The silent roar of a campfire blazes into the night sky. Far above the stars shine gold, red and green and the moon casts its ugly head to watch the somber woods beneath its hull. There, in a village of tents, is a small band of adventurers who use the fruit apple as their symbol and title.
"So now that your debt is paid off, how long do you plan to stick around" Jakurk stirred the fire with a burnt wooden stick, keeping it burning, its flame lit beneath the iron cauldron burning with a fish soup.
"What?" Tristin sat on the opposite side of the fire, atop a small wooden log dragged out from the nearby forest.
"Im guessing you wanted to join us so badly because you needed enough money to settle your debts, well the debt is settled, it's done and gone, so how long do you plan to stick around?" Jakurk did not trust the hill folk. He was too much like himself, willing to keep large secrets, steep death and an accusation of being a murderer which he had admitted too. Quite frankly he wondered if the party would be better off without him.
"Well.. for as long as you'll have me…" Tristin's eyes didn't leave the dancing fire. He knew he wasn't exactly the kind of person you'd want in a party. His skills were mediocre, useless in a fight, and his past would drag both him and anyone connected to him down.
"So until we're rich enough that you can slit our throats and escape into the night with our earnings?" Jakurk stared directly at him. With eyes that saw through any lie. For Opip it felt oddly like watching her parents fight, made even worse since she'd only gotten fragments of the conversation back in the broken nail.
"NO, of course not, I would never do something like that!" Tristin flared up. He stared directly into Jakurk's eyes as he spoke. And what he said was true, Jakurk had lived long enough to tell.
"Then what happened, why did you kill three people, for what end?" Whether Tristin remained in the group come morning or if he was sent back to town depended on his answer.
"Becuase they killed my brother" Silence befell the camp as Tristin sat back down. Only the dancing flames and the bubbles of the soup could be heard.
"Well thats a good enough reason for me" Opip reached for the soup spoon, she wanted the discussion to be finished as quickly as possible so they could eat. She was starving.
"Im not finished" Tristin caused her to stop. It seemed the soup would have to wait.
"I came to this island one year ago with my twin brother, Kvist Daehult. Together we aimed to gather jewels and crystals on the fourth floor, the floor called the moss grave." A dungeon was commonly divided into floors, floors were regions found within a dungeon separated by the distance from the surface. As a general rule the lower the floor the larger the danger and reward.
"Within the moss grave there are ravines, deep once the some speculate reach down to the supposed dark sixth floor the lowest anyone has ever gone. The ravines' walls were filled with rare crystals which used to be the dungeon's main attraction before the veins dried up about two months ago."
"We would scale the walls with hardy sylvester rope, the kind that could support heavy weights, back then we got into an argument with a different group of adventurers over a particularly rich spot along the eastern ravine, things escalated but before things got too serious, Vinkt intervened on our behalf, after all kin folk are meant to help each other or something like that, it was foolish to trust him"
"I thought that would be it, that the problem was gone, that we could make enough coins to send home, but. Then came a quiet morning, i decided to take a day off, enjoyed some boose, some friends and some cards, while my brother toiled away alone in the dungeon, then those same adventurers came and looked at me as if i was a ghost, my brother did not return to the inn that night"
"Which wasn't that unusual, the journey down to the fourth floor can take between six to eight hours and when carrying a load of crystals even longer. He could have made camp in the dark, taken an expensive bed down in August's drop.. but he hadn't. When I made my way down to our spot. What I found was a cut rope."
Tristin bit into his lip and hid his eyes with his hand. No tears came, they had dried up long ago but the bitterness remained. He should have been there. He took one day off and it cost him everything. "You don't have to continue," Jakurk handed him a bowl of soup. Tristin stared at it. Then slowly reached out his hands and took it. "I burnt their house down, a hamlet on the coast south of town. I can hear the screams, but I feel nothing at all."
"You got revenge, ain't that good enough?" Opip chowed down on a spoon of soup. She didn't like it. She should have bought the pork. But it was so expensive.
"I don't think that was the problem. But what you did, Trisin it was wrong, but i would have done something far worse so im not the kind of man who should judge" Jakurk seemed tired. The fire reflected the old wrinkles in his face, half of them seemed to cut deep, scars of old wars. Battles not told as heroics but as tragedies. The path he had taken through his life was a muddy one covered by bones. And although he might live to regret it, it was the path he walked.
The three continued to eat in silence. "You know, one time my clan had our cattle stolen by another clan" In Cezen the hounds were divided into clans that roughly followed the same religion. Opip came from a large clan of Grahunds, one of the three main cultural groups that dominated the steppe. "Two of my brothers died in that raid, well i still had five other brothers left and nine sisters so it was okay, but still i know that losing your family hurts" Opip patted Tristin on the back seemingly hoping that he would cheer up, but it didn't seem like he would.
"So what did your clan do? I have heard nomads won't survive for long without their herd" Jakurk had never been to the Cezen stepp, a land of strong winds and grassy hills and tiny lakes. He heard it was as beautiful as it was bloody.
"We went to war, my father rallied the banners of our sister clan and together we destroyed the clan which had dared to steal from us. We took their herd while our sister clan took their treasures and surviving clan members" Opip was not bothered by the thoughts of war. It was a natural thing. If one's family starved one took from another to live, such was life.
"What happens to the surviving members of a defeated clan?" Jakurk was interested in the ways of foreign lands. He had traveled quite a bit during his life. He had seen, heard and learnt of nearly every culture, every nation, every port along the Orcan Sea. And now even in his old years he was curious.
"Well.. they are either sold as slaves or incorporated into the victor's clan as Chifas, the lowest caste in hound society." Hound society seemed simple at first glance, hundreds of small warring clans along an open green steppe. But upon closer look one found a spiritual society divided into castes that determined a hound's entire life. Chifas, the lowest cast, servants and slaves. Ittul, The merchants and craftsmen. Punns, The priests of the many headed god. Jacherds, the warriors and finally the Mactin the ruling cast their chiefs, kings and the said to be direct descendants of Macca the wolf who ate the first moon.
"Intresting, so what cast are you?" The subject of Tristin's past had slowly disappeared from memory. Now they focused on much simpler things, the taste of the food, the open night sky and whatever it was Opip was talking about.
"Me? well i wish i had been born as a Jacherds as a warrior, but unfortunately i was born as a Macca" She said it so casually that Tristin barely noticed. But when it finally clicked it made him spit out his soup.
"YOU'RE A NOBLE!" Someone of the upper class, maybe not in his own society but within one none the less. An important person besides him was eating poorly cooked fish soup with a broken wooden spoon. "I guess in the common tounge id be nobility, yes, so?"
"Shouldent you be.. I don't know ruling your clan from a wooden throne covered in silk and red pillows while dining on green grapes?" Tristin had some preconceptions on how Nobility was supposed to act. They were mighty people too big for this world. Not meant to mingle with the peasantry.
"No, that's not the kind of life I want, so it's not the one i will live" Opip had her reasons for traveling. She wanted to be a warrior not a ruler. Someone who could win against anyone, someone who feared nothing, someone who didn't run.
"You get it, there's nothing good about being nobility. I was for a long time and the name didn't give me anything but trouble" Jakurk didn't even seem faced by Opip's sudden declaration of nobility. It didn't mean much to him where you came from but rather what you are seemed more important to him.
"What? you'd throw away a life of luxury? for this?" Both the hound and grass folk nodded at his question. To them this life was free, sometimes hard but the way they wished to live, at least for now. For someone who had chosen this life only in a desperate means to reach out of the poverty he had been born in, their answer seemed quite possibly insane.
"Im too tired for this, im going to bed" Tristin left the fire for the small white tent they had set up along the road. It was Tristins tent and it could fit around four people. It would likely be their only real shelter later in the dungeon and for now it seemed to be in a good shape.
"So you used to be a noble?" Opip and Jakukr continued their conversation into the night. The embers of the fire their only companion against the moonlit forest.
"I was born into it, realised way too late I didn't want it" The fire continued to smoulder into oblivion. "Do you think Tristin can be trusted?" Jakurk did not like it. The story seemed true but there was a hint of falsehood, too many gaps and too little proof of anything. Could he take the hill folk at his word or should he keep his distance?
"...Yes, he does not smell like a liar" Opip stared into the darkness of the night. She believed in the hill folk. And trusted him just as much as she did the mage. Although if any of them were to betray her trust her blade would find their neck.
Jakurk took her answer into account. Hounds had a different way of seeing people than other races. If she could trust the hill folk then at least he could give him a fair chance. The two of them sat by the fire in silence, Tomorrow they would brace the dungeons depth for the first time.