The Feral Dog Adrift - Chapter 3: Grace & Green

A rain-soaked noon
Moon of Hanging Lichen
Hoof-Bridge Point, on the eastern edge of Gierrom Mawl

“Thank you for coming, Animist.” The black-robed priest bows low, a hand reflexively going up to keep his pointed ceremonial hat on his bald head, covered in a thin layer of barely-regrowing hair.

“The thankfulness is mine, Honorable Priest. Every festival like this gives me a chance to pig out on fried squid. We don't really have that up in Five Pines.” The red-painted man, shedding his deer-pelt shawl, responds with a jovial smile just barely visible under his snow-white beard. He hands it to one of the priest's nameless assistants, their face hidden by that unadorned wooden mask, before continuing: “Remind me. Ceremony is past the tenth drum?”

“Yes. That gives you some time to wander our market street, if it would please you.”

“I'd better not. Want to leave some room for the after-ceremony meal. And a lichen salad. And maybe a few cups of strickus.” The red-painted Animist runs a finger through his beard in elaborate pondering. “Maybe a bowl of that green cream for dessert.”

The black-robed priest, face a flat stone of self-control, loses that firm facade at this last line. His brown eyes glimmer with a bit of mirth as he feigns exasperation and puts his palm across his face. “I'm not sure you need anymore dessert, Grauld. You're already fit for hibernation.” The animist, Grauld, cackles as he turns back to the beaded curtain across the entrance to the small harbor-side temple.

“Ah, Oake. It's good to see this place doing well.” Grauld says wistfully, looking out from the front of the small temple as the priest-in-black ducks under the curtain of beads. The large elderly man strokes his beard, as he gazes out over the bustling town. His icy blue eyes roam across its streets and clay-shingle roof-tops, to the milling docks. Then his eyes lift up.

“Indeed,” the priest-known-as-Oake spoke up, his own brown eyes looking with a tired mix of stress and satisfaction at the immense bridge connecting his town to the western island. “I'll admit, Grauld. It has been stressful, even frightening at times, trying to curry favor with the patriarchs of two of the greater clans just to allow this place to exist. But this bridge has already manifested miracles.”

They both look at the bridge in question. An immense construction of wood, stone, whalebone, and shellac, built into and twining through the massive rocky pillars that haphazardly jut from the waters of Rolan's Strait between the two great islands Gierrom Mawl and Gengrau Mawl. Hoof-Bridge echoes, even to their ears, from the sound of shouting and cart traffic. Down in the waters, a complex weave of lashed-together rafts and canoes allowing for quicker, albeit riskier, walking between the two towns. Already, Grauld's eyes could see the colored smoke of festival bonfires rising from the town of Hoof-Bridge Rest, on the opposite shore.

“Forget the patriarchs,” Grauld muses. “I could feel the energies of two of the Winds on my way across. You've already gotten the blessings of Yuresk and The Twinfisher?” A meaty hand absentmindedly reaches up to the charm-laden mass of necklaces wrapped around his throat, his weathered fingers caressing a chunk of carved, speckled rock with a hoof-shape engraved into it.

“Yes! Yes, over the last couple of moons we've successfully treated with them,” Oake responds with a hint of pride, reaching up to point. Two large totems, hanging from the underside of Hoof-Bridge by lengths of rope and vine; One, a mountain goat's head with turquoise stones embedded into its eyes; The other a two-faced, two-beaked kingfisher, with all four eyesockets left hollow and empty, and both feathery crests made from old, long-worn fishing harpoons. “We're still putting together the proper offerings before we entreat Grandfather Moose, Nali, Master Dam-Builder, and Bousht.”

“Ah, I was just about to ask that.” Grauld says with a nod. “Very well, I'll keep that in mind when the ceremony is finished. Although I'll tell you now, you don't need that large of an offering for Old Moose.”

“Honorable Priest! Honorable Priest, we have trouble!”

Oake's response is halted by a panicking shout. Immediately, the priest and the animist start down the hill holding the small temple as a panicked young man – hands still clutching his logging axe with a fearful grip – comes charging up. Already, Oake notes with a hint of exasperation, the young man is trailed by a small crowd of concerned and confused townsfolk.

“Woah lad, cool your haunches.” Grauld says as he thrusts a hand out, putting the sprinting lumberjack's pace dead in his tracks. The young man, barely reaching his adulthood and with his facial hair still growing in patchy and unfocused, is brought to a halt with a sudden hough. His shining blue eyes are wide with panic, and looking at Oake- All he can utter is a confused babble of sounds and the occasional word. Grauld's hand goes up to his shoulder, and pats it roughly. “Stop. Deep breaths now. Straighten your lungs and head out. You made it.”

“Take it slow. What do you need of me?” The priest-in-black asks, brown eyes on the alert as the crowd of concerned townies starts to grow. “You wouldn't have run all this way if it weren't important.”

Looking between the priest and the animist, the young lumberjack takes in a couple deep breaths. “Honorable Priest. North edge of town. North- At the logging camp. We got a- We got- We... One of the greens. The Green Men. One of 'em came outta the woods. Started hollerin' and brayin' some noise fierce. The lads are keepin' their distance, we dunno what he wants.”

Grauld has started moving before the young man could even finish his words, crashing past the startled onlookers with his bearish physique, and Oake can only curse under his breath. “Go to the temple. My assistants will help you cool down after that run.” And then immediately the priest sets off at a dead sprint.

==+==+==+==+==+==+==

“RHOI CAIMORT EE HOWN!”

“Please stop cursing us green one, we didn't know this was your grove!” One of the lumberjacks, with the rest of his compatriots hiding behind one of the felled trees, is pleading. There, just at the edge of the forest, it stands: Taller than a great brown bear standing on its hind legs, with an immense shroud of vines and shrubbery draped over its inhumanly broad shoulders and twining around its long, gangly arms. One of those green-tinted arms, and its equally gangling fingers, clutches an immense wicker-woven staff with squirrel, snake, and bird skeletons tied into its length, while the other lies awkwardly tucked under its shroud, carrying some large bundle. A stark-white and massive rack of antlers juts out from the shadowy lump that is its head, with two brightly-glowing white eyes staring into the soul of the lumberjack attempting some crude form of parlay.

Again, the Green Man bellows. “RHOI CAIMORT! MAE HOWN YEN MAROW!”

“Aright you lot, stand back!” From over one of the felled trees, Grauld vaults in with a speed and grace far belying his girth. Grabbing the attempted-diplomat by his shoulder, the red-painted animist roughly jerks him back, sending the lumberjack sprawling. Putting himself between the wood-cutters and the mysterious figure, he grumbles. “He's not being territorial, or you'd already be dead. You did your part, man. I'll do mine.”

Oake arrives shortly thereafter, his pointed ceremonial hat having fallen off at some point during the mad sprint from the temple. The bald priest, breathing hard, reaches into the folds of his robes. “If he's not territorial, what on Lendosk brought him this close to humanity? The Green Men are hermits as a rule.”

Grauld clears his throat, several times with a hard barking cough at the end. Reaching one hand up to the charms hanging from his neck, while the other one smooths back his head of snowy, lengthy hair, he locks eyes with the creature of the woods – His icy blue pupils staring into the deep, white depths. “Argelweyd Dryselweyn. Reydeym yan goll-gu dim niweyd ichi. Reydeym yan goll-gu eich coeydwegoed adim niwed. Pam ydysh chi weddod?” That booming tongue, magnified in volume by some invisible force, rips out of the Animist's throat like a rushing river.

“Honorable Priest, is he mad?”

“Silence, good lumberjack. Let the Animist do his work.” At the word 'Animist,' a reverent-yet-fearful silence grips the lumberjacks. Where there was frightened murmuring, now only a stunned silence as they watched Grauld.

“MAE HOWN YEN MAROW!” The Green Man repeats its last bellowing, and it shuffles forward from under the canopy. Revealed by the light of the cloud-shrouded day, the creature's head is shown: A replica of a human skull molded from warm, pulsating brown clay, with that large rack of antlers growing out of its temples. Tangled into and around the skull are what appear to be strands of flesh and skin, the texture and color matching that of the gangly arm. Its legs are the same disjointed and disproportionate array – and whatever makes for a 'torso' and 'trunk' on the Green Man are hidden under its cloak of shrubbery and foliage. In that skull's sockets hover two unblossoming flower-bulbs, emitting that bright white glow.

“Yeer un yma?” Responds Grauld, moving himself closer as the Green Man approaches. The massive foliage-frocked creature kneels down, bringing its other arm out from under its shroud. He's holding a man in that long limb, as if he were holding a baby. A limp, unconscious human, whose skin was the color of sun-scorched leather, and covered in haphazard and splotchy discolorations; As if someone had drizzled white lacquer or melted wax over his form. Grauld rushes to close the distance, hand leaving the tangle of charms and necklaces as he grabs a hold of the unconscious person's shoulders, and gently pulls them out of the Green Man's grasp onto the muddy ground.

The man's hair was a strange, bright, fiery shade of orange only seen on certain trees in the autumn moons; And here and there, parts of that same hair on his head and lower face were singed as if they had been burnt. What parts of his skin weren't rendered like melted lacquer or wax had simple black tattoos, themselves incoherently broken up. Grauld checks for his pulse, listens for his heartbeat. Both are there, but as dim and slow as his breath.

“Fay niol, Argelweyd Dryselweyn. Nid yedem yen ay adnabod, ond beydewn yen ay gymryd oddi yema.” Graul speaks to the Green Man in that mystical tongue. The creature nods, and stands back to its full height. It turns, wicker-staff thunking into the mud and loam, and retreats back into the woodlands it calls home. “Get a stretcher, and bring him to the medicine man!” Grauld yells with urgency. Oake finally moves up to the animist, kneeling on the other side of the mysterious, dying man.

“We didn't have anybody missing, recently, on either side of the strait.”

“He's not from here.” Grauld mutters as the lumberjacks behind them holler and rush. A crowd of the Point's townspeople, following over the sprinting priest and animist, has already begun to gather in a concerned crowd just beyond the fallen trees. His blue eyes rake up and down the unconscious man's form, seeing things that Oake's own vision cannot. “Salt and water've soaked in, not just to his skin but down to his spirit. These tattoos don't match any village or clan on Art Lendosk. And...” The animist's voice trails off, his brow furrowing with a deep concern.

“And? We know there are lands beyond ours, Grauld. He could be a castaway from someplace like Conthas.” Oake suggests, cocking a brow as he looks up, waving over the stretcher-bearers.

“I've met the Conthan merchants, Oake. I was there when they won their bid for that district and enclave in Woddell's Fane, and the Belasarians were pushed out.” The animist murmurs with growing apprehension. “Even then, I could see the elements of a person's spirit that peak out from under the skin.” He looks up, his eyes locking with Oake's plain brown pupils. “The Conthan and Belasarian' souls. Their spirits, their souls, were colored and changed by their lives. But I could see that fundamental shape, they still looked similar to us.”

“Right?”

“This man's spirit, what little struggles to live. Looks nothing like theirs ever did.”

 

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Trying to write this chapter took many, many attempts and revisions. Trying to figure out how to establish language in another world, yet also enable the reader to comprehend what's being said without jumping to the conclusion that the British Empire dominated all of space and other universes.

I couldn't find a proper compromise in the long run, so instead we're doing it like this: Going forward from this chapter, the languages that the chapter's Point-of-View character are capable of understanding will be presented for the reader's comprehension - while any other languages present in the scene, if not known by the character, will remain untranslated.

The Feral Dog Adrift - Chapter 2: Washed & Wax

An unknown shore
An unknown time

He awakens in confusion. He isn't dead?

Then the pain comes back.

Liam's eyes squeeze shut as it all comes rushing in. The pain of sunlight burning through his closed eyelids. The agitation of the salt, grime, and sand that cakes his face and skin. The dull numbness of his beaten and bruised body, aching with the memory of burning, searing agony. He remembers the fire spreading quickly as the barrels of gunpowder began to cook, his body being consumed as his lifeblood gushed and poured to the wooden hull of the Osprey.

He squeezes his left hand – Hand? His hand's returned? He clenches, gnarled fingers digging into the sand beneath him. It's real. He didn't imagine the gunshot that blasted it off, but it's intact?

Liam unclenches the sand, and grits his teeth as he forces his left arm up to wipe at his face and eyes. The light that scorches his pupils through those tightly-squeezed eyelids fades and darkens ever-so-slightly, and his skin feels the chill of a breeze. He forces his hazel eyes open.

The sky is blue, with foul dark-grey clouds drifting across the deep ocean-like expanse. The sun's rays stab his pupils like white-hot knives, even as the foul daystar itself is increasingly choked behind an oncoming storm. Liam pushes himself up onto his elbows with a huff and a groan, as that gulp of air sparks a fresh wave of misery.

He looks first at that largest mystery: His left hand. That's his hand, but... not. It's a dull white, almost grey, except for a ragged line along his wrist where it immediately shifts to sunburnt tan. The tattoos he remembers getting on this hand and these fingers are absent, as are the scars. His eyes trail down along the rest of his left arm; Scars he remembers wearing with pride are also filled in with that dull white tone, and his skin is spider-webbed and splotched; In many places, the discolorations break up and cut apart his skin's tapestry of tattoos. Almost like melted wax was haphazardly flung around, then left to sink in and cool just under the skin.

Once more, he remembers the flames that were licking and eating at his dying body.

His mind slowly unhinging, Liam turns his head away. His shaking hazel eyes look around him - The shore is like any ordinary beach he's been on. Beige sand being washed a dark brown by the ocean waves. Trailing between him and the ocean's edge was a line of charred wood and warped scrap metal. Here, a span of canvas and cloth once flung to the shoreline, now being dragged back to the sea. There, a tangle of rope and seaweed. And nothing but the sound of the ocean and the wind echoing through his-

The once-dead pirate perks his head up at the trill that drifts in. A deep voice, singing in a strange tongue, drawing closer. From where? That deep tune draws close from nowhere, yet everywhere around him at once, echoing and ringing in his head. Already reeling from his circumstance, Liam falls back, his breath drawing fast like an overwhelmed bellows.

He hears that singing voice grow louder, and louder. Its song cuts abruptly, as does the echoing beat in his skull, and a shout rings out from his right. Liam, eyes widening with shock as his breath continues its horrified rhythm, slowly turns to look.

A large figure crests the sand dune, bearing a large staff of driftwood and vine, with bones and small animal skeletons hanging from it like charms. A pair of immense antlers branch out from its head, with a massive shroud of green plant-life draping from its shoulders. Liam's eyes grow blurry at the sight, refusing to focus as he feels his consciousness fading out like a light. The immense green shape starts shuffling forward, faster and faster.

He faints, his mind choosing oblivion over comprehension.

The Feral Dog Adrift - Chapter 1: Storm & Smolder

The 17^th of September
1693, fourth year of the reign of William III, King of England
The boundary between the Celtic Sea and the British Channel.

The storm batters against the worn hull and tattered sails of the HMS Osprey, her battle-scarred silhouette struggling to make headway against the waves. Her deck is covered in flickering lantern lights, as thick-voiced sailors struggle to keep her from being swamped in the freakishly large waves. The sails of her three masts are bundled tight, all eighteen gun-ports shuttered, anchor hooked onto the prow. High and low she bobs in the dark waters, a lone flicker of light in pitch darkness.

Deep in the Osprey's cargo hold he sits in cross-legged silence, gnarled wrists clasped in iron shackles. His boots and coat were long gone by now, claimed by the ship's officers as both trophies and replacements for their own gear. Only a pair of ratty canvas pants spare his modesty. Under the flickering lantern light above him, his skin gleams with the mapwork of a foul life: Streaked with grime and soot, scarred by sun's rays and old battles, with tattoos etched like a tapestry. And pock-marking this wretched flesh are copious, fresh welts and bruises. Yet under that mane of fiery orange hair, the muscled prisoner's eyes still shine with vigor, pupils wide with a calm, unbroken rage.

From his position, he can see his four watchers. Four men of His Royal Navy, each unsettled and nervous in their own fashion. Two are simple, fresh, clean-shaven boys – likely brought on from that other ship after his capture. The other two would have been useless during this storm, and so their position here is simply to keep them out of the way. One is so badly wounded as to be crippled: His arm in a makeshift sling, a hollow and mangled eye-socket covered with a strip of linen. The last is staring at the walls of the lower hull, muttering. The orange-haired man has seen this kind before: Stricken in combat, his eyes are likely full of gunsmoke and death. An injury of the mind.

If it weren't for this storm calling every able-bodied sailor to duty, these four would not be here.

A vicious wave crashes into the inside of the Osprey, and it sweeps across the deck of the vessel. Two men are washed overboard, and the ruckus above becomes even more desperate. Below, one of the boys stumbles and falls, sea legs still untrained. The other struggles to help his brother-in-arms up, and the trauma-stricken soldier begins to tremble. The prisoner makes his move.

“Sit your arse back down, Liam!” The wounded soldier calls out as the orange-haired prisoner surges to his feet. His one good hand points a pistol, struggling to keep it aimed true. Liam wastes no time, his scarred feet gripping the wood beneath him before his legs tense – and then launch him forward. He sees the man's single eye start with surprise, before-

KRRK. His forehead smashes into the wounded man's face, a splash of blood spurting out from the impact. The crippled sailor collapses, nose and bones beneath pulverized from the impact. His pistol fires, the musketball cracking off into the wooden hull aimlessly.

One of the boys, still on his feet, hastily begins to hoist his rifle up; The unwell mariner hollers, struggling to make his shivering hands and shuddering eyes aim. Liam, even with his hands bound and his body aching, streaks and lunges around the sailor-boy's gun. His hazel eyes are now lit with a wild, hungry fire; With a savage lunge, he drives his stained teeth deep into the lad's tender neck, and clenches his vice-like jaw shut. It takes only a shake of a mangy head, and the boy's throat rips apart, blood gushing out from mangled flesh. The young lad slumps against the wall of the cargo hold; In seconds, his body goes limp.

“HELP! WE NEED HELP! RED DOG IS LOO-” The other boy screams as he tries to take aim with his musket from the floor. He has no chance, as the orange-haired pirate stomps his head against the wooden hull with a knobbly ankle. WHAM. WHAM. WHAM. He's unconscious, but Liam keeps stomping. WHAM. WHAM. WHAM.

KRAKOW.

The chaotic air is struck quiet with a loud gunshot, and the shaggy red pirate grunting in pain. He looks back: Smoke billows from the muzzle of the haunted sailor's rifle. He feels his right arm's shackle slacken as his left arm and his lower back bloom with hot agony. He pulls his arms to his front; His left hand is gone- No, not gone. It's there, fallen to the floor of the hull. His left wrist is a ragged stump, and he feels the culprit rolling around in his gut, the musket ball piercing his wrist and into his innards.

“Death here then, instead of dancin' the hangman's jig.” The first words from Liam's lips, before he clenches his sole remaining hand and smashes that fist into the temple of his final jailer. Those haunted eyes roll back into their sockets, and he hits the hold's floor with a loud thud. The pirate reaches up, gritting his teeth as he feels that iron invader rolling around in his lower body, and feels the end approaching. He grabs the lantern from its hook in the ceiling, and rips it off, testing his grip on the glass-and-metal frame.

“Indeed. T'is a shame you won't live to face trial, Mr. Gault. But your corpse will still see me promoted.” That posh voice, dripping with noble ambition. Liam glances up from his bloody carnage, blood and viscera dripping from his filthy jaws and beard, his ragged stump, and the hole opened in his back. The new arrival's cutlass is already poised to strike, even as Liam's vision begins to blur at the edges. A blonde man, fair locks and pale skin streaked with the sweat of exertion and desperation. “Permit me to make your passing quick. You won't survive the night, and whatever foul honor you wogs swear by would surely allow for death by the blade over bleeding like a pig.”

“If I would not take Orange Billy's noose, wot makes you think yer blade has a chance?” Liam says with a harsh snarl, hefting the lantern in his good hand. “Why, James... Would I not take the flames of Hell firs' and foremost? Especially as you didn't feckin' move the gunpowder out?”

James' eyes widen with horror as Liam Gault turns on his heels, and his arm winds for a massive throw. The captain of the Osprey leaps forward, cutlass piercing through the air. It slices deep and stabs downward through the pirate's flesh, catching on the bone of his ribcage and cutting into his lungs.

But too little, too late.

The lantern soars through the short distance the shaggy pirate has flung it, and smashes against the barrels and bags stacked and shoved into the deepest recesses of the Osprey's cargo hold. Canvas and wood begin to smolder and smoke, the air growing hotter and hotter. The captain can only stare in horror, his mouth trying to find the breath and the voice to start shouting for help.

“I am Liam Gault,” the former prisoner turns, James' cutlass still jutting from his back as his own blood pours from his many wounds. “The Red Dog. Captain of The Lady's Mercy.” He coughs up blood as he falls to his knees, a smarmy and sadistic grin on his bruised and pock-marked face. “You burn with me.”

==+==+==+==+==+==+==

The HMS Osprey burns for a long time, gunpowder stores cooking off with a brilliant flare and smoke rising into a pitch-black and stormy sky. Her crew fights to see the dawn, to beat back the flames of The Red Dog's final hour. 

By morning, no one remains to tell the tale.

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