Familiarity

It was nice to be back here. The damp scent of his little fishing boat was a simple comfort; homely and familiar compared to the world outside.

Moacir lay on his bed (more a thick plank of wood fashioned into a bunk than a bed.) His blankets are scratchy, with a few holes. He would need to sew them. Simple worries. Before he would have been irritated by the need to fix them, but now he was thankful that old blankets were the least of his troubles. 

The one eyed-man from his past, then the one eyed monster. 

He shivered. That thing Aliester had become… he was glad that mage was gone, nothing but bones, but he cursed the cost it had come at. Trapping people in eternal, blissful sleep, then ripping their fantasies away, was cruel indeed.

He had already left the tourney by the time the miasma had appeared, a day’s walk along the trail to the jungle. His armour had been weighing heavy on his back when he heard the first rumours of a monster. With a sigh he had turned around, praying his muscles, weary from the fighting of the tournament, wouldn’t fail him. 

As it turned out, he wouldn’t be needing his strength. He spent most of his time hovering around the boundary to the all-consuming fog, tending to those wounded trying to fight, guiding those rescued away, swinging his hammer from side to side. Daring himself to cross the fog. But what lay within, the visions of a perfect life everyone claimed to see, stopped him.

Could he handle that? Could he handle going back to… before?

No. He couldn’t. Aleister had got the better of him again, even in death. 

So he had been at the site of the tourney for a bit longer, until the fog dissipated, and the beast was dead. He watched them take his bones away, hauling them off in carts that struggled in the mud. 

He had been thinking on it. The idea of a perfect life. 

Maybe the fog would have shown him that. What would have happened if he hadn’t been such a fool. Perhaps he never would have left Leona. Perhaps he wouldn’t have rotted in the jungle for years, stewing in his own misery. Perhaps he never would have found himself digging up his armour again, choosing to strap it on regardless of the blood still baked into the steel. Maybe he never would have been to the whispering sea, experienced that horrid darkness. Maybe he never would have gone home again. Maybe he never would have met that man with the knife and for once in his miserable life tried to do the right thing. Maybe he wouldn’t be… the thing he was now. 

But if he had never set a foot out of line, he never would have met any of them. Baqir, Rosaline, Herta, Rhavid. He never would have learned how to push aside his doubts again. How to do good in spite of it all again. 

So he’s glad he’s gone through what he’s gone through. He’s glad his first foray with Fortune has left him ageless, and now with a power greater than he had ever known before, even if it hurt. 

One day, Fortune might get him. One day. But if he could do some good in the meantime, give something back to the world he took so much from, he was at peace with that. 

So as he lay there, scratchy blankets making him itchy, for the first time in a very long time he feels content. There is a goal. A way forward. 

It’s the best feeling. 

He had been back in the jungle for a few weeks now. His boat had needed some repair after being left moored for so long, but it was finally good to go. It would be his mode of transport as he travelled, a monster hunter seeking his quarry. 

But for now, he was having a nap. He was starting to get on in years. He needed his nap.

~

He doesn’t know when he drifted off, but he’s waking with a start. It’s already dark within his boat. Had he slept into the evening? 

Rubbing his eyes, he sits up and slips out of the covers. The planks are cold beneath his feet as he wonders through the door and onto the tiny deck. The clouds hang grey overhead, obscuring the sun and dimming the sky. Not night. Just overcast. 

He’s about to go back in, light the stove to make some tea, and set about repairing his blankets. 

Of course, that’s when the screaming starts. 

At first, he thinks he’s mistaking one of the loud jungle birds for a person, but then someone is running towards his boat.

‘Mr. Moacir!’ He cries. He’s just a boy, a son of one of the shopkeepers. 

‘Mr. Moacir! You have to come!’ 

Frowning, Moacir clambers from his boat and jumps onto the rickety pier with a thud. 

‘What’s happening?’ He hardly has the time to ask before the boy is sprinting off again. He keeps up the best he can, jogging down the dirt path towards the village proper. By the time he reaches the square, where a crowd of people are gathered, he’s completely out of breath. 

‘Moacir.’ The hushed yet fearful voice of Herta, the village doctor, is behind him. With a grunt, he turns. 

‘What on earth is happening-’

‘Just look up, you big oaf!’ She shoves a wrinkled finger past his head, to the sky.

How he didn’t notice it before, he isn’t sure. Perhaps he’s got too used to monsters and magic these past months. 

A colossal patch of darkness, shrouded by the clouds, spreads across the sky. Inky swathes of black, like tentacles, drip from the shadows above and disappear into the trees beyond. 

‘... Shit.’

Memories flash by; images of the Whispering Sea and the endless darkness he had found there merging together. His hand flutters to his stomach. The scarring was still fresh. 

‘Moacir. If it’s what I think that is,’ Herta begins. 

‘We… we don’t have any way to stop it.’

He’s never seen her like this, before. The normally resolute old woman was trembling, eyes wet with fear. 

Moacir places a hand on her shoulder. 

‘Don’t worry,’ He meets her eyes, hoping his do not betray his own terror. 

‘It will not get past me.’ 

~

Moacir does not think as he runs back down the path and climbs back into his boat. Before, he would have been full of worries, wondering what could happen, wondering if he even wanted to fight. But now all he held in his mind was his one goal; protect the village. 

He finds the chest he keeps his armour in and rips it open. Donning it normally took ten minutes, but he made it five, fumbling with the straps as fast as he could. His hammers were always ready for him; hung on the wall. All he had to do then was strap them to his belt and return again to the square, ignoring the villagers who gasped in surprise at his sudden transformation.

‘Herta?’ 

The old woman jumps and stares at him. 

‘What?’ 

He realises his helmet is muffling him, so he releases the faceplate with a click, letting it swing open. 

‘Herta. Listen. Send word along the road to the next villages. We need to get anyone who can help here as fast as possible.’

She nods. 

‘But… Moacir. Are you sure you can-’

‘Don’t worry about me. This isn’t the first beast I’ve slain-’ 

His cape hangs off his shoulders, dragging into the mud. Once lustrous, striped fur sodden and dirty. It fastened at his neck, metal pin holding the monstrous hands of what was once a mage together. 

‘-and it will not be the last.’ 

If she has anything else to say, he doesn’t hear, because he’s already closing his helmet and striding away towards the road that led into the depths of the jungle. 

~

WC: 1341