Ep.6 The Blight Queen

A Tale Of Doon

Goatbeard snapped his fingers and a line of brutish looking characters fanned out in a line either side of him. The goatman took a step forward, his cloven hoof clopping on the dirty cobbled street as he gave a kurt bleat to make his presence known. The vendor, a sun browned, leathery skinned woman with wispy hair and a filthy apron, took a weary step back despite the dividing wall of her rickety serving kiosk. The nervous expression on the vendor’s face caused Vesca to pause in her eating, a spoon full of hot soup with a noodle dangling precariously, and a lump of unidentifiable ‘street meat’, steaming in the cool mid-morning air.

“Vesca the Vandal,” Goatbeard bleated from a few feet behind Vesca, a threatening yet cautious distance judging by the sound of it. She winced at the name, hating it, and having no idea how she’d picked it up in the first place. The judgmental misgivings of others she imagined, rumors and stories spoken to-and-from people she’d never met, no doubt. The wild imaginations of those not privy to events themselves, but later arrivals, who saw and judged a scene a mess, rather than a necessary outcome, or sheer collateral damage. Could she really be blamed for the rash actions of others? Should she be at fault for defending herself in the face of serious harm or certain death? She’d walked Theon for many hundreds of years. Lived the life of a wayward soul, haunted by mysteries she herself did not wholly understand. Was it so strange that in all her travels events had spiraled out of her control from time to time? It hardly seemed fair to be saddled with a name that amounted to as much as a minute fraction of all her enduring years.

“What of it?” She found herself answering, her voice fair and feminine but for the crackle associated with her advanced age, even for a Fey.

“I’ve got it on good authority you sacked a caravan three days short of Doon, not surprising from someone the likes of you. You disparate Djuani are always into what isn't yours. You’ve taken from me, and now I’ve come to take something back.”

While Vesca had crossed paths with a caravan not three days out of Doon, and the caravan may have been sacked in due course (and for lack of a better term), she felt it unfair to be blamed for such outcomes. As she recalled, she’d been minding her own business, tending a little fire at her roadside camp when the wagons with its guard pulled up to share in the sheltered area. It was the assembled body of thugs (whom Goatbeard clearly considered respectable guards), drunk, bored, or prejudiced as they were, that started the whole affair. First a few begrudging words, then the odd taunt, a self-invitation to rummage through her things, before it all topped off with one kicking over her pot of cooking brew. The insults could be dismissed as harmless banter. The rummaging through her belongings, rude. But once a hearty meal is lost, threatening one's livelihood, and throwing away the energy poured into its preparation, that’s when things have a tendency to escalate. At that point it seemed only fair the offender end up in the cook-fire. Why his companions felt the need to get involved was beyond Vesca, but they had, and it wasn't long before things turned ugly. Bloody ugly.

“You could do with teaching your men some manners.” Vesca chastised the goatman without turning to face him. She sounded very much the grandmother despite being mother to no one. In her peripherals she could see a couple of such men moving to flank her, pressing in close, slowly, carefully. Vescal’s host, the vendor-woman, had disappeared beneath her kiosk. “If anything you should thank me for doing the job for you. And I didn't take anything from you. I left only with that which I arrived.”

Goatbeard blew angry air through his nostrils, the heat blooming a cloud of vapor. His eyes  veered in opposite directions as he raised his voice in rage. “Then somebody else did after you slaughtered the guard, you fool!” He blurted.

That seemed to be the queue as, a heartbeat later, there came a flurry of activity. Vesca spun on an instinct, hurled her spoon like a throwing knife which  pelted Goatbeard square in his triangular skull. It ricocheted off with a pang but did its job in sending him teetering back into the street. Two broad men with thick arms and stubby clubs lurched toward her on either side. Too near to flee and too heavy to dispatch one before the other, she did the next best thing and threw her arms bodily over the bench of the kiosk. The ramshackle construction was by no means sturdy. By all appearances it was a makeshift box for show, with a large heavy sign that, in theory, could be carted around the city. She heaved on it’s countertop so the whole thing came toppling forward, the two men caught by surprise as the heavy wooden beams and it’s broad sign reading ‘The Wayward Noodle’ came crashing down on top of them. Vesca sprung through the space in the middle, a new box forming from the upturned structure in front of her. On the other side, huddling in a protective ball, was the kiosks vendor who looked up all of a sudden then fled.

Three more men darted forward having avoided the worst of the crash as a handful of onlookers paused briefly amidst their errands to watch the goings on. Vesca saw her opportunity and dove though the kiosk into the relative safety of the other side. Her pursuers came on, herding her toward the street's edge so that any which path was no better than another. Seeing a crane with it’s crew of Gnome-Gee’s, she took her opportunity to run up and leap off a nearby stack of unloaded goods that jutted like a flight of awkwardly measured stairs, grab the crane crane arm in her flight, and swing herself gracefully to freedom. The nearest Gnome’gee cursed, the thug leaping with outstretched arms took a nasty boot to the face, and for the briefest of moments Vesca felt herself gliding gleefully out into the open air. The mechanism gave a groan, the cart on which it was mounted slowly began to topple, and the combined weight of crane, crate, and Vesca pulled the entire thing swiftly to the ground. There came a tremendous crash, a slew of obscenities from the assembled Gnome-gee’s, and the scrape of bone and crack of skull that Vesca associated with an unwelcome fall.

Vesca rolled, her head ringing, her mouth tasting suddenly of blood. See, it was days like these that earned her that god awful name, Vesca the Vandal. None of it was her fault, clearly, but they always blamed her nevertheless. If this wasn't Doon maybe she could have just slaughtered the bastards and left everything intact. Since she didn't fancy the Patrician sending the law after her, or worse, the Death Gnolls becoming invested (Doon’s only legislated form of killing within the city), escape was her only real option. Now look where that had got her, not to mention everyone nearby.

One thug got his hands on her, hauling her to her feet. The other came up all of a sudden with his club in hand. He clapped her across the head then socked her one in the gut which forced a ‘whoop’ of air from her mouth. She tried to cover up from the one while wrestling with the other in a tangle of arms and legs, kicking, writhing, thrashing. That’s how things usually went in Doon. Step on somebody, cross a guild, take something that didn't belong to you and it’d be paid back in a pound of flesh. Never death, that was reserved for those important enough to warrant such a price, but maybe some form of punishment that’d make you think twice before stepping out of bounds. Vesca was old enough and wise enough to keep to her own business, but sometimes life had a habit of getting you involved regardless.

The whole affair was getting annoying now. Vesca was too old and too proud to want to put up with it. The heat from the blows, the frustration from a big fool to stupid to know when to let go. The spilled soup, her lost noodle, that unanswered question as to the origin of the street meat wobbling in the middle of her spoon. Vesca felt her anger boil, a rage not so unlike Goatbeard's well up and inhabit her mind. She let out a roar, belting out her inward turmoil so that the entire street couldn't do anything other than stop and stare. Then came the crackle in the air, an inward sucking from an arcane pull, and as the light of day dimmed from some unseen power, an explosion of energy surged outward, blowing everyone and everything over with unnatural force.

Vesca the Vandal they’d taken to calling her, but it just wasn't fair.

(Continue to Ep.7)

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