Chapter Text
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Cold as frost, wet, and prickling at her face. Jiang’s mind stirred from its slumber under the water droplets dotting her skin, the pounding of her head overshadowing the discomfort tenfold. The throbbing pain drew a hiss of breath in and out her lungs. More water sprinkled from above contrasting harshly against the hot skin of her cheeks and forehead.
Ughhhh… my head, Jiang groaned internally. I thought mom fixed that leak…
Her eyes screwed shut tighter and she sluggishly wiped her face on the back of her hand. The simple motion, done without a single thought, the reward of an awful ache that seized her body even tighter. The sudden, full body pain sapped the strength right from her body and another bone deep groan. “Did I manage to catch some sort of bug or something?” She swore under her breath, too tired to even keep her hand propped up against her head.
She flopped her arm down, half exhausted and half frustrated. She was met with the soggy sensation of wet grass plastered against her arm and sent a jolt of shock right to her brain, defiant of the agonizing throbs that wracked her head. Her eyes shot open and she croaked out a gasp.
I’m not at home.
She was met with the sight of trees. Where the ceiling of her warm room should have been was the canopy above. The dense web of leaves and branches largely obscured the gray sky above, the gaps between the canopy revealing drizzling and moody rain clouds clogging heavens. The air was muggy and insufferably thick with moisture. The very breeze was cold, humid, and stuck to Jiang’s lungs and skin, making her feel all the worse. She lay on her back, nestled in the tatters of her clothes and a bed of damp grass and mud. She sat up sharply, her body protesting with another anguished ache that dug its claws into the meat and bones.
The back of her mind reasoned she had to be close to home. Perhaps she had fallen asleep on one of the nature trails after a walk and she had simply forgotten? She tried to recall the events prior to her rest, perhaps an adventure detour or a post victory nap over some foe. That would explain the damaged clothes. However, the black tank she loved and mechanic jumper weren’t tattered in the way lined up with a battle. Rather than tears indicative of knives or claws, the fabric was oddly stretched out like she had been caught on something and pulled herself free, splitting the seams at the sides and along her hips. She tried to recall what could’ve left her in that state, alone, and feeling like she had been hit by a truck. Something. Anything.
Yet her mind pulled back nothing. Her stomach dropped like frigid lead. Her memory, anything prior to her awakening was nothing more than a blank slate.
Her pulse quickened and her breath became short and shallow. Claws of thoughts raked through the hour, day, or— heaven forbid —week before and the only thing she could remember was leaving her mother’s shop to run a standard bot repair. Anything after was a blank sheet of nothing.
Nausea coiled violently in Jiang’s belly as she forced herself to her wobbling feet. Her vision swayed under the pressure of her migraine and she grit her teeth. They ached unnaturally, bone on bone grating audibly, and oddly felt harder to close than she remembered. The discomfort made the pulsing in her head twice as bad.
Jiang braced her hands on her knees and swallowed down gulps of air to try and quell the nausea that threatened to expunge whatever remained in her stomach. She gagged once, twice, but thankfully nothing came up. Perhaps there was nothing to vomit; she couldn’t remember the last time she ate.
Jiang wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and straightened up. Muscles screaming, she tried to get her bearings on her surroundings. She dragged slitted pupils over the ground she had laid. A clearing, if a small one within the dip between great roots. Some pieces of grass had been kicked up to reveal the peat and mud beneath, as damp and earthy as the air around her. The trees around her stretched to the heavens and shadowed the ground in muted, dark colors.
“Ok, don’t panic,” she panted. “I’m in a forest. Ok, yeah! Let’s start with that. I’m in a forest and the nearest forest to Kanalis is the Black Forest. Alright. Unless a wyvern’s carried me off, I shouldn’t be anywhere else. Ok think, Jiang. I should-“
Another pang interrupted her thoughts and she winced. “Ohhh… hell, my head. What happened to me?!”
A flare of agony-fueled anger gave her a bit of strength and her tail lashed hard. She looked up at the trees, her mind clearing up a little more. The trees were tall, few branches until the very top of the tree. Dark green leaves filled the top, looking almost black through the shadows, and the voice of an old friend flooded her memory.
“One of my old airship buddies, this fella named Todd, used to climb the Blackleaf Sequoias as part of his search and rescue training before he joined our crew,” Krieger had said over a mug of beer, the old eagle chuckling at the memory. “Fell twice and I’m surprised the first fall didn’t do him in. Ain’t no branches til the top and it’s one long way down.”
Jiang stared up at the trees. Sure enough, she could conclude she definitely was in the Black Forest. Blackleaf Sequoias didn’t grow anywhere else. She also, with far more disappointment, noted her lack of climbing gear. Even with the equipment, she doubted she could manage the strength to haul herself up the trunk of the upsettingly tall trees.
She rubbed a hand over the back of her neck in weary frustration, her feathers fluffing up. As she did so, her fingers brushed the cord resting against the nape and her eyes widened. She reached down and her claws scratched the glossy surface of her amulet. She had all but forgotten it and she looked back up at the tree. It was a long ways and typically, she knew better than to use her stone when she was exhausted. However, the wet cold in the air and her damaged clothes pressed her on.
Alright, levitate, Jiang reasoned tiredly. Easy enough. It’s only the first thing I learned. Nothing to it.
She focused on one of the lowest branches at the top and tried to summon the energy to utilize the stone. She pushed her weight onto her toes, hands outwards by her sides. The stone glowed and-
Szzzrt!
With all the grandeur of a robot short circuiting, the stone let out a few pitiful boots of energy and the yellow glow died. Jiang looked down at the stone sitting on her chest. It stared back like an unimpressive paperweight on a string. She plucked it off her chest and smacked her palm against it like a malfunctioning machine. The stone did nothing.
She the amulet drop against her chest and tried once more . The stone glowed and flickered out in another crack of electricity. Again, she tried. The stone whined and waned. Her frustration mounted and she grit her teeth. The motioned scraped audibly in her skull and her brain throbbed in protest. Jiang’s vision grew fuzzy and she seized her head with a loud cry. Her eyes screwed just and burned with tears. A swear ripped out of her mouth. The stone did not respond.
Jiang snagged the stone in her grasp and raised it to her mouth like a walkie talkie.
“Hey Richard!” she shouted into it. “What is your problem?! You hoarding your magic now, you lazy puff of smoke?!”
She waited for his reponse, a disdainful complaint from the proud and lazy stone voice at the nickname she had given him or some decry of her insult. The stone did nothing. Richard’s voice did not come hissing into her ears.
“Richard, you better answer now!” she snapped. “What is going on?! You better not be lazing about your weird pocket dimension thing! Isn’t it your job to help me?!”
Once again, eerie silence. Something cold, more frigid than any mountain rain, seeped deep into Jiang’s chest like a blade. Her fingers trembled as dread slowly engulfed her, an unhurried floodwater rising and rising to build its suffocating pressure on her lungs. Jiang’s lip quivered and she held her stone closer to her face.
“Please Kalios, this is not the time for the silent treatment,” she pleaded shakily, her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. “I’m cold and I’m hurt. I don’t know where I am. I want to go home and I need you to work with me here. S-So talk to me. Please, Kalios, talk to me!”
The use of his true name was met with more unsettling silence. Tears managed to slip through and Jiang exhaled a petrified whimper. She looked up at her environment, endless trees reaching the cloud clotted heavens, cries of birds and insects echoing throughout the cool, wet air. She couldn’t see a trail from her place, not a single tent, no smoke of a campfire wafting up.
What am I gonna do? Why won’t Richard answer me? I don’t know where I am. I don’t even know how I got here…
Jiang breathed in shakily and wiped her face on the back of her knuckles, her skin stinging from missing scales leaving the skin still tender. She looked around once more, trying to find something, anything in the clearing to use to her advantage. A clue or whisper of an explanation. The only thing she could make out was a fallen tree broken near the base and-
Another fallen one behind it, perhaps 10 or 15 feet away. To find a fallen tree in a forest strange was like finding smooth rocks in a river strange. However one a few feet away from another, almost in a straight line? Jiang squinted and looked past the second tree further back. Sure enough, blurred by distance was another tree, snapped in the middle.
“Huh,” Jiang mumbled. “That’s… worth investigating.” She scanned the area once more and with truly nothing else out of the ordinary, Jiang made up her mind. The cold air after a rain shower would soon turn to fog and she would not be so keen on trying to navigate the Black Forest in a blanket of white.
She looked down at her stone and raised a claw to tentatively encircle it.
“If you’re taking one of your naps, you’re really gonna get it, Richard,” she muttered and started up the small clearing, deeper into the woods.
Her muscles ached awfully but she was not willing to admit defeat so easily. Not when her mother would be worried sick about her. Jiang pulled herself up the short incline and glanced back over her shoulder at the clearing to try and memorize where she had been. With the collapsed trees in mind, the torn up grass was more than a little odd. She just hoped the connection was just a set of mere coincidences.
She pressed on through the cold, damp air and followed the trees. Sure enough, perhaps 10 feet passed the third tree, another collapsed on lay ahead. And another. And another.
With each one, that sense of dread followed Jiang, breathing down her neck.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He brushed through the small crowd of people gathered around the scene. Some citizens of Kanalis and even a few guards off duty had come by to see the remains of the fiasco that had taken place only a few before. The coolness of the fall air had been warmed up by the cluster of bodies that morning. They muttered and whispered, only to stop and let the hooded elf pass. Glass cracked beneath his feet as he navigated the damage of what had once been some rinky-dink, hole-in-the-wall shop. Now it had looked like a grenade, or even several, had been tossed in and blown up in spectacular fashion.
Brick, wood, and metal were strewn about in some industrial confetti. He stepped over the blown off arm of some old model robot and a large “X” from what had once been part of the sign over the shop. The doorway and front wall had been blasted outward and into the street, charred and cracked. All that remained were the warped metal frames of the doorway and windows, guarded by two elves. The sight made something ugly in his stomach churn and the could taste of bad memories threatened to steal his mind from the mission at hand. The cloaked elf stifled it bitterly and pushed on towards the door.
The two elven guards snapped their attention to him, eyes narrowed. Despite the real debacle that had reached his ears through rumors about town, only they had been posted to guard the location behind yellow tape and barking orders.
“Halt in the name of the king!” one shouted, readjusting his grip on his spear. “No one is allowed entry!”
The cloaked elf scoffed coldly and lifted his hood just enough for the guards to see his face sneering back at them. “I beg your pardon?”
The guards flinched violently, like a ghost had materialized before them. Despite his role being more contractual rather than real rank, the two bowed their heads out of respect.
“A-Apologies, Gabilan,” the one on the right, a young elf of about 17, stammered. “I hadn’t recognized you.”
Gabilan rolled his eyes in disdain and stepped through the doorway. “You’d best keep your manners so you don’t have to apologize, boy. Why don’t you put your voice to better use and update me on all this?”
“Ah, y-yes,” the young guard nervously acquiesed and followed Gabilan closely into the privacy of the demolished building. “There was an incident-“
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Uh… well, under orders of the king, a small team were searching for a stonekeeper.”
Gabilan’s ear twitched and he grit his teeth. Of course. That lot always tends to find themselves in trouble.
“Orders, eh?” He grunted, looking around the scene. “Why?”
He could make out the charred remains of the a work table and tools scattered across the floor. Wood splinters were littered everywhere in the whatever struggle had taken place. Metal cabinets lay toppled over one another and what looked like long divots carved into the walls. From sword or inhuman claws, Gabilan could not tell but he certainly hoped it was the former, against his better judgement. It did not help that something dark and brown stained the ground in some spots beneath cluttered rubble and the dubious marks in the wall. Usually he was present for the blood being freshly spilled, thick and red and slippery. By all accounts, any sort of filth could replicate old blood: rusted metal contaminating water and drying to the floor, red dirt and oil, old paints. But Gabilan had not been so naive, not since he was a boy still clinging to his mother’s skirt.
“Yessir, following a series of reports from guards patrolling Alabaster Street within the last months. The king is very eager to investigate any alleged sightings, even if it’s just by word of mouth.”
Gabilan stopped and peered over his shoulder. “Alabaster Street?”
“Yessir, people at the shipyard reported an incident with a kanalian girl with what sounded like a honest-to-Erlking stone,” the young scout noted. “According to the reports, she had gotten into an altercation with an elven ‘vagrant’ near some drinking joint. I think it’s called the Crooked Beak or something?”
Gabilan’s fists clenched and he scowled quietly to himself. Of course… just my luck. Through gritted teeth, he forced himself to continue his investigation.
“So the king ordered you to arrest her?”
“Well, not me, sir. I am just posted to guard. I’m sorry to say I have not been debriefed on what occurred. It was Captain Inarius who was in charge of the investigation and since then, a lot of the information has been declared confidential. From what I do know, it was more like a… detainment for questioning, I think? I don’t know what the king would want with another stonekeeper after Max but looks like they were just following orders.”
“And where is he?”
“I don’t know. After the incident here, he’s taken a leave of absence for the time being.”
Gabilan grunted and circled the area of the old workshop, minding any bent nails or shards of glass sticking up from the debris. He stepped down on a plank of wood and something beneath cracked. He lifted his foot and scanned underneath. An odd copper frame of something peeked out from beneath the plank.
Gabilan bent down and shifted the board aside with a scrape and clink of broken glass. He pulled out the frame and found an old picture, damaged and slightly torn. Within were two Kanalians, one woman older and unknown, the other younger and way too familiar. Though the girl in the photo was half the age of when he last saw her, his side ached at the memory of the burns she had left him with. Unlike the older woman, whose chow chow akin form was large, strong and soft all at once, the familiar kanalian was lithe, short, and unique in form.
Gabilan never forgot a face but it would be hard for anyone to forget a face like hers. Her snout was short and triangular like a rattlesnake’s with its harsh ridges softened into more rounded points. She seemed very reptilian and yet, not entirely so. She was cloaked in crimson scales of different shades with claws and sharp teeth to boot. In their two interactions, shoes were a no go with wide feet with claws more akin to talons to protect them. Long dark feathers that made up a hair like mane and a framed her face like an axolotl. In the photo, she lacked the scar he had left her with from their first altercation at that shut down warehouse. Ages before that fateful night That accursed yellow stone had not yet tainted her humanity as his enemy lacked it in the photo.
He didn’t need to ask. The clues were loud and clear but to keep his image, he turned to the scout and asked him, “Who are these two?”
“The Xiao family,” the scout said. “They owned the store. Xiao Bot Repairs, I think that was what it was called. The older woman there was the owner and I think that girl was her daughter. She was apparently our secretive stonekeeper.”
“Where are they then?” Gabilan pushed.
“Well. Again I wasn’t debriefed on much, sir. All I know is that the mother was injured in the incident and the daughter fled. Apparently, the daughter flipped out and went on a rampage. Whatever that entails should be in the report filled by Captain Galo or Senior Captain Inarius. It’s currently confidential however. I’m not sure if you’re cleared but if you can find them, I’m sure you can ask them directly considering your… connections.”
Gabilan frowned deeply and looked down to the picture in his hands. He picked the glass shards from the damaged frame and tugged the photo free. Carefully, he folded the glossy paper, stored it in the small bag that hug from his belt, and turned.
“Where can I find Lieutenant Galo and Captain Inarius?” He grunted.
“Uh, I know Lieutenant Galo is currently staying in the barracks on Iago road and frequents some of the bars there and on Alabaster Street. As for Captain Inarius, I can’t say for sure. He went on leave just yesterday.”
Gabilan grumbled under his breath and stalked past the scout, crunching debris beneath angry, audible steps. “I suppose that’s as good as a place to start. Thanks.”
The scout hesitated and raised a hand after him.
“Excuse me, sir but… if I might ask, what exactly is your purpose here?”
Gabilan stopped at the skeleton of the old door way and looked over his shoulder. His gaze pierced the young soldier and the boy flinched.
“I suppose that’s confidential now, isn’t it?” Gabilan replied coolly.
His tone was icy, pointed and the scout got the message immediately. He cleared his throat shakily and saluted with a fist over his heart. “Understood, sir. Good luck.”
Gabilan nodded in acknowledgment and slipped out. The other guard still stationed stiffened up anxiously as Gabilan departed, disappearing into the crowd of spectators still hoping to get a good glimpse of what lay inside. Gabilan weaved through the crowd and walked a block down, grinding his teeth in frustration.
Just my luck. Always my accursed luck to get tied up in nonsense like this. And with the likes of her. Just had to try and play it the straight and narrow way.
He ducked into an alley way between an old boutique and a bookshop. He unzipped his side bag and pulled out a small rounded device. His mood only soured as he turned it on and typed a few digits into it. The device whirred to life and the screen crackled with static until a face appeared within. Gabilan grumbled under his breath and the kanalian fox man within frowned.
“I suspect you have something to report,” Leon Redbeard said plainly. “What is it?”
“Well, I found myself a new bounty and it’s something your stonekeepers will be very interested to hear,” Gabilan said. “Another stonekeeper has been living in hiding and word got back to the king. He sent some soldiers after her and she fled after causing quite a disaster in town.”
Leon’s ears perked and his eyes widened.
“Stonekeeper?” He echoed. “Well… not the best timing.”
“Will things progress as planned? Should we try and track her down first?”
“Things are already in motion. If we stop now, we will lose the opportunity. We will continue as planned but it is imperative that you find that stonekeeper and ensure her safety. Who else knows?
“I managed to get the names of two elves. Inarius and Galo. They were tied to the situation and have had the reports be sealed in confidentiality. My best bet at starting to find her is through them.”
Leon sighed and rubbed a furry hand beneath his chin. He glanced to the side as he thought, calculating what ought to be done.
“Alright, investigate anything that we can learn about her and bring in anyone tied in for any foul play,” Leon ordered. “This will take stealth and nonlethal means of detainment. You’re not acting as a mercenary. You’re acting as a bounty hunter and we have a code. You are not dealing with outlaws and will follow our method of doing things. Remember your deal.”
Gabilan bared his teeth indignantly. “I haven’t forgotten, fox. But you will do well to remember my debt is with the prince and the council, not with you.”
Leon’s lip curled in a snarl and an odd sound grumbled in the back of his throat.
“Count your blessings,” Leon all but spat. “Report back when you learn anything.”
Without waiting for confirmation, the screen cut out and Leon’s voice disappeared with it. Gabilan shoved the communicator into his bag with a growl of frustration. Had he had half a mind, he’d turn his back on the whole ordeal and skulk off to the shadows he had become so accustomed too. However, he has unfortunately cursed with intelligence and some semblance of a backbone.
At least Prince- or more appropriately King Trellis is more likely to keep his promise than his father before him if things go as planned, he griped internally. This better be worth it.
He slipped out from his hiding place and calmly walked down the street. He knew where to find Iago Road and the barracks. It would be a good place to start his hunt and hopefully drag out his time. He’d rather not have to face another angry stonekeeper. He’d done that too many times in his life and every single one had been a complete nightmare.
He’d be pissed to the hells but Gabilan hoped that never finding the Stonekeeper would be acceptable to the prince and his team of soft fools. At the very least he could say that he tried. Tempting indeed but Gabilan knew his debtor would not be so easy to trust the words of a mercenary without evidence.
Hopefully the evidence would be in Gabilan’s favor.