The Elgrys Diaries I

The evening had started to seep into the clouds that never parted. In the world in which I was born, night would herald its arrival by painting the skies orange, then red and finally dark purple. The sun would drown into the Evrian ocean like an ecstatic convert baptized in its waters, then resurface behind the eastern mountain range bordering my hometown. I still hadn’t gotten entirely used to how different things were in this world. Evening came without fanfare, as a slow, colorless descent from muted, greenish shades of milky daylight to complete darkness. Whatever source of light illuminated this place behind that persistently overcast sky, it just seemed to fade in brightness come nightfall, then return every morning. There are no sunrises or sunsets in the Palefields, but after weeks of getting used to that, it was hardly the cause of the unease I was experiencing.

My anxiety wasn’t caused by a hulking creature leaving behind clouds of dust as it slid across a nearby plain at a pace that was too fast for something that looked like an oil-black hybrid of a giraffe and a snail. To be sure, roamers were dangerous predators, but like with most things in the Palefields, the peril they posed was determined by a peculiar set of rules. They picked their prey at random, making me as likely a target as some back-alley rodent in Elgrys. The fact that the largest city in the Palefields was over a hundred leagues away made no difference - a roamer didn’t let things like time and space get between it and its meal. It would simply cease to exist in one location and appear in another, next to whatever creature had the misfortune of being selected as its quarry. Getting eaten by a roamer was a fairly rare cause of death. People are more likely to die in fires.

Another oddity was that time’s passage felt irregular and uneven. The sensation is hard to describe to someone who has never experienced it first-hand. It’s a bit like drifting between wakefulness and sleep, leaving you feeling like something might’ve walked past without you noticing. While obviously disquieting, that wasn’t bothering me on the fifteenth evening of the expedition. My foremost apprehension was due to a human factor. The plans laid out by lieutenant Colnierre were, in a word, reckless. I can see why he chose not to elaborate on them back when he had recruited me.

“Ain’t no fucking way I’m doing it,” I protested.

The lieutenant was watching the roamer through his tent window. The creature’s trajectory passed our camp with a reassuringly large breadth. “You did write a contract,” he reminded me absent-mindedly.

“I’m pretty sure walking into Godsgrave would be considered an unreasonable request,” I replied.

“Perhaps. I can’t force you to go, but you can’t force me to pay you, either.”

I sighed in resignation. Jobs in the ‘fields, especially weird ones like this, paid well. “Why do you even want to get to a place like that?”

“For the same reason you ended up with us here.”

“What’s that?”

”Necessity.”

I answered with perplexed silence, prompting Colnierre to continue. “I understand there are risks involved, but you don’t turn down orders from the Synod. The survival of our country might depend on it.” His Synod. His country. I’d long since given up believing anything could halt the Calyndian imperialism from swallowing Pleronn. Too much economic pressure, too many vested interests bent on justifying all the sunk costs. 

“Whatever it is we’re looking for, I don’t think Godsgrave is the kind of place to house benign, clean solutions to a problem,” I replied.

The roamer was now a distant, barely discernible droplet of ink on the edge of the plain. The rumble of its passing had become imperceptibly faint. Colnierre walked away from the window and sat down, as unconcerned as ever. “If this turns out to be a dead end, you’ll still get paid, no?”

“Sure. Assuming we’re chasing a wild goose and not a rabid bear.”

“We’ve taken precautions.” He meant the Aradhi witch and the Peacekeeper. I’ve worked with Eoda before and I knew she was dependable. She could scry a dozen threats as many leagues away and pin down each of their positions, intentions and strategies, assuming the perils we might face actually possessed any of those. As far as the ‘fields are considered, that’s hardly a given.

If those threats got too close, that’s where Jarn’s presence would doubtless be appreciated. The Peacekeeper seemed competent enough, but most of us bore some degree of distrust towards his kind. One might think his fairly jovial, outgoing nature would soften my misgivings, but I found the lack of reassuring, dour professionalism associated with military folk unnerving. Goes double for people working or living in this particular world.

As the silence was beginning to verge on the awkward, it was broken by the sound of air starting to sing. It was a jarring melody, sliding up a tritone, then back down. An alarm, sounded by one of the warding spells Eoda had cast. Colnierre let out a small sigh. He had only just managed to wrestle a boot off his right foot and looked dejected. He was someone who could stay calm in a life-threatening crisis, but slight inconveniences aggravated him to a noteworthy degree. We all clutched onto our little flaws and quirks like precious talismans that would protect our humanity against the constant malaise that permeated the ‘fields. He waved me off. “Let me know if it’s anything actually serious”.

I stepped outside. In the deepening dark, Palefields would seem almost like any other world, unless you started listening closely. If you did, you’d start to pick out peculiarities in the nocturnal soundscape. Birdsong with an eerie sense of familiarity, occasionally punctuated by vocalizations that didn’t feel like they should come from anything avian. Waves on a shore even though the nearest body of water is miles away. Rarely, a distant thumping of slow, slouching motion that Eoda assured us was just our imagination. As I headed for the witch’s wagon, my attention latched eagerly into sounds that were caused by human activity around the campfires.

The wagon’s door was slightly ajar. I heard Eoda and Jarn talking.

“...I’d have to check. It will take some time, though,” Eoda said.

I entered the wagon. After a brief nod of acknowledgment from both of them, they continued.

“But probably nothing to worry about?,” Jarn asked.

“Not right now, but we both know how quickly that can change.”

“Of course,” Jarn said, already halfway through the door. He had missed a button. Must’ve fallen asleep just before the alarm was sounded.

The Peacekeeper closed the door behind him. Eoda had busied herself at a dissection table and was in the middle of extracting the liver and kidneys from a freshly butchered dove. I gazed around the interior while she worked. I wasn’t sure if it was magic or not, but it felt like the inside of the wagon was more spacious than the outside.

“What did I miss?” I asked once I heard the soft clinking of her tweezers and scalpel abate.

Eoda didn’t lift her eyes from the table. “Probably nothing.” She scooped the entrails to a small copper bowl, uttered words in Crowntongue and a green-blue flame ignited on a nearby altar, to which she threw the viscera.

In the flame, I could see an image. A small brook running through colorless autumn forest. A herd of white, doe-like creatures stood at a distance. “Glarings. Skittish, yet dangerous. Get too close and their eyes will flash and you’ll get a nasty concussion. Persist in your approach and you’re met with cranial hemorrhage and, eventually, death,” Eoda explained. “They’ll probably get out of our way by morning. They don’t like human sounds.”

Something in her voice prompted me to ask. “But…?”

“This is an exceptionally large herd. Usually these critters come in fives, but I count at least nineteen.”

“Have you consulted Filne about that?”

Eoda glanced at the door, as if awaiting for our resident Hag to enter on cue, but nothing happened. She redirected her attention to the flame. “A heavy sleeper, that one.” If she was bothered by Filne’s lack of punctuality and discipline, she didn’t let it show.

“You want me to go and wake her up?” I offered. I wasn’t one to shower others with acts of kindness, but for some reason I wanted Eoda to like me. I had reflected that it wasn’t attraction as much as admiration. Perhaps I seek approval from competent people to allay doubts about my own capabilities. I’ve always seemed to measure up all right, but that has never completely removed my diffidence.

She permitted herself a small, if weary, smile. “Got my hands full for the rest of the evening, so I’d appreciate it.” I left her rummaging through a cabinet for small crystal globes as well as rods made of brass. As I was closing the door, I could hear her muttering in Crowntongue as she suffused the artifacts with Amrita.

Filne was where I assumed she’d be. I followed the sound of deep, heavy snoring to one of the more remote campfires on the edge of our encampment. She was sleeping on the ground, completely unbothered by the cool, damp weather. It’ll take more than a slight nip in the air for a Hag to catch a cold. I called out her name and prodded her with the edge of my boot. She stirred slightly, protesting in that foreign tongue of those who are half-asleep and refuse to be woken up. After a moment, apparently still sensing my presence, she let out a tired groan and gathered enough resolve to get on her feet. I was of above-average height, but she nonetheless towered over me, the stark outlines of her square-jawed face made more striking by the firelight. Her voice had depth that matched her stature. “What’s the occasion?,” she asked groggily.

“Eoda’s ward caught an unusual herd of glarings,” I answered. “She could use your opinion.” She tilted her head slightly. I couldn’t read her at all. I have trouble sussing out the meaning behind ordinary people’s expressions, let alone those of witches that pick up affectations and body language from the animals to which they transform. Her voice nonetheless carried the cadence of perfectly human emotions - annoyance mixed with a tinge of amusement. “Well, shit, let’s not keep her waiting”. Filne was one of the few people brave— or reckless— enough to offer their services to those who needed a guide in the northwestern plains surrounding Godsgrave. She seemed at home in this world, which made her an outlier among her own kind. The Palefields “smell wrong” to most Hags, but apparently she wasn’t bothered. I wasn’t sure if that made me uneasy or reassured. 

On our way to the wagon, Filne stopped walking, as if she had heard something. She then looked up, at something perched on a pine branch high above us. In the twilight, my eyes couldn’t pick out anything from the dimly lit canopy. “Don’t try to look at it directly,“ Filne said in a casual, conversational tone so as to not alarm whatever was up there. ”Some things are easier to spot when our eyes are focused on something else.” I followed her advice and directed my gaze to a nearby fir tree. I still couldn’t see anything, but something in my field of vision seemed to report: Movement, to the right! I instinctively refocused my eyes onto the source of the motion, but could once again see nothing.

Filne had noticed my reaction. “The middle of our visual field is good at gleaning intricate details about form and color, but is numb to movement,” she explained. “It has grown complacent. Lazy. Content to look only upon shapes that stay still and let their contents be analyzed. But the outer reaches of our eyes still remember the predators and the monsters, and haven’t forgotten the tricks that reveal them.” I willed my attention to drift away from what I now sorely wanted to see and could once again detect movement to my right: A slow undulation, moving languidly across the branches, gradually receding beyond campfires’ glow, until even the most paranoid backwaters of my vision could find nothing but motionless darkness. “Naturally, most of the time they’re wrong and make you look like a fool that jumps at shadows,” Filne continued. “But after they end up saving your life for the first time, you’ll learn to appreciate their wisdom.”