Chapter 30: 28 – Mine’s Bigger

“Ooh, lemme guess. It’s somethin’ real personal ain’t it. Like a lover’s body odor or somesuch,” he replied with a knowingly facetious tone right after downing a big gulp of his liquor.

She knew that he knew, and that was that. Zel didn’t even bother replying, instead just leaning back in her seat and taking a long sip of her own drink. It was… Cider. No more, no less - just good, hard cider. So it was that she slowly chipped away at the tankard, idly observing and taking in her surroundings. The stone walls were covered by a great deal of memorabilia - some were paintings, depicting things like Ikesians in victorious combat against various monsters or simply humans in outlandish armor and wielding equally outlandish weapons. Others still were more flags or nationalistic propaganda posters, or mounted trophies from the war.

One such trophy caught her eye in particular - a little off to the side, in the awkward space between the bulk of the wall and the stage in the back. It was a huge, three-fingered metal gauntlet, severed cleanly just above what she assumed to be the wrist. Its centimeter-thick armor was painted the iconic green of Ikesian uniforms and the back of the hand had a black decal. With a bit of squinting and a tiny breath of Fog to sharpen the senses, Zel managed to make out that it depicted a forward-facing wendigo’s head.

Most of the ex-soldiers down here spoke of their time serving in the war with the gallows humor that inevitably came to those traumatized by combat. They mocked their Pateirian enemies for being out-of-touch peasants or nobles that thought Ikesia had some secret pyromancer organization instead of simple massed artillery. 

In other cases, they spoke of how glad they were that Grekuria had struggled to even muster a full-scale military response on many of its fronts, mentioning the terrifying effectiveness of their precision-strike units while, with the same breath, joking about the antiquated, truly medieval tactics employed by their main military forces. According to these men and women, Grekurian armed forces had kept attempting to force pitched battles even after multiple battalions had gotten obliterated by the use of bombardment and early-model tanks.

Thus some time passed, until Zelsys felt a hostile presence approaching.

---

Udar had lived in this country for years, in this city, for months, skirting the edges of war and doing the odd mercenary job for either side here and there. He was small fry, good enough to be independent but insignificant enough to slip through the net when the big shots tried to wipe out the opposition. Possessed of light hair, hazel eyes, and a beige complexion, he had nearly universal “handsome foreigner” appeal and the plausible deniability of a mixed ethnicity on his side. Where that wouldn’t suffice, he had his holy trifecta of saving graces - raw charm, people skills, and the threat of violence. 

Unfortunately, only the last one held any weight down here, in this speakeasy, reluctant as he was to apply it. That was his seat, he had no choice but to assert himself - that was simply how things worked in this place, which he thought of as the “bad” part of town. In places like these, he knew that a simple conflict of seating could easily turn out to be some weird assertion of superiority.

“That’s my seat,” he said as he took out his sword, trusting that the massive girth of its curved blade would resolve the conflict without violence. It was as though a war-knife had been forged with four times the material, easily heavy and powerful enough to cleave a man in twain with a good chop. As proud as he was of his ability to wield such a massive weapon, he was even more proud of the fact he rarely had to use it.

Only… It didn’t quite work out like that. The brown woman regarded his weapon with an amused look in her eyes and an insufferably confident grin.

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“What, you want to make this a dick-measuring contest?” laughed the one-armed foreigner, rising from her seat. It was only then that it really sank in just how much larger she was. She reached under the table and gripped something, the subtle hum of livingmetal resounding before he even saw the blade gleaming in the light.

“‘Cause mine’s bigger.”

---

An old eye peered from amidst the leaves of a bush. It watched the road, watched and remembered. The Menace-Merchants’ forward scouts had come, bringing tidings of bottomless coffers and unparalleled blades. For days more, the city’s populace would remain none the wiser, save for perhaps a few particularly curious customers in the markets. Indeed, these concealed eyes would dip their toes in the local market and like an expert fisherman determine what bait - or in this case, what goods - to bring.

Just as they had done for centuries prior, and just as they would do for centuries to come. The families changed, the people changed, the goods they brought and money they paid with changed, but they always came and went, for that was the nature of the Kargareth.  

Indeed, they always came and went, and their presence always secured the lives of their hosts for a time. In this, they differed from lesser merchants. The Kargareth greatly valued those they sold to and bought from, for they simply didn’t trade with those they deemed unworthy. So it was that their unparalleled caravan guards became guards for their hosts as well, for as long as the caravan stayed. 

Watching those humanoid war machines stomping about always had him on high alert. They brought back memories of rampaging golems and unholy amalgamations from ages past, yet they were naught but glorified automata puppeted from the inside. In ages to come, perhaps those who came after him would regard the war machines of their era with the same misplaced nostalgia as he did these not-golems.

It would be time to go into town again. He was beginning to run out of things that couldn’t be replenished with hunting or scavenging.

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