Disclaimer: as usual, this work features extreme scat and filth-fetish content, as well as non-sexual violence and general dark fantasy fucked-up-ness. This particular chapter will include some body horror involving teeth. All characters in sexual situations are over the age of 18.
Prologue
Zake, in his full black and white bone-themed armour (minus his gauntlets, helmet and weapons), with a ragged black cape hanging from his shoulders and his face still obscured by artfully layered scarfs, sipped at a glass of red wine. He'd pulled the bottom layer of his scarfs down to reveal his lips and chin and nothing else. The wine was unobjectionable, but certainly nothing special. With how much he'd paid for it, it ought to be
spectacular
. He was drinking this grossly overpriced wine in a
very
illegal wine house in Upper Lanovul, hidden down in the basement of a fancy tea house. Everyone else in the wine house was gawking at him. He tried to look brooding as he sipped. Like someone pondering dark and serious matters. Which he basically was anyway. He supposed that that counted as method acting.
This wine house was called the Crystal Lounge. It was where the dissatisfied sons and daughters of rich wankers went to get shit-faced, and Zake had once counted himself among their number. The Crystal Lounge had been fashioned to look like it was some sort of natural grotto that had been converted into a drinking establishment: all the stone down here looked like it had been sculpted by flowing and dripping water, large quartz crystals in several colours sprouted from the walls and supporting columns, sparkling in the lantern-light, and a few seemingly-natural trickles and pools of water added to the illusion that this place had once been some kind of mystical place of uncanny beauty before they'd made it into a secret wine house, except that Zake could see the occasional chisel-mark.
(There was an old man up on a stage in the back, rather dramatically reciting poetry from a worn-out book. That fossil was reading flowery romantic crap tonight, which Zake found vaguely annoying.)
The Crystal Lounge smelled vaguely of incense, probably from the various braziers dotting the place that barely managed to keep the chill in the air at bay, but that spicy smell didn't quite mask the stink of unwashed bodies and stale tobacco smoke. By Lanovale's shitty standards, this place was actually considered by many to be
too clean;
a stuffy establishment fit only for toffs and the occasional class traitor.
For the time-being, he was alone at his little round table. Although people kept coming by to pester him. Pestering was something Zake had outright encouraged. When he'd first arrived down here, he had loudly offered a free glass of the house's finest to anyone who told him a story about Stench that he hadn't heard yet. (He'd tried subtlety already, and it hadn't worked.) After that, he'd heard
lots
of tales that he would rather not have heard. He'd taken notes. He intended to put so many details into his fucking report that whoever read it either fell asleep or puked.
The Eighth Company had stayed in Lanovale for three days following Zake's meeting with Captain Tamaerin. During those days, there'd been no sign of Stench- Lyran!-, and Zake had attempted to hire some down-on-their-luck types to act as extra eyes and ears, in order to inform him if his mad cousin was spotted. Every single prospective hire had fucked off before he'd even finished making his offer. Between how he'd picked up a Lakelander accent and the fact that he'd been dressed in a hooded black cloak and mask (and probably also the fact that he didn't
stink)
, they'd probably all assumed he was some foreign prick up to something that it was in their best interests to not get involved in.
So, when the Eighth had departed, Zake had decided 'screw subtlety', and had paraded up Lanovul's main street, in full armour, on horseback. The only way he could have been more ostentatious would have been if he'd had a musician following him, playing the sort of aggressively melancholy music associated with a desperate last stand. (He'd actually considered arranging something like that.) At least that way, he'd gotten to have
style.
After he'd crossed the so-called 'Arrowshot' (A gap between Upper and Lower Lanovul
exactly
as wide as the maximum effective range of a flaming arrow from atop Upper's walls) he'd tried to enter Upper Lanovul through the lower gatehouse. The Lanomen on guard there had initially refused his entry, and had made rather tiresome accusations as to what they presumed his business in town was. Zake had wordlessly presented them with a scroll, signed by Sirgil Lanovin, saying that he had permission to conduct the Wandering Duke's business within Lanovin lands. He
still
wasn't sure if that scroll was real- that Duke Kesilbary was involved in this plot somehow and had manipulated Sirgil into signing it- or whether Captain Tamaerin just knew a good forger. He wasn't sure which possibility worried him more.
Then he'd gotten quarters in Lanovul's nicest inn, and now he was down here in Lanovale's fanciest drinking establishment. Word about the grim, villainous-looking swordsman had probably spread to at least half of Lanovul by now, and various darkly-dressed gloomy types (there was no way they'd truly experienced enough of life's horrors to be properly cynical, but Zake supposed he appreciated their effort) regarded him as a novelty. The braver ones attempted to strike up conversation with him. Not just with tales about his disgusting lunatic cousin in exchange for a free drink. With how generous he'd been about giving glasses of stupidly expensive mediocre wine away (he'd kept receipts for the bottles!) everyone was assuming he was wealthy, and he'd already had four women and one man come up to his table, making suggestions that they wouldn't mind getting to know him better.
He'd told them that they ought to bathe before he'd be interested, and they'd treated his relatively mild remarks regarding
hygiene
like they'd been highly offensive insults, and now they kept shooting him disgusted looks.
Fucking Lanovale.
Though there was
one
woman who was clearly very interested in Zake, who seemed determined not to be easily chased away. She had shown up in the Crystal Lounge not long after he had arrived, and had started pestering him practically the moment she'd entered. She had given him four separate stories about 'Stench' that he had never heard, although he now somewhat regretted hearing.
(Apparently, his mad cousin had started having her disgusting idea of fun all over Lanovale, not long after Zake had tried to make her see reason. Assuming these accounts were accurate, that felt a bit like a deliberate 'fuck you' to Zake specifically.)
That woman, who had introduced herself as 'Gianne', was out of stories by now, but kept coming by Zake's table anyway. Kept trying to flirt with him, and kept taking his gruff indifference as some sort of challenge. Her skin was a little darker than was typical for Lanofolk; her slightly greasy wavy black hair was shorter than what looked to be the current fashion. She was pulling off the 'conservative black dress and lots of silver jewelry' look quite well, and her dress was totally free of stains. She also clearly had been in a hurry coming to the Crystal Lounge, because Zake could smell her unwashed sweat every time she came close.
Zake probably would have been interested, if she was clean. Yes, he'd been Lanofolk once, and there had been a time when he hadn't even noticed that other people around here stank, but the memories from those years weren't ones he cherished, and his time spent down in the Lakelands had taught him better. Also, he could imagine going down on a woman who'd didn't clean herself down there, and didn't care for what he imagined.
Yet, despite making no secret of his distaste for her dirtiness, he didn't do anything to outright drive her away. He knew who she was, and her presence here represented an opportunity.
She had been a struggling stage actress and street musician, when Zake had last lived in Lanovale. One of the Lanovins (Sirgil, probably) had decided to recruit her as an agent to 'gauge public opinion'. A spy, essentially. She'd held the position for long enough that she presumably had some skill at intelligence-gathering, and Zake could only assume she'd gone up in the world since he'd last seen her. And he could not, for the life or death of him, remember her actual name; he just knew that 'Gianne' wasn't it.
If he had to guess, she was here because the Lanovins wanted some information on this 'dark mysterious mercenary' who'd stayed behind while the rest of the Wandering Duke's people had departed.
Probably
. Zake had, admittedly, made the mistake of overestimating his own importance before, and he'd been lucky to escape that particular blunder with his life.
"You're too old for me" he said, when she came to his table again. He knew she was at least ten years older than him, though she'd aged well enough that she could have easily passed for someone younger.
"Oh? And how old do you think I am? It's hard to tell how old
you
are with your face all covered like that, 'Muurg'."
Zake had no intention of ever using his real name while he was stuck in Lanovale. To those who'd asked, he'd claimed his name to be 'Muurg the Unrepentant'. (Which had actually been the name of one of the Eighth once; a crazy fucker who'd
volunteered
for a suicide mission and had died horribly. Zake had once thought the man to be the maddest person he would ever meet. Such naive days...)
"I already know you're here trying to gather information on me, just so we're clear. I trust the Lanovins don't miss paying you
too
