Little Watchers
The moon hung like a guillotine, its curved blade ready to fall on the first unsuspecting victim to walk beneath. While the snow of the shores had melted, the peaks and valleys of Tsotska d’la Mer still hosted several feet of the stuff. Menoetius was not the tallest of her kirins, so he was resigned to pushing through the snow like a mule.
The path they took was an old one. Iapetus had completed her duties to the Erré, so now it was time to see to her other clients. They were troublesome in their own way—far more annoying than the ghosts Iapetus had the luxury of slaying—but their eyes were everywhere, and their strength the backbone of these islands. Her first stop was the hollow of an old pine. The outside was decorated in feathers, bright pieces of paper, and a hoard of blue stones. To anyone else, it would look like trash. But to Iapetus, she knew it for what it was—the home of a dragon spirit. She pulled out her first offering of the night and set it within the hollow. The blue shell glittered among the pieces of rubbish. She let it lay silently for a few minutes, then moved on. They would only reveal themselves if they had business with her.
She diligently checked each shrine like a hunter checking her traps. The Erré told her of demons and spirits haunting the shadows—dangerous game, but nothing she and her dragons couldn’t handle. The dragon spirits told her of monsters, too—but of a different variety. Ones made of flesh and bone, creatures among the living, ones that looked by all accounts like normal people. Perhaps they were. But they were monsters all the same, and ones to be slain by her hands.
When they reached the hot springs, the closest thing to their patron spirit flickered into view. It was smiling from ear to ear, as much as a lizard could smile, and was laying atop the bumble of Prospero’s mask as if it was a lavish bed. “Look what I got, Iapetus!”
She sighed. “Don’t take away things like that from people. It’s probably haunted.”
The spirit rolled around in the fluff. “I didn’t take it, that Rider gave it to me. Eventually. If it was really haunted, you wouldn’t have let him wear it.”
Iapetus shook her head and yanked it out from under him. “Since when would I protect a killer like that?” It had been over a decade since the dragon was killed—she could sense that much. The soul barely lingered, but it still sent out wisps of fury and sadness. “It’s definitely cursed. If that man is done with it, I’ll perform the rites.” The spirit whined in protest, but Iapetus could care less. It seemed this was the only work the spirit would provide for her. Time to move on.
The channel between the islands was nothing to Menoetius. He followed the web of instances easily, taking the fastest course from shrine to shrine. A circle of mushrooms, a clearing of grass, a tree that grew sideways—each one received a visit. The moon was lower now, its blade nearly touching the horizon. The sun would rise soon, and Iapetus wanted to be home. Light and dark made little difference to him—it was all the insufferable people that came out during the day that kept her away. She resigned herself to abandoned markets with jobs plastered on a board—to hushed whispers in candle-lit church sanctuaries—to quiet letters and work with Aurelia. “Only one more, Minnow. Let’s go home, then.” The people of Tsotska d’la Mer were like ants to her; She would leave before they swarmed the island for their hunts.
The kirin grunted in acknowledgement. He dipped in and out of the Chronoscape until they reached one last cairn. It was tiny—barely standing over Menoetius’s hoof—but well-maintained nonetheless. There wasn’t a speck of moss or dirt on it. It had no water stains where rain had dripped and dried. Each stone was smooth and perfectly aligned.
She gave this spirit a small pebble. That was the biggest thing it could really use. The spirit flickered into being and accepted the pebble with its two-pronged feet. Its tail curled delicately around the small cairn, its eyes darted in all directions as it scanned for predators, and its now-visible scales were shifting between hues of brown and black. It was uncharacteristic for this one to show itself, especially with scales so dark. Iapetus crouched closer to it while Menoetius twisted his ears to better hear their conversation. “What’s wrong, little one? What happened to you?”
The little dragon spirit trembled. “Someone killed a dragon. It was in my thicket, over there—“ it motioned its snout towards a concentration of pine trees—“And it was a nice dragon. Not a feral. It didn’t fight or anything.” It pulled its new pebble close and started to knead it nervously with its claws. “I don’t like it when Tsotska gets angry.”
Neither did she; Neither did anyone. “Listen, little one, don’t tell anyone about what you saw. I’ll handle it and tell you when it’s done.” Tsotska’s wrath was rarely invoked; If the little one told others, it was more likely the stronger dragon spirits that would enact justice before divine retribution occured. The justice of dragon spirits was more primal than that of the Erré, and something to be avoided—she would solve this herself as soon as she could, before things escalated to that extent.
The little dragon nodded and flickered out of view again. The pebble appeared to levitate up the cairn and seat itself at the pinnacle.
“Let’s work fast, Minnow.” Dusk had arrived, throwing pink hues across the sky and shrouding whatever starlight remained.
“Very well,” replied the kirin. He trotted to the clearing on his own, flaring his nostrils as the smell of death hung on the air. All he found in the clearing were traces of the past. Here, the ground was turned over by a deer in its last moments. There, the dragon was slain, its blood spilling across the ground. Not a single scale or talon could be found among the needles. Even the deer bones had vanished. The trees were undisturbed; this was not the scene of a dragon battle. The only thing that remained was the blood-stained earth and the scents of the perpetrators.
Iapetus felt an apprehension from her dragon as he flicked his forked tongue over the scene. “What’s wrong?”
“It smells of Prospero and Caliban.”
Ah, yes. The poacher who already wore the skull of a dragon was the obvious culprit. Iapetus had allowed him to keep the mask in the hopes it would haunt him or douse his luck, but it seemed the man was able to defy that fate. It was a crime that happened outside of these isles, thus, outside of her interest. But to kill on these lands? To carve out a dragon that didn’t bother fighting back? She felt her cold blood start to boil. She would not wait for the dragon to mete out its own retribution. “Let’s pay him a visit, then.”