The stone steps were adorned with flaking paint, splotched in ornate patterns of flowers and curving shapes, all brightly colored with fading edges. From within the dark recesses of the cove, came the warbled, but melodic cacophony of music, sometimes shrill and sometimes softly lulling. Didn’t appear to be a place of skulking humans devoid of humanity.
The edges of the cave opening were cracked in some places, but jagged all over. The seeping purple of twilight covered the sky. The dark reddish glow of the setting sun bled behind the building and its bordering thickets of trees. Its bloody tint peeked from behind the stone roof, spilling its dying glow atop its craggly bumps like a grove of withering roses.
On the sides of the hill where the stone building perched, were rolling woods interspersed with cramped wooden huts. Their dark brown surfaces of faded wood blent into the barked fingers of the climbing forest.
Karvhael’s silver boots at the fringe of his pants’ golden-colored fruffles, brushed against the floor, jangling and creating a faint abrasive sound. This stone was unfamiliar to the pathways he’d walked within the confines of the Empire’s Commonwealth. Within those jurisdictions, he’d walked across much of tiled stone and pale rock surfaces. Here, the stone material of the stairs were gravelly and multi-colored, like clumps of the earth stitched together, stained by the varying brown and gray shades of sediment and earth. They fit in nicely into the mosaic of dirt and grass, receding into the rolling surfaces of green grass.
Far beyond the clustered mass of leaf curtained trees of the woods, where they turned into a faded green, cloaked by the translucent fog of distance, were the round roofs of stone buildings. Two columns of dull smoke crawled out of two chimneys far away.
To the left, a narrow chimney of pale smooth stone buried in a clump of trees, was shooting choked dark plumes that went hissing in the air.
The world went on while music and the aromas of a siesta’s hot food and slightly musky scent of dancing bodies in a dark room wafted from the cove, grazing Karvhael as he climbed the last set of steps and embarked upon the entrance.
The sharp crunching of gravel made Karvhael flinch. He turned to see a stout man of smooth chocolate colored skin appear from around the side of the building.
Like a willowy plant with a thick underbelly of stalk, the man sauntered forth, holding a shiny darkly-stained wine bottle. His dark arms were sinewy with bulging muscles that seemed to twitch with his sauntering, dance-like motions. He wore a sleeveless white tunic that clumped to his large chest. He wore a long brown robe at the waist, fashioned like a skirt.
His eyes squinted at Karvhael and he stopped walking. He looked Karvhael up and down. The man seemed formless to Karvhael when he considered his own ornate and formal imperial attire of silver satin and metal decked with red velvet.
A strong musky scent of alcohol wafted out of the bottle’s opening.
“You here for the party?” asked the man in a razor-edged voice, lilting with mirth. A soft smile touched his lips.
“Yeah,” Karvhael said slowly. He knew that to be a lie, but he needed a safe passageway. “I’m here to see about about a woman who used to live here.”
The mirth filled man suddenly frowned. His squint of puzzled amusement turned to one of skeptical fear.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m the envoy.”
“The envoy?” asked the man as his frown deepened. “Who does the belong to?”
“I belong to the classified,” said Karvhael. “I’m of the Empire, the only entity to send out envoys.”
“Who are you?” the man repeated, pointing a finger at Karvhael in an aggressive manner that made his upper half stagger slightly.
“I’m here to see about a woman,” said Karvhael, continuing without answering, “who might be responsible for your demise.”
The man cocked his head up in confusion.
“She may have led the Red Dawn mystic cult to your village tonight.”
“Nobody has portals to speak of!” the man said, waving his arms.
“The Red Dawn find ways to infiltrate our world through people susceptible to their touch. Those who have touched any of the offchanted realms in any way are sought after as conduits into our world. The night-flyers come into our world when the portals from the offchanted realms are opened. They attack those susceptibles’ homes, the homes that failed them.”
The bearded man said nothing for an extended time. He glared with sullen brown eyes and what seemed like blindingly furious white irises into Karvhael’s. Despite their even gazes from across their similar heights, Karvhael felt imposed by the larger frame of this more muscular man.
With his leopard-like frame and his unmoving nonchalance, he was what stood in between, the young man Karvhael and the goal he was set out to accomplish. The silver-colored satin of his robe, his red armbands and the golden fruffles bordering the ends of his pants no longer felt as dignified and answerable to Karvhael as it had mere minutes ago, as he’d strolled grassy staircase to a hut that had once been hidden by the blue of sky and the mounted grass of the hill.
Karvhael was starting to feel like he was dressed in a frivolous costume in the land of open fields of grazing animals and farmers dressed in simple dully colored tunics.
“Listen, boy,” the bearded man grated, almost speaking the insecurities of Karvhael’s mind into existence. He motioned with the arm holding the wine bottle as he spoke. Dark liquid sloshed around inside the tinted glass. “We see the real flyers the Plagese left here. They’ve been here for ages and the Emperor— or…..” He swung his arm holding the bottle up, bringing it up to his mouth and taking a long swig and then wiping off the dark drops of liquid pouring down his beard.
“— your emperor and his governors have been living here far away from our lands. We make do with what we have. We hear the stories of conquest and rebellion from the Pilasee, but we know they tell them only because they can. They live comfortably. My people haven’t seen the nightflyers haunting our forests for ages. You don’t know our real problems. The Empire doesn’t know our real problems.”
“The Emperor and his governors have been living far away from our lands. We make do with what we have. We hear the stories of conquest and rebellion, but we know they tell them because they can. They live comfortably. Here, the night flyers border the woods. We have more important things to do than listen to the fairy tales of dangers by people who live with more than us.”
G.R. Nanda 