin’ to act like people, dey laugh. But dey get to tinkin, dey say, ‘dese big strong troll be good muscle.’ Now troll gotta work and do big jobs if dey wanna keep livin where we always lived. Not fair. Not right. Kimberlite, she say dis good, she say one day we be people like man and elf and dwarf. Dun want that. Just wanna eat rocks and be troll. Troll, rock. Rock, troll.”

Mister Stone sat back, exhausted from the effort of so many words. The others took a moment to digest that. They hadn’t been aware that Stone was a troll from his letters, as he was much more eloquent in writing, but now they were recontextualizing some of his reports.

Mister Blood nodded after a while. “I get that. The Black Boar tribe are trying to do similar. They’re turning their backs on the old traditions and trying to do trade with human cities.” He scowled, and his tusks glinted under his hood. “I found out about it because my tribe attacked a merchant caravan for supplies, and the Boars were there as guards, hiring themselves out as protection!”

Mister Coin’s brows raised. “That must be recent, I hadn’t heard about that. Who won?”

“They did,” Mister Blood growled like it hurt to admit. “They had good steel weapons and metal armor that my tribe couldn’t compete against, and that’s what ticks me off the most. If they were mining and forging like dwarfs, I’d still be angry but at least they were doing to work to get the weapons. But no. They bought them with money like, like a--”

“Like a dwarf?” Mister Hammer asked, sarcastic.

“Yes! That’s not what an orc is! We’re warriors! We don’t deal, we don’t negotiate, and we take what we want! To do anything less is to be less than an orc.” He fidgeted, then the anger abruptly left him. “And now the young bucks in my tribe are thinking we should do the same. They don’t respect tradition. My own son and daughter are part of the new thinking.”

He fell silent, and the other stewed in their own thoughts. Mister Wood privately thought that the young orcs had the right of it, but then he imagined having to trade or travel with orc mercenaries and decided he’d much rather stick to the option that meant he didn’t have to get close to an orc.

Mister Fang glanced at Mister Bone. “What… er, what are you angry about?”

The wraith looked over, eyes shining with an unearthly light, and he smiled. “...I simply want to be part of the story for once.” Then he looked away and said no more.

When no one else seemed willing to share, Mister Wood chose to speak up again.“We all have our issues. Myself, I would much prefer if humans and elves stopped mingling so much. They keep trying to cut down our forests for their farms and for the past while I’ve even had to deal with…” he shuddered. “...half-breeds. Ugh. A mockery of elven beauty, twisted into something hideous.”

Mister Coin’s eye twitched. “Personally, I never thought humans and elves looked all that differently.”

Mister Wood ignored that gibberish and pressed on. “But if we are not killing the human king as initially proposed, then what are we doing?”

“I proposed that because I believed that King Thoreau’s oldest son is someone who can be bought. Prince Dunstan shares many of our views, Wood, Hammer, and where he falls short he can be persuaded by old fashioned coin. However, it would have left Mister Stone and Mister Fang possibly with the same problems as before, and Mister Claw even cut ties because he believed it would make his situation magnitudes worse. But then, Mister Bone found this.”

He gave the book a pat, incidentally crinkling the page, and Mister Bone hissed at the small damage. All present flinched at the sound.

“Apologies. But, as I mentioned before, I chose this town as our meeting point for a reason.” He pointed out the window at the old well in the town center. “The town of Sunbake was where it all happened. It was the beginning of the end, where the mages went mad. That well was the first, and last, of the Deadland Pitmouths.”

Wood and Hammer fell out of their seats. The others only looked confused.

“Pitmouths?” Mister Blood asked.

“Yes, and such things leaves wounds in the world, wounds that haven’t fully healed even so many years later.” Mister Coin grinned. “With the right spell, right here in this book, we can crack open a door to the Pit. Mister Wood, how would you like to speak and have Queen Willow listen?”

The apparent non-sequitur had the elf blinking. “I--of course, any man with sense wants to be part of her court.”

“Not part of it. All of it. You and you alone bending her ear, telling her what to do and having her do it.”

Wood’s mouth flapped.

“Mister Hammer, how would you feel about giving the Mountain Lord order? Blood, would you like to be High War Chief? Stone, Kimberlite could listen to every word you have to say, or perhaps the mayor of that town that’s bothering you.” Mister Coin held the book up. “Imps are easy to bind. And they can possess a person. We don’t need to kill the king and hope things work out for the better. We don’t need to fight our way to the top and do all the difficult work to make the people listen to us. All we need to do is put a bug in their ear, and we’ll be running things from behind the scenes.”

He grinned, and a few more hesitant smiles were returned.

Mister Wood was skeptical. “I don’t know about this. “Demons, Coin? There are any number of ways it could go wrong. The Deadlands themselves are proof of that. Surely it would be safer to do things the slow way? We are all fairly important people, even the troll and the orc if I understood their veiled letters correctly. And our opinions aren;t unique.”

“The issue with the slow way,” Mister Bone said, “Is that I’m the only one here who would still be alive to enjoy it by the time it bears fruit.”

“Indeed,” Mister Coin agreed. “Come now, Wood, you can’t say it isn’t tempting?”

“...Mmmm, perhaps let’s test it out first?” the elf suggested. “If imps are as easy to bind as you say--and you’re the only one here who can use magic, so I have to take your words--then let’s summon just the one and see it for ourselves.”

Mister Coin nodded. “A reasonable request. That’s why it’s a shame Claw and Scale didn’t come, they were the only other mages in our group. They’d have made things easier… But I’m up to the task even alone. Step outside with me, gentlemen.”

“Let’s make history,” Bone whispered.

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The first summoning went well. The imp was bound without difficulty, and Mister Coin demonstrated its use upon Mister Blood, to the orc’s displeasure. The second summoning went even smoother, and the third better than that as Mister Coin got used to the process. Each was bound to a necklace provided by Mister Bone, and even Mister Stone was able to control the little demons with ease.

Once each of the seven men had their own enslaved imp, they decided to leave and test it independently, to meet back up once they were assured of the plan’s success.

Here was the issue. A lesson that the wild mages of the past had failed to learn, that the robed men now learned in turn.

When you open a door, even if only a crack, someone can force their way inside. And when you close a door, you need to remember to lock it again.

After noticing a bunch of imps vanishing and not coming back, something stuck its foot in the door.

The gentlemen had not even left the town center before the old well exploded.