The Gaming Outpost

I pull off the wire-frame glasses with the smoked frames, and carefully fold the mystic lenses, and place them upright in my left front pocket of my tan, cashmere trench coat.  Scooping out the crossed tresses of my corn silk hair, and I then let it fall so that that steel ball at the end of my ponytail brushed the top of my hips.  Reaching to my right, I pulled back the flared bottom of the coat, and revealed a the ruby-brown wood coils of the handle of a shikari knife; its blade is a curved triangle suited for stabbing and gutting.  For today, I was hunting.

Stalking forward, my padded boots with their triangle looped leather cords, stretching and relaxing under the hard flexes of my calf muscles, I crossed the Street of Household Metals.  Ducking to the right, I came up under the rough-cut white oak timbers hanging off the back of a lumber cart pulled by a braying donkey, with the wagon creaking in echo, and a minstrel singing a deep chant in the distance.

“Your man hit you….” The thing said, and I  could hear the whisper no one else could hear because I knew to listen for it, because I was an outworlder, and glamour had little hold on me.\He’s evil.

“Uh, well, he punched the wall near…” The worried looking woman in the plain green tunic said next to the thing, although there was no sign that the woman knew her ‘friendly ear’ was seven feet tall,  had a curved spine that made it stand only five feet tall, and had a pair of rudimnetary wings all covered by a black, shiny exoskelaton.

“That’s disturbing.”  \Next time it will be your face, the unheard by most whisper said.

“I don’t know what to do.” The woman said, and leaned on her ‘friend’s’ arm.  I could see life energy flow between the two.  Enthralled and disgusted, I watched even though I should have intervened.

“Should I apologize?”  The woman asked.

\Especially not if you are wrong.  A woman needs her pride.

“Or maybe I should leave to visit my mother for a few days until my mother and dad can talk to him?”  The woman bit her lip, and looked at her ‘friend’ who sucked more life force from the lady’s face.

\ No. Who knows what floozy he might be making time with if you leave him alone.

“No, you’re doing the right thing now.  We’ll teach you management techniques.” \You need us. You’ll die without us.

The Acaridell were obvious to those who could See, or had a functioning brain.  Unfortunately a woman (they preyed on woman. Tales say that there was an equivalent male predator centuries ago, but then they picked on the wrong guy.  Arch-Mage Landros is an imporant figure in history books of the fifth century.  He turned an army invading his king’s country into Dead Man’s Lake.  When the manipal tried to feed off him, he got seriously irritated, and summoned a hurricane and anchored it for two weeks atop the home islands of the manipal.) in the grip of fear and anger and apparently guilt was easy prey for the Acaridell, and their abilities at perverting people’s judgment with the Whisper.

“Your judgement is sound, woman.” I said stepping up.  The woman looked up at me.

“Sword?”

The Acaridell backed up.

“You know your man has never touched you, and you provoked him.  So you consider apologizing.  Or, you think that you need the help of your father and mother, to make sure nothing bad happens to you.  I cannot say which is right, but the management techniques this thing would teach you are guaranteed to infuriate your husband, and make it much more likely for you to get hurt.”

The Acaridell began walking further away.

“Come back, Jek, tell the Sword you’re not like that. You’re my friend.”

“Did you follow Jek’ s advice and that led you to this fight with your husband?” I asked, and suddenly saw a light go on in the woman’s eyes.  It was then that I drew my knife, and threw it, just in time before the Acaridell turned the corner.

It flipped a half-dozen times, and buried itself with a thunk up to its hilt in the back  of the Acaridell.  A second later, and the Acaridell was a mound of mist that rapidly dissiptated in the morning air.  My knife clattered on the sidewalk.

“You killed it.” The woman said frankly.  I was glad she had enough logic to recognize that her ‘woman friend’ was nothing of the kind.  It was why I had waited so long.  I needed the woman friend to be understand when I spoke that her ‘friend’ was a demon.

“Unfortunately, no.  I forced it too evaporate, but it will soon condense.  But now that you know what they are, you’ll protect yourself againts them, and your husband.”  I looked at her.  “If you, and your Full Family Council cannot handle this….well I’m here.”

It was how they handled disputes.  Go to the immediate elders, and if that did not work, then call a full family council of all blood related adults of anyone involved.  Everyone wanted to be fair to both sides because they knew that someday it would be them in front of the council.  Since the family council had significant pressure it could bring on both sides, it worked better than some distant bureaucrats who do not really care, and have few tools available.  And it was a lot cheaper for the king.