Jonathan was gripping the railing of the Le Capitaine Escargot Aéronautique, the company airship that Eleanor had arranged to be his transport for the entirety of the mission. The crew gave him a wide berth; he had been traveling with them for long enough that they knew there was a good chance he was about to throw up again. Airship travel did not agree with him.
He stood there miserably with only the captain for company. The captain was standing on the railing, somehow perfectly balanced despite the fact the airship was moving at a steady clip. The captain was also a gargoylian and apparently one of the best scientific minds in all of Floyde’s of Aqshy when it came to all things aeronautical, although they were currently preoccupied in leaning forward to comfort Jonathan with the pointy end of the snail shell that made up their body.
“We’re on the approach,” the first mate called out from his position by the helm. The captain smartened up and bobbed their shell towards the first mate. The Duardin banged fist to chest and began to bellow orders for the crew to prepare their approach. “Thank you, ca—first mate,” Jonathan said. “Like we agreed, put me down by the perimeter so I can have a few minutes to catch my breath before meeting with the team here.”
“Very good, sir,” the first mate said.
Jonathan looked at the collection of buildings in the distance. This was his second stop after arriving in Slidecrown. The first had been to their main camp where he had explained the situation to the Senior Partner overseeing operations. Eleanor Verdigris had been right about their agents here being a rough lot, but their leader was at least a sensible, if heavily armoured, Aelf.
He had agreed that the mission was critical and had drawn up a schedule between them so that they could visit the different teams, apprise them of the situation, and assess any damage they might have caused. There were also other groups operating within the island that they needed to risk assess, and deal with if need be.
“Sounds like a plan,” had said, pleased at the productive meeting. “So, what’s this site I’m about to visit?”
“Right, the Maw,” Lumaren said, scratching his chin.
“The Maw?” Jonathan asked. The capitalisation had been alarmingly palpable.
“Well, I haven’t actually seen it yet, mind, but I received a request from one of my best agents a few months ago for a Forensic Magician to assess a site. Something about a large mouth on the earth muttering gibberish in a foreboding fashion.”
“Who’d you get?”
“Conflagration & Sons.”
“Of Hallowheart?! I thought we usually worked with Gryphons out of Settler’s Gain?”
“Usually, yeah. Someone already retained them though, so we had to avoid the conflict of interest.” Jonathan groaned. The situation was volatile enough without factoring in wild magic from Hallowheart. Still, there was nothing to be done about that now. “What did the wizard say?”
“Their report suggested the maw was uttering valuable secrets. The wizard recommended that we claimed the area, so I sent builders and a wildercorp detail to secure it. I doubt improving on the island would trigger a claim, but it’s best to let the lads and the wizard now before they got too creative.”
“Right…”
That was how he had found himself in the middle of the forests with a guard detail of Duardin. Jonathan had a few precious moments to recover from being sick. It wasn’t long however before a wiry man approached them with a hand crossbow raised. He lowered the weapon when he noticed their livery. “You guys from the head office?” he asked. “I thought we weren’t due for a supply run for another week,” he said, sounding uneasy.
“I’m Jonathan Wadesly. HQ sent me here to talk to your boss and inspect the Maw,” Jonathan said. “Ahh,” the man said. “I’m called Shiv. The Maw? Well, you see,” he frowned and shrugged. “Well, HQ was going to find out sooner rather than later, I suppose. You best come along, and I’ll take you to the boss.”
The boss was a large man with a large personality. He was tending to a dog, while a woman in hunting leathers sat with two other large hunting hounds. Jonathan noted the large boar spear propped close to her. “You the guy who flew in on that airship just now? I’m Tugs, head of security here. Fianna over there is my second-in-command,” he said, motioning to the woman who nodded at him curtly. “Don’t mind me. I’m just seeing to one of our hounds. I’d, uh, refrain from any sudden moves. Biter and Firebolt over there can be a little distrustful of strangers, though be glad I have ‘ol Teclis here sedated.”
Jonathan blinked. “You named one of your hands Teclis?”
“Yeah, though not where any of them fancy Realm-Lords can hear. Saw him in one of the crusades I was in once. Posh ‘git. Got a lot of my friends killed deploying one of his fancy runes. Anyway, what can I do for ye?”
Jonathan straightened and explained the situation with the policy. He also mentioned that he was here to inspect the Maw. “Ach. The boys aren’t going to like that. Most of our income from these contracts are from the incidentals,” he said, musingly.
“I’m sure Tempest’s Eye will set aside some gold, but I’ll be sure to mention it in my report. Now about this Maw?”
“Ahh, I was about to get to that…well, y’see… Can you take over here, Shiv? Just get Jeng to help you. Fianna and I should probably show lord mucky muck over here what’s what.”
They waited for Shiv to round up some help, before entering the facility. “So, where is it?”
“Well, it was right there,” Tugs said, gesturing vaguely at some scaffolding at the centre of the courtyard that led to nowhere. “Then, uh, about a day ago, it just disappeared.”
Jonathan frowned. He pulled a drawing from his case. “Tugs is this an accurate drawing of the Maw?”
“Cor, that’s a very good drawing. Didn’t think the wizard had such a delicate hand,” Tugs replied. “It’s a very good likeness, sir.”
“Right, so how can something so large and so full of teeth just up and disappear?”
“Beats me, sir,” he said cheerfully. “We’d ask the wizard, but he’s not due back for another week. All I know is that it was there when one of the boys were doing the rounds at midnight and then gone during the next ”
“And nothing strange happened other than that?”
“Hmm…let me think. Would you call the Ogor attack strange?” Tugs asked Fianna.
“Well, there was that one weird Ogor leading them.”
“Oh, yeah,” Tugs said brightly. “The scaly one. He looked like my cousin Merks after he’d spent that week have too much fun in the docks. You remember, yeah?”
Fianna laughed. “Yeah, the whole street had to pitch in before we could get enough coin for the priests to see him, Sigmar bless him.” Tugs chuckled. “Tugs? You were telling me about the Ogor attack?” Tugs coughed and straightened. “Yes, sir. So, the builders had to take a break on account of waiting for the next shipment to arrive with some materials, yeah? So I had Eyes—he’s our sniper—watching over the Maw while we patrolled in the meantime. Eyes was the one who saw their leader first.”
“We shot at him. Figured it’d be easy enough. We’d fought Ogors before, but they fought didn’t fight like proper Ogors. Too coordinated, but they weren’t like our City Ogors either. Their boss was richly armoured for one. He also only had one eye and was scaly like we said. He spoke in a weird language too.”
“Would’ve probably caused us a world of hurt if we hadn’t managed to sic the hounds on him. Don’t think he’s ever dealt with them. The Teclis, Biter, and Firebolt managed chased him off between the three of them. Even then, his Ogors fought with coordination.
“It was definitely hard going,” Fianna said. “We had some wounded and lost some good men too, but we certainly gave them hell, yeah?”
“That we did. We took down a handful of them, and that was enough for the rest to withdraw. Was one hell of a fight. Anyway, then about a week later the Maw disappeared. Was on the same day the scouts reported that the Ogors had left the perimeter come to think of it. Huh.”
Jonathan grimaced. He looked at the empty courtyard and wondered if the Maw had even been there at all. He made a mental note to start an audit on this site, and the use of funds by the personnel behind it. Floyde’s of Aqshy would have to find a use for all this infrastructure in the meantime. He had hoped to be here for just a few days before moving on, but it seemed there was work to do. At least that spared him from having to return to the airship anytime soon.
“I guess I’ll have to meet with this wizard of yours. Can you prepare some quarters for me? I’ll have to send the ship back with a message, and I’d like to go over some of the reports you have on the site…” He began to list down tasks for them to do. He was no longer feeling anxious or worried; his initial trepidation was finally giving way in the face of the banality of having clerical work to do.
Adventure, it seemed, was as much about bureaucracy as any endeavour.
~*~
