Sunday Pilots 4 [28.10.2018] - Twin Snakes at the Stake [1/1] – A fantasy story with a villain as the protagonist

If you have been following me for a little while longer. This one might be a pleasant surprise for you. I think most of what you need to know is already in this chapter. Full disclosure, characters may be familiar, but the world is completely my design this time around.

The marketplace of Caramea was known for three things primarily. Some people may say two, others may four, but most people would name you these three when asked about the city at the golden bay. Number one was its excellent arrange of wares. As the meeting point of three major trade routes, everyone who made a stop here had a lot to sell and to buy. As such, despite the rather poor soil quality of the fields around, Caramea was a wealthy city. 

With the constant flow of wares came a constant flow of people. The second point was therefore the range of people roaming the streets. White-skinned men from the north watched over their women as they haggled with others of brown skin, their woman nowhere to be seen. A man with deep black skin flirted with a redhead over a drink.

In such an atmosphere the man of a well-tanned complexion was basically ordinary. He wore a brown coat over lofty clothes, a needed compromise between protecting him from the sun and wearing as little clothes as possible against the sweltering heat. Today was an especially hot day, but the man was used to worse.

Nevertheless, the man hoped the winds would shift soon, pulling in the cool air from the westward ocean rather than from the southeast, where they only had heat, dust and sand to pick up. He had seen enough of those things in his lifetime.

It was a good day at the marketplace for customers. People were scarce enough that they would quickly get service at whichever shops they aimed at, and would be able to reach them with getting churned through the strangling encapsulation of a tightly packed crowd, but enough that the storeowners felt like they didn’t have the time to keep haggling for too long.

Not that the man cared, he had a bag full of gold that wasn’t his to buy things that he would only need tomorrow. As such he was willing to pay whatever price would be first stated. His dark green eyes scanned for the shop he was looking for one that sold herbs. 

Over his shoulder he carried a bag that had other things already, a piece of metal, wood, candles, three brushes and lots of small things. Certain people would have known what he was planning to do when they saw that arrangement, but, even in diverse place as this, wizards were rare.

He approached the shop and breathed in the aroma exuding all the way from the back are. Waiting the little time he had to, he started reciting the plants he knew by name in his head. He had spent a lot of time reading about these plants, getting practical experience with them had been harder, but he managed. With 15 years since the hunters had dragged him into this city, there had been a lot of opportunities to…’convince’ other captives.

“And he shall invite darkness into this world! A dark sorcerer, from forces beyond use, of demons, yes, indeed, of great demons of lust he shall make puppets!” That was the third thing that was outstanding about Caramea, a long wall where religious zealots spouted their newest epiphanies. Today was just one of the days where they spouted pre-written lines. 

A male, demon summoner that went ahead and summoned a succubus would appear somewhere. What a great insight. Every man capable of doing so would do it at least once, there was no given day that wasn’t true, so chances were they would eventually find one in this city. The masses loved it though, stopping in front of the loudest prophet and throwing coins into a wooden bowl to the feet of his sandstone podium. They were hailing them as prophets because they sometimes got things right.

All nonsense as far as the man was concerned. Religion was a stupid concept to him, wise men knew, and the man most certainly counted himself amongst those, that there were no gods. Only stronger and weaker beings. To the dog, man was god, to the man, a demon or a strong spirit was god. Both the dog and the man were wrong. Then again, mankind almost always was.

“What do you need? Spit it out quickly,” the shop owner went over to the man. He was a fat man, doubtlessly thanks to this city being immensely wealthy and to connections he had made in his travelling youth. A normal story for a permanent resident of this city. It helped that he was running only the front of this shop anymore, now that he had a whole array of slaves doing most of the work for him in the background. He would have probably pulled out completely, but letting slaves run your business on their own was considered bad taste.

A slave just as the man was, hence why the owner addressed him with so little respect. The metal shackle around the man’s neck was all that needed to be seen. A symbolically empty eyelet, wide enough for a thick metal chain, was at the front. The chain that bound the man to his mistress was an invisible one. Immense pain would befall him if he distanced himself too far – or if she wished for him to be in that pain.

If this necklace would have been working, that was.

In silence, the man smiled at his own accomplishment, causing the shop owner to wear a confused expression, closely followed by an angry one. To be ignored by slaves was an uncanny experience. “Dumb idiot, do you not speak Setitian?”

A small commotion breaking out at the long wall prevented more senseless verbal abuse flying the man’s way. Someone was suffering a heatstroke, or so it seemed. The shop owner had the decency to look reasonably worried. “Another one of those idiots, preaching all day and forgetting to drink.”

The man, in the meanwhile, grabbed a piece of paper from within his clothes and reached it across the table. One preacher more or less was no loss for this world.

“You should have just started with, slave,” the shop owner cursed and quickly grabbed the paper to read the list of things on it. “Tyracean? Hetzberries? Highly unusual but I have it…why am I even still talking to you, not like you can understand me.” The owner gave the paper to one of his own slaves, who then hurried into the back of the shop and got what was asked. “Masters that don’t teach their slaves the local language but send them on market errands should-“

“A TREE WITHOUT BRANCHES,” the crowd that was trying to help this stroke suffering ‘prophet’ suddenly scattered as she started screaming. “Two snakes! I saw two snakes winding around the tree! One was black and red, the other was white and blue. They whispered two words: You – Clack – You – Clack.”

“You sound like that collapse got you dumbed down a bit,” a passer-by from the crowd joked. Who was going to believe a prophesy that wasn’t delivered in fancy rhymes or elongated sentences of grandeur. “Let’s get you some tea, that should help you.”

The man chuckled.

“So, you DO speak the language!” the shop owner keenly observed.

“I guess you could say so, fat man,” the man’s voice was deep and full of arrogance. A tone that already made the owner fume with range, even without the insult attached to it. “What’s the matter? At least my insults are true, while you attack the intellect of someone so far above you, you can’t even comprehend it.”

“How dare you, you filthy little slave!” the shop owner began, but then was distracted by his ‘assistant’ bringing him the requested wares. “Who are you and who is your master? I will write her a stern letter!”

“He will sacrifice his mistress to the demons! Blood shall give her paling her the intense red it once had!” the prophet was onto something, the man had to admit at that point. Which only made this whole thing funnier.

“Her name is Mathilda Rothhaupt.” She was a bit of a celebrity in the city, or had been when she was in her prime and her hair was more glowing than a ruby.

“I saw him draw a circle from her blood mixed with herbs!” 

“If you could hand me that bag now. I have better things to do.”

“The demon’s whispered, the two snakes whispered and whispered always: You – Clack!”

The man couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that point. “And I never had a prophecy about me, that is fun. Maybe there is some big power looking at the idiots on that wall after all.”

The shop owner had grown increasingly pale over the course of those last sentences. Attempting to pull the bag out of the man’s range, his fat body became the hindrance it always had been. The man, in the meanwhile, was trained from years of unthankful labour as a slave, grabbing the owner by the wrist that held the bag. “I re-refuse you service!” the thick, saliva covered lips slurred out. Eyes wide like a pigs in a panic.

“I don’t think you will,” the man spoke and poured magic into the shop owner. Influencing somebodies’ thoughts was a costly endeavour, overwriting them much more. Without body contact, it was almost impossible. Soon, the panicked eyes became dull and relaxed – open to more reasonable suggestions. “You will give me these wares and forgot all of this ever happened,” the voice sounded like a command from god to the shop owner. Gold hit the table and the man took what he wanted from the mindlessly nodding shop owner.

“Twins, winged, horned and tailed, sent by darker forces, the snakes have mirrored names!” the prophet kept going at it. “You – clack, I can’t make sense of it, but that is what they say!”

“Because you are an idiot if you think that is two different words,” the man mused as he stored away the sack of herbs inside the much larger sack he already had with him. “It’s a name - Uklag.”

The man’s name.