Chapter I - Lissium - Jiro

Everybody in this city will be dead.

Jiro awoke with a start. The words still echoed through his head as dreams faded into reality. He had trouble recognizing his surroundings for a moment, blinking the sleep out of his eyes until he could see clearly. The warm hues of twilight, redder than usual today, seeped into the room through the curtains, imbuing them with an otherworldly glow.

He had dreamt of his father, a dream he was not unfamiliar with; in this dream he was always running, engulfed in darkness, but exactly when he had stopped walking and started running was difficult to discern. His father was at the edge of the black, seated upon an ornate throne, and even farther beyond that the abyss dissolved into the rolling green hills, lush forests and slate stone towers of Elowyr; his homeland. His father had just returned from a trip, Jiro knew, but from where this time? Was it another diplomatic mission north to the grasslands of Sayiif with their spiraling towers? Or maybe he had gone with a trading convoy east to negotiate with the Merchant Kings in the sands of the Free Realm. Perhaps he had even taken a ship and ventured west across the Gulf of Ghosts to the mysterious foreign kingdom of Persus, surely mounting his forces for another invasion against the Bronzelords.

It mattered little, in truth, because the dream would always end the same way; before Jiro could even reach the throne, he would find himself falling, falling, falling, deeper into the darkness. You’re a coward. A woman’s voice bit at his ears. You can never return home. And then he would scream, and then he would wake, thrust from the black of his dream and into the black of night.

But this time it was different.

Never before had a dream left him like this. His mouth was dry, and his tongue tasted as if he had just ran it along the edge of his blade. His arms were trembling, and a cold sweat dripped from his forehead onto the sheets below. The moisture that covered him sent a chill through his body and Jiro suddenly realized he was naked, with nothing but a threadbare blanket separating him from the cool morning air. He wiped his brow dry with the back of his hand, brushing a thick tangle of auburn hair out of his face.

He sighed. I need a cigarette. He had to let the idea bounce around in his head for a moment before working up the willpower to follow through.

Jiro found his clothes in a pile next to his bed. He quickly pulled on a pair of wool trousers and shrugged a thick hooded tunic over his shoulders, his shivering fingers fumbling at the buttons. He had been wearing them to bed, if memory served him, but could not recall the point at which they had come off. I have Delphi to blame for that, I suppose. He glanced over his shoulder to find her still asleep, undisturbed by his movements and snoring lightly. Her long, dark fall of hair took up nearly half the bed. The sight warmed his heart, but he did not smile. It’s far too early in the morning for anybody to be smiling.

After he was dressed, Jiro scooped up his blue box of Old Middenese cigarettes from the nightstand, along with a small book of matches, threw open the curtains and walked out onto the balcony. He pulled out a single tube of the rolled tobac from the pack, struck a match, and deftly lit the tip before the breeze had a chance to snuff out the flame. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs, and watched the thin white wisps of smoke fade as they became one with the sky.

Dawn was breaking, and the first beams of sunlight were beginning to peak above the tall mud-brick buildings that comprised the city of Lissium. The sea of towers rose and fell almost endlessly until they met the actual sea. The castle of New Hope Keep marked the easternmost point of the city on the edge of the Oasis, and beyond its stone structures sailed three ships, no more than specks on the horizon. Jiro knew whose ships they were; he had watched the Seventh Duche of Lissium christen them with a bottle of chardonnay the night before.

Otemmo Ohra, a fierce Sealord from Sayiif, captained the first, a brig. Atop the mast of the second, a jade-sailed barque, was Arin Pyker, an Elowyri lordling whom Jiro had once been acquainted with. And at the helm of the third, a fearsome battle-ark, stood Salhor Swansea, a Middenese pyrat who had stolen enough gold to earn himself a lordship.

To parts unknown, they were going. Earlier that year, a hearty group of fisherfolk from the outlying islands of the Oasis claimed that a raging storm had whisked a schooner far out to sea, and the men were thought to be dead. Months later, when the men returned, in a new ship bearing gold and jewels and treasures the likes of which the poor island-dwellers had never seen, they spoke of an extravagantly wealthy kingdom on a massive island in the southeast oceans. When this tale inevitably touched the tongues of the common people, it did not take long before reaching the ears of Lords. Despite the skepticism surrounding the claims, many were eager to strike gold on the ocean blue.

In a past life the sight might have filled Jiro with grief, seeing those ships set sail without him. To parts unknown. It had always been his dream, but his sense for adventure had died long ago. Even so, he watched the ships until the last one, a pinprick, dipped below the horizon, as if it had fallen off the edge of the world. The edge of the world, Jiro contemplated. Could such a thing even be?

Jiro tore his eyes from the empty sea down to the city. He had always enjoyed the view from Delphi’s apartment balcony; it was far enough from the palace to avoid the clangor of crowded streets, but close enough to the ocean to smell the salt. He could even see the Monolith from here; the gargantuan crimson spire that stood as the central hub for the city. Narrow at the tip, it widened and narrowed back on itself several times before it reached the ground, where it seemed to sink into the mines beneath it. At its base erupted a myriad of tempered pipes that slithered through the city like copper snakes, over rooftops and through alleyways. They were thick enough that two full-grown men could walk their length abreast, and one with keen enough eyesight could follow the lustrous trail to the edge of the city and back. But one way or another, every pipe led to the Monolith.

Starting beneath the tower’s base, the crystals from the krima mines would be sent to forges throughout the sprawling city to be burned for fuel, and to as many alchemy labs to be melted into liquid. From there the pipes split off like a maze leading to a wide variety of destinations. The steam from the forges powered great machines that provided the city’s spoiled inhabitants with steaming baths and warm bedchambers to fight the chill of the desert nights. The streets were lit with flames that never flickered, whether by lamp or from an open apartment window. Engineers toyed and tinkered with engines fueled by krima, and farmers had found that fields sowed with krima yielded double the crop come harvest.

Without krima there would be no Lissium, it was often said, but the true meaning of those words was often lost on the people. No man alive could tell you how the Monoluth worked, only that it produced krima, and in a city with an unlimited source of the miracle red element, one would find it quite easy to become complacent. But not Jiro. Not a single person in this city has ever stepped a foot west so far as to touch sand, he surmised. With each passing day the Crimson Sea fades a shade lighter. The rest of Phaedyssia withers while the descendants of hypocrites stuff their mouths behind a desert shield. And by the sounds rising from the streets below, Jiro could tell that there would be a gluttonous feast tonight.

The sun had barely begun to rise and already the clatter of pots and pans rang out from cookhouses and taverns. The pounding of nails on wood drew Jiro’s attention to a nearby Church, where a small wooden stage was slowly rising in the large yard. Merchants and traders scrambled to set up their stalls in preparation for the crowd, and some had even begun hocking their wares to anyone who so much as happened to pass by. Thousands had swarmed to Lissium from all corners of the Oasis to celebrate the Centennial, the hundredth year since the founding of the city, but none could have known that there was going to be a bloodmoon as well. The aeromancers had confirmed it with their sky watching machines, but as the sun rose and the hues of red poured out of the clouds to paint the pale city, Jiro could see the proof of it. For the people, it was a reason to drink twice as much, but for him it just meant thicker crowds. Jiro hated crowds. Festivals like these made his job harder to do and left nothing but garbage behind, but at least the coinchangers could say some good came of it.

Surely the people would count the sky’s color as a good omen, but after the dream he’d just had, Jiro was not so sure. Ordinarily the details would have faded by now, but this one clung persistently to his memory, like the bloody taste that was still on his tongue.

He was jolted from his thoughts when a pair of arms reached from behind him and wrapped around his waist, taking by surprise.

“Good morning, love.” Delphi rested her chin on his shoulder.

“Morning.” Jiro replied, meeting her lips in a kiss before taking another puff of his cigarette. “Did I wake you?”

“Maybe.” She said playfully, settling down at the edge of the balcony. She had clad herself in a heavy black coat that fell to her ankles, a thick scarf and woolen socks before coming outside, but her teeth still chattered. “Did you have that dream again?” She asked knowingly.

Jiro replied with a somber nod. “But it was different this time.”

Delphi cocked her head to one side. “How so?”

“I didn’t fall.” Smoke escaped from his lips with every word. “I just kept running and running, knowing that at any moment the ground could cave in beneath me and sweep me down to abyss, but it never did. I just kept running until I finally made it to my father.”

Delphi said nothing, listening intently.

“He took me in his arms and ruffled my hair, and all of a sudden I was a child again. He sat me on his lap and told me, ‘I’ve brought you something, and I had to go a very long way to get it. Beyond the gulf of ghosts and Persus and even the Grand Barrier, farther west than anybody has ever imagined.’ And then he showed me…”

Delphi pushed her thick-framed glasses up higher on her nose. “What was it?”

“It was a doll, no bigger than my hand. It had a round, black head with two small horns, button eyes, a crooked scar and a sinister smile. A cloak that was tied around its neck with a scarf obscured the rest of its body. He handed it to me, but when I reached out of grab it, it sprung to life. It opened its jagged mouth and clamped down on my arm. I squirmed and struggled but it just wouldn’t come off. I tried to cry out but I couldn’t make a sound, so I turned to my father for help, but when I looked at his face again it had changed. His hair grew long and white and his eyes turned to blood. It trickled down his face and poured from his open mouth. He looked down at me with his red smile, and without even moving his lips he told me, ‘by the time the bloodmoon rises in the sky tonight, everybody in this city will be dead.’” Jiro tossed the cigarette to the ground and stomped it out with a bare foot. “And then I was back in my bed.”

Delphi, unable to stifle her snickering any longer, burst into laughter.

Even though Jiro knew he was being mocked he couldn’t help but crack a smile. “So, which part was the funny part? The part where the doll ate my arm, or the part where my father’s face exploded?”

“Everybody in this city will be dead?” She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a sleeve. “You’re starting to sound like a Thulogist.”

Jiro stiffened. She was right, he knew. She was always right. The bloodmoon festival was a tradition so old that no living man could say why it was tradition in the first place. For thousands of years, when the moon turned red, the people celebrated, except for the radical Thulogists of Lissium. Instead of participating in the night’s festivities, they would lock themselves inside their sanctums, praying and lighting incense to ward off the evil they said the red moon beckoned.

“Well, when you put it like that…” Jiro stuttered.

Delphi straightened. “Jiro, how many bloodmoons have you seen in your lifetime?”

“More than I can count.”

“And how many people have you seen die on a bloodmoon?”

Jiro had to think hard about that one. “This one time, when I was a kid at court in Daphos, my dog…”

“Doesn’t count.” Delphi cut him off.

Jiro knew there was no way she’d see his side on this one. “Well s**t, with both the bloodmoon and the centennial tonight, who knows which side the Thulogists will choose?” He quipped.

Delphi dipped her head to look over the edge of her spectacles. “This early in the morning and we’re already having a conversation about politics?” Jiro shrugged, she giggled. “Sounds like somebody needs to chill out, let’s fix that.”

Reaching down, she produced a cigarette, but this one’s tip was twisted and rolled with a different type of leaf. Using his matches, she lit the tip of the twisted joint, hit it, and passed it.

“It’s called Kombuchan dreamleaf,” she coughed, “psychedelic faeries who live in mushrooms beyond the Grand Barrier grew this s**t.”

Jiro couldn’t help but laugh. The tale of the Kombuchan mushroom people had always been one of his favorites. He inhaled deeply and let the smoke cling to his lungs before releasing it; it was thick and heavy and burned his throat on the way up. “When did you have time to go see a peddler last night?” Jiro had always been amazed at how good she was at finding the sweet leaf.

“Delphi does not go see a peddler, a peddler comes to see Delphi,” she winked as she led him back inside. “And besides, did you see how crowded the market was last night? I’d wager drugs are the easiest thing to find in Lissium right now.”

Jiro folded the balcony curtains closed. “I didn’t see. I was in the Eastmost Hall all night on guard. Have I ever mentioned how boring nobles are? The fat one from Ferrendell wouldn’t shut up about how red the sunset was last night, and how he was the first to notice. Speaking of which…” Delphi handed him the burning sweetleaf. “Ah, s**t. I can’t… I have to be at New Hope Keep like now. The Seventh Duche will be awake soon, and the Lords and Ladies of the Oasis wanted to break fast at first light. Said they had some important business to discuss.”

 “It’s already first light, which means you’re already late,” she put the joint in his mouth and ran a finger down his chest, “and you know how our good Lord the Seventh loves his sleep. What are a few more minutes going to matter?”

Jiro smiled, “yeah, just a few more minutes.” In an instant she was in his arms, and there was a sweet smell in the air as the two collapsed back onto the bed.