The stars never change.
I’ve always found comfort in that. Wherever I’ve been, wherever my mothers’ ship landed us and wherever my companions and I found ourselves, the stars have always waited for me each night. Countless hours have been spent lying on my bedroll staring up at those familiar glimmers of light and knowing that, despite everything, there is some constancy.
“I brought you some broth,” Greenwa says, her voice so low and quiet that it seems to be part of the wind. She sits beside me, placing the wooden bowl and spoon to the side as she crosses her legs. “The others would welcome you by the fire.”
“I know.” I pick up the utensils and sip at the broth, thick and rich with freshly slaughtered venison. My eyes wander the skies above, picking out familiar constellations. Flos Ignis lies to the south, just peering over the horizon. We’re heading that way soon and my heart thuds at the thought of the memories that lie beneath it.
“So, will you join us, Anmog?”
It’s so easy to forget that Greenwa is near at times. It’s why she’s so integral to the group, so good at executing the heists when bounties don’t quite fund our other exploits. I glance over at her, forcing a light-hearted smirk to my lips, “You get me all day. Am I really so much that you must have me at night too?”
She gets up, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder, “If you want to play it that way, my friend, I will let Abalvis come over himself next time he worries for you. You cannot wallow or hide from whatever it is that plagues you forever. And I know he won’t rest ‘til he gets it out of you.”
“After all these years, is it truly so difficult for you all to believe that I like the solitude? That I like the peace of the night sky? Of the stars?”
“You’re a navigator Anmog, the stars are your story. There must be a reason you re-read it so often yet tell us nothing at all.”
I do not return to the campfire as the night wears on. My companions drink and sing great ballads to our adventures and escapades – detailing events old and new with vibrant passion. I listen enough to take in snatches of recalled memories but my mind begins to wander. It walks the path of my past, right back to Flos Ignis and the carnage that once lay beneath it. My eyes are drawn down, from the constellation to the tree line. Through the breaks in the branches – though a day’s travel still lies between us and that dreaded dock – I swear I can see the flames from that day still burning.
As dawn breaks and the sun chases the stars from the sky, I tidy up my bedroll and make into the depths of the woods, where we passed a stream a day earlier.
My pack looks meagre all alone on the bank, without the trinkets and trophies of my companions. I strip out of my clothes and step into the stream. The water, rich and cloudy as a finely polished amethyst, sends a chill through me. Overhead, oxrids chitter in the canopy, drawing the attention of the urneote family slumbering at the base of a great tree. As I wade down the stream, into deeper waters, I watch the mother urneote scale the trunk. Her sleek, bluey-black fur shimmers in the early morning light as she slinks towards a cluster of young oxrids. Time seems to slow as she approaches, the glint of a hunter in her white eyes. The oxrids have no idea what’s coming for them, their innocent chittering continues. I’m frozen in place, unable to move. A splinter of memory pierces my skull. I’m young again, like the oxrids, completely unaware of what’s to come.
The snap of a branch cracks through the scene. The oxrids spook, flying over to another tree, downy feathers falling loose and tumbling to the ground by the urneote family. The two pups bat at them and are soon engaged in a play fight with one another; their mother slinks away to hunt elsewhere.
“Running away, Anmog?” I turn towards the intrusion, taking in the familiar sight of Abalvis. His unruly hair, un-braided and unkempt from last night’s drinking, falls over his antlers in tangled waves. He sits down beside the stream, “You’ve not been right since Gurgog told us our heading.”
I sigh, my tongue clicking against the roof of my mouth. If I had it in me to reply to Abalvis I would but everything is too tied up. I’ve spent too long trying to force it all to the back of my mind that it’s still an unhealed wound, too sore and bloody to open.
“I know I didn’t push when I first met you, when you were alone on the road smelling of ash and covered in scars, so I won’t push now. But I know it wasn’t far from Lindunheilm that we met, and I know that’s the heading that has you so tightly wound.” His voice is gentle, a kind of softness that has grown unfamiliar over the years as we’ve grown into our roles: mine as navigator and him as the fighter, the torturer. It reminds me that he’s a protector too. That that’s what he started as.
I don’t tell him more. Don’t loosen my tongue to share the images battering at my skull lest releasing them breaks me entirely. But I accept his comfort like I did all those years ago, re-dressing myself then sticking close to him the entire walk back to camp.
On the outskirts of the forest, half a day’s travel on foot to the city, Gurgog manages to hitch us a ride in a fruit trader’s cart. His hobgoblin charm working to get the five of us – myself, Gurgog, Abalvis, Greenwa and Shizrnes – a lift into Lindunheilm. As I move towards the cart, catching a glimpse of the trader’s face, my hands begin to shake; a crude scar crosses his left eye and mars his features. My fists clench the handles of my sheathed daggers, whitening my knuckles, until Abalvis tugs at my elbows, pulling my hands away. I sink back into him for a fraction of a moment, just long enough to take the trader in once more. Where I saw the memory of pale-skinned, looming, scarred human, there is only an elderly gnome with tawny skin and a jovial demeanour. A shred of the tension coiled within me slips from my body.
“Don’t squash his berries,” Gurgog warns, delicately pushing Abalvis to one side as he goes to sit.
I perch on the edge of the cart, dangling my legs over the side, looking back towards the forest and places we’ve been. The others settle down – Gurgog on the other side of the berries to Abalvis; Greenwa and Shizrnes amongst mauve citrons and maroon breadnuts. There is quiet for a while, just the whistling of the trader and the turning of the wheels on uneven ground filling the air. I focus on that, try to let the memories and thoughts subside as I look away from where we’re going, let myself forget it as much as I can.
Then the whispers start.
It’s Greenwa first, talking to Shizrnes in elven, a language I know very little of. But that makes no difference when my name still sounds the same. “Anmog, si nu kiti sekre,” she says.
“Y agras, si nu higi menori,” Shizrnes leans in, the tips of hir moth-like wings sweeping across the wooden slats of the cart.
They continue on, muttering and conspiring together. I feel their gaze searing my back every so often, making it harder and harder to maintain my focus on anything but the present moment and our destination.
Lindunheilm hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve been gone. The cobbled streets are still full of pitfalls that pool with slop and excrement flung from upper floor windows. Bawdy folks stumble out of tavern doorways and slosh through the streets despite the fact the sun still hangs on the horizon.
“Tary nu plecote,” Shizrnes rolls hir eyes, sarcasm dripping off hir tongue.
An elf with cropped red hair and leather armour grabs Greenwa’s wrist as he passes, “Have your friend stop sullying our language.” He releases her and side-eyes Shizrnes as he walks away.
“Fuck you,” ze yells after him, hir wings beating angrily, “You eniligante bazarde.”
He turns for just a moment, his hand glowing gold as he flicks his wrist towards Shizrnes, sending a wave of dank puddle water surging at hir. Ze is knocked off hir feet, crashing into the ground and getting covered in filth.
As Abalvis and Greenwa pull hir up and pull linens from their packs so ze can clean up, I sidestep over to Gurgog. His focus is targeted towards an alleyway, situated between The Lust and The Flagon and Rat, two of the more unsavoury taverns the city has to offer – largely due to the many strangers that frequent them. “Please don’t tell me we’re going down there.”
He looks down at me, “The person who requested our services said to meet them on the dock.”
“What happened to meeting at Haley’s Old Whale?”
He gestures to a messenger crackdaw, preening its feathers and tittering on the roof of a trader’s stall, “That’s not an option anymore, for whatever reason. Message came through just after we entered the city limits.”
“What do we actually know about-”
Shizrnes barrels in between the two of us, “I’m as clean as I’m going to get right now so let’s get going. Best not to leave a client waiting.”
“Potential client,” Gurgog corrects.
“Emphasis on potential,” Greenwa mutters, “someone still stinks.”
Shizrnes glares back at her, sketching a curse symbol in the air. Ze continues on in the lead, Greenwa and Gurgog on hir heels.
“Whatever’s going on with you, it’s in the past, right?” Abalvis rests a hand on my shoulder, “It’s not going to come for you today. And we’re all here with you. This is just routine. We meet someone, find out who they want us to rob or kill, and either agree or leave.”
I push his hand away but stay close to him, “It’s hardly ever that simple. Especially not the leave part.” My gaze rakes around me, taking in the docks at the end of the alleyway and the tavern patrons stumbling this way and that. I see a street orphan pickpocket three men before getting caught. As the fourth man, a drunken dwarf, smashes a glass bottle over her head, I can only hope that she’s smart enough to have befriended a healer at some point. Similar scenes play out: an orc and an incubus falling through a doorway, knives at each other’s throats; a hunched over religious acolyte preaching his supposed saviour, a god of death, proclaiming that your loved ones could be safe with only five sacrifices. “Plenty of people around here are more unpleasant than most. Walking away from someone who wants to set up a deal here? That’s hardly guaranteed.”
“It’s just one meeting,” Abalvis replies. But I see his hands flex, reading to grab his halberd at a moment’s notice.
It’s only one meeting, I echo him in my mind. It’s hardly helpful against the growing noise of my memories, but it keeps me moving forward, following the others along the docks.
“The smuggler said he’d meet us here,” Gurgog says, stopping at the fifth ship along on the dock, “Half his previous crew got arrested, so he needs some extra muscle.”
“You never said we were meeting a smuggler.” My body tenses, hands hovering at the handles of my knives, fingers twitching with the urge to arm myself.
“It’s nothing unusual.” Gurgog and the others all look at me, concern and confusion etched on their faces.
Abalvis leans down, “I’ve- We’ve got you, okay?”
I turn to face him, to nod and accept his reassurances. But there’s someone visible just over his shoulders, a human man walking towards us. A man with an unmistakable, crude scar cutting across his left eye.
I’m a child again, home on the ship, snuggled up to Mum and listening to Mama tell me the story of a man who looked just like him; a smuggler the crew had come up against when looting stolen artefacts from Gurgester city. He’d wanted to sell the artefacts; we’d been tasked with returning them to the original owners. Mama was the one who gave him that scar, slicing him with her cutlass in the conflict.
I’m sixteen, running back to the ship along the same streets I’d just now walked, watching smoke and flames billow above the buildings and praying that they weren’t coming from my home. Selfishly begging that it was anyone’s crew, anyone’s family but mine who were victim.
I’m standing at the docks, grief tearing me to shreds at the sight of the huge, flickering swathes of orange leaping from my home into the sky. My body is fighting against the solid arms of a tiefling woman who saw fit to hold me back, to keep me from running into those flames. My throat is raw, hoarse with guttural screams and sobs being torn from me and flung into that same air that nourished those flames.
I’m both sixteen and twenty-five, shattering to pieces on the Lindunheilm docks, staring at the man who killed my family.
“Ah, you must be Gurgog! It’s a pleasure to meet you and your companions in person. Please, do come onto my ship. Let’s talk.” Saccharine charisma oozes off of every word he says.
I want to be sick. The others move to follow him but I find myself frozen in place.
“Is your friend okay?” he asks.
“Anmog’s been a little-”
“You got that scar from a pirate captain, didn’t you?” I say, “Captain Amaria, of The Red Minnow.”
He stalks towards me, “How did you-”
“And you killed her for it, didn’t you? Her, her wife, her crew, her ship – you destroyed it all because she stopped you getting what you wanted.”
“And what? You find my skill impressive?”
He steps closer. And closer. My fingers wrap around the hilts of my daggers. He’s so close that I can feel his breath on my skin. It’s hot and sticky, like the night sea air tainted with fire.
“No.” I secure my grip on my daggers, unsheathing them and drawing them upwards. “She was my mother. They were all my family. My crew.” I jab forward with my blades as I speak, sinking them into the unsuspecting flesh of his stomach.
His eyes widen. A grin stretches across his face. “Did you hear their screams? They called for you, Anmog. With their dying breaths they yelled for their daughter who was nowhere to be found. Maybe, just maybe, they would have got out if they hadn’t done that.”
Blood pools from him as he tugs my dagger free from his wound, lashing out towards me. I stumble backwards, flinching at the bite of metal across my face. My left eye is sticky, obscured with red that goes beyond my rage. The taste of iron coats my lips.
He crumples down to the ground, an unnerving satisfaction in his smile. “You’re the killer here, girl. First them,” he coughs, “and now me.” With one shuddering, spluttering breath the light leaves his eyes.
I am left staring at the image of myself: bloody, scarred and deadly. My legs buckle beneath me. Heaving, gasping sobs tear from my chest. I don’t see him move but Abalvis is there, holding me tight as the tiefling woman once did.
Under the light of Flos Ignis, tangled grief and guilt finally breaks free of me.
Holly Pratt is an undergraduate Creative Writing and History student in England. They love writing a variety of stories - usually exploring queerness, mental health or fantastical worlds. Another piece of their work can be found in Issue 05 of Swim Press Magazine. They also enjoy sharing their work at local open mic events. Online, they can be found on twitter @ramblingprat.