Chapter Text
You didn’t notice anything weird about Vaugarde until a few months into your travels through it.
Well, no, that’s not quite true. The whole country is weird. They all leave their doors unlocked and you can come and go as you want (but not past the first room, for some reason?), they greet you like they’ve known you for forever even if you’ve only just entered their town, and they’ll toss odd jobs your way before you even have to ask for one.
That’s what tipped you off that something properly strange was happening, actually. The shopkeeper of one of those stores that sells the old things—you forgot the word for it—saw you carving outside of their store during a quiet afternoon, and, instead of chasing you off like you expected, they asked you to come inside and take a look at an old sign. They said it used to hang outside their store, which was obvious to you from how beaten up it looked. It was weathered, the words hardly legible anymore, with clumpy bits of moss obscuring the shallow indents of the letters. They asked if they could pay you to make a new one, and you accepted without hesitation. Not like you were doing anything else.
Well, that took you just a few days—Vaugardian spelling is weird, (why can’t all words just be spelt how they sound?) and you’ve never quite gotten a solid grasp on it—but when you brought the finished sign to the shopkeeper they acted surprised and told you they never requested it. They acted like they’d never seen you before.
You… weren’t really sure what to make of that, when it happened. So you just gave them the sign and left.
That town was weird anyways.
But you got over it. Spent a few weeks in the woods, only occasionally seeing other travelers or merchants. You’d picked up a foraging booklet a few months prior when you were still in Poteria, so you managed to scrape by with that and some hunting here and there until you got to the next town.
And it was fine there for a while, too! You sold some of the carvings you made over the past few weeks as well as some game you’d freshly hunted, and did other odd jobs here and there. You actually managed to save a good bit of what you earned, enough that you planned to maybe stay at an inn for a night or two. Your cloak is good at keeping you warm, but it was starting to get especially cold, so you would have rather been indoors instead of finding some bench or alley or tree to rough it in.
But now it’s the day that you’ve decided to sell what’s left of your carvings. It’s been fine. You’re sitting in the park, cross-legged on your blanket with your wares spread out in front of you, a few customers coming here and there. You only have half a dozen items left, so you’ve been considering wrapping things up and finally treating yourself to that proper meal and bed you promised yourself, when two burly people walk over to you. You forget exactly what they’re called—something with a D?—but they’re somewhat similar to a police force, you think? But Vaugarde doesn’t have police, they have whatever these people are. Which is not good news for you, because why is this country’s closest equivalent to a police officer approaching you?
Regardless of what you have or have not done, they come up to you, and you realize in that moment that you probably aren’t supposed to be selling things here. You prepare an apology and start to gather your things, but one of them speaks up seconds after you stow away the first of your carvings:
“Oh, no, please sit! We don’t mean to be a bother, we just need to ask you some questions, if that’s alright?”
And that’s weird in of itself, and you’ve been in similar enough situations before to know that this sort of encounter never ends at just questions. But these people look stronger than you, and even if you could outrun them they could just search for you across the town, and you don’t really want to leave this town yet, so, to appease them, you go back to sitting. And that seems to satisfy the first one of them.
The second one keeps their distance, unlike the first, brows furrowed and lips drawn into a thin line. “Louise, the report said—”
“It’s all fine, Clem. We’re just going to talk, right? No harm in talking.” Their eyes flick down to your hands, which now are fiddling with the figure you picked up—a small mallard you made from some pine wood. “Besides, that report’s probably all hullabaloo anyways.”
Oh, they’re just making up caecantia words at this point.
You smile up at the one closest to you—Louise, by what their partner said—and put on your sweetest voice, “How can I help you?”
You’re not really sure what else there is to say? They’re being incredibly vague about whatever it is they want. If they don’t want you to pack your things and leave then you’re at a total loss for what to do or say or anything.
Louise kneels to be close to your level while the other sighs and adjusts their stance. “It’s nothing too important, I promise. We got a report from Mérient—that’s the next town over—about some weird Craft sickness that was spreading around. Making people’s memories get all fuzzy and whatnot. And, uhh…”
They peer back towards their partner, Clem, and tilt their head towards you with a shrug. The other one nods, but gets no closer. “Yeah, a traveler with a darkless hat, cloak, and hair. Long hair, too, like they said. It fits.”
Wait. Do they think you got a town sick? You haven’t been sick recently, so you don’t think you could have done that? Or was it something you hunted? You did give a few rabbits to that big building—they called themselves a house but it was too big to be a house, in your opinion—so maybe you don’t field dress them well enough? Could that get the whole town sick, though?
Well, may as well ask. “I’m… I got a town sick?”
That gets both of their attentions back onto you. Louise pipes up, voice shrill as he yammers, “Well, uhh, technically the report mentioned multiple towns, which is, I guess, how they may have traced it to you? ‘Cus you’ve been seen traveling through them all? But nothing is proven! Nothing’s concrete! We just wanna take you down to our headquarters and ask a couple of questions? If that’s okay?”
Wuh oh!
You decide you’re not going to stick around for this, actually. Questions and secondary locations are definitely where you draw the line and get out of dodge. This isn’t your first time skirting the law. You really do hope it’s your last. All the attention is never fun.
Like a man on fire, you jolt to your feet, snap your fingers three times, and Craft Celeritas et Agilitas, darting off and leaving your carvings and blanket behind, but for the mallard that you were holding. Glancing behind you, both of the officers look stunned, eyes wide and mouth parted in shock, before they seem to come to their senses. But they don’t follow after you…
Well, you’re not gonna give them the chance to catch up.
While you run out of the town and into the nearest stretch of woodland, you think about what they were saying. Getting not just one, but multiple towns sick? That’s definitely not possible. You’re not a doctor or anything, but you’re fairly certain that’s not how disease spreads, and you know you're a better hunter than to mess up enough times to have a track record. You’ve never gotten yourself sick, anyways.
Or, you don’t think you have? It’s blurry.
Vaugarde must have weird laws, though, if this is something that you could be arrested for. And you didn’t even do anything!
Feeling your Craft wear off, you slow your gait, sufficiently far from town and concealed by foliage and shrubbery. You lean against a half-dead tree, some of its bark flaking off when you apply pressure, and listen to the sounds of nature around you.
Somewhere off in the distance you hear the song of a crow. You scan the treeline, searching for their lightless feathers through the dappled rays of light passing through the leaves above, and see not just one, but eight crows sitting in the branches of a huge tree. One of them tilts its head at you, and you copy the motion. Seeing all of them so near each other reminds you of the poem your aunt taught you as a child, where the number of crows signaled a message from Ūniversa about…
Wait. Your aunt? Ūniversa? What are you—
<<< <<< <<<
Your head hurts.
You blink, vision coming into focus past your headache. Oh! You’re looking at crows! Actually, just one. You see a bunch of others taking off, almost in tandem, leaving this one behind and staring at you. Or maybe at the pins on your cloak. Is it crows or ravens that like shiny things? You hope it’s ravens, because you really don’t want this crow to try and steal your pins. Wait, is this a crow or a raven? What’s the difference between them anyways?
Stellae, this is not helping your headache.
You push off of the tree you're leaning against and trudge forward, towards a narrow dirt path leading deeper into the woods, narrow enough that you doubt it was made by anything other than foot traffic.
What’s so interesting about this big tree that people would want to come here?
You pass it by. No reason to linger on Vaugardian customs. You’ve come to the conclusion that they’re all kind of weird anyways.
You’ll just head onward to the next town, you suppose. And hope that those officers don’t come looking for you.