Journey West 03: Sae Crita

    By foot the journey could have taken over a day, by cyber-horse it has only taken a few hours. All save for Gold Wolf, who has been wandering from town to town in the Sae Kingdom waiting for the others to arrive, are amazed at the contrast between this city and Sae-Rin. While Sae-Rin seemed to want to hide the sea from sight, using buildings to block the view with only small docks for very small vessels, giving the rest of the town a dusty desert town feel Sae-Crita is pretty much the opposite with large docks, large fishing vessels and busy sea side markets, even the sea gulls are far more numerous here than Sae-Crita.

    ******

    Of course any amusement is short lived as Rhulan hands the woman behind her half cage front window in the exchange office, her satchel of silver and only gets back like three gold pieces and a copper.

    Gold-Wolf smirks, “The Sae Kingdom,” he says, “uses an absolute gold value based on trade and places very little value on the common land currency of Stratalia.”

    He gets up from leaning on a wall, “In fact the Sae Kingdom uses the same currency as the Magnus Empire, their influence has even spread this far.”

    “I imagine,” says Rhulan flipping the coins in her hand as the others exchange their own money, “that has much to do with the fact that they would be this land’s primary trading partners. It can’t be helped.”

    “Yeah it sucks,” says Betty looking at the tiny slivers of money in her hand, “There’s no way we can travel with this much.”

    Rhulan looks at Gold Wolf who only nods.

    “Miss Rhulan, Miss Betty,” says Hollia, “we can just do some adventurer jobs can’t we?”

    Gold Wolf shakes his head, “They don’t have those here.”

   “Excuse me,” says the exchange office woman, “I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but I am standing two feet in front of you, if you’re worried about money…well we may not have those silly go on adventure type stuff they have in the east but we do have bounty offices and hunters…I mean I think its almost the same thing, each town has their own bounty office which offers rewards for special jobs like chasing criminals or going after some dangerous animal.”

    ….. “Interesting,” says Rhulan, “Yes that is different than the guild, however this information will be of great use to us thank you.”

     “Yes thank you miss.” says Hollia with a bow

    “However,” says Rhulan, “I can’t help but feel your words have some knowing to them.”

    “Well,” says the woman behind the window a bit embarrassed, “my brother’s a fisherman, the bounty office around here normally just has jobs for registered detectives like chasing down a pick pocket, but there has been this general hunter bounty at the office for like two weeks now to hunt down this giant kraken.”

     “A kraken?” asks Cata, “interesting, what more can you tell us please?”

    “Sorry,” says the woman, “that’s all I know, the bounty office is just next door, they would have more information.”

    ******

    The salty cool air, the rocking of a boat; it has been a while since Hollia rode on a real ship, not counting the small vessel they used to cross this very same sea from Osopika. Their team stands at the front of the ship while the sailors stay back, some watching through not so nice eyes at this group of oddly dressed women and one guy claiming they will be the ones to finally get rid of the kraken. Hollia can’t blame them for being suspicious or angst given what she heard back in the bounty office.



    “Your not the first team to try,” ; “its real urgent, the kraken is preventing the fishermen from bringing in anything worthwhile and the Magnus tax collectors will be coming by the city soon.”

    She remembered the map her brother had shown them, the Magnus territory mostly covers the far west, but a long arm of it stretches across the grass lands and more forested regions north touching near the top of the Archae Sea and a ways down its coast line. There is a break between the Eastern Magnus region and the Sae Kingdom, a large grass land where very little in terms of edible plants can grow, very little water, and a whole host of very unusual plants and creatures that make the entire region un-wanted for any homesteaders.

     “It’s not official now,” said the person at the bounty office, “but soon the Magnus Empire is going to send a military force to Sae-Crita to build a fortress and officially make the Sae Kingdom part of the Magnus Empire. Yes, we’re finally going to be an official territory of the Magnus Empire.”

    Hollia still doesn’t know why he seemed so happy about that. Hollia turns to the co-captain of the vessel who is out on point to let them know when they have reached the area the kraken has been spotted in.

    “Excuse me,” she says, “Mr. Hasanbran, Co-Captain sir, I was wandering something.”

    “Yes, missy,” says Mr. Hasanbran.

    “Well, this mission is urgent because the kraken is preventing the fishing vessels from bringing in large hulls, however I did see plenty of ships with lots of fish back at the harbor.”

     “Have you heard,” he says taking a pipe from his mouth, “about the tax collectors from the Magnus Empire?”

    “Yes, sir I have, but if they are coming so soon and you only have so many customers what difference will it make.”

    “The fish…” he says, “they take the fish as tax, load them up and take them out west to feed their bases and towns. We have to make sure we have enough for both them and us, otherwise they leave us with what ever is left over.”

    “How sad,” says Hollia, “that’s not very nice.”

   He just shrugs

   “What about asking Osopika for help?” asks Hollia.


  He spits into the sea, “Ask those people?” he snorts, “They’re why we’re in this mess in the first place, they’re why both Sae-Crita and Sae-Rin are so poor, they take all the business, even the ships from northern Ravashira go to them. Seriously, we’re being pinched harder now because the ships from the north have started to avoid the toll zones by going over land in caravans down the Stratalian coast. So we end up having to make up for that loss.”

    “Well that’s not right,” says Hollia, also thinking back to the caravan they had helped.

    The man missing her meaning completely says, “No kidding, those greedy bastards now sell all their goods to Osopika, we can barely get our hands on foreign goods or even fresh fruit anymore. We have plenty of rivers and lakes but damned it all its all still desert anyway, fruit just won’t grow out here.”

    *rrrruummble*

    “Hollia!” yells out Rhulan, “If you’re done with the exposition we have a monster sized octopus coming up fast.”

    The front of the boat has been grabbed by a tentacle as thick as a man’s waist. A few sailors run forward with harpoons and stop in stark surprise as Rhulan summons her sword from no-where and slices the tentacle off.

    “magic…” whispers one of the men.

    They all, including the co-captain, but not the real captain with his long white beard at the wheel stand in amazement as everyone except Hollia flies into the air.

   Co-captain Hasanbran remembers when they took these so called hunters on board, the crew practically laughed at the sight of them, past hunters had all been rough men with hooks, chains, one even had a giant cross-bow, and harpoons. This was a group mostly of women and all except two of them wearing strange costumes.

   “Stay back,” says Hollia with a voice of command the man hadn’t expected to hear from what he took to be a mousy young girl.

    “Saint’s Barrier!” she yells out as a blue energy field cuts off the ship from the sea just
as the bulbous form of the kraken rises to the surface.

    The co-captain’s and the crew who could see this eye’s grow as large as dinner plates, or at least seem to try to, at the sight of Hollia’s ears vanishing and two little cat ears popping up on top of her head.

   “And with a twist!” she yells, “meow!”

   One of the tentacles of the great beast strikes the barrier

   *ZZZZZstlesss*

    Electric arcs streak across the tentacle frying it forcing the kraken to cease going after the boat, at least so directly. Another tentacle trying to go around is blasted to pieces by a devastation beam by Lin Lin, gaining her too surprised looks by the crew and co-captain as they had imagined this just some weird pet they had tagging along.

    The kraken swims back away from the boat, but remains on the surface as though preparing a new strategy, octopi are said to be intelligent for invertebrates after all. However it is completely oblivious to the group floating in a circle above it.

     Cata places her hands to her side, palm over palm, a blue electric point appearing between them, a move she hasn’t had cause to use since the battle against Ravana, in fact images of that battle flash in her mind. Gold Wolf makes a similar gesture, with instead a white point emitting golden colored electric arcs. Betty pulls out both her guns and aims down. Rhulan holds her arms out, her sword now recalled, her hands facing out as though pushing something as she whispers something to herself, a white fiery light appearing
before her hands.

    Each releases their attacks at once.

   Gold Wolf, “Golden Blast!” (a golden plasma beam blasts down)

   Cata, “Rai-Ko-Ken!” (a beam of focused lightning blasts down)

   Betty, “Twin Guns!” (she fires off numerous fire ball and electric orbs)

   Rhulan, “Hell Fire Blast!” (a white beam with streaks of red flames blasts down)

    Gold wolf notices as their blasts converge on the massive creature below them that the blasts from Cata and Rhulan on either side of Betty swallow up her shots.

   “What the hell?” he thinks, “even between those other moves those weapons should be
much stronger than that.”

   After only a few seconds of blinding light the fully cooked remains of the kraken float on the surface, the sea still boiling. As the group lands on the boat and Hollia takes down her barrier the stupor of the crew is shattered as the captain yells over a mega-phone, “stop standing around you sea dogs and gets the hooks in that beast!”

    Rhulan, Hollia, and the others stands in bewilderment as the crew gets out massive hooks and nets that wouldn’t be needed for general fishing and latch the kraken carcass to the ship.

    ******

    Ashore the group stands dumbfounded as the co-captain gives them their meager reward, meager compared to what they estimate all that octopus meat is going to sell for that the crew has already started to hull on shore and chop up.

    “The caravan is going to pay a fortune for this delicacy,” one of the crew says to another.

    “You know,” says Cata as they walk from the scene towards the stable their horses are at, “I think we’ve been had, I really doubt that animal was a menace, seems more like they hired fighters to do what fishermen couldn’t do to make a profit.”

    “No doubt,” says Gold Wolf, “that’s business for you, get cheap labor to bring in a fortune in rare goods.”

    Rhulan shrugs her shoulders, “Not that we should really care, we got our money, they make some more, now lets get out of town before this Magnus Caravan shows up, I seriously doubt they’d like to see a bunch of easterners wandering around, probably think we’re spies or something equally stupid…right…Gold Wolf.”

    He gives her a curious look and shrugs his shoulders saying, “Sure.”

   Hollia gives Lin Lin a tiny piece of octopus she stashed away much to the enjoyment of the little dragon. Rhulan sees them and smiles.