Location: Skarra Bree
Timeline: Sixth Age, 53rd Year, End of Summer
The final days on the Parkway North were a study in absolute desolation. The road, once the primary artery for trade all the way from Mersia had become a bleached bone stretching toward the horizon – word had surely travelled through the merchants caravan network to avoid the area. Yet Nathily and Emcorae still pressed onward even as the late summer heat became a physical weight trying to pound them into dust.
As the Azoras rode, the landscape took on a haunted quality. They no longer encountered the steaming bodies of weeks prior, instead they saw the aftermath of a deluge that had already passed. Abandoned cottages stood with doors ajar, their interiors ransacked by the desperate or the dead. Occasionally, they would spot a solitary figure in the distance—a farmer leaning on a hoe or a ragged child standing in a fallow field. But the moment the sound of Mossflower’s or Joanne’s hooves reached them, those figures would vanish into the tall, yellow grass like ghosts retreating from the sun. There were no waves, no shouts for news, no pleas for help. There was only the silence of the wary.
“They aren’t running from the plague anymore,” Emcorae observed, his voice muffled by the ash-stained scarf wrapped around his face. “They’re running from the living.”
Nathily didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Her mind was still a fractured landscape, torn between the terrifying emptiness of the road and the agonizing proximity of the man beside her who she so desperately wanted to escape to anywhere in the world with – anywhere but here. Every mile they traveled deeper into the far northeastern corner of Orkney felt like a distance further from the light of Arbola and from what could be a glorious life together, but which now might never be. The greenery of the south was a fading dream; here, the world was a palette of dust, ochre, and the pale, sickly grey of the dying – be that people, vegetation, or love.
By the time the broken down palisade of Skarra Bree appeared against the backdrop of the northern foothills and the end of the Great Parkway, the sun was a bruised purple orb dipping below the horizon – much like Nathily’s heart.
Skarra Bree
Skarra Bree was not a fortress, though it tried its best to impersonate one. It was a trading post that had turned into a town over time – a sprawled hub of timber and thatch that served as the final gateway before the road split to other destinations. A sun-bleached wooden palisade, reinforced with sharpened stakes and patched with scrap lumber, surrounded the perimeter of Bree. It was a defense built to keep out wolves and bandits, but it had proven pitifully inadequate against the Red Death.
In the decades prior, Skarra Bree had grown into a key element of of the Northern Trade Loop. It sat at the unique geographic nexus where the Great Parkway met a triple fork in the road. To the northwest Montreu, to the north Otronto, and to the east Fubar and the Akka Mountains. It was the eastern path – called the Iron-Haul Trail – that was the main road – for it led to the crown jewels of Orkney. As trading increased, the village was often riot of color and noise – for it was here that the lords of Orkney brought their wares (minerals, timber, and the like) to be traded for Pennal grain, Arbola art, Meridian silks, and countless more goods from the ports of Primcitta.
The history of the town was written in its architecture; the lower district was built of sturdy, fire-blackened stone from the first settlers, while the upper barrows were a chaotic sprawl of timber, added hastily during the Great Expansion in recent years – when the wealth of Akka trickled out to the far reaches of Orkeny. Over time, Bree had once boasted the largest open-air market north of the Primcitta, a place where a man could buy anything from a forged broadsword to an exotic songbird. But times had changed – quickly.
The village’s decline actually began before with the plague – with the closing of the Fubar borders. When King Diked at the command of Ramssee] began to pull his kingdom into a shroud of isolation and added countless checkpoints to make travel difficult, the lifeblood of Skarra Bree – the merchants and their caravans – stopped. Without coin, the village declined.
The palisade itself was a relatively recent and desperate addition. It had been constructed during the Year of the Broken Pike, when starving marauders from the farms and forests began to prey on the dwindling merchant stocks. The timber was scavenged from the very wagons that used to bring prosperity, giving the walls a patchwork, skeletal appearance. Now the village looked less like a town and more like a dying animal that had grown a thorny hide in a futile attempt to ward off the inevitable.
Fearing they might encounter Diked’s spies at worst and guessing they would not be welcomed at best, the Azoras had already made plans to keep a low profile as they approached the village. Before they reached sight of the town, they’d stripped away their identities as warriors at a rest stop in a secluded gully choked with scrub. The silver-etched breastplates and fine elven pauldrons—armor that sang of Arbola’s artisan-smiths—were wrapped in oilcloth and buried deep beneath a cairn of heavy stones. To carry such wealth into a starving town was to beg for a knife in the dark. Their primary weapons followed: Nathily’s beloved Falchia and Emcorae’s katana were replaced by rusted, chipped shortswords they had scavenged from a roadside wreck in anticipation of just such a need.
Perhaps most painful was the treatment of the horses. Mossflower and Joanne were noble creatures, their coats usually gleaming like polished silk. Nathily had wept silent tears as she worked a mixture of wet ash and dung into their hides, matting their manes and dulling their vibrant spirits until they looked like half-starved nags destined for the glue-pot. To a casual observer, they were just two more beasts of burden carrying two more broken souls.
“Hoods up,” Emcorae reminded her as they made ready to move.
Nathily pulled the heavy, grease-stained wool of her cloak forward. She tucked her long, golden hair—the color of a sun-drenched Arbola morning—deep into the recesses of the hood, ensuring the shadows swallowed the high, elegant curve of her cheekbones. Emcorae followed suit, smearing a final handful of road-grime across his forehead. His eyes narrowed into cold, suspicious slits. They weren’t warriors anymore; they were the walking dead of the Parkway.
When they finally reached the gate, they were taken aback with the scent of stagnant water and unwashed bodies. Two guards stood before them in a state of near terror. The larger one, a man whose cobbler’s apron was now stained with something darker than leather dye, leveled his rusted pike at Emcorae’s chest. His hands shook so violently the tip of the weapon traced tiny frantic circles in the air.
“Hold!” he shrieked, the sound cracking like a dry twig. “No entry for the blighted! Turn about or be skewered!”
Emcorae didn’t pull the reins. He didn’t even blink. Joanne kept her slow, rhythmic trudge forward, even as the pike’s head came inches from Emcorae’s throat. Nathily watched him, her heart hammering against her ribs. He was leaning too far into the role, she realized. There was an eagerness in the way he stared down the guard, a lack of fear that bordered on suspicion.
With a flick of his wrist, Emcorae produced a heavy Pennal silver coin. It caught the dying light, a brilliant spark against the grey backdrop of the village. The guard caught it with a clumsy snap of his fingers, his eyes widening as he rubbed the metal against his thumb.
“We’ve no cough and no bile,” Emcorae said, his voice dropping into the gravelly Northern rasp that Nathily barely recognized. “We’ve got coin for a bed and a desire to be gone by dawn. You want the silver, or shall we take our business to the ditches? I hear the crows in the gully are looking for fresh eyes.”
The guards exchanged a look of predatory greed. In Skarra Bree, silver wasn’t just money; it was a potential ticket out of the graveyard. It was the price of a bribe, a fresh mount, or a final meal. The men stepped aside, the heavy timber gate groaning on its rusted hinges as it creaked open—just wide enough for the horses to squeeze through.
The moment they crossed the threshold, the atmosphere shifted from hostile to suffocating. It was clear the plague had passed through here, but had done more than kill the population – the Azoras guessed that it had rotted the social fabric of the survivors too. Nathily felt the eyes of the villagers peering through the splintered gaps of shuttered windows. She felt the weight of desperate men lurking in the lightless corners of alleyways, their breaths held, their fingers likely curled around the hafts of hatchets. FOr his part, Emcorae knew that every resident looked at them and saw either a carrier of the “Grey Cough” or a walking treasury.
Thus it was that the silence was absolute around them – save for the rhythmic clop-clop of their horses’ muffled hooves on the cobblestones – a sound that felt like a countdown toward an inevitable explosion.
In a short time, they arrived at the village’s main inn, The Hanged Raven – even from the outside it that smelled of burnt tallow and cheap ale. The inn was a sagging monument to better days, its blackened oak timbers groaning under the weight of its three stories as if the building itself were exhausted by the misery it housed.
To their shock, the common room was not empty. It was a sea of hunched shoulders and shadowed faces. In a town where most were hiding, it seemed the desperate had congregated here for the safety of numbers or the numbness of drink. The silence that fell when the door creaked open was absolute. Dice stopped rattling; tankards stayed mid-air. Dozens of eyes—hard and hollow—fixed on the two mud-caked strangers.
Emcorae caught himself. He had almost led with his chin, his hand instinctively reaching for a sword that was currently far away beneath a pile of rocks. He remembered his rags, his ash-smudged face, and the fact that they were supposed to be “sorry travelers,” not Azora warriors.
The man behind the bar did little to welcome them. His braided beard was matted with grease, and his eyes darted with nervous energy. He slammed a rag onto the scarred wood of the as he growled, “We’re full. No beds for drifters. Go sleep in the stables with the rest of the muck. We don’t want your kind bringing the cough into a crowded house.”
A low murmur of agreement rippled through the room. A few men at a nearby table stood up, their hands holding heavy wooden cudgels. Emcorae felt the heat of the room rising, but still he tried to keep his cool. Nathily played along as Emcorae cautiously laned against the bar with the weary weight of a man on a long journey.
“We’ve come from the Parkway,” Emcorae said humbly. “My sister and I… we’ve been sleeping in ditches for a fortnight. We’re not sick. And we’d like a bed for the night. We’ll be gone by morn.”
He reached into his tunic, his movements slow so as not to trigger a fight, and produced a tarnished silver ring—an “heirloom” they picked up from an abandoned farm house for just such a moment – and then he placed it on the bar.
“It was my mother’s,” he lied, his hazel eyes glistening with a fabricated grief that made Nathily’s heart ache even though she knew the play. “It’s worth three nights in your attic and a bowl of whatever is in that pot.” Then with a winning smile, he asked, “What’s your name, friend?”
The barkeep’s eyes locked onto the ring. The greed was a physical thing, a twitch in his jaw. He looked at the crowd, then back at the “sorry” pair. Behind Emcorae, Nathily played her part. She didn’t look intimidating; she looked exhausted. She slumped her shoulders, letting her hood fall just enough to show a face pale with “fatigue,” her eyes downcast.
The tension in the room shifted from aggression to a grim. The men with the cudgels sat back down. To rob a warrior was a feat; to rob a fellow peasant of his last memory of his mother was a curse most weren’t ready to invite—not with the plague already at their heels.
“I’m Erik.” The big man snatched the ring, his thick fingers disappearing it into his pocket. “Attic room. The roof leaks and the rats are the size of terriers. Take it or leave it. And if I hear so much as one cough from up there, I’ll toss you both into the street myself.”
“That’d be fine,” Emcorae grinned, bowing his head in a mock show of gratitude.
Nahily leaned close to him. “I’ll take the horses to that lean-to we saw out back.”
“Sure thing, Nat.” Emcorae hopped upon a stool at the bar – something he’d done countless times during his youth at The Brandonale back in Monthaven with Alfranco. He turned to Nathily. “I’ll see if ol’ Erik’s stew is edible.”
Although Emcorae might have missed it, Nathily noticed that ‘ol Erik’ wasn’t amused by the newcomer’s overly familiar attitude.
Assault
The lean-to behind the inn was a drafty, shadows-drenched structure that smelled of moldering hay and old manure. It was nearly empty, save for a few scrawny pack-mules. Even as Nathily led the horses into the furthest stalls, her Azora senses were screaming of a hidden threat so her guard was up.
The surprise came as she was tightening the tether on Mossflower – when the floorboards behind her creaked.
“Quite a prize you are,” a voice rasped. “Too pretty for a refugee. Too clean for the road.”
Nathily didn’t jump. She slowly turned to find a lecherous peasant blocking the exit. He was one of the men who had been loitering at the gate—a man with greasy hair and a yellowed smile that made her skin crawl. And he wasn’t alone.
A smaller, wiry man stood in the shadows behind him, clutching a club. “Yes, too pretty, Hank. Too pretty for you, but not me.”
“Step aside,” Nathily said, her voice like cracking ice. “You don’t want this.”
“Oh, I think I do,” the larger man – Hank – said, stepping into the dim light of a flickering lantern. He reached out a grimy hand, his intent clear. “I saw that silver your man was throwing around. I figure a girl like you has more tucked away in that bodice. But it’s not your coins we want. He-he. Why don’t you be a sweet thing and—”
He never finished the sentence.
In a blur of motion that no human eyes in Skarra Bree could have tracked, Nathily moved. She didn’t draw her blade; she didn’t need to. She stepped inside his reach, her hand catching his wrist with the force of a steel trap. She twisted, the sound of snapping bone echoing through the stable, and used Hank’s own momentum to drive her knee into his solar plexus.
As the brute gasped for air, the lithe elfess spun Hank around, her forearm slamming against his windpipe. It was a precise, lethal strike intended to silence, not just to stun. The would-be attacker collapsed into the hay, his eyes rolling back as he clutched his throat, his breath a desperate, wet whistle.
The second man hissed and swung his club, but by then Nathily was already gone from that spot. She’d ducked beneath the arc of the wood, her palm striking upward into his chin with a sickening thud. His head snapped back, and he fell like a stone, hitting the floor with a heavy thud.
Nathily stood over her assailants, her breath shallow with mixture of adrenaline and a cold fury. She looked at the peasants—the men were still alive, but barely. With a grunt of exertion, she grabbed Hank’s collar and dragged his unconscious form into the shadows behind a pile of moldering hay. She did the same for the second man, covering them with a thin layer of straw.
But then – another surprise: “The hawk strikes hard when the butcher is waking up.” The unexpected voice came from the far corner of the stable, a stony rumble that made Nathily’s blood turn. She whirled around, “Who’s there?”
Her Amorosi eyes quickly spied a man sitting on a crate in the deepest shadows, almost invisible in the gloom. He was caked from head to toe in the fine, red ferrous dust of the northern iron pits. He was sharpening a pickaxe with a rhythmic, grinding stone.
“Just a watcher,” the man said, his pale eyes catching the lantern light. “Name’s Bram. I’ve seen enough death in the pits to know when a man is looking for it. That’s Hank,” he gestured toward the hay pile with his pick, “he found it.”
“You saw?” Nathily was annoyed. “And you didn’t help him? Or me?”
Bram let out a dry laugh. “Help? In Skarra Bree? Girl, the only person who helps you in this town is the one who buries you. I’m a miner. I mind my own business and I wait for the mountain to stop coughing. But you… you have the scent of The Others, and the look of the hunted. You shouldn’t linger here.”
Nathily slowly relaxed, sensing no immediate malice from the dust-covered man. “What do you know of the road East?”
Bram stopped sharpening. The silence that followed was pregnant with a warning he seemed hesitant to voice. “Iron-Haul Trail? It’s the mouth of the furnace, little bird. The King’s shadow has grown long enough to reach the clouds, and the air… the air has teeth. If you’re looking for a hero’s welcome, you’re about a month too late for the funeral.”
He stood up, his movements slow and methodical. “Eirik and his friends will be looking for this pair soon. If I were you, I’d be through the palisade before the moon hits the ridge.”
Without another word, Bram turned and vanished into the back of the stable. Nathily didn’t waste going after him. She checked the horses, knew they were capable of defending themselves, and quickly slipped back into the inn.
I hear you loud and clear. Those words have become a crutch, and it’s time to break them. I will strip away the repetitive descriptors and find fresh, visceral ways to ground the atmosphere.
Here is the conclusion of the chapter, revised for unique imagery and a more distinct, haunting tone.
The atmosphere in the common room had shifted from stagnant suspicion to a low-frequency thrum of impending violence. Eirik wasn’t just whispering; he was leaning over a table of scarred wood, his massive frame casting a shadow over two men whose hands were rhythmically tapping the hilts of their rusted daggers. The flicker of the hearth-fire played across their greedy faces, reflecting a consensus that had clearly been reached: the strangers wouldn’t be leaving with their boots or their lives.
Emcorae sat by the fire, a silhouette of feigned exhaustion. He didn’t eat. The stew sat cooling, a skin of grease forming on the surface as he tracked every movement in the room through the periphery of his vision. When Nathily slipped back through the door, the subtle, sharp tilt of her head was like a lightning strike. The tension in her shoulders told him everything—the stable was no longer a sanctuary.
He was on his feet before she even reached the table.
“We’re leaving,” she breathed, her voice a ghost of a sound as she brushed past him.
“The room?” Emcorae’s brow furrowed, his mind momentarily calculating the loss of the silver ring—the “heirloom” he had used to buy a safety that had already expired.
“Doesn’t matter. We leave. Now.”
With the practiced, fluid stealth of the Azora, they glided toward the shadows of the back kitchen. The shift in the room was instantaneous. Eirik bolted upright, his red beard bristling as he realized his prey was slipping through the net.
“Hey! You haven’t touched the pottage!” Eirik’s voice boomed, a confused demand that signaled to the others that hunt was on. “Sit down! No drifter leaves the Raven without a proper tally!”
But they were already through the grease-slicked kitchen and out into the biting night air. The stable yard was a cacophony of mud and shadow. Nathily threw herself into Mossflower’s saddle, and Emcorae followed suit on Joanne just as the rear doors of the inn slammed open. Eirik spilled out into the yard, flanked by four men armed with clubs and notched iron.
“Thieves! Plague-rats!” Eirik roared, his face purple in the moonlight. “Don’t let them reach the gate!”
The warriors didn’t waste breath on a parley. Mossflower and Joanne, sensing the frantic adrenaline of their riders, exploded into a gallop. The townsfolk, used to the sluggish pace of malnourished nags, stumbled back as the “shabby” horses revealed their true, powerful elven stride. They tore through the yard, the sudden drumbeat of hooves echoing against the timber walls like a heartbeat.
The pursuit was fierce but brief. Nathily led them through a brief maze of narrow alleyways where the overhangs nearly brushed their hoods. She had memorized the line of the wall upon their arrival, and she didn’t hesitate when they reached the eastern flank. The palisade here was a patchwork of neglect; the timber was sponge-soft and black with rot, held together by nothing but brittle, oxidized wire.
With their pursuers still shouting two streets back, the horses surged against the wood. The barrier gave way with a splintering sound. They pushed through the breach, their hooves instantly muffled by the soft, churned earth of the dark fields outside.
The flight continued in silence until the flickering torches of Skarra Bree were nothing but pinpricks of dying light behind them. It took nearly a candlemark to double back through the lightless gullies to the hidden cairn. There was a grim efficiency to the way they worked—shoveling away the stones, stripping the ash-stained wool, and reclaiming their true steel. As Emcorae buckled his silver breastplate and Nathily felt the familiar weight of her bow across her back, the “sorry travelers” vanished. The Azora had returned.
As the moon rose to its zenith, casting a pale luminescence over the world, they crested the final ridge of the northern hills. The triple fork was there and they road they wanted hooked sharply to the East.
Scanning ahead, they both felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night wind. The geography of TerrVerde had fundamentally shifted. The parched, flat steppe was gone. In its place was a nightmare landscape of obsidian-colored hills that looked like the broken teeth of a buried beast. Deep, lightless ravines flanked the narrow trail, and a low-hanging mist swirled through the valleys, clinging to the rocks like a living shroud.
Nathily reined in Mossflower, her breath hitching. She looked at Emcorae, his face set in a mask of grim resolve. His eyes didn’t reflect the light; they seemed to absorb the gloom, burning with a cold fire that made her heart ache. She thought of the bodies she had hidden in the hay—the first blood shed in a town that was already dead—and the crushing weight of the “Teresius Warning.”
“We’re close to our goal, aren’t we?” she asked, her voice small against the whispering silence of the ravines.
Emcorae didn’t turn his head. He stared into the mist, his hand resting on the hilt of his katana, his entire being coiled like a spring.
“Close enough to smell Diked’s rotting blood,” he replied. “Can you hear it, Nathily? The wind sounds like the king’s moans.”
He kicked Joanne into a trot, heading down into the first ravine. Nathily followed, her silhouette merging with the shadows as they descended into the heart of the northeastern waste – entering into the unknown.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 