300 years later…

“Paganism!” Jak’har of Rüzgâr spoke the words on the pamphlet in mock solemnity: “To all right-wise citizens of her Majesty’s Empire, be gravely vigilant against this barbaric doctrine that wields a strong attraction to the typical male aggressor, mainly human men. Imperial investigations have linked deplorable behavior to this once subsidiary culture in Avrupa and the Northern Isles, discovering that it glorifies and vindicates the passé roles of femininity as the highly praised epicenter of its teachings, along with the practices of pillaging, slavery, slaughter, bigotry, and especially the degradation of…” She paused for dramatic effect. “…Women!”
“And that is a problem.” The Sword Dancer’s slender finger was a stake piercing her companion’s bounty on the table: three thousand gold florins. In 14th century economy, it was a nobleman’s wage within a Royal Household. The bright blue of the pagan woman’s eyes scrolled down the poster, noting the last word emboldened beneath the stated reward: Alive.
“Crapper snappers!” the Rüzgârian exclaimed in a mix of surprise and self-amusement. “And in gold? Hmph! You’d think that mean jokes were the be-all end-all of existence—the cosmic life-force or something!” In a manner that seethed with self-conceit and exhilaration, Jak’har drowned herself figuratively with another swig of schwarzbier, a popular import from the Continent, from her wooden tankard.
The Sword Dancer was acting less than festive tonight: “For that much, I’m almost tempted to turn you in myself. You alienated half of the Guild!”
“I alienated the cry babies,” Jak’har rolled her eyes. “No big lost.”
“You just couldn't resist, could you?”
“Crapper snappers! Are we really doing this now after all this time?”
“Now!” Seetha narrowed her own eyes. “Or later, we could wind up in a dungeon or exiled to Hell’s Gate. Either one I’d rather not be in, but I think I’d rather be dragging a ball and chain around for a month than get eaten by dire dragons in some wilderness over a stupid joke.”
Jak’har’s mood didn’t sway one bit. “Well, what could be worse? Dungeons or Dragons? We can handle both, you know that.”
“Not like this one we won’t,” Seetha shook her head, making the curls of her long black hair vexedly bounce. “Not unless you have resistance to poisonous fumes or poxes in your nether realms. How your lewd conquests haven’t blessed you yet with that level of immunity is beyond me!”
Like a desert serpent from her Isyrian homeland, Seetha’s green eyes stared venomously at Jak’har to let her know the seriousness of their plight. But Jacq the Rüzgârian wasn’t fazed at all; it wasn’t the first time that Seetha had displayed anxiety or irritation over trivial matters, even when Jacq was the instigator. To that, she leaned back nonchalantly on her wooden chair and admired the jubilant scenery of the Pike’s Pike Inn.

Known to Seetha by her anglicized name since childhood, Jacquelyn (Jacq for short) was a tall woman, twenty-five of age, white-skinned, born of pure human stock. Her features beheld a rustic beauty: brown bobbed-hair that was wild and her hourglass figure that held up her bare, sinewy shoulders, which she rolled before taking another gulp. To her thinking, which was occasionally nuanced in spite of her simple ways, Jacq didn’t believe that anyone from the Guild’s HQ in Sloane would go through all the trouble of following two young women across the Sea of Tyrants into Angevin; two women who were stunningly beautiful but armed to the teeth. That said, she had hoped that treating her small companion to a respectable establishment with a room of her own and a clean bed for once, even offering to pay without splitting the bill, would ease the tension in her crankiness. It didn’t seem to be working.
For a quaint inn by the old Winding Blue, no bigger than 2,400 square feet, the carousing that filled the main room of the Pike’s Pike Inn with every cross-section of Angevin nearly every weekend night, was a noise that the faint of heart would perhaps be afraid of, for it may remind them of battles or quarrels or other terrible noises. Tonight, these were beautiful noises: laughing, boasting, bantering, and reminiscing of great deeds by hand, by magic, or by sword. How they rose into a crescendo now and then, intwining with the melody on the stage that shook the shadows along the walls of the white motor of the candle-lit room, like cave paintings coming to life. It was another busy evening. The bar maidens were plodding through the ambivalent air of sweet and bitter things to every table seated with thirsty mouths and empty bellies. They moved through the ale’s foam and the burning smoke of wax candles, of hanging lavenders and the dust on the travelers, and the piney smell of the lute on the stage which pulsed out a rhythmic river of ♪ Oh lei-oh lai-oh Lord ♪ that washed away the day’s tribulations from every patron’s hearts.
So named because of the establishment’s sign depicting the titular fish impaled on an iron head, villagers and hamlet dwellers were the Pike’s Pike’s usual patrons. Its more opulent cousin was the Cat’s Tongue Inn in the town of Ashinghamm, not more than five miles down river. To its credit, the Pike’s Pike has had it’s share of interesting travelers be they clergymen, pilgrims, foremen from town, and Adventurers from the Questing Guild. Local and imported brews were its mainstay, yet trade from Ashignhamm and Dalmont, and of course the fat of the river, abled the innkeeper’s cook to whip up decent enough cuisines to hold over the hunger of travels. Jacq suddenly noticed, however, that Seetha had barely touched her own ale since she had ferried news about her bounty, and a fly was taking a long bath in her carrot soup.

Seetha was short for her age, twenty-seven of age, another human born under the gentry name of Von Beldt from her father’s side. As an Isyrian, her dark-skinned features were undistinguished save for the small yet determined mouth, the cursive curls of her long hair shaped after the billowing of a thundercloud at sea, and the narrow shape of her eyes were sculpted after the cool likeness of a desert cat, which still did not look upon Jacq too softly. Apparently, she need more convincing.
“Hey lady!” Jacq called to the nearest bar maiden. “Lady! Another ale for my frowny, browny friend here.”
At that, Seetha gritted her white teeth together like chisels. This dumb gorilla could be digging her own grave and not know what she was shoveling. “They could hang a person in High Cimbria for saying that, you dumb gorilla!” she seethed under her breath.
The Rüzgârian only threw her head back, laughing. “Aww, don’t tell me that those Imperial sticks in the mud have gotten to you too. Besides, I thought you liked being called frowny browny.”
“Hmmm, that’s funny,” said Seetha in mock-thinking, “I don’t recall myself enjoying you using a negative of my world-weary disposition, or my skin color, in anyway.”
Jacq glared back, though not with hostility but rather with jesting derision. “Well, I’m pretty sure that no one likes being called a dumb gorilla either. Not that I ever complained.”
Seetha opened her mouth again to object, but then… Damnit, she’s right, she thought. “That’s neither here not there, Jacq. Stay on topic, will you? What else do you plan to do now, other than running on kettle steam?”

“Let ‘em come, on the field of my choosing,” said Jacq, a keenness for battle glittered in her eyes.

Seetha stuttered in frustration. “Ja—Jacq, you’re reasoning with all of this like a child! You’ve got to stop thinking of the Guild as your enemy!”
“Look, murder is an offense,” Jacq continued her justification, “so is treason, burglary, and strong language in some regions. Are you seriously telling me that cracking cripple jokes is somehow a warrant to hunt me down and lock me away like some kind of animal? Not that I deserve it.”
“Well, running only made you look guilty in their eyes,” said Seetha. “And flaunting self-deprecation is only going to get you so far in a court of law; and I still can’t believe you did what you did! You knew better than that!”

“It was bound to happen sooner or later, Seetha!” said Jacq defensively.

“Doesn’t matter, you should’ve been better,” rebuked Seetha.

“Yeah—a better fighter than her,” Jacq snorted.

“You think knocking her lights out like some common wife-beater makes you better?”

“Just because she was a cripple doesn’t give her a free pass from fair fights.”

Seetha massaged her temples, exasperated. “Look, it’s not about what’s fair or unfair It’s about respect and understanding. You can’t go around punching your problems away—no matter if they’re cripples or kings!”

Jacq crossed her arms over her chest and sported a grin as wide as the Winding Blue. “Do you even hear yourself right now? I expect to hear such jaded, delusional crap from teachers who punish their students for standing up to bullies—but from you?”

Seetha blinked, her vivid eyes flashed with a caustic glare. “Don’t you dare twist my words! I'm not saying you shouldn't stand up for yourself or others. I’m saying you need to fix this. You need to stop painting yourself as the victim and make everyone else out to be the villain.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Jacq refuted, her fists clenching under the table.

“Isn’t it?” Seetha challenged. She looked back at the Barbarian, her dark eyes unreadable in the flickering candlelight.
Jacq clenched her jaw, feeling all of a sudden like a prodded beast in a cage. “How can you even say that?” she slowly raised her voice, “you were there! You know what happened! You know what she did to me!”

Seetha sighed irritably. “I know. That’s not an excuse—”

Thud!

One hand wrapped up like a boxer, Jacq sharply banged a fist on the table, rattling the floorboard and sending the ale and soup to jump like rabbits. “You know!” she shouted. “Stop acting like a damn Imperial already! Three years, and nobody cared when that crippled rat was casting shades at me—behind my back! Everyday! And no one batted an eye, until I dared to tip their sacred cow who’s only half the woman she’ll ever be!” Breath shuddering, a cold blue fire blazed in her eyes. “But only in 1393, I guess—oh—in the year of your three sisters, of course,” she sneered with a snark sharper than her teeth.

Amidst the jovial upheavals around them, an uneasy moment passed between the two women. Jacq took a long, deep swig, but her drinking didn’t have much of the same idle mood it had before. Suddenly, her voice shivered, her once fierce eyes became glossy like fogged glass, her body shivered like a puppy thrown out in the cold, and the snarl upon her face melted into quivering lips; all signs of old wounds reopening.
Seetha just stared at her with a stunned look, not truly knowing if she should feel worried or sympathetic. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember the last time her companion with the devil-may-care attitude had ever expressed such genuine vexation. After a long boat ride and two days of looking behind their shoulders every step of the way, the Sword Dancer had hoped that the partying that surrounded them would distract eager eyes from their presence. Evidently, a few heads turned at Jacq’s sudden outburst, but then they lost interest and returned to their business. The other patrons seemingly did not notice over the music and other noises.
“Why now, Seetha?” Jacq sighed solemnly, once her voice had simmered into calmer articulation. “We could’ve been rich. We’ve could’ve finally made a name for ourselves from that Ice Gale Valley expedition. No one got a little bit suspicious about the timing? And why the hell did she wait a whole year to cry about it to Ishmael? And what was I supposed to do, let that tattle-telling coward ruin my life over a stupid joke? Get me arrested? You know me better than anyone. I’m no saint, but I didn’t deserve to have that blackball thrown at me. And I—I just hate it when you talk to me like that—like I’m some vile monster who had it coming or something.” She turned her head away, eyes glistening as though she were fighting back bad memories.
Seetha sucked in a deep breath, feeling the lump in her throat tighten before reaching across the table to tentatively place her hand over Jacq’s clenched fist, gently squeezing it like a lamb’s ear. The calloused skin tightened, clamped around her own slender fingers, a silent plea for understanding. “Listen,” she said softly, tone contrasting the harsh words earlier exchanged. “I never said you deserved it, Jacq. You’re a lot of things, but never a monster.” She sighed after a brief pause. “I’ve never doubted that she did you wrong. I don't know why she waited all this time to bring it up and cause this mess. And yes, you’re right; you didn't deserve that blackball.

“But Jacq, you’ve gotta understand how insensitive you were, and how much trouble that’s gotten you into, regardless of your reasons. Here, it’s a notification to the local authorities. I snatched it off the notice board before we came in here. Look at it, and then tell me if this is worse than getting a ‘dumb gorilla’ retort.” She pulled out a rolled-up handbill from her satchel, spreading it across the table like a napkin.
Jacq gave a very passive look at the parchment’s content. “Tch. So, some puny town guards know we’re here, so what? Are they planning to host my baptism?”
“Along with the Minister of Justice,” said Seetha, “and the Chief Magistrate, and every single bounty hunter guild that’s going to have names like ‘the Grim Darks’ and ‘the Shadow Killers’ and whatsoever. But that’s not even half of it. The word is, the Order of the Heavenly Gate from Vauxhall are considering setting up shop here in Angevin. Unless you can sprout gills, they’ll gladly come to drown you in holy water if they know there’s pagans on this island.”
Concern streaked in Jacq’s gaze like a shooting star. “Okay, that’s a little worrying than I had anticipated,” she partially admitted. Every pagan worth their creed knew well of the Order of the Heavenly Gate. Anything but heavenly, they were notorious pagan hunters that could give the Imperial Inquisition, and even the Virago Order, a run for their coin. Needless to say, their definition of reforming whoever they deemed as a danger to society were best left to the imagination.

“Oh, so you agree we have a problem then?” Seetha asked with cautious optimism.
Glancing over at the bar maiden who ferried two fresh mugs of schwarzbier to their table, Jacq suddenly chirped as though she remembered some good news. “Nope! We have a solution!” Her optimism sharply returned as she took another swig, but Seetha only frowned.
“I don’t follow.”
“Your father’s a Knight Marshal, right? Maybe he can pull some strings for us,” said Jacq, plunking her tankard down.
Seetha hated it whenever she suggested playing the Get-Out-Of-Dungeon card. It was meant to be a favor in case of inescapable moments, not a cantrip for them to recklessly flaunt.“Well that depends,” Seetha raised an eyebrow. “Can you cure any of Azdahag’s blights?”
“Nope,” answered Jacq.
“Can you resolve all crime in Queens’ Barrow?”
“No.”
“Can you bring him a Kraken’s head?”
“Too hard.”
“Will you become a vegetarian?”
“Hell no!”

“Will a prince fall in love with you?”
“No. Wha-Hey!”
Seetha snorted a dry laugh. “Then I think we’re in trouble.”
With a feminine flair of petulance, Jacq folded her arms and turned her head away. “You were more fun when it was just us on adventures,” she pouted.
“Fun isn’t going to pay the tabs or loans, or legal protection,” said Seetha in a tone that meant to pull her companion’s head out of the clouds. “We need the Guild for those benefits, and for them to call off the dogs—uh—figuratively speaking.”
“Or,” rebounded Jacq, “can we just assassinate the dogs who are hunting us? Literally speaking?”
“Not when you say it publicly.”
Jacq still could not let it go. She commenced what the bards would call a soliloquy: “Three thousand florins for a cripple joke? In gold? By the Nothing, how stupid is that? You can’t even crack wise like owl eggs with a non-human without being accused of subliminal bigotry. And how can I not? Because everywhere I looked back in the Guild, everywhere I looked, everyone was a doppelgänger of one absurdly prosaic archetype or the other just waiting to—no, asking—to be mocked. How can I forget them? The dandy-ass, pretentiously quirky, twenty-something year old half-humans; the fat, homicidal dark-lords with manliness more bent than their swords; the annoying, horny hermaphrodites with creepy tendencies; and the strong, brooding she-males who think that personality traits are dyed undercuts, menstruations, and magical rings of bullshit shoved onto their fingers and wands up their asses.
“Yes... yes... it was all very thrilling and enlightening in the beginning... the call to adventure, the allure of glory and riches and partying with new friends and whatnot; where anyone can be who they wanna be and still save the day… but now, I can’t even be myself anymore, or just enjoy anything that doesn’t conform to timid ways or provincial thinking, because that would a danger to this frail society. Oh sure, I do like to crack cripple jokes harder than a slave’s back, fight half-naked, and have high standards of beauty and fitness—but allowing cripples to dive into dangerously inaccessible caves or dungeons, where accidents can happen, is somehow civilization’s epitome of progression? And they call me an uncouth thug for having the temerity to point that out? Not in a gentle way, granted, but would they have even listened to gentle reasoning? How did it ever come around to see, that the same bastards who complained about being systematically ostracized suddenly have the power to decree damnation, all because I refused to dance to their tune or turn the other cheek at their whim?

“I dared to disagree. They say, ‘Tyrant!’ I dared to think. They say, ‘Traitor!’ I dared to choose. They say, ‘I know that you have rights as everyone else, but your husband’s manliness, your cute butt, and your cripple jokes oppresses millions, so just dial that blasphemy back a bit…’ Hmph! I jest, but I cannot tell you how many times my eardrums were bleeding out from how many times I’ve heard that asinine nonsense before. They make you think that being some anodyne altruist is a really big thing, and then you become this big suicidal’ altruist and sit around tryin’ to out-grovel all the other shit-eating altruists! You spend years and years with your nose buried into their manifestos, while out there, they’re rewriting history and reaping all the glory. If you don’t step to the side, they’ll brand you as some tyrant in their mob courts; the excuse being is what some crazy pagan warlord did to some non-humans centuries ago. But there’s just no middle ground anymore. It’s like they think that I need to shed myself from the skins of the past… a past that was never really mine.
“What I still don’t understand is that any wizard or druid could un-cripple a cripple with a snap of the Uriezauberai if they wanted to, right? I mean—talk about straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel! The Guild is going to go bankrupt if they keep kowtowing to these sanctimoniously chubby Imperials and their extraneous policies that do more harm than good. If your Holy Mother could come back and witness half of the ways they’ve been regressing society under a conniving pretense of doing it for the greater good, she’d never stop castrating her crotch on a grinding wheel!”
She solemnly locked eyes with Seetha’s. “And you know what the biggest dilemma in all of this is? I made things worse by dragging you down with me. I never meant to get you into this much trouble too.”
Seetha let out another deep sigh. “I chose to go with you, Jacq,” she reminded her. “My personal qualms are a little more catalogued than just needing a change of scenery. But I don’t agree with the way they treated you either, and you are right about one thing: the Guild has lately been having a double-faced attitude towards anyone who questions their new rules since those Imperials joined the Council. It still baffles me that they would simply say ‘if you don’t like it, go start your own guild.’ But that’s not an option for pagans when the local magistrates won’t even grant them permits. On the other hand, if the Guild does end up bankrupt, you’d be free from any bounties on your head and the policies you dislike. And no more dealing with chubby Imperials either. But you don’t seem too happy about that possibility.”

Jacq lowered her head, sighing somberly. “Honestly, I don’t want the Questing Guild to go under—I never did. It’s not that I have a problem with people from different cultures and races, or even people with disadvantages. But the problem is how they view me: assumptions purely based on ignorance or guilt by association, which might sound hypocritical to some, but…”

“They get a free pass, and you get a forced re-education,” Seetha added, her brows furrowing gently. “Maybe they’ll at least you the chance to explain yourself. You know, my father has the authority to represent you in court.”

Jacq looked at her, her sapphire eyes wide and glistening under the streaks of candlelight. “No,” she sighed deeply, shaking her head. “I think they’ve already made up their minds about me long before I walked into the Guild. No thanks to Mandi. That’s why I’m better off on the run…”

Seetha winced at the mere mention of that name—the crux of their argument laid bare in all its raw vulnerability. People like this Mandi were, for a lack of better words, the bane of Jacq’s desire for a place among fellow adventurers, for empathy from a society that had no time or patience for her kind. Losing her thirst, Seetha offered Jacq her own tankard.

“And you know what?” Jacq went on, taking another sip. “The hell with ‘em. What did I even leave behind that’s worth going back to, my job as the official inclusivity mascot? Those two-faced assholes can have their rose-tinted giddy club without me, but when they run out of non-conformists with the cripple jokes to burn, they’ll just eat each other next. Imperials always need monsters to justify their wages, as if we don’t already have enough of those in sewers, in dark caves, or in High Cimbria.”

Seetha knew deep down that Jacq didn’t mean a word of what she had said about the Guild. Not all of it anyways. Aside from her, the Sword Dancer knew that words that a wounded heart spoke came laced with stomach acid. “It wasn’t all bad for us when we were Guild members,” reasoned Seetha. “Ixnay on the okejay.”

Jacq smirked at that, pausing to reflect. “You know, in all of those three short years, the only fond memories I even remember were our adventures together, especially our first one, although I’m kinda sure you’re tired of hearing that story by now.”
Seetha’s stern face slowly broke into a mirthful grin. “On the contrary, I relish every chance of hearing it again, that is except when you tell it because, well, you keep leaving out the best parts. Or, in your case, the embarrassing parts.”
Jacq scoffed, shaking her head reminiscently. “You’re just never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“Maybe if you converted to Trinity, we might be even.”
“Seetha, you’re like a sister to me, but no chance in Hell.” At this, Jacq’s lips loosened into a smile; a smile that spelled relief.
“If you say so,” Seetha shrugged. “As for your previous statement concerning the Uriezauberai, one snap of some magic-user’s finger isn’t how that works. Azdahag’s blights are too powerful to cure, even for the greatest of magic users and physicians. We can harness the power of magic, but we’re not its damned maker. And to reiterate one more time, we need the Guild for the benefits of not only bedroom and board, but also the high end jobs that pay well for sword swinging, which is your most favorite division. Otherwise, we’ll be dungeon-crawling up latrines and poop chutes for rats, dung beetles, and Mother knows what else, just to get by. So, if I ask you no more cracking wise like owl eggs, would you please keep your cripple jokes to yourself?”
Jacq returned the response with scrappy intrepidity: “Etiam si omnes, non ego.”
They recognized their inside man by his olive skin, curly hair, and wiry frame beneath his green tunic. In a manner that imitated a serving man approaching a regular patron’s table to take orders, he stood between them and leaned forward with a wooden menu promptly held out in one arm, and his other arm folded behind his back. The two women inconspicuously kept one ear opened.
“I think I found your entertainment for the evening, my Ladies,” he said. “Door on the left behind the bar, one level down, and one guard at the door. Two human men at the bar have the key in a satchel. Brigands. They’re the ones in those tawdry leather armor and darkened tunics, you can’t miss them.”
Over the passing centuries, Humans and Orcs and Dwarves became the sole inhabitants of Angevin no longer. Many races had crossed the Sea of Tyrants to either settle on new lands, escape from war and conquest, or simply to seek their fortunes. Through the cluster of half-humans, half-elves, half-dwarves, Halflings, Roglings, Hulders, Fir-bolgs, Gnomes and beast kin, Seetha’s peripheral vision could see the two human men getting their next rounds. Brigands, as Leo had aptly put it. The first had his elbow resting on the bar, and the second was slouching on his stool with the satchel over his shoulder. Both were just as Leo described them, save for their ugly mugs.

Seetha kept her eyes on her partner, nodding attentively, while her nimble finger caught the tiny pouch of powder Leo had discreetly let slip from between his chest and the wooden menu. Jacq followed suit and smoothly tossed a coin bag in the man’s open palm behind his back. Still got it, she smiled in a self-aggrandizing way.
“Thanks for the tip, Leo,” said Seetha to their inside man. “Stay safe.”
Leo gave them a passing wink. “You two stay safe. I’ve heard they had dealings with orcs and boerboks.” He departed quickly for the next table, as if nothing happened.
The two women payed for their own drinks and food, then grabbed their own swords that had been fitted accordingly to each their contrasting styles of melee. The bastard sword with an Oakeshott type XI blade that held a length nearly as tall as she was, 6’1, was for the Rüzgârian, and the curved saber was for the Isyrian. It was only 71 centimeters in length, yet ideal for close quarters.
“So how do you wanna handle those guys?” Jacq inquired. “The old sticky blade?”
Seetha, all too familiar with what it would entail, couldn’t help but whinge at that notion. “Just don’t get carried away like the last time.”
They weaved through the crowded room towards the bar with renewed purpose. Crumbling up Jacq’s bounty, and the public notice together, after they left their table by the window, Seetha had the good sense to then flick them discreetly into the roaring fire pit that they passed. Like a pair of dead spiders, the parchments unfolded and curled inward within the coruscating orange blaze, before crumbling into dark blobs that would soon be ashes. There were sure to be other bounties posted everywhere now that word had apparently reached Angevin, but to Seetha’s mindset, there was no need to leave a paper trail for peace of mind.