Not Quite The Golden Pony

Stan made good progress after he left Wissler, and he made it to the big city by night time. using the small amount of coin that he had in his pocket, Stan booked a small room at this town's version of The Golden Pony. The room was at the very top of the end, which meant that he had a window through which he could see the entire bustling street below him.

Stan had not eaten very much throughout the day. His stomach was very grumbly.  Although Stan was not a fan of inn food,  there was no place else for him to go. Resigning himself to a mediocre meal, Stan left his bags upstairs and made his way down to the common room.

Taking a seat next to the fireplace, Stan flag down the nearest waitress and ask for a mug of ale. The waitress, whose breasts were larger than her head, gave a hurried nod as she juggled empty ale glasses in her hands.

The inn smelled strongly of burning wood and soured soup. His chair was worn and somewhat shaky, but there was a nice oaken side table right beside him, and the spot was slightly quieter than the rest of the inn.

After what seemed like an eternity, the flustered waitress brought a mug of dark, musky, slightly warm drink that reeked mostly of alcohol. He thanked her with coin, and requested that the night’s dinner also be brought to him.

“It’s potato and turnip soup,” She said, her expression souring slightly, “And it’s not very good, if ya ask me.” Her tone was conspiratorial in a way, but also seemed to dare him to complain later.

“I understand.” Stan agreed. “I won’t blame you for the soup.”

Her smile brightened considerably. “One bowl of potato and turnip soup for you then, good sir!” She bustled away, swinging by the high top tables to pick up empty glasses. She moved out of his line of sight.

The fire’s warmth was taking the edge off of his road sores. He hadn’t brought a horse, expecting to find the answers he was looking for in Wissler. But no one had sight or sound of his father there, so he had trudged onwards to the larger city ahead.

Renya was a place where two major market roads met. Though not the largest city in the region, Renya was certainly the largest city that Stan had ever traveled to. He remembered somewhat fondly the trips his father would take him on as the shamans had their yearly meetings, or when the village had run low on supplies that could not be found in Wissler.

"Here you are, sir." The waitress' voice interrupted his memories, and he looked up to see a steaming bowl of broth extended to him from afar.

"Much appreciated." He said, already regretting the soup. The smell of it was somewhere between rotting watermelon and feral pig shit. He handed her the coins he had been idly playing with as he waited -- with a generous tip -- and sent her on her way.

Taking a deep breath, he tried not to think too hard about the soup's generous odor, and slurped up half the bowl. He survived -- mostly -- but it took quite a bit of inner strength to avoid retching when something more than broth -- something slimy -- slid down his throat. It was probably just a … potato. He thought as if trying to reassure himself. His stomach grumbled, angry both because it was still hungry, and because he had attempted to pass off pure, boiling garbage, as a meal. At least he had jerky in his room.

The next morning, Stan set off to the shaman guild. He had only every visited as an apprentice, and so, was only allowed in the first room. But as the full shaman of Dyssa, he would be allowed full entry. He hoped that other shamans would be in for some reason or another, and that he would be able to find some answers to his father and Horatio's disappearances.

The shaman guild was an unassuming warehouse-like structure on the western edge of town. Stan was sure that the neighbors of the building knew what it was, but the building had no signs or outward indications that it was a gathering place for the magicians and leaders of villages across the region.

Mount Grokum loomed ominously behind the structure. It disappeared behind the warehouse, away from his sight, as he approached the large, rolling wooden doors to knock. It took ten total raps on the door, in a pattern precisely learned from his father, before he was admitted entrance into the Great Hall.

The Great Hall looked drastically different than it had the last time he had visited, around half a year before. The hall had been decked out in royal blues and greens, but now, the tapestries were torn from the walls, and they were bare, a dull, grey wood, with hints of light peeking through the slats.

The man who let him in was in equal disarray. Whereas before, staff of the shaman guild were dressed royally, this man wore a homespun shirt little better than a rag, and his eyes were sunken deep into his hollow, melancholy face.

"Please take a number." The man intoned dully. Stan looked at him quizzically, and the man pointed to a round contraption on the entrance desk. A little slip of parchment was hanging out of it. Stan closed the distance and pulled on the slip. It tore easily into his hands and another one took its place. Stan squinted at it.

The man interrupted Stan's confusion. "Please take a seat. When we call your number, we will serve you. The man pointed to the rest of the hall.

Last time that Stan had been here, the Great Hall had been a bright and lively place, with many long tables set up with benches. Now, the hall was barren. There were no tables, and the benches that he assumed had previously been seats for the tables stood in evenly spaced rows at the far corner of the room.

What had happened here, Stan wondered? Was there some kind of disease, or was this what the place looked like all the time? Unsue of what else to do, Stan walked away from the man and took a seat on one of the long cold hard benches in the corner of the room. Almost instantly, the man called out a number.  “Forty two?”

Stan had not yet looked at the number on his slip of paper, but a quick glance told him that he was correct. The man had literally waited until he had sat down to call his number.

Annoyed, Stan stood and walked back over to the man. The man gave him a deadpan look. He pleasantly asked, “How can I help you today sir?”

“I am here seeking information about my father who died 3 weeks ago.”  Stan responded with a grim smile. “ I'm not sure if you can help, but I am aware of 1 other Shaman who has also disappeared recently.”

“I am very sorry to hear of his passing.” The man said almost mechanically. “ Let me see if I can assist you with that.”

The man walked behind the desk, and began shuffling some papers around. He glanced up and motioned Stan over. Stan closed the distance. Their voices echoed strangely in the empty hallway.

"Where did you say you were located, sir?" The man asked, still mostly expressionless.

"Uh, Dyssa." Stan said.

"And who is it that you're looking for?"

"I'm not… I'm looking for information. Two shamans have disappeared in the last month, from Dyssa and Wissler, and I was wondering if you had any information about what could be causing this."

"I'm so sorry, sir." The man said fluidly, setting his papers down and eyeing Stan with cool disinterest. "I cannot help you with that, but I can transfer you to someone else who can."

"Uh, thanks?" Stan said awkwardly. The man moved from behind the desk and made a "come hither" motion at Stan.

"Come along, then. We'll bring you to Ho-ak. He may know more about your issue than I do. I just work the front desk."

Stan ambled obediently behind the man as they wove their way through the benches towards the door leading further into the warehouse. The whole experience was surreal to Stan. He had been to this place yearly for the last decade, and never had he been subject to such a weird dynamic.

The man led him through the small door and took him down a pale lit corridor to his left. The lights flickered, and the hallway seemed… damp and dull. Stan shook off the feeling of unease he had.

"Annica can help you, sir. Have a great day!" The man beamed enthusiastically, the most emotion that Stan had seen from him, and held the door open to a small office on the right. A plaque hung on the wall next to the door. It was engraved with the words, "Office of Shaman Licensure, Life, and Death." Stan felt a chill go up and down his back. Was he dreaming?

He stepped through the door to a smiling, brownish woman with round rimmed glasses. She waved him to a cushioned seat with split leather on the other side of her desk. Her desk was covered in neat piles of small papers. An ornate bookshelf, built like a ladder, stood behind her, with various bound tomes of shaman standards. This, at least, put him somewhat at ease. This woman must be a shaman.

"Hello!" She reached over and took his hand. "How can I help you today?"

"My father, our village shaman, passed away unexpectedly while outside of the town a few weeks ago. I'm here seeking information about his death."

"Oh, dear." She frowned, her worry genuine. "I am so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you." He said, briskly moving on. "His death was suspicious at best. When I found his body, there was a dragon standing over him. It flew away when I got close."

The woman stared at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. Her laughter surprised him. Her gut-busting noise rang in his ears, and he felt himself growing angry.

"Oh, you're a right comedian, aren't you?" She howled, gasping for breath. "A dragon. Who would… My god. What's your name again?"

"Stan." He said flatly. His frustration must've been apparent on his face.

"Oh, Stan." She said, taking a motherly, slightly condescending tone with him. "I'm sure you've been using that line on your villagers, but every shaman knows that dragons aren't real."

"I'm… aware. Of the whole fake dragon thing." Stan said. Had a real dragon really been that rare? He wondered. "But I'm also aware of what I saw. I wasn't tired or sick. It was large -- almost as large as the Great Hall, here. And it flew away when I got close."

He had partially spoken over her giggles, but by the time he finished, she realized that he wasn't kidding. The woman furrowed her eyebrows at him. "Wait a second…" She looked around, as if looking for watchful eyes. The office was small, and there was no one in the hallway that Stan could see or hear. "Here… close the door now." She said, her voice hushed.

Stan obliged and shut the door behind him. It clicked into place, and the woman's office turned into a dark little cave. She turned the knob on her flickering oil lamp, and the light brightened.

"You mean to tell me that you saw a real dragon?" She asked him. "No joke. You're not messing with me. This isn't some elaborate prank that Gareth is pulling?"

"I saw a dragon." Stan said. "I think it had something to do with my father's death. I am here seeking information. About dragons, about shaman disappearances, or deaths, or anything really." He wrung his hands. "The shaman of the nearby village disappeared before my father did. No one has found him yet, but I bet he's dead, too. One is a mistake. Two is a pattern."

"Huh." The woman leaned back in her seat. "Amazing. Stan, would you mind if I asked a few questions?" She shuffled around her desk like he had already said yes, searching for a pen and some clean paper.

"Sure." Stan resigned himself to the process. He certainly wasn't going to get what he needed unless he answered her questions. That, he was sure of.

"When did you say that you saw this dragon?" She asked. She peered over her glasses at him.

"About two weeks ago." He said. "It was the eighth of Fallum."

"I see." She scribbled on her paper -- presumably notes about his answer, and then asked her next question. "How would you describe this … dragon?"

"It was larger than a house." He said, realizing that he sounded insane as he was saying it. "It was dark in color, but I was also pretty far away, so who knows what color it was."

"Was it dull or shiny?" She asked him curiously.

"Dull." He said immediately, with more confidence than he felt. "Nothing really sparkled on it.

"Interesting." She said. "What… shape was it? Did it look like what you'd expect a dragon to look like?"

"It was kind of… squat and fat." He admitted. "I though dragons would be leaner. It seemed to be one big mass of a thing, with a short neck and wings that were way too small to lift something that size."

"Interesting, indeed." She muttered. She stood up. "Hang on a second, let's see if I have the dragon book in here…" She turned to her bookcase, running her long fingers over the spines, searching for a particular one. After a moment, she made a victory noise and pulled a thin, green-spined book from the shelf just above her head. "Here we go!"

She turned around and plopped back into the chair. "This is a book that has spent a lot of time collecting dust, but I think it might help us."

Stan watched as she tenderly opened the book and laid it flat on the table. One page was filled with tightly packed scrawlings, and the other, with a drawing of what Stan guessed was a dragon. It did not, however, look anything like what he had seen. Where his dragon had been fat and black, this dragon was spindly, long, and painted with dashes of red and pink. Its scales were large and obvious.

"That's not it." Stan shook his head and the lady looked up and barked a laugh at him.

"Of course not." She said dismissively. "That dragon inhabits the deserts very far south of here."

She flipped the pages gently, seeming to search for something. After a few times of flipping past some sections, she laid the next page down for him.

The page showed a fatter dragon than before, more of a royal blue. Its neck was too long though, and its wings were similarly longer than what Stan had remembered.

"That's closer, but I don't think that's it, either." Stan said. The woman frowned and flipped past a few more pages.

"Alright, what about this one?" She showed him a slender black dragon and he shook his head negative.

"It was fat." He said. "I'm certain of it."

"Okay, okay." She flipped the page and pointed at the next image. A fat, black dragon with absurdly tiny wings stared at him, threatening to jump off the page and eat him like it had his father. Stan felt a little line of sweat break out, although he knew that the tiny dragon in the book was not real.

"Yes." He said quietly. "That's it. That's exactly what I saw."

"Mmm hmm." She agreed. "I figured as much." She glanced at the book, then shrugged and flipped it around so that Stan could read the text.

The Deatheater Dragon is said to inhabit the Grokum mountains, but has only been spotted infrequently. Where the Deatheater dragon goes, death and panic run fierce. Regions with a Deatheater begin experiencing disappearances and mysterious deaths scattered across miles. It is often people with solitary jobs, such as shepherds and shamans, that are the first to disappear.

The Deatheater comes and goes as it wills. No man has ever successfully defeated a Deatheater dragon in written history. Mythology suggests that there is only one Deatheater, which has lived for hundreds of years, coming every so often to extract its tax of human souls as penance for the devastation that humans will cause on mother earth.

The Deatheater primarily hunts at night, but will occasionally return to feast on a body in the morning. Although it is quite large, it is quiet as a bat at night, and can sneak up on its victims before they realize that anything is wrong. It is best to only work during daytime and within shouting distance of someone until the disappearances in the region have subsided for at least a month.

Stan felt a chill run up and down his spine as he read the words. He looked up at her.

"Have there been other disappearances?" He asked, "Or are the ones in Dyssa and Wissler the first?"

"There have been others." She said, closing the book. "But you are the first one who has seen the dragon. Actually seeing the Deatheater is rare. The author of this book," She waved the book at him, "Mostly pieced together his illustration from scant written accounts. Most people who saw the Deatheater didn't live for long afterwards."

Stan felt his heart beat in the pit of his stomach. She looked at him with a grim expression. "Though you've survived for quite a while, so perhaps you'll be fine."

"What's quite a while, exactly?" He asked, betraying no emotion in his voice.

"Most people who see the Deatheater die in three days." Her flat voice irked him, just a little. "Which is why I thought you were joking, when you first came in here. No one lives to tell about a Deatheater. But somehow, you did."

"I did." He agreed. "Is my… is Dyssa in danger?"

"Not really." She said. "The Deatheater is stealthy. It wouldn't attack a town. It might, however, attack people that are out gathering herbs or wood by themselves. I would recommend that you tell your villagers to work in pairs for the time being."

"How many… how many other deaths have there been?" Stan asked, and she shrugged.

"We're not sure, entirely, how many deaths are directly attributable to the Deatheater. Hell, we weren't even sure that there was a Deatheater around until you walked into my office. But I'd say probably twenty five or so? We've heard about eight now, and for every suspicious disappearance, a Deatheater could snatch up another couple of people who wouldn't be missed."

"Wow." Stan leaned back in his chair. "I, uh… I don't know what to say."

"Let me get you some hot tea, and we'll talk about what to do from here." Annica stood up as Stan nodded his agreement.

"Stan," She said conversationally before she stepped outside the door, "Would you say that you're … a moral person? Like a truly moral person. Not in name, but in action?"

"Yeah, sure. Why?" Stan's confusion showed as Annica smiled.

"No reason." She stepped out of his line of sight.

Stan and Annica spoke for a few hours, all in all. At various points in the conversation, some of the other shamans inhabiting the building would peer in curiously through the open office doors. Occasionally, Annica would invite them in, and explain how Stan had seen a Deatheater and survived. They all eyed him suspiciously, and she would have to assure them that he was sincere.

Stan hadn't really planned to stay another night, but Annica insisted, and it was far too late to travel anyway. He would never make it home in time, and knowing what he knew about the Deatheater, he wasn't sure he wanted to travel at night anyway. He was mildly concerned about Kreev, but had a feeling that the boy would stay in his shaman-cave until Stan had returned for him.

The inn's dinner selection was better, and Stan got a restful night of sleep before setting off back to Dyssa the next morning. Annica, along with some other shamans, promised to visit Dyssa soon to collect evidence, and call upon Stan if they developed a plan to deal with the Deatheater before more deaths happened.

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