Chapter 196: 59 – Another White-robed Stranger

Upon Zel’s return to her compatriots, she took a moment to patch the hole she’d shot into her cloak; it wasn’t pretty, given her total lack of experience in such a craft, but it would hold. They moved on.

A violent rainstorm picked up in the course of the next stretch of the journey, but the Ankhezian road’s enchanted cobbles refused to become slick, and though waves lapped at its elevated sides and occasionally washed over it, the road remained safely above-water for the most part. That was, until at one point, the road just seemed to vanish beneath a raging river that certainly didn’t belong there. There, mere meters from the raging flow, was a peddler’s cart and next to it a wide parasol. Beneath it sat a long-haired, pointy-eared Ankhezian in white vestments and a wide-brimmed cone hat, plucking away at an archaic citar while a prodigiously-sized pot full of crustaceans bubbled away over a hexagonal blackstone apparatus from which spewed a jet of blue flame. Spices both known and unknown to the modern world wafted forth and overpowered the petrichorous scent of rainfall. The pot had a wide outer brim with a gutter-like depression running its entire circumference.

He waved them over when they approached: “Ah, fellow travelers! Come, come, sit down and share in the Dozer Boil. I’ll get you seats, just a moment…”

The elf sprung from his seat with unnatural smoothness of motion, vanishing inside his cart before returning with four disks of blackstone. He tossed them onto the ground around the pot, the disks springing up into four-legged stools. Gesturing for them to sit, he sat back down, stirring the pot and lifting one of the creatures out of the reddish liquid. It would best be described as a crustacean centaur, with the body of a crab mounted atop that of a lobster, rotating freely like a turret. The thing had two sets of claws on its “head”, one pair clearly for cutting, while the other two were thick and fist-like. Its lower body had two more pairs of claws still, these ones looking like they were meant for crushing, with four more pairs of limbs down the body’s length for locomotion.

With no other options at hand they dismounted, draping their oiled cloaks over their steeds to shield them from the rain.

“Oho, River Dozers get that small?” Zel questioned, waiting not a moment to sit down, motivated by a love for the meat of these creatures, having experienced the chasm of difference between how good it was fresh versus preserved. Zef, Jorfr, and Victor followed suit with varying degrees of caution, but the elf’s aura of magnanimity quickly washed away any suspicion. Still, Zel kept an eye on him, feeling an uncanny familiarity from him.

“Of course, these have only molted once; their meat should be nice and sweet. Perhaps consider buying some trinkets of tchotchkes while we wait for this mess to pass, hmm? The food is free, of course,” he offered as he pulled one Dozer after the other out of the boil, sliding them down the length of the pot’s brim so that one ended up perfectly in front of each of his guests in turn.

“Just crack them open, any knife will do. I presume I needn’t furnish hardened travelers like yourselves with knives, yes?” he waved a hand in vague instruction, raising his head just enough for Zel to get a look at his face. They locked eyes for a moment. She didn’t bother with a knife, willing the Impelling Arm to lengthen the claw on its thumb and using this to cut the creature open. As she dismantled it and methodically exposed its meat, blue blood dripping betwen her fingers, she posed a question to the merchant: “Say, did you play with the Krishorn Caravan last year? I could swear I saw you in Willowdale.”

An elusive smile formed on his face; he raised a claw to his mouth and sucked the meat out of it, answering after a few seconds of chewing: “That was I, yes. You would happen to be the founder of that new sect, is that right? Newman, was it?”

Zel nodded, “We met your grandfather up north, warned us of the northern passage through the mountains. Beset by localized storm systems and savage beasts…”

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“Ancient Ankhezian bioweapons from an attempted conquest of Borea, he called them,” Jorfr grumbled, his mouth full of meat as he spoke. Anger was evident in his voice. “I thought it to be a deception, but there they were, in spite of the lengths I went to to commune with the spirits and ascertain the time of the Great Blizzard’s passage.”

“My grandfather, you say?” the Man in White asked. A cold fury came over him for a moment, his smiling face undercut by the brief turning of the rain into hailstones. Thunder howled in the distance for a moment, and then, both of these phenomena subsided, returning the weather to a rainstorm and leaving eyeball-sized chunks of ice littered around.

Raising another claw-leg to his mouth, the old man bit a piece out of it, exoskeleton and all, chewing with a horrid crunching as if it were nothing. His presence felt as though a volcano trying its best not to erupt, driving the four of them into cautious silence; even Zelsys dared not speak up.

“He must have recommended the naval route to you, knowing him,” he said. “Do you intend to take one of the western ports?”

Jorfr was the first to speak up: “We do not have such time. I know of a route through Agartha.”

“Good choice…” the Man in White hissed with thinly-veiled rage still bubbling in his speech. Then, even this remnant vanished when he turned his eyes to Victor, looking at his face, then at his chest, whereupon hung a pale-blue gem. It was like he had shut off the part of himself that processed anger. “Young man, your necklace. May I look at it?”

“It’s not for sale,” the redhead stated flatly.

The Man in White smiled. No anger this time.

“I neither wish to buy it, nor do I think I can afford to pay what it is worth. I simply wish to see if it is what I think it is. You need not place it in my hand, just hold it out so that I might take a closer look,” he asked, pleading even, as if his curiosity overwhelmed his dignity.

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