Broken Lands

“Come on in.” Arryn opened the door beside his seat, then did something and the seat turned into a wall. It had clear lines where the wood moved, but it was definitely a clever arrangement.

Sophia shrugged to herself and followed Arryn into the wagon. It was her first time inside and it seemed far more spacious than she’d expected. She’d expected a room with enough space for a pallet, probably under an overhang, and perhaps a passageway; instead, the interior was far more like a Winnebago’s interior. There were two beds, one of which was covered in hair that had to be from Peaches, an eating area, a tiny kitchen, and a number of windows that didn’t show from the outside. Arryn definitely wasn’t joking when he said he had a magical wagon, but it wasn’t where he carried his stuff the way he implied; instead, it was a cozy place to live.

Arryn leaned outside. “Peaches? Head towards the burning town. Make it quick, but stop us outside the gates.” Arryn then closed the door behind himself. It was quickly obvious why he closed up the vehicle and brought them all inside; the wagon accelerated slower than a modern car would, but it soon reached similar speeds. Sophia was pretty sure it was flying, as well; there was no way it could be that smooth over the rough terrain she saw outside otherwise.

“You three haven’t been to a Vocational Registry yet.” Arryn frowned, then reached into a pouch at his side. He took a moment digging, then pulled out a jumble of ribbons, cords, and medallions. Most of them looked like some sort of multicolored stone inlaid into brass or gold; Sophia was betting on brass, especially since some of them showed a deeper color from tarnish. “I keep meaning to organize this, but that would be saying I think I’ll use them and I’d rather not. This is the time, though. Let’s see. Here’s one for Revina.”

Arryn untangled a medallion from the others, then set it on the counter next to him. It was hung on braided black twine; the medallion itself showed a starscape with an aqua pattern that looked like wind or waves covering part of it and a brass design that reminded Sophia of a complex compass rose over it all. The medallion seemed to have a sort of a swirling motif, so that had to be why Arryn set it aside for Revina.

“For you two, probably swords; hmm. These might work, give them a look. Pick something you’re willing to wear and show off; these are Registry emblems and you’ll wear them a lot. As you can tell, there are generally two styles, the iridescent inlay and the complex field; they don’t mean anything specific, though the symbol you pick does generally say something about who you are. The sun-and-moon symbol here,” Arryn tapped the only one of the three pendants that didn’t have a sword, “is a fairly common symbol for a healer. The sword-and-wreath and the fancy sword can both mean whatever you want, though they do both indicate that you use a knife or sword, along with something else. If you prefer, I can find something more appropriate for a siege mage; I just didn’t see anything immediately.”

Dav took one look at the pendant Arryn called a sun-and-moon medallion and shook his head. “I’m not just a healer and I don’t want to be limited that way. Either sword would work, I think.”

Sophia took a good look at both swords. The sword-and-wreath was relatively straightforward. It would be fine. The “fancy sword,” on the other hand, had both a face and a skull worked into the brass filigree between the crossguard and whatever the second, smaller, quillon was supposed to be. It reminded her of her family, especially her father and his sister, which made her smile. That was enough of a reason for her. “I’ll take this one, you can have the sword with the wreath?”

Arryn scooped up the unclaimed pendant and stuffed it back into his pouch along with the rest of the tangled pendants. “Wear them openly; that way, people will know you’re there to protect them from monsters. They’ll also track your kills, in case that matters, but it shouldn’t here.”

“You aren’t wearing one,” Sophia interrupted.

Arryn shook his head. “I don’t qualify anymore, I’m a Professional. The only Vocational Registry badge I can wear is the Professional one, and I’d rather not. I won’t be dealing with people anyway; that’s what you three will be doing. The monsters don’t care about emblems.”

“But you can give them out?” Sophia probed. She hadn’t forgotten that Arryn told them he was taking them to the Registry or that one of the reasons for it was to get their badges.

“In an emergency? Yes.” Arryn paused, then shook his head. “This isn’t exactly what the exception is meant for, it’s meant for when someone gains a Vocation during the emergency, but this is still allowed. We were on our way to the nearest Registry and came across an emergency; this is less of a deviation than many.”

Before Sophia could probe further, the wagon lurched, bounced upwards, then slammed down to the ground. Sophia grabbed the bedpost to steady herself and managed not to fall over at the next lurch. Revina wasn’t as lucky, but when she fell she landed face-first on Peaches’s bed. She was fine other than a liberal coating of giant sloth fur and an annoyed expression.

Arryn barely waited for the wagon to stop bouncing crazily before he opened the door. Dav was right behind him, closely followed by Sophia, with Revina in the rear. As they poured out of the wagon, Sophia was able to see the town, or at least the town wall. It was an earthen bank with a ditch in front of it and a palisade of poles rising from the top of the bank. The poles had thin branches weaved through them; the cracks between the branches were filled with something. That was odd enough, but there were literal tree trunks leaned against the wall. In places, they’d actually knocked the poles that formed the wall over. The tree trunks were clearly how the monsters entered the town.

It was also how the five of them were going to enter the town. It had to be; while Sophia could see a gate, it wasn’t open. They’d probably have to open it to get people out. She wondered how the people they’d seen on the Road escaped.

A glance at Peaches let Sophia see him unbuckle the last connection he had to the wagon, then he paused long enough to let Arryn hop onto his back and grab ahold of his harness. Arryn took one last look at the trio. “Remember: find people and get them to the Road. They’ll be safe there. Getting them safely out of town may be enough; it doesn’t look like there are any other fires, so they can probably run without you while you get others.”

Peaches didn’t wait for Arryn to say more. He leapt onto one of the larger tree trunks, then bounded over the wall and was lost to Sophia’s vision.

Sophia looped the cord for her pendant around her neck and made a mental note that she needed a better way to carry it next time, a way that didn’t invite something to grab it and use it to control her movement. She hurried to the same trunk Peaches used and hopped up on it with a look at the wall. “Weren’t there supposed to be refuges in the wall?”

“Maybe they meant the bank?” Dav climbed up behind Sophia, but his attention was ahead of them not on the wall. “What are those things?”

Sophia turned to follow Dav’s gaze. In the distance, silhouetted against a wooden building that seemed to be mostly a steep roof that wasn’t yet aflame even though fire showed through an upper vent, was a group of four creatures. They looked short and chubby, with brown fur. The largest two seemed to have fire rising from their bodies, while the middle one emitted the occasional spark. Only the smallest one didn’t seem to be on fire.

It gave Sophia a moment of cognitive dissonance, because she was pretty sure that only the smallest one was the correct size. The biggest one was probably as large as a large human. “I think they’re beavers. Flaming beavers.”

It explained the tree trunks, at least. Sophia looked at the one she stood on; at the end, there did seem to be the characteristic gnawed section of a beaver-felled tree. “Flaming beavers are a new one for me.”

“Does that change what we have to do?” Revina hopped up on another log and looked over the wall. “Uh. That’s a lot of fire.”

“We should start along the wall,” Dav said as he hopped off the far end of the log Sophia was on into the town. “There has to be a way into any hiding places, and it’s probably easy to find. Come on; we should stick together.”

Dav paused and looked at his pendant, then wound it around his hand and pushed it onto his upper arm. It caught on one of the armor plates until he pulled it around, but he managed to get it to lie more or less snug against his upper armor. Sophia was going to have to remember that trick. She was also going to have to help Dav with it next time; right now, it looked like it was trying to fall down to his elbow.

They raced along the inner edge of the earth wall away from the gate until they found a section that had clearly been built from stone instead of dirt. There was even a door set into the side of the wall. Dav was in the lead, so he was the one that got to pound on the door. “Anyone in there? We’re here to get you out, get you to the Road.”

The door opened a crack, then far enough to see inside. There was an entire group of people, at least a dozen, but half of them were children under the age of six. Two were babies being held by parents. The woman at the door took one look at them and seemed to sag in relief. “Called. Come on everyone; we have an escort out of town.”

It took four times as long to get from the safe room to the gate as it had to get from the nearby breach in the wall to the safe room. The children were well behaved, but they simply didn’t move that quickly. When they were a few yards out of the saferoom, two of the adults scooped up the two youngest kids; the last two were able to move at least somewhat quickly.

No flaming beavers seemed to notice them before they were at the gate, but when the woman who answered the door unlatched the gate, it made a loud creaking noise. Everyone froze and looked around. When there was no immediate beaver attack, she opened the gate just wide enough for someone carrying a child to slip out.

That was when a small lone beaver rounded the corner. It ran straight for the group until Revina pegged it in the nose with a gust of wind. It didn’t seem to do any damage but it definitely disconcerted the beaver. It paused for a moment and several more people escaped out the gate. Sophia triggered her Imbued weapon to strike at it; that did seem to penetrate, at least enough to leave a bloody scratch on the beaver’s chest.

Dav managed to trigger the Imbuement on his sword as well. Sophia might have cheered under other circumstances; right now, all she could do was watch with fierce joy as he left a second, matching scratch that crossed the one she left.

With that, the fight was on.