After so many days of barren salt flats and endless scrub, the Troupe’s passage beneath the canopy felt like stepping into another world. Trees, gnarled and tall, leaned close together as if conspiring, their branches heavy with dusky-green leaves and lichen that hung like faded funeral veils. The light here was different too — scattered and strange, a patchwork of gold and green that dappled the dirt road beneath the rolling wheels of the vardos.
ProlixalParagon rode near the front of the caravan, one hand on the reins of a lean, dust-gray ox, the other resting idly on the worn leather hilt of his dagger. His silver fur was streaked with road grit and sweat, black-marble swirls dulled by the relentless days of flight. The salt flats had been left behind, and the mercenaries too, for now — but the Hollow’s reach had been long before, and he doubted it shortened so easily.
The road itself was a narrow cut between dense thickets, choked by wildflowers in shades of bruise-purple and rust, and bramble vines fat with pale berries. No well-worn trade path, this. Some ancient, half-forgotten thing clinging to the memory of its purpose.
It was Lyra who called the halt, her voice low but sharp as flint in the waning afternoon.
“Here.”
ProlixalParagon slowed his ox, ears twitching as he scanned the clearing ahead. The trees opened around a tumble of old stone — weathered walls half-swallowed by the earth, moss-streaked and cracked. Pillars jutted like broken teeth from the overgrown clearing, their surfaces etched with the faint, worn markings of a language no one had spoken in a hundred generations.
The ruins loomed, remnants of a forgotten empire older than either Draggor or Soohan, built by hands long since turned to dust.
Kaelthari grunted as she dismounted, her mulberry-scaled hands gripping her bardiche. “Gods,” she muttered, gaze flicking to the moss-choked lintel overhead. “Could be worse.”
Marx limped up beside them, his mana-powered prosthetic hissing faintly with every step. “Could be better too,” he rasped, rubbing a hand across the stubble of his jaw. “But I’ll take stone walls over open ground.”
The Troupe fanned out with practiced efficiency, vardos wheeling into a loose crescent, oxen unyoked and watered at a shallow stream cutting through the stone debris. Kits tumbled down from wagons, weary and hollow-eyed, clutching dried meat and whatever crumbs remained in their pouches.
ProlixalParagon moved among them, sharp gaze sweeping the perimeter. Every shifting branch and sudden birdsong put his nerves on edge. The forest felt… watched. Not by mercenaries, nor beasts, but something older. The ruins had a weight to them, an ancient heaviness that pressed against the air.
Ralyria approached from the treeline, spear in hand, her metal frame catching the dying light. “No signs of pursuit,” she reported, though her voice carried no ease. “But tracks by the north edge. Old. Can’t say what made them.”
ProlixalParagon frowned. “Nothing fresh?”
“Not in the last day or two.”
He nodded, though it did little to settle the tight coil in his chest. “Keep sentries doubled. No fires tonight.”
Ralyria gave a short, sharp nod and moved off.
As evening bled into dusk, the Troupe made camp in the shadow of the old walls. No songs rose. No drums. Just the quiet sounds of water poured into cracked clay bowls, of cloth torn into bandages, and the occasional low murmur as wounds were tended. The air smelled of moss and earth, heavy with the scent of ancient stone and the dry, resinous tang of sap.
ProlixalParagon found himself at the edge of the ruin, where a half-buried plinth rose from the ground like a cairn. He crouched, brushing away leaves and soil with calloused fingers. The carving beneath was faded — a pair of interlocking circles surrounded by jagged lines. Not a sigil he recognized.
A flicker of notification pulsed at the edge of his vision.
>+25 Lore XP<
New Codex Entry Unlocked
He grunted softly.
Behind him, Kaelthari came to lean against a cracked column, her long frame outlined in twilight. “That thing worth a curse or a coin?”
ProlixalParagon stood, dusting his palms. “Probably both.”
She huffed a short laugh. “Figures.”
Night settled in gradual layers, the sky deepening from bruised violet to star-pricked black. Lyra gathered the elders and lead scouts around a battered map by the elder’s vardo, her silver fur catching what little moonlight filtered through the canopy.
“We’ll reach the coast in four days,” she said, her dry, rustling voice cutting through the hush. “Assuming no detours. The ship waits at Shallowmere’s inlet. Baigai coin paid for it in advance.”
Marx scowled. “If the Draggor mercs don’t find it first.”
“They won’t,” Lyra replied, voice steel-wrapped. “They’d have to catch the trail first, and no Draggor patrol’s fool enough to hunt in these woods. Not at night.”
ProlixalParagon spoke up. “There’s old things in here. Worse than men. I’d rather move before dawn.”
“Aye,” Kaelthari agreed. “This place… wrong feel to it.”
Lyra nodded once. “We break at first light.”
ProlixalParagon turned his gaze skyward. The leaves above shimmered, windless but rustling all the same. A thousand unseen eyes in the dark.
He didn’t like it.
But it was a place to sleep.
A breath’s length away from death, perhaps.
But sleep nonetheless.
He settled at the base of a leaning stone, dagger across his knees, ears flicking at every night sound.
Somewhere beyond the ring of vardos, something called — a low, mournful sound, halfway between a beast’s cry and a voice.
ProlixalParagon’s grip tightened on his blade.
The forest listened.
And so did he.
The Troupe’s vardos circled tighter as night deepened, their bright-painted sides dulled by dust and grime, canvas hangings hanging limp like forgotten festival flags. The low whicker of oxen and creak of wagon wheels echoed soft against the stone walls as each family unit claimed a space for their hearthless camp.
Without fire, they worked by lantern-glow — thick glass shields dimmed low to keep their light from wandering. The forest beyond the ruin seemed to crowd closer with each passing hour, the air thick with loam and the sweet, cloying scent of overripe berries left to rot on the vine.
By Lyra’s order, sentries were posted in pairs along the edge of the clearing. Ralyria moved silently from post to post, spear in hand, her voice a calm murmur when she spoke at all. The rest turned to the dull necessities of living — tending to wheels, mending gear, seeing to the wounded, and fetching water.
The stream ran narrow and clear along the eastern side of the ruins, half-choked by moss and fallen branches. A handful of stones marked what might have once been a path, now barely visible, swallowed by the forest’s slow hunger. The water was cold and carried a faint, mineral bite — but it was clean, and that was enough.
One by one, the Troupe took turns at its banks. Kits were stripped of dust-caked clothes and scrubbed down by weary mothers and older sisters. Warriors and scouts followed, rinsing grime from wounds and sweat from fur and flesh, all beneath the watchful eyes of guards stationed along the treeline.
ProlixalParagon waited until the line of bathers thinned before he stepped to the stream, crouching beside a stone smoothed by centuries of water. The cold bit into his skin as he cupped his hands and doused his face, sluicing away the road’s grit. The marble-whorled fur along his arms darkened with the water’s touch, the pattern ghost-pale in the dim light.
He paused, letting the water run between his fingers.
Would this be the last clean stream? The last clear sky?
He could still hear the cries from the salt flats — the sob of a kit, the dull thock of a quarrel sinking into wood, the snap of a yoke under strain.
It clung to them all.
Behind him, Kaelthari crouched, lowering herself into the stream with a hiss. The water climbed over her mulberry scales, and she groaned low in her throat.
“Damn fool’s death,” she muttered, tilting her head back, the chains and beads strung between her horns catching in the current. “Running like this. No end to it.”
ProlixalParagon flicked a glance her way. “There’s a ship at the end of this road.”
“There’s always a ship,” Kaelthari snorted. “And always a man with a blade to keep you from it.”
They shared a quiet, bitter humor in that.
As dusk fully surrendered to night, the Troupe gathered what they could for supper — thin strips of dried goat, a handful of sour berries, root mash thickened with what little fat they’d saved from the last kill. The meal was meager but warm, cooked in covered pots over coals brought carefully to ember before being doused again.
They ate in heavy silence.
No stories. No songs.
Children clung to their mothers, chewing sleepily. The elders took watchful positions near the vardos, while the younger scouts lingered near the edge of the ruin, ears and eyes sharp for any hint of movement.
Marx gnawed on a strip of meat, his single hazel eye hooded and distant. Across from him, Ralyria sat with one of the rescued kits curled against her metal flank, the child’s small frame wrapped in a faded patchwork shawl. She absently rubbed the kit’s ear in circles with the flat of her palm, lost in thought.
ProlixalParagon sat at the edge of the circle, his back to a squat stone, dagger resting across his lap.
When Lyra spoke, it was without ceremony.
“Tomorrow, we push east. We skirt the old trade road. Keep to the gullies where we can. Four days to the coast if the road holds. Five if we’re forced off it.”
No one argued. No one needed to.
She eyed them all, her golden gaze catching like fire in the dark. “We’ll lose some oxen on those narrow trails. Be ready to abandon what you can’t carry. The ship waits for those who reach it.”
A murmur of grim assent.
ProlixalParagon’s ears twitched at a sound beyond the trees — a rustle too large for any bird, a scrape of claw or stone on bark. His hand drifted to the caltrops at his belt.
But it passed.
Still, the forest felt thick with watching things.
Lyra stood. “First watch takes post. The rest sleep. None of us are whole enough to outrun death if it comes tonight.”
Slowly, the Troupe dispersed, leaving half-eaten meals, gathering children, securing the vardos. The oxen huffed, shifting uneasily in their lines. Somewhere nearby, a whip-poor-will called — a thin, sharp cry that fell into silence.
ProlixalParagon remained where he was for a long while after, staring at the embers as they cooled.
The ruin loomed behind him, a jagged crown of stone against the sky.
They would leave it in the morning.
And he hoped whatever old ghosts clung to it would stay behind.
But he doubted it.
The road to Baigai lay ahead.
The others had long since settled when ProlixalParagon finally stood.
The ruin loomed behind him, its jagged teeth of stone a silhouette against the star-churned sky. The last embers of the communal fire guttered and died, leaving the clearing wrapped in shadow and the soft, constant murmur of the stream. The night was heavy — not with danger, but with grief. The kind of weight that didn’t scream or claw, but simply pressed on the ribs until it became the only thing you could feel.
He made his way to a narrow space between two vardos, the ground there packed hard by passing wheels and long-dead fire pits. The night air cooled the sweat still clinging to his fur, and his limbs ached in the marrow-deep way that spoke of too many miles, too little food, and the kind of fear that wore away at a soul like river water through stone.
He crouched beside the wheel of Lyra’s vardo, leaning back against it with a sigh, fingers working absently at a knot in the leather thong that held his dagger sheath. The night hummed with soft sounds — the distant shifting of oxen, the mutter of a kit in restless sleep, the crackle of old stone cooling in the dark.
For a long time, he simply breathed.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
What in the Hollow’s name am I doing?
ProlixalParagon wasn’t a soldier. Not a hero. Not some war-leader fated to carve his name into the bones of Varethis. He was a tinkerer. A scavenger of broken things. A keeper of small, clever tricks. Every fight, every desperate run under a burning sky, every life balanced on the edge of his next decision — it gnawed at him.
He thought of Dustreach. Of the Hollow. Of the sand-choked tunnels and the stink of salt-crusted blood. He could still hear the mercenaries’ shouts, the way the little ones had screamed when the vardos burned.
His stomach knotted.
He thought of the old ways, the stories whispered by Fennician elders — of ancestors who’d fled the cities and carried their names in painted wagons, of choosing exile over chains.
And now here they were again. Different road. Same noose.
He closed his eyes.
Baigai. The ship. A place beyond the reach of Draggor’s mercenaries and the Hollow’s long claws.
He didn’t believe in clean slates. But he believed in new ones.
And maybe that was enough.
When sleep finally took him, it was sudden and absolute.
The kind of sleep earned only by men too bone-weary to dream.
He woke to bright light.
Too bright.
ProlixalParagon’s eyes snapped open, his heart thundering in his chest as he lurched upright. The sun hung high, filtering through the canopy in slanting gold spears. The camp was still.
He spun, ears flattening, his pulse a frantic drumbeat.
The vardos were still there.
Oxen shifted lazily in the grass.
The sentries paced at the treeline.
And the Troupe… still camped.
His breath left him in a sharp rush, equal parts relief and humiliation. He’d overslept. Gods, he’d slept through false dawn and midmorning both. A mistake no scout, no fighter, no damn Troupe-blood should make.
A shadow fell over him.
“Good,” Lyra’s voice rasped from above. “You’re up.”
ProlixalParagon squinted up at her. She leaned on her staff, silver fur catching the light like fine threads of silk, though her face was drawn and pale. Deep lines tugged at the corners of her eyes. The weight of too many burdens carried too long.
“I thought you’d left me behind,” he admitted, the words rough in his throat.
Lyra snorted, a brittle sound. “If we had, you wouldn’t’ve woken at all.”
She crouched beside him with a grunt, her joints cracking like dry branches. A long moment passed in silence before she spoke again.
“Some of the kits are sick,” she said softly. “Water rot, maybe. Or whatever curse clings to this place.” Her gaze lifted to the ancient stones surrounding them. “A few of the elders too. Fevers. Vomiting through the night.”
ProlixalParagon’s stomach sank. “How bad?”
Lyra sighed. “Bad enough. They won’t survive another day’s march. Not like this.”
“So we’re staying,” he said, not a question.
She nodded. “A day. Maybe two. This forest shields us better than open road. And sick folk can’t run.”
He looked past her to the camp — saw the sluggish movement of a few figures, the pale faces of kits resting in the shade beneath vardos, and the weary slump of shoulders too long under strain.
“I should’ve woken—”
Lyra cut him off with a look. “You’ve done more than your share, boy. Let others carry it awhile.” She reached out, fingers brushing the back of his ear in the old, familiar gesture of the elder women. “You won’t save them all. But you can stay standing. And we’ll need that.”
She rose then, staff tapping against stone.
“Wash. Eat. I’ll need your hands soon.”
And with that, she left him sitting there — the last of the morning’s quiet wrapping around him like a thin, frayed blanket.
ProlixalParagon let his head fall back against the vardo wheel and closed his eyes against the light.
The road hadn’t ended.
Just slowed.
And the Hollow’s breath was still at their backs.
But for now… for now, there was water, and sun, and the fragile threads of a day not yet lost.
ProlixalParagon rinsed his face again at the stream, shaking water from his whiskers as he stood and made his way back to camp. The light had shifted, grown sharper and heavier with noon’s weight. The air was thick with the scent of moss, crushed grass, and the sour tang of sickness.
The sick lay gathered near the center of the clearing, clustered beneath canvas shade rigs strung between vardos. The little ones were worst — kits and goblin cubs swaddled in worn cloth, their skin pale, fur matted with sweat, eyes glassy and unfocused. The elders fared little better. A few moaned softly in delirium, while others lay silent and still, too weak to waste breath on complaint.
He crouched beside Ralyria, who was wiping down a young goblin girl’s brow with a strip of damp linen. The girl’s skin was flushed an unhealthy blotched gray, and her breath rasped like dry leaves.
“How many now?” ProlixalParagon murmured.
Ralyria didn’t look up. “Eleven. Maybe more by dusk.”
He swallowed, then set to work — checking bandages, replacing soaked cloths, coaxing bitter water into parched throats. His hands moved with quiet care, though the pit in his stomach grew heavier with every pulse of feverish heat he felt against his palm.
It wasn’t much. But it was what he could give.
And sometimes survival was measured in small mercies.
After what felt like hours, Nara approached — the elder healer’s hair bound tight against her weathered face, her fingers stained with sap and dried blood. She carried a shallow basket lined with crumpled leaves, half-filled with wilted herbs.
“Prolixal,” she rasped, voice like sand on stone. “We need feverbane. And blackroot leaf. The old crones say it grows in the shade near broken stone. Lyra’s making a poultice to break the sweats.”
“I’ll find it,” he said without hesitation.
Nara’s sharp eyes softened a fraction. She thrust the basket into his hands. “You’ll take care. No further than the ruin’s edge.”
He nodded, adjusting the caltrops at his belt and slipping his dagger into its sheath. The familiar weight steadied him.
If the Hollow finds me, it won’t be for lack of teeth.
The forest closed around him as he moved beyond the vardo circle, boots crunching on damp leaf litter. Sunlight came in slanted knives, catching on floating motes of dust and tiny gnats that rose in lazy spirals from moss patches.
He scanned the ground for telltale signs — the narrow, ridged leaves of feverbane, pale-green with a dusting of yellow fuzz, and the dark, slick veined leaves of blackroot, which always clung stubbornly to shaded stone.
A pulse of warmth flickered at the edge of his vision.
A faint grin tugged at his lips. “About time.”
He crouched near a crumbled pillar, noting a cluster of pale, star-shaped blossoms nestled at its base. Feverbane. He worked quickly, plucking them by the stem, leaving enough to regrow. A patch of blackroot lay not far off, dark leaves slick with dew, hiding beneath a tangle of thorny brambles.
Carefully, he drew his dagger and trimmed what he needed.
>+5 Feverbane gathered<
>+4 Blackroot Leaf gathered<
He dropped them into the basket and turned to head back when a glint caught his eye — something half-buried beneath a drift of old leaves and stone dust.
ProlixalParagon crouched, brushing aside debris to reveal a bundle of old, rusted metal fittings and scraps of copper wire, likely from an ancient campsite or supply depot long since reclaimed by the forest.
He pried loose a set of tarnished screws, a cracked but intact clamp ring, and a short length of half-split mana filament cord. Useless to most, but to a tinkerer’s hands…
>+1 Mana Filament (Damaged)<
>+2 Reinforced Clamp Ring<
>+5 Copper Wire Scraps<
He stowed them in his satchel, a small pulse of satisfaction warming his chest. Tools. Pieces. Fragments of control in a world determined to strip it away.
One day I’ll build something better than the world that made me run.
He rose, adjusting the basket and making his way back toward the clearing.
The ruin loomed behind him, and though the air still felt thick with watching eyes, nothing stirred beyond the shifting of wind in the leaves.
Back at the Troupe’s camp, the scent of boiled herbs and damp earth hung heavy. Lyra stood by a firepit of coals, a clay pot nestled in the ash. The poultice mixture inside frothed faintly, its scent sharp and medicinal.
Nara took the basket from his hands, inspecting the herbs with a nod. “Good.”
“Found some scrap too,” he added, pulling the salvaged bits from his satchel.
Lyra glanced over, one brow raised, the faintest smirk ghosting her lips. “You never come back with just what you’re sent for.”
“Bad habit,” he said.
“Useful one.”
She gestured to the shade tent. “Go. The kits’ll need another dose soon.”
ProlixalParagon exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and moved to the sickbeds once more, satchel a little heavier, steps a little steadier.
The Hollow might be at their backs. The road ahead might bleed.
But so long as his hands could still build, still heal, still fight—
He’d be damned if he’d stop now.
By the time the sun bled out of the sky, the worst of the fevers had broken.
The kits still lay curled beneath faded canvas, slick with sweat and weak as half-drowned pups, but their breathing had steadied. The elders no longer muttered in fever-haze. Even the oxen, restless for most of the day, now chewed at the sparse grass with dull-eyed calm.
Nara made her rounds, her fingers cool and sure as she checked pulses and eyes. “If it holds through the night,” she murmured to Lyra, “we’ll leave at first light.”
ProlixalParagon lingered nearby, wiping the last of the fever water from a kit’s brow. The child’s fur was patchy and matted, but the color had returned to his lips.
A small win. Too rare to waste.
As dusk thickened, the Troupe ate a simple meal — boiled root mash, hard bread softened in broth, and the last of the salted goat strips. No fires. No stories. Just the slow scrape of spoons in bowls and the occasional rustle of cloth.
ProlixalParagon barely touched his food. His mind and hands itched for something else — something to chase the edge off the restless ache in his chest.
He rolled out his battered Tinkerer’s beginner tool set, its leather flaps cracked with salt dust and age, and laid out the scraps he’d gathered: a split length of mana filament cord, a few half-rusted copper wire segments, a busted clamp ring, and a handful of scavenged nails. He added the bit of reinforced wire he’d salvaged back at the stream, feeling the familiar calm settle into his bones.
His fingers worked quickly, shaping the mana filament into a rough coil, wrapping it with salvaged wire to create a conductive ring. He attached the clamp and soldered it with a heated knife tip until it bit fast. A scrap of half-shattered glass went into the housing, anchoring the makeshift trigger.
It wasn’t pretty. Gods knew it wasn’t safe.
But it was his.
A soft pulse flickered in his peripheral vision.
>Tinkering Check Successful.<
A grin tugged at his muzzle.
And then the pulse came stronger — the faint but undeniable hum of system resonance. His pulse quickened as the notification bloomed before him.
<+2 Attribute Points>
<+2 Affinity Points>
He exhaled, muscles easing as a familiar warmth threaded through his limbs.
Finally.
He opened his stat window with a thought, its clean script and flickering values a small, private reassurance.
Affinities:
Allocate points.
It wasn’t a hard choice. He felt the way his fingers had moved faster tonight, more precise. The way his mind had mapped the trap’s pulse flow almost before he could finish the thought.
<+1 Dexterity>
<+1 Intelligence>
And with the affinity points—
<+1 Metal>
He hadn’t meant to walk that road, but Varethis didn’t care what men meant to do.
He ganked the last affinity point and with a mental gesture the allocation window flickered closed leaving his character sheet like this:
Player Name: ProlixalParagon Level: 6
Class:tinkerer
Subclass:None
Profession: None Specialization: Hexwright Machinist
Currently Active Title: -
Most used Skill: -
Alignment: Chaotic Grey
Health: 140/140 Mana: 122/122 Stamina: 80/80
Points Earned: 0
Reputation:
-OakHaven - 10
-Vermillion Troupe - 115
-Pella - 0
-Marx - 20
-Lyra - 100
-Lord Elmsworth - (-100)
-DustReach - (-100)
-Draggor - (-100)
-Yendrals Hollow - 50
-Soohan - 50
Attributes:
Strength:11 Constitution:11 Dexterity:19 Intelligence: 19
Wisdom: 13 Charisma: 12 Piety: 0 Luck: 10
Karma: 10
Combat:
Attack: 14 Accuracy: 8 Agility: 15 Speed: 8
Critical: 0.21 Endurance:10 Focus: 12 Defense:10
Magic Def: 10 Armor:10 Hygieian Meter: 15 Perception: 10
Affinities:
Earth: 0 Water: 0
Fire: 0 Air: 0
Blood: 0 Soul: 2
Celestial: 0 Abyssal: 0
Lightning: 0 Ice: 0
Metal: 3 Wood: 0
Currently Equipped Gear:
Worn Leather armor (Durability: 7/45)
Tinkerers beginners tool set (Durability: 22/45)
Low grade iron dagger (Durability: 8/25)
Makeshift trash Caltrops (Qty: 31 Pcs)
Marx’s Woven Cuff (Durability: 45/45) (Accessory — +1 Dexterity, +5% Mana Efficiency)
Jury-Rigged Mana Snare (Single Use)
Active Status Effects:
Abilities:
-
Titles
-
Passive Skills:
Improvised weaponry , Salvager’s Insight , Master Tinkerer’s Insight, Herbalism (Novice)
Feats:
-
Character Background:
Fennician, Scholars Apprentice, [Hidden]
Inherited Traits:The Lost Workbenches of the Master Tinkerer
Lunar Reflexes , Unrooted Identity , Magical Burnout, Knowledge Retention, [Hidden]
Currently active Quest:
The Lost Workbenches of the Master Tinkerer (2/7)
A subtle shift settled into his bones. The camp’s sounds sharpened — the muffled scrape of Kaelthari adjusting her armor, the whisper of Lyra’s staff against stone, the faint groan of old wheels.
Good. He’d need it.
He pocketed the static tripwire, cleaned his tools, and leaned back against the wheel of his vardo. The sickness hadn’t claimed them yet, and tomorrow’s dawn would find them lighter, if no less hunted.
The night stretched on around him, thick with leafmold scent and the constant hush of ancient trees.