Adventures, Zia thought to herself, seem to be much less glorious in practice. I didn’t realize there was so much that was east of Sasson. I thought we’d walk for like a day, and then find an inn, and for a few silver apiece we’d get a room and a hot meal at the end of the day! Instead, we’ve been wandering along the road, and then through marsh because it looked like a trail—it looked like a trail! It did! And I thought it was a shortcut! But then it wasn’t, it was waist-deep water, and I think I might have ruined my leathers and we couldn’t find the way back because, admittedly, I was sure I saw a trail in the distance and then the sun was setting and by the time we were on a little patch of dry land it was dark and we had no idea which way was which and I suggested we just keep going east but there’s so much east! “Zidrist, any idea how long Drexl’s been gone?”
“Long enough for you to have asked that three times.”
“Well I’m hungry. I thought bread types were used to rooting in the marshes for mallow and burdock and whatever. What’s taking her so long?”
“Maybe she’s delayed by your negative energy,” Darka suggested. “You’re putting out impatient vibes and it’s making her feel pressured and impeding her effectiveness.”
“That is not how metaphysics works.”
“You want to tell the wife of a deacon how metaphysics works, now?” Zidrisk raised an imperious eyebrow. “You’re the one who got us lost.”
“The road was going south. We didn’t need to go south. I thought I saw a trail and I’m sorry already!”
The sun had risen hours ago, Zia was sure, but Drexl had insisted they needed to make a fire before she headed out and she’d made Zia do some of the gathering. What do we need a fire for during the day anyway? It’s all wet deadfall, it’s making more smoke than light.
When Drexl did make it back, the sun was, by Zia’s reckoning, high in the sky. Why would I need to know how to tell the time by the sun? The bell towers of Sasson always declared the time. “What took so long?”
“Zia, I am poor, not a survivalist, blast it. I can find tubers and berries, but I can’t find a lot terribly fast. As is, we’re having a small meal.”
“A small meal? Drexl, we need to get back to the roads today, we can’t march on empty stomachs.”
“Then you should have made sure we had trail rations.”
“I thought there would be inns. Dragold is civilized, or I thought it was!”
Zidrist sighed. “A lot of them were raided and razed during the early civil war by opportunists and military groups. And again, we went off the road, because someone saw a shortcut.” That is not fair! I was trying to help!
“That is not a way to talk to your leader, Zidrist.”
“And that is not a way to talk to your spiritual authority, Zia. I may not be a priestess, but I am the representative of Izkarzon in this group and I think you need to recite some Our Dragon of Mercys while Drexl turns what she found into food.”
“We have to wait even longer before we eat?!”
“Our Dragon of Mercy. Twenty of them.”
“What for?”
“For questioning the spiritual authority of your representative of the Church. Unless you want to be fed to the heir when we find her?” Ulp. Right. Oaths of fealty to Izkarzon included His holy Church.
“Yes’m. Our Dragon of Mercy, please pray for—”
“Silently, penitent.”
When I am honored for finding the heir of Izkarzon, I will see you defrocked, deacon. You may have agreed to come with me as a spiritual authority… well, okay, so I asked her to come along. Pleaded. Said it would be easy. Our Dragon of Mercy, hail holy Izkarzon, hail our—Zia took the time to recite her prayers as directed by Zidrist. Even with the rapid changes of leadership, even the secular claimants to Dragold’s gerontocratic throne declared the primacy of the Church.
After they had eaten what Zia found to be a perfectly disgusting breakfast-lunch of berries and roasted tubers, they continued along the way of vaguely dry ground. It was Drexl who pointed out the smoke trail through the sparse tree cover. “It’s just like I had you set that fire for! It means there’s someone, and where there’s someone we can ask for directions!”
“Excellent eye, Drexl! And you beat me to pointing it out, I’m impressed!” …okay, so Zidrist didn’t need to roll her eyes. I guess I didn’t need to lie. It’s just I need some kind of claim to leadership because so far only Darka is less useful than me, and she impressed Krask even.
The trees were thicker, and the ground more solid, and ultimately they came to some proper forest rather than marsh. Drexl was leading, something Zia was uncomfortable with until she stepped on a small mound of dry grass which promptly caught fire. “Sarx!” Drexl cried, while the dry grass combusted with a minimum of heat but a great deal of smoke. Drexl was patting her leggings out, but they didn’t seem too badly burnt. From the brush emerged a woman dressed in cured hides, skin like Darka’s but hair more like Zidrist’s and adorned with beads of glass or—Zia shuddered—bone. She was carrying a long knapped knife, but did not look actively intent upon using it.
“Greetings, worthy of Izkarzon!” Zia said. “We are lost and looking for…” the woman was looking at Zia with her head tilted in incomprehension. Zia turned to the Heirrors. “Does eastern Dragold not speak Draconic?”
“Try Loon,” Zidrist suggested.
“I was just about to. Thank you for the suggestion.” I don’t think it’s unreasonable that I try to seem like I know what I’m doing. I would have gotten to it soon enough, I just was first making sure she didn’t understand! In Loon she addressed the woman. “Greetings! We are lost and looking for directions.”
“We also would trade silver for a meal,” Drexl cut in. Zia shot her a look but didn’t contradict her.
“Who are you, then?” the woman asked. “I am Lunar Sword, of the Glade of Mother Supreme.”
“We are the Heirrors,” Zia replied. “I am Zia, leader of our adventuring band, and these are Zidrist, Darka, and Drexl.” I hope Drexl doesn’t get snippy over being introduced last even though she’s in the lead. It’s how it is, you introduce in descending order of caste. Speaking of which… she’s a hunger? What is a hunger doing in the middle of a swamp?
“You three—” Sword indicated Zidrist, Darka, and Drexl, “—can come with. You, we’ll bring you food, but you may not enter the glade.”
“What, do you have something against ouroboros? You’re a hunger, you can hardly have issues with Izkarzon’s cast—”
“Only women may enter the Glade of Mother Supreme.”
After several moments of stunned freezing, sarx was the gentlest of the profanities which occupied Zia’s mind. She stood rooted to the ground until she creakily turned her head when Drexl touched her arm. “Hey, I’m sorry about this. We’ll get directions and bring you something to eat.”
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“I never counted you as anything less than Krasna’s daughter,” Zidrist added, as she walked past Zia.
“Hey, uh… I don’t have anything in particular to say, but it’s a weird rule. I’ll ask about it,” Darka finished, trailing behind her wife.
It’s just as well they left me here, Zia thought, given I just spent a solid sandglass screaming inarticulately and kicking a tree. Sarx, my foot hurts. “Women only!” I’m a woman, damn it! Literally, condemn them all to Hell! When I’m at the right hand of Izkarzon’s heir, I will see to it this glade is burned to the ground. Or melted with acid. Probably acid. I’m sure His heir wouldn’t mind doing that in exchange for a queendom. I am perfectly much a woman! I have curves, in this armor, and I am a fire sorcerer, which everyone knows fire is one of the Powers of the Virtue of the Mother, which is naturally feminine! And I don’t have a younger sister, so it’s not like I’m trying to claim the family name from someone more deserving. I’m a woman! So I have a deeper voice, I don’t talk in my deeper registers. I bet she guessed. She probably guessed. There’s no way she could have known for certain. Which means when I didn’t immediately deny it, that’s when she knew. Sarx it! I should have said, “I am a woman, thank you very much!” Stupid Lunar whatsername. Feed her to the heir. It’s only fair. Zia continued to seethe, imagining the penitent cries of the wilderness women as the dragon melted their sarxing stupid glade, until the rest of the Heirrors walked back towards her.
At least, Zia thought with a grumble of her stomach, they brought food. Drexl had brought, in fact, a small bowl of soup and a shank of cooked meat. “What did you find out?”
”Well, for one, we’re only a few hourglasses from the road.” Zidrist replied. “It went south where it did because the swamp, as we discovered, became more watery for about a day’s march.”
The shank of meat was well-cooked, and seasoned with something Zia recognized from eating with Drexl but couldn’t name, not the kind of spices she’d been brought up eating. The soup tasted much like the tubers they’d eaten for breakfast-lunch, but with a greater depth of flavor. Zia paused in her voracious devouring to nod and gesture for Zidrist to continue.
“I talked to their priestess. They’re a heretical cult, nothing Izkarzon would have stood for in His day. They revere the moon as the Mother Supreme, which you might have gathered from the names, but they refute the divinity of Izkarzon outright. Fief’s influence, no doubt, we’re only another day from the border.”
“That’s why they wouldn’t let you in, by the by,” Drexl added. “The moon thing. They hold that a woman’s cycle grants her levels of divine awareness and that such things are holy.”
Oh, so because I don’t bleed I’m not a woman? I bleed when I’m cut. I could feed myself herbs to make myself cramp and be a misery to everyone each month. Maybe I will. Then I can come back to their stupid glade and be like, “I have a cycle, I’m cramping, your stupid heretical non-draconic faith has to let me come in!”
“Sorry about that, again,” Drexl said. “From the thunderous look on your face you’re not over it.”
“I am… very angry. When we find the heir, I’m glad their heretical sect will be melted into the ground by our new God-Queen.”
Zidrist raised her eyebrows. “They’re heretical, I’ll give you that, but I’m not sure they need to be melted. Just chastised and maybe put in a proper convent.” Just a flash of my ouroboros mark and I’d be granted access to any of Izkarzon’s Churches. Or if I wasn’t, it would be my clerical status, not—
“Hey, how’s the soup?” Drexl asked Zia, interrupting her train of thought.
“Oh, uh… it’s good. Tastes like what we’d get back in Sasson. Thanks for getting it for me.”
“You’re welcome.” Oh, so you were fishing for gratitude, when you got to go into the glade and experience the weird heretic cult thing and I didn’t. Isn’t me letting you all go thanks enough? …I’m mixing up my anger. It’s not Drexl’s fault they let her in. And we needed directions, which Zidrist said they got. I’m taking out my anger on them. Maybe I should have kicked that tree more.
“Thank you for getting directions, also.”
“You’re welcome,” Zidrist replied.
“I also learned a new song while we were in the glade!” Darka said excitedly. “It’s probably heresy, but it proclaims that the natural world is the Creation of the Mother Supreme and that all things in it are blessed by Her. Except it… actually, it’s irreverent enough that it’s definitely heresy, right Zidrist?” She’s lucky Zidrist is her wife. Not just because she has a wife, but because anyone else asking a deacon if something might be heresy will earn a sharp rebuke about not risking one’s soul and not trying to cut corners on piety.
“The One True Church of Izkarzon is to be treated with honor and respect. By extension, so is the One God, hallowed be His Name.”
“But it’s a fun song. It’s called Mosquito in Paradise.”
“There are not mosquitos in Heaven,” Zia said tartly.
“Zia is right,” Zidrist agreed archly.
“Can I sing the song anyway?”
Zidrist smiled indulgently. “This is why I try to keep her out of the baudier districts of Sasson. She loves music of any variety. But what say you, leader Zia?” Is she trying to placate me? Am I that visibly angry? I don’t… I mean, air is a choleric element and it belongs to the Queen, but I’m a fire sorcerer, I’m supposed to be jolly…
”Go for it, Darka. Sing away. Just follow up with some good and Godly hymns to Izkarzon.”
As Darka treated them to Mosquito In Paradise, they trekked east to get back on the road. Sure enough, they were going through waist-deep water before they found the road, but it was where they had been told it would be. Shortly after that, they passed the skull-spikes which marked the border of Dragold. Zia couldn’t help but feel a moment of trepidation, taking the step which brought her out of her homeland, and into the heretic eastern land of Fief. They don’t even have a dragon ruling them. They have… what, a couple of Kings? No, wait, I think they at least have Queens. Can’t have a patrilineal monarchy, how would you even tell? But then, what’s to tell? They don’t have castes, they just have some arbitrary system of… I wish I’d paid more attention to my tutor on the subject of foreign lands, but I never imagined they’d be relevant. The histories were never as interesting as the stories of adventure like the Daring Kaliskast, subduing heretics and spreading the Good Word of Izkarzon and seducing people left and right. It’s always these dry stories about how Noun succeeded Verb who usurped Nounverb and then Verbnoun the Noun went and raised an army and the tales of the armies are just blah-thousand soldiers and bleh-dozen fire sorcerers… well, I guess the fire sorcerers are interesting. They were always women too, and the most comely of them would be drawn in by Kaliskast’s charms and talent. I hope that happens to me. I’m a comely fire sorceress, I’m in a foreign land, and I’m sure the heir will gladly elevate a foreigner to ouroboros in thanks. …right?
Mosquito in Paradise
Tried to amend my sanguinous habit
Made it nearly one hourglass.
Want your blood, it’s something I need
Drinking it up lemme say you’re first class.
I have a thought of a thing I could drink
Red but without the distaste
The juice of a tomato maybe I’ll try it later but
Right now I need a vein at your waist.
Mosquito in Paradise
It ain’t Orth but it sure is nice
Everyone in togas
Wearing wings in open air pagodas
I’m just a mosquito in Paradise.
God made mosquitos and loves them just as much
As the ones She made man and other such.
Let me tell you brother there isn’t any other
Who blessed every Creation with a personal touch.
And if the One God loves mosquitoes
And thinks they’re really neato
But if I’m gonna live I’m gonna need ‘o
To bite you just a little so that you might bleed.
Mosquito in Paradise
If you’re wanting into Heaven well maybe think twice
But it’s been said of bug bite’s scratchin’ ‘em’s nice
I’m just a mosquito in Paradise.
So you hate mosquitos as they whine and dine
Maybe you won’t find that Heaven is fine
I just want a little bit of your blood
One God made me this way is that understood?
I’m just a
Mosquito in Paradise
Let me tell you friend your blood will taste nice
When I am a’drinkin’ it while
I’m just a mosquito in Paradise!
There’s mosquitos in Paradise!
Yes’m mosquitos in Paradise!
So you hate mosquitos as they whine and dine
Maybe you won’t find that Heaven is fine
I just want a little bit of your blood
One God made me this way is that understood?
