Ironscale Preview

All around, damp moss dripped foul water onto the stone floor beneath the great coliseum.  Fresh torches sputtered in their sconces, the flames choking in the unbelievably humid air. In the dim light, a man stood before a towering cage where a great terrible something rumbled in shadow.

The gargantuan reptile lunged at him from the inky darkness, slamming into its prison with a bone-shaking roar. Stout iron showered rust and sparks as the enclosure groaned against its tremendous weight. Bowing the bars outward, the prickly beast rattled its chains, yanking the rune-strengthened wrist-thick links tethering its limbs to their limit. Vicious spikes snapped off its armored shell when they caught against the sides of its cell, barely big enough to contain the creature.

The brute’s wicked eyes, beady and black as darkwater tar, locked onto the two-legged piece of meat standing so arrogantly just out of reach, peering at him from a narrow arrow-shaped head. Colossal jaws gleamed with rows of serrated teeth as they opened wide, perfectly built for gulping down such prey.

To the monstrosity, the strange six-and-a-half foot furless bull ape would have hardly been a mouthful. It didn’t care. It was starving. Faster than the morsel outside the bars could blink, the titantic saurian launched its deadly barbed tongue. The thick pad at the end of the froglike appendage struck the iron with a wet thuck, venomous saliva spraying all over the man. Runes of protection and power tattooed on his arms hissed and glowed dull red as they counteracted the potent sedative, the poison evaporating in a cloud of steam. Thwarted, the sauropsid raged at him, its guttural roar deafening in the enclosed space. Even the echoes vibrated his heart in his chest.

‘So this is a mud dragon.’ Hondo observed with practiced eye as it thrashed in its bonds: that snaptrap head perched on a snakelike neck; the body of a turtle crossed with the devil herself, all spike and bone. Cunning too. He could see it even now, plotting to escape if given any opportunity. What a beast! Nobody here, man or monster, had ever seen anything quite like this eccentricity from the far side of the world. But any animal is always still an animal. This one was hungry, desperate, furious and afraid.

‘Just the right attitude for a fight.’ He nodded to himself. Ardisia and -more importantly- the gathering crowd should be well-satisfied. Still, he frowned as he tallied the expenses mentally: not just the creature, but the transport, the imported runework steel manacles to hold it, the custom wrought cage… and not a single goldwing of patronage to make it happen. The dark lady gambled hard with coin she didn’t have.

“So what do you think? Worth the cost?” A childish voice called out to Hondo from a much safer distance than where he stood, the words shaky and soft. “Our lady could have bought another you for the price of that overgrown snapper.”

<We’ll see soon enough.> Hondo signed with his hands out of habit, though the tiny goblin couldn’t see them with his back turned. She wouldn’t have understood the cryptic gestures even if she had. But Grundle knew him well enough to guess at his thoughts. She should. The young monster had grown up around him in the Mistress’s household.

“Yeah.” She agreed, flinching as the caged beast tried to worm its tongue through the bars. “I suppose we’ll know one way or the other in a few hours.”

Hondo backed away from the enclosure slowly, unwilling to turn his back on even a chained aberration until he reached the side passage to the arena floor. Calloused fingers worried the enchanted ring on his hand as he set a brisk pace out of the catacombs, Grundle falling into step behind. They traveled through the tunnel quickly, the floor sloping up away from the underground realm, the temperature in the stuffy corridor slowly rising to the blistering midmorning norm of summer.

Before long, the pair reached the portcullis to ground level. In the open air beyond the latticed steel, vacant stands loomed over ten foot walls of bright white limestone. At the base of the wall, the arena floor stretched out in a hundred pace wide circle of loose earth churned by generations of feet and tails and chariot wheels. Towering poles of black iron, as thick and tall as pine trees, spaced around its perimeter. Tiny shards of magical crystal graced their summits, the miniscule grains catching the light and glinting in the sun.

‘Arena , sand, arena.’ The man wondered a moment  at the words that were only a single word in his Mistress’s tongue. Language had always intrigued him. As a gypas, one of the sworn guardians of young royal blues, he was told since he could remember that all words have power, to paint the image the speaker wishes and color the perception of others. Then there were the select few that could do so much more, the ones only to be spoken in direst need.

Beyond the grated door, three people stalked the barrier that separated sport from spectator. He marked each of them in his mind: a stranger, a peer and a master. These names, too, were important. To know your position was to know who you were and where you belonged. So he was taught. So he had seen himself. He remembered his place and the honor of it, let his pride straighten his broad shoulders long bowed by responsibility, and put on his best public face for the meeting to come.

Reaching into his vest, the retainer retrieved a snaggletoothed piece of pitted brass and inserted it into the keyhole of the coliseum’s gate. A quick turn, a clunk of tumblers, and the metal groaned open at his touch. Passing through and locking the way again behind them, the man stepped into the beating sun with the tiny goblin at his heels. As sensitive to the light as the rest of her race, Grundle shrank from the bright burning orb in the sky and scrunched closer to hide in his shadow.

The pair of servants approached the trio, heavy boots kicking up puffs of dust with every step on the soft arena floor. Closing the distance quickly, Hondo made himself known with a wave and a sharp whistle. At the noise, the demon, the old man and the stranger interrupted their conference and turned their attention his way. Hondo slipped into his privileged place alongside his Mistress, and the group of three became five.

Summoning every bit of mannered poise he could muster, Hondo placed his hand on his chest and bowed deeply, the gypas offering respect to his lady first. In his mind, his actions were a pale imitation of her true genteel radiance, but he tried to make up for it with genuine feeling.

The budding noble demon, Ardisia Aes, smiled back at him graciously. Not a single strand of her midnight blue hair dared stray out of place, each of her movements as polished as purest cobalt. Only the impatient flash of her keen eyes and her tense stance screamed for him to get on with his report.

‘Such a shame.’ Hondo thought, sighing to himself as he gazed upon her almost flawless countenance. ‘She goes through all the polite motions but in her heart it’s still just pointless nonsense. If she only learned to embrace proper etiquette, she surely would be more acknowledged by her peers by now.’ He still intended to see it so. Unlike so many of the ever-genuflecting hanger-on courtiers, he knew his lady had quality worth recognizing.

The gypas held his bow for a full three heartbeats, demonstrating his regard for his young principal in the old ways, as became a servant of a noble lady of Aes. When he finished, Hondo straightened back to attention, his hands itching to communicate what his Mistress desperately wanted to know.

Dismayingly to the manservant, the gaunt old gentleman beside Hondo’s charge slipped into the conversation before the gypas could sign a word.

“I trust everything met expectations?” Gaius said, beaming at him. “Mountain cyclopean steel and Gyptian runework, as I promised. You won’t find anything finer in the city. And the beast  I believe-” The carefully constructed smile morphed into a toothy grin. “-speaks for itself.”

The Mistress didn’t even have the presence of mind to be offended at the ill-mannered interruption. Hondo felt honorbound to be insulted on her behalf, but he tucked it away for later, as was proper. To him, these things too all had to be kept and tallied, to tease out what finer political shifts he could. His lady did not have ears within the court as those with thicker bloodlines did. Add to that her contemptuous disregard of anything but the bare minimum of the political game, and he knew it was his responsibility to do everything he could to help.

In this case it didn’t mean much. Gaius always let his mouth get ahead of him and always gave a harder sell than his wife, if such a thing was possible. This day was no exception. The upcoming matches would make or break his family too, and the elder man was anxious to hustle the deal along.

Hondo looked over the husband of the proprietor of the coliseum and tried to square the image with the one from his memory. In the last year, Gaius’s cheerful cherubic face had grown sunken and thin. Once springy golden curls had turned white and frayed, forming a wispy cottony cloud that floated on the top of his skull. One would never imagine that it was the skeletal man’s wife who was the truly ill one.

The silent servant felt for him, he truly did. The jovial couple always had a kind word and a fair price for all their clients since before he was born. Strip away the trappings and he and Gaius were just two men: one a husband and one a guardian. Neither were slaves, but both were still seen as property in the lands of the demon lords. Each only commanded a certain respect because of the women they belonged to. Here, the old man spoke with the authority of his ailing spouse. And so the dark lady could deal with him.

Catching himself staring, the gypas sharply chastised himself for letting his mind wander. Business first. Business always first. He nodded politely to Gaius, acknowledging the truth of the man’s statements before giving his report to the Mistress, the unspoken words flying from his fingers in a flurry of sharp deft movements.

Hondo was sure it was this situation putting him off his game. The whole venture still left him uneasy, the risk far too great in his mind. But it was his duty to be honest and helpful, not to argue his concerns after he originally presented them to his lady. The young miss had great instincts, and had seen what he had not in times past. He trusted her to make the right call, as she trusted him to tell her all she needed to know to make her final decision.

The bewitching succubus took in all the coded signs with sharp eyes, catching even the slightest nuance of her gypas’s calloused and scarred hands. Even so, Hondo knew her mind was made long before they came here. Her guardian’s silent utterances just cemented it was still the right decision. She smiled, a true demonic smile, a monster’s smile, and turned to finalize the deal with Gaius, chatting happily of the profits to come for them both. Only the gypas strove to keep the worry off his face as promissory notes and hard currency changed hands.  This had largely been a final check, with the criers already hired and the match advertised all over the city. But those losses would have been trivial compared to the creature. Now the deal was done, and there was no backing out.

Powerless to change the outcome, no matter what it might be, Hondo resolved to put those thoughts out of his mind. He slipped back into his main role of observation and protection, eyeing his surroundings.

Inevitably, the gypas’s attention was drawn to the cloaked woman hanging back from the familiar faces, the one person who didn’t belong, the one who had arrived in his short absence. It was highly irregular to have someone else present for this late stage of proceedings. His lady appeared not bothered about it in the least, but she rarely took an overt interest in other’s affairs. She might have been expecting him to take care of it for her. If that was the case, he was determined not to let her down.

Alien red eyes stared back at him from beneath the shadowed hood. The dark-skinned outlander ignored the far more important people discussing business, studying him even as the gypas watched her. Her intense leer passed over him, scrying the bare runes twining over his bare arms with such focus that his skin crawled. Most women would be more interested in his more masculine attributes or would politely avert their eyes. This was different. He could feel how she longed to strip the ancient secrets from his hide, her gaze burning from the tops of his fingers until the tattoos disappeared beneath his vest. Infinitely worse was the hint of understanding in her eyes, like a child trying to sound out a new word; impossible, unless she knew the ways of the runes. Perhaps, given enough time, she could decipher what the last of his people guarded above all else.

 The young gypas felt his body react naturally to the threat once he perceived it as such. The innate conjury welled from deep inside of him, waiting for a spark and a course to guide it. But a warlock of his level had no need of such power to investigate the stranger before him. He quickly put a lid on the magic, taking just a trickle, too little to activate the vast network of runes, and channeled it down his arm. The ancient ring on his hand warmed as he directed his unearthly power into the tool, the arcane structures carved into the very metal shifting like running dye as they expanded and locked into a new position. Augmented by his magic, the artifact broadened beyond the simple reading of intent it used to translate speech. And so the guardian tuned the small piece of gold, the sacred badge of his position, to the surface thoughts and the background noise of consciousness.

Several long seconds passed, Hondo trying to listen over his heart pounding. He waited and he waited. But there was only silence, only inscrutable quiet.

There was only one way that could be. He was being blocked.

That sealed it it. The gypas knew then for certain she was a sorceress or something even stronger. And this witch, this foreigner, she coveted the ancient magic as a dragon covets treasure. That certain knowledge stirred feelings that had laid dormant since his childhood, not fear or worry for his charge but for his own kind. Instinctively, the guardian crossed his arms, obscuring what he could from the witch.

Only then did the inquisitive creature look him in the eye, her lust for his arcane birthright burning bright as red flame.

He needed to know how far she had gotten already, even if it tipped his hand. The gypas began to leaf through spells in his mind, searching for one that could crack the wall she’d erected around her thoughts.

The young manservant was interrupted by Gaius before he could act. The aged showman, sensing the growing tension, broke away from pleasantries with the Mistress to step between the two, bringing both magicians under his decades-perfected and totally-disarming salesman’s smile.

“How forgetful of me.” The canny elder bobbed his head apologetically. “Hondo, my boy, may I introduce the runesmith I hired to calibrate the barrier of the coliseum. It was she who ensorceled the chains for the beast as well. First class work, as I believe I mentioned. This talented lady has traveled all the way from the sandy wastes beyond the northern mountains. I was very fortunate to catch her passing through the city. I will be overseeing her work momentarily to be certain we are prepared for this evening’s main event.”

‘Of course!’ The gypas scolded himself. ‘How could I miss something so obvious?’ The arena’s shield was old and out of tune. What power it still had sputtered and worked against itself. Its magic would not contain a mud dragon. Gaius must have borrowed heavily to fund this renovation. Certainly, everyone’s fortunes hinged on today.

The red-irised maga smiled warmly at her venerable patron. It reminded Hondo of the Mistress’s public smile: cunning, dangerous and it did not touch her searching eyes.

“I’m used to such jobs. I was the one fortunate there was a demand for that work here.” The foreigner spoke for the first time in perfect- if heavily-accented -Sharn, the oldest surviving dialect of the common tongue of these lands. Far from comforting the bonded young mage, it unsettled him more. Only the people around the abandoned ancestral capital at Darkwater still spoke that way these days. Traders and travelers from the outlands did not and had not for centuries. Hondo surmised she learned from someone borderline ancient or was taught a very long time ago. The sorceress’s looks alone certainly gave no hint of her true age.

“Good runework is essential to dealing with such large creatures.” The runesmith added after a moment, bringing her piercing gaze back to her man-shaped object of interest. “You should see what we use to hunt the Khorkoi back home.”

Hondo didn’t like the way she emphasized ‘hunt’ when she was looking at him. But he was the one in the wrong, and he felt ashamed at escalating so quickly. It did not reflect well on his lady. He knew he had to do better. If he could not think straight under these circumstances, how could he be counted on when she really needed him, when a split second might be the only difference between victory and catastrophe?

Hondo made his apologies for not welcoming the foreign maga properly, silently asking her forgiveness of his rudeness, drawing the runes with a graceful dance of his fingers and humbly bowing his head.

The witch did not acknowledge his quiet plea. She just kept smiling as she rolled back the sleeve of her voluminous cloak, drawing the heavy traveling cloth back, and slowly revealing an arm wrapped in linen bandages. A hand covered in rings and magic jewels pulled loose a knot at the top.