Chapter Text
Kuula had to admit that the unknown builders had done a good job.
Everything in the semi-dark hall suggested to him that he was in an underwater cave, but not in the pleasant type of cave that dreamers would imagine.
The massive walls, carved of holey grey stone, seemed damp. The arches of the ceiling were jagged and uneven. The lack of light made the air in the room seem murky green. It was not an underwater cave, and there were no currents, there was only an unpleasant drought.
Kuula couldn't help thinking that cold drops could fall on his head at any moment. It was very unfortunate - now inattention could cost too much.
The burly creature opposite him blinked all his different eyes. It felt at ease, leaning on an ornate golden staff.
It felt like the master.
"Do you know Orosou?" Sklera asked, the blue ridges on his scruff moved like gills that drew water.
Kuula nodded cautiously.
"Your tribeswoman failed ‘my’ mission. And was captured."
Kuula knew her, and for a moment he felt a twinge of sympathy. He had never thought shenanigans of fate brought her too to this salt-smelling, unfriendly land. But the moment of weakness was short-lived. Why had Sklera informed him about it? He didn't do anything without a reason. Failure of Orosou couldn't be a reason to share precious information with a landman. Sklera certainly did it because of the strange whim of his race. The Morgors believed that all beings of the same race were connected.
But certainly not as tightly and faithfully as the Morgors themselves.
They were a race of telepaths with a single mind and they had emerged from the depths of the oceans less than a decade ago. For centuries Auriga had already been relentlessly torn apart by a dozen races, but the Morgors had surpassed them all in a very short time and had gained a bloodstained fame. Suspicious, cruel, unable to understand those who did not possess a single mind, and therefore despising the ‘one-minded’ inhabitants of the land, they became the scourge of their neighbours and the nightmare of the inhabitants of the coastal settlements.
They weren't enthusiastic about communicating with the land-dwellers, unless someone mad would count the massacres as communication. The only exception were the mercenaries, whom the Morgors eventually accepted as a handy tool and eagerly invited to sign contracts.
Sklera had explained all of this to Kuula, without hiding anything, on their first meeting. Sklera, a half-mad commander who owned his own network of informants made up of telepathically intimidated creatures of other races. The way he had inflated his shapeless body might seem amusing to someone but not to Kuula. He wasn't amused at all when Sklera had proudly and arrogantly told him about 'his' telepathy gift. And 'his' had always meant the entire Morgors race.
Kuula was a professional infiltrator and assassin from the Forgotten Ones. But he was an ordinary human and could only guess what the words ‘single consciousness’ meant. But looking at Morgor creatures, he caught himself thinking that the merging of their minds had gone wrong. They had not merged their talents. They merged their anger, anger at those who had dared to slip away to land and evolve without them. Evolve into beings so different from them! And that anger was directed towards every creature of Auriga.
"That's unfortunate," Kuula said. He felt uncomfortable under the gaze of a dozen constantly blinking eyes, these weird spheres of murky crystal. Other races considered blinking and losing eye contact a weakness. The Morgors came from the depths of the ocean and could not afford such prejudice because of their physiology. Maybe it made them angry. Sclera's slimy eyes blinked, wetting their surface profusely, and his inhuman face seemed more and more irritated with each glimpse.
‘He expects to see more anxiety about the fate of a kinfolk,’ Kuula understood suddenly. It was irony. The Forgotten's upbringing prescribed to show as little emotion as possible. At least, in the face of everyone who wasn't a friend.
Kuula forced his facial muscles to relax, lowered the corners of his mouth and shifted his eyebrows. Deceiving Sklera's expectations would be foolish and unprofitable.
“What happened?”
“Too many monsters,” Sklera muttered, and Kuula chilled inwardly. There were only a few creatures which were called ‘monsters’ by the Morgors.
“What was her mission?”
"To kill the governor of Yegh so that 'I' could finally wipe it off the map. It's a Necrophage lair. They are experiencing bad times. Because of 'me'” said Sklera, and Kuula thought he saw a smirk on the ugly face of Morgore. "Only the governor keeps this monstrosity from chaos and cannibalism."
"A volitional personality,” Kuula nodded with respect. "And not one of them."
"It's good that you realize that. You are the next."
Kuula had been ready for this from the very beginning. Morgors didn't make appointments with drylanders for no reason.
"Who are they?"
"You will find out,” said Sklera, and his jaws twitched like they were trying to form a squeamish grin. "You want 'my' money so you will find this out by yourself."
***
His departure was several hours later. The ship was waiting for Kuula on the small mollusk-strewn wharf. Looked like Sklera had been fully confident that the mercenary would accept their contract and had taken care of the transportation in advance.
Kuula was glad to leave the Morgor settlement, he disliked Meruan as much as its inhabitants. Every piece of this country gave a sense that the Morgors did not like this land, this dry soil, but used it to gain strength and get their wet hands on other inhabitants of Auriga. To reach them and drown in their own blood.
The city of Meruan bore the mark of its sullen creators. They had the same smell - salt and rotten fish. Its buildings looked like primitive piles of underwater rock, yellowish barnacles covered it like lichens. And algae. Algae was everywhere, braided, crumbling, sticking out of every crevice. It made the city mired in malignant dreariness even more unwelcoming.
Kuula loved beauty - as much as his vocation allowed. Sometimes it favored his wishes: Kuula had used to have a contract with the Fierce Mages and had seen their cities full of spires and spikes. He had visited the Molraez, magnificent creation of Broken Lords and a chance to admire its beautiful castles before the city was burned and assimilated by the Morgors.
These short moments were part of the payment his customers were unaware of. The settlements of the Forgotten, Kuula's homeland, had nothing in common with luxury and swagger. Their nation, a nation of spies and shadows, could not have gleaming spires or stained glass windows that shimmered like rainbows. Their architecture was based on two principles. Functionality and stealthiness. Their settlements were faceless, and a person, who saw it for a while, couldn't recall its look and structure. These principles had served well to the Forgotten. Their lands didn't share the fate of said Broken Lords and their houses were still safe, not scattered in black ashes.
But they too fell on hard times.
That is why Kuula wandered among the monsters. For the yellow dust that could buy help for his people. His new mission was not much different from the other ones - an unpleasant errand from disgusting creatures and a tightly stuffed sack of dust in the end. Maybe this time the sack would have the smell of the swamp mud.
***
The voyage to Yegh lasted about three weeks. Time to time a glimpse of the image sneaked into Kuula's mind. It was a chained woman held in oozie moat. Kuula tried not to dwell in the vision - he had no rational reason to rescue Orosou. He was not her friend, just a mere acquaintance. The best way to help her was to complete his mission. With the governor dead, the city of Yegh should fall - the Morgors would do everything to see it in ruins. If Orosou survives, she would be released. But the odds were against her. Kuula knew that the necrophages were starving. They might have consumed her long ago - and that was not the worst fate for those who got into their insectoid limbs.
Kuula had never been in the lands of the Eaters of the Dead, but he had learned all he could about them long before this mission. He feared them even before this mission and now he was even more afraid of the fact of facing them.
***
City of Yegh could easily fool naive and unaware creatures. They would probably scratch the back of their heads and ask “Isn't this place already in ruin?”.
It was a deception, primitive yet very convincing. The area was strewn with huge shards of stone and had no resemblance to a settlement. But if one would look properly, they could recognize a pattern. Then they could notice the dark spots of entrances at the foot of the stones. It led to underground labyrinths, dark and hopelessly confusing. Sooner or later, the eyes of the unfortunate one who dared to descend there would catch a glimpse of the shine. The shine reflected by membranes, dense like the skin of Ursa. Cells of the hive.
A few more steps inside, and one would notice the silhouettes of workers and soldiers maturing beneath the matte surface. The tunnel would curve aside and lead out into a big smelly room, where something would blacken. It would be best not to know that this 'something' is a cloud of insects swarming over a pit of corpses. A heart would skip a beat when understanding comes.
The buzzing of flesh-eating beetles would fill the air. A quiet crunching of chitin. And a poor creature, mesmerized by the horrible sight, would be dragged into the pits. If they are lucky, they will become food. If they are not, the queen will lay her larvae in their corpse, and not-they-anymore will join the army of the necrophages.
Kuula had to use all the skills he had if he hoped to avoid such fate.