Trailquest: Part 2

With their first champion fallen, the gods needed another monster to lead our torment. Presumably, that was the reason for the brief reprieve we enjoyed. By this point, I assumed that they had realized the futility of mere brute force against us. So they started picking our brains, collaborating, setting elaborate traps. Trying to force us to overextend or misstep so they could ensnare us and flense the flesh from our souls. The one who lead this campaign of terror was Mohisrinte, the Skinshimmer. Where Merekens was a predator, Mohisrinte was an artist, and he painted nightmares with brushes of bone dipped in blood.

Though, even as the opposition regrouped, we changed to meet what was to come. Some of that was training and research. Thale gave Devlin some fighting tips. I began research on my Theory of Metaconceptual Manipulation, though that wouldn't bear fruit until much later. But there were changes that none of us had control over. The Badlands is run through with mutagenic substances, particularly one the gods call 'Tormolin' that kills most humans and mutates anything that survives it. And so we began to change. I began to resemble the Hollow Men, gradually learning how to desync myself in time, the effort turning my skin white to match theirs. Grew an extra inch and a half as well; I wasn't always quite this tall. And Devlin grew wings. At first, only enough to glide, but by the end of our journey he was divebombing our enemies from above. That was the extent of our changes at the time. We didn't realize what would become of us later on.

On top of that, we were able to find some remnants of the Prince's caravan and add them to our number. One was a healer named Nero, who had mutations from before he entered the Badlands, a massive set of antlers and hooves. Then there was the academic, Lyeielm Cofiko, who wielded ice magic. And the third, who I cannot speak further on for reasons detailed in Addendum-F. They would prove invaluable in what was to come. There was also Meredith, whom we found shortly after the deaths of Ferrum and Merina. Anyone who met her before the expedition would characterize her as kindly, if a bit sheltered and dim in the way the upper-middle class often are. Anyone who met her after would speak similarly, if also noting her chitin exoskeleton and her self-developed archery style, one that used the poisonous spines that grew on her for ammunition. For the safety of the crown, she no longer remembers who she was between those two points. But there has to be a record somewhere. It will be here.

- Ninth page of "A Report on the Last Expeditions of Vaucra the Enduring", by Rogura Mythtwister

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We also had assistance from another source, which is still kept secret due to the potential political fallout. Well, two, but the actions of Dachrys Egerenth are largely locked behind Prospeoi's diplomatic barriers. Their role was minor regardless. Those familiar with the political situation at the time will remember that the Sunskull Empire, the land of the undead that lies to our South, was particularly situated to take advantage of Silspada's disarray, only to mend diplomatic ties shortly after the ascension of Queen Sybella. While this outcome was partially due to my own hand in negotiations for Silspada, there was another representative on the other side, one who had also served in the expedition: Dame Quinn Whitehawk.

The Sunskull Empire had learned of the situation. A civil war between Vaucra and Benziir would fit the ambitions of the liches at the top, keeping Silspada weak while the Sunskull Empire prospered. Either side definitively winning would lead to a Silspada united, rapidly growing to strength and becoming a threat. Silspada and the Sunskull Empire had come to blows in the past, and while the Sunskull Empire was well-placed to win the next war, they weren't willing to fight it. So they sent agents into the caravan to sabotage any attempts on the prince's life. Their direct source was a ghoul named Ayu who served on the acquisitions team, while Quinn followed the caravan with her wight squire, Vhargest. But when Ayu went feral a few weeks in, Quinn was forced to kill one of Bayorn's knights and sneak into the camp.

Quinn now serves as Sunskull's premier diplomat to Silspada, and she therefore has access to much of the archives. There's a high chance that she might come across this and read it. Given that, I will say that she has zero skill in the art of spycraft. One of the worst spies I've ever, and I've seen so very many. Absolute trash. She went so deep into her persona as Bayorn's knight that she lost the trust of everyone she encountered and got so aggressive with Voriar that she blew Quinn up in self-defense. Luckily, her squire was more level-headed, and we were able to convince her to work evenly with us. For all her lack of subtlety, her strength and surety was insurmountable, and she proved deeply useful in what followed after.

- Tenth page of "A Report on the Last Expeditions of Vaucra the Enduring", by Rogura Mythtwister

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The problems began even before we first met Mohisrinte. Thale took us on another acquisitions trip shortly after the three mages joined us. This was also shortly after Quinn, still under the guise of Atticus the knight, got herself blown up. Though we initially (and gleefully) declared her dead, she survived and wandered off in the confusion, so we were forced to try and find her as well. Ideally, we would have abandoned her out there to die, but her squire proved to be a greater diplomat than she was. A fine-hearted child, though if Scevi cared too much for knives, Vhargest had him beat by a score.

No acqusitions trip ended without one of us maimed or near-maimed or dead, and this one was no different, though the circumstances were...far more unusual. After finding Quinn and browbeating her into compliance, we came across what appeared to be a group of survivors from the Prince's caravan. Friends of Meredith. Now, Meredith's sanity was starting to unravel long before this. Though she's now accustomed to her form, the initial transformation must have been horrific. By the time we encountered her, she had developed amnesia and had no memory of what happened to her after entering the Badlands, which also couldn't have helped. And then we dragged her into our battles against Merekens because, well, we had no choice. We wouldn't have killed that rainsnake without her poisoning it. It was wearing on her. She started becoming aggressive. The only person who could interact with her safely was Vhargest. So when Meredith saw her friends and remembered them, it was important to handle the issue carefully.

And then Thale, experienced monster hunter, revealed that they were monsters wearing the skin of humans, ripping the shirt off one to reveal where the horror was literally stitched in. And then Thale, absolute idiot, pulled out his rifle and shot one in the head as Meredith watched.

The ensuing battle was no more or less dangerous than any other we faced, but we lost Meredith entirely after that. We tried to make amends. I tried to make amends. But the gods were looking for any weak points in our formation, and Meredith was all too willing to abandon us to join her 'friends'. She feigned a willingness to keep working alongside us, so we let her stay until her part in the gods' plan came to fruition. But that would wait. After all that trauma, we still had to meet Mohisrinte.

- Eleventh page of "A Report on the Last Expeditions of Vaucra the Enduring", by Rogura Mythtwister

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I'll pause for a moment to appreciate Sayone Savat's role in these matters, as without her guidance, it's unlikely that we would have made it past Merekens, much less Mohisrinte. I doubt she cares about getting credit; she had little interest in prestige, or friendship, or hygiene. Her only joy was gambling, something that her gift of divination helped greatly with, and perhaps that's what her assistance was in her eyes: gambling on our survival. Still, I consider her a valued ally, and a friend. The fact that she'd scoff at me for doing so only encourages me. It was she who lead us to Mohisrinte. I did not question her as to why. This was not just because she wouldn't have given an explanation anyways. By that point, she had proven right about...everything. Lleuadu's betrayal, Maggie's death, the solution to defeating Merekens. So we wandered into a field of tar pits on her urging, following the low song of the skinless god.

I learned later that we had each dreamed of him the night before. The first stage of his plan, no doubt. He offered us various...things that he wanted, no doubt planning to leverage this somehow against us. For me, it was the healing of old wounds, the source of which I will not delve into here. I resisted. To my knowledge, we all did. He pulled a similar trick here. He claimed he wished to introduce himself and answer questions. Only after we asked did he reveal what he wanted in exchange: flesh. Quinn's boney hand. My eye. He also revealed that he had stolen some possessions of Maggie to keep me from retracting my question. That was his modus operandi: emotional blackmail, manipulation, theft and trickery. As someone who uses the same tools even now, I should respect him on a professional level. I do not.

I was willing to take the bargain. Maggie's possessions had...emotional value. I am not made of stone. Quinn, however, had other ideas. She decided to challenge him to arm-wrestling, with the promise that we'd get our questions and Maggie's pack free if she won. It was foolish. Absolutely foolish. And yet, I watched as she matched his strength and overcame it, tearing the creature's arm from its socket. The first wound we would deal against that monster. So, we got our questions, and at my prompting, he gave us another survivor of the Prince's caravan, trapped in a prison made out of the warped, skinless bodies of his former comrades. Bodies that were *still alive* until we euthanized them. Understand now the importance of Sayone and her masters' actions, to ensure that his kind are not allowed to walk among us without consequence and limit.

- Twelfth page of "A Report on the Last Expeditions of Vaucra the Enduring", by Rogura Mythtwister

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Our time between that excursion and the next was largely without note, though we would have two guests joining us. The first was Viirdang, a half-ogre whom we had befriended while gambling in one of Sayone's card games, a simple kind-hearted man whom I have no complaints about. The second was Her Future Majesty, Sybella Chesis, who wished to get some rare insect samples. We tried to impose on her the danger that we encountered literally every time we stepped foot outside the camp, but she was, as she is now, indomitable. I suspect what happened to her would have occurred either way. It wouldn't be the first time agents of the Cold Gods infiltrated the camp.

The first attack would be against us, however. I spoke of Mohisrinte's ability to sneak into dreams. That is not his power alone, however. There is a...dimension used by the gods. One which I call the Red. The realities of physics break down there, allowing one to travel to any location, including ones that only exist in dreams. At some point during the opening of our excursion, we were smuggled into the Red as we slept, through a process that continues to elude me. I presume Meredith had a hand in it, but I wasn't able to interrogate her. But yes, for about an hour, we traveled with hidden gods, taking the places of those who weren't drawn in. Thale was replaced by Cjopaze, son of Ewachol, who tried to burn the caravan with solar fury so long ago. Viirdang was replaced by the Stitcher, who had personally made some of the monsters we fought against, sewing them up with black thread. And Sybella was Gontracha Mere, the Ascendant Spider. I suspect that she personally was the one who shaped Meredith into what she became, both physically, mentally and, later, metaphysically.

I am not sure whether they were working in conjunction with Mohisrinte or whether this was a separate act of sadism. They claimed to only desire some souls which Ferrum had stolen, the act of which led to his death, but I suspect they also came just to intimidate us. Luckily, once again, they underestimated us. Maggie, even as she was, managed to force two of the gods to fight. And Nero, channeling his mastery of nature, tore the other to bits with his giant pet centipede. We escaped, though Nero and Lyeielm took longer to escape than we did, and despite some lackluster leadership on Thale's part, Meredith was correctly branded as a traitor and left the wagon rather than submit to our punishment. All that, and we hadn't even reached our destination yet.

- Thirteenth page of "A Report on the Last Expeditions of Vaucra the Enduring", by Rogura Mythtwister

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As I mentioned before, the gods in the Badlands have access to the dreams of those who inhabit it, the ability to enter them and manipulate events inside them. However, there is one being in the Badlands, an ancient one, who dreams the true dream. You see, where the Badlands now lie, there was once a nation called Div, ruled from the city Kalkarot by the giants, and subsequently, the Red Gods, the Cold Ones, the beings that played the Game of Gods against us. For the crimes of those gods, Ewachol came down from the sky and annihilated the gods, the city, the nation. One in the Badlands still dreams of that day, over and over again. That dream was where Mohisrinte spirited Sybella away, right after we finished collecting her insect specimens. He tossed a creature called 'The Roaring Death' at us for a laugh, a four-headed necrotic dragon spoken of in tall tales of the Badlands. By this time, I had refined my research on the metanarrative of consciousness to the point where I could combine it with my mutations and apply it in the field. That is to say, I reached into its sense of self and stole one of its four souls. Thus weakened, it didn't put up much of a fight as we thrashed it and stabbed it to oblivion. In hindsight, I doubt Mohisrinte expected it to kill us. It was merely an obstacle to stall us while he got Sybella into position.

Through similar application of my theories, I was able to tear open a portal to the dream of Div. I've been working with Sybella to properly describe our view of a lost world, for scientific purposes, but in many ways, I found it preferable to Silspada. Friendlier. Less hostile to my kind. Though of course, it was ruled by the gods, and even then, they were exceedingly cruel. We used our foreknowledge of events to find exactly where Ewachol would land, and there was Mohisrinte and Merekens, before they were marked by Ewachol's hand. Mohisrinte was...beautiful before. His eyes. His skin. I can see how he must crave what he lost. He offered healing to the audience gathered before him, but of course, there was a cost: four lives, two for Merekens and one for Mohisrinte. But Mohisrinte's sacrifices in the dream were replaced by the real Mohisrinte. It was Sybella and Vaucra who lay on the chopping block.

We tried to rescue them, of course. We had gotten cocky by then, as gods and dragons had already fallen before us. But we were still recovering from our assault against the Roaring Death, and a god in his prime is not to be assaulted without preparation. He just pointed at Viirdang and the man exploded. Just like that. He would have killed the rest of us if Quinn hadn't sacrificed herself to buy us time to escape. How Quinn undid her death yet again is detailed in Addendum-F. For now, know that she is alive and that Viirdang's soul was...well, it sits on my desk as I write this. After that, the dream went on as it should have, and we escaped after witnessing Ewachol's flensing of Mohisrinte. Back to the Badlands. Back to the Game of Gods.

- Fourteenth page of "A Report on the Last Expeditions of Vaucra the Enduring", by Rogura Mythtwister

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Any restraint Mohisrinte had left was abandoned. While we were rescuing the royals, a pack of changelings infiltrated the camp as livestock, and nearly murdered the entire caravan. Luckily, Barchant and Bayorn's mutual distaste for nonhumans pulled through, and they were able to keep a fraction of the caravan intact. Then, the survivor they captured for interrogation conducted a ritual using the blood of slain caravaneers and his fellow changelings. He pulled us into a pocket realm inhabited by the souls of humans who lost their lives in Div, their flesh and blood and souls merged into a single terrible mass. We narrowly managed to escape, though we lost dear Vhargest and had to sacrifice Maggie's prized possession, a musical instrument possessed by chaos magic. We knew our time was running out, so we pushed the remnants of the caravan forward. To the center of the Badlands. To the remnants of Kalkarot. To Eternity's End.

But there was one more task to conduct. Some among us had racked up...debts. See Addendum-F. As such, we were forced to negotiate with the Red Gods to ensure our safe escape from those debts, and from the Badlands. Talking with Mohisrinte would have ended...poorly, as you can guess. But the Red Gods had a leader, one who conducted the Great Game. No, a father, a king, a White King who rules alongside his Red Queen. The Good Doctor. For most of the trip, he resided in the caravan, and we knew him as Errapel, who mended our wounds and managed our dead as we fought through the threats his children threw against us.

I still do not know what to think of the Good Doctor. He is not like the others, I can say that much. For one thing, his guise as Errapel was seamless. Merekens couldn't pass as human for more than an hour of conversation. Gontracha and her trio managed better, but even then I had my suspicions before she pinned me to the wall of the wagon. But Errapel was kind, methodical and pacifistic, practically to a fault. And once we successfully figured out his identity, he was, to my knowledge, upfront with us when asked questions. But in the end, I suspect that he only wished for a fair game in the interest of good sportsmanship. He is the most noble of his ilk in the Badlands, but a noble demon is still a demon. Do not forget that if you have the misfortune of meeting him face to face.

It was here that we learned the exact conditions of the Great Game, and what would be expected of us. He agreed to erase our debts in exchange for some actions on our part. That is why I published my own version of events, though it was mangled by the publishers. That is also why Sybella and the Sunskull Empire continue to permit travelers to enter into the Badlands, despite first-hand evidence of the risks. I regret my part in this. I would rather shut them up to rot in their prison, alone until the end of the age of mortals. But we had survived so much. None of us were willing to back down.

- Fifteenth page of "A Report on the Last Expeditions of Vaucra the Enduring", by Rogura Mythtwister

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[Translator's Note: The entire sixteenth page appears to be missing. No doubt folded into this 'Addendum-F' I keep seeing. Mythtwister speaks of divine matters and crimes against the crown so casually. What could be so concerning that she and the Crown found it mandatory to sequester? I've sent one of the apprentices to try and find Mythtwister to get an answer. Rumor is that she's been staying in Piiroca.]

After that, we found ourselves in what remained of Kalkarot, half-dream, half reality. A field of roses, leeching from the same pocket realm of Divattan souls that we escaped. While Sayone distracted Mohisrinte, losing her eye to do so, we firebombed the garden. The pantheon's punishment, as delivered by Sayone. All that was left was to fight the remaining champions of the gods. Mohisrinte and his allies.

Fighting Mohisrinte in the Divattan Dream was one thing. Fighting him in person, as he split the sky asunder with red gates, tearing reality apart like skin? Nothing prepares you for that. And even then, he was not alone. Under the ministrations of Gontracha, Meredith was transformed from her initial beetle-like form to a glowing, mothlike archer. And Lleuadu was summoned to his side in what was, perhaps, his true form: a giant worm of tar, with a lamprey mouth that ate song and sound. Stolen from his true prison, no doubt. We rose to the challenge. I became the culmination of my research, a being of pure story. Quinn donned the helm of the ancient Sunskull champion, the Colossus. Devlin with his wings, his fists, his axe of flame. Maggie, clinging to regained life. Ademar, ready to spring his trap. Nero, mending our wounds as they were dealt. Thale, the best shot in the Badlands. And Vaucra, ready to seek vengeance for his imprisonment. And so we won. Lleuadu was burned alive. Meredith's mind was wiped clean by Maggie, restoring her to the upright citizen that serves Sybella even now. And Mohisrinte? Ademar held him in place with bindings of shadow, and in his weakness, I stole his gates into the Red and used them to send his soul to Ewachol. Even now he is screaming.

As we nearly collapsed in the aftermath of our victory, Barchant and Bayorn reached us, having stayed behind to ensure that the remnants of the caravan made it safely. Quinn and I had both strongly impressed upon Bayorn that, if he laid a hand on the Prince, his survival would be forfeit. And yet, he tossed a knife straight through the Prince's eye, and for that, his soul is still trapped in that hell. Barchant, as it turned out, was not here for us, or even the Prince, but for the Good Doctor's wife. For you see, the Good Doctor was no mere god, but the God of Life, Life itself. And his crimson queen was Death. Barchant's patron and, I believe, the one being that she truly loved. Barchant cast a ritual to summon her onto the physical plane, a death sentence to any mortal nearby. And as we were still battered from banishing a god, we had no choice but to escape. Per our agreement with the Good Doctor, Nero stayed behind to study under him, and we were forced to let one god escape with us. We chose Merekens, as we already knew the extent of his abilities. Even now, he lurks to the east of Silspada, using Scevi as a vessel, turning as many as he can to the curse of transformation before his term is up. Again, I regret what I have done, even as I do my best to mitigate his damage.

After that? Well, there is no happily ever after. Even now, Maggie has to soothe away my nightmares. But life does go on. Vaucra was given a royal funeral and Sybella was named Benziir's successor, upending the line of succession. She was surprised, but I was not; it is no accident that she alone came to save her uncle. The remaining two mages went off the grid, though we have agents keeping tabs on both of them, and Sayone has disappeared entirely. I am still negotiating with representatives in Sunskull to create a new body in which to house Viirdang's soul. Devlin and Thale got married and, along with Shinost, took up piracy as a hobby. Quinn resides between here and her homeland as a diplomat, and Voriar works in the new Institute of Chemistry, each striving for the Queen's attention in their own way. Maggie went back to her homeland after our marriage and crushed the one who cursed her, taking over his business and eventually taking up piracy as well. And I, who once clutched the soul of a god? For a while, I wrote children's books and poetry. Then I served with Maggie as a pirate for a few years. All the while corresponding with the governments of Silspada and Prospeoi, ensuring that the current political climate stays peaceful, ensuring that Merekens does not spoil what we have won. Now? I think I shall wander for a while, as Sayone no doubt still does. Visit my friends who remain landborn, while meeting with Maggie when I can. Finding things that are wrong and making corrections, as only I can. Writing about my experiences in a world of peace. I am...new now. Devlin and Maggie are similar. Not quite mortal, not after what we've witnessed. I fear that I shall have a very interesting life for the rest of my days. All the more reason to enjoy what normalcy I have left.

- Seventeenth page of "A Report on the Last Expeditions of Vaucra the Enduring", by Rogura Mythtwister