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Tales from the Terra del Sur: The Accountant


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TALES FROM THE TERRA DEL SUR

The Accountant

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22nd of Horen's Calling, 1917

On a pleasure barge somewhere in the Sarissan Delta, in the west of the Terra del Sur

 

"More rum, Your Magnificence?" 

 

Nor'ogg the Ogre's appetites were commensurate with his choice of watercraft, and so the obese greenskin took up a new chalice of rum as swiftly as he had drained the last. Around him, his court were gathered on the deck of the opulent vessel, strewn about lounges and divans in the fashion of a Rhenyari pipehouse, hard timber covered by plush cushions and the most exotic of fabrics. This ship was as broad as any frigate, but not nearly so tall, with the waterline barely below the guardrails. The sun was beating down upon them all. It was only early afternoon, and the ogre-lord was probably approaching his fiftieth cup. For those unaccustomed to a being of Nor'ogg's size, that would have been a sight to behold, but Vihai had watched this spectacle for nearly three years now.

 

The Ogre was several tonnes of trembling, sweating fat, too immense for his legs to bear him upright and wrapped in a billowing purple robe the size of a marquee. He had not always been this way. In his youth, Nor'ogg had been a svelte swashbuckler based out of Freeport, but with the ill-gotten riches pilfered from merchant ships sailing the Kahaen he had built a criminal enterprise enough to satiate his gluttony tenfold. While he had learned the Common tongue at a young age, now he did not trouble himself to speak it. His every order was conveyed to his court through a goblin translator, skilled in interpreting his master's peculiar dialect of 'the Blah' and positioned perpetually by his throne.

 

Today was a day for leisure, and so the greenskin's orbiters had been forced to 'carouse' with him all day. It was the sixth such occasion this week alone, and the ogre pirate had spent the whole morning bellowing drunkenly, tormenting his servants with whips and prongs for his own amusement. Three had gone overboard today, but thankfully, the sharks had only taken two. That was Nor'ogg's rule - if you survived the sharks, you would have a day of clemency until the next time you caught his eye. Before he took up the role of Nor'ogg's accountant, Vihai had never encountered such a grotesque creature. Come to think of it, he had never done much accountancy either. But how hard was it, really, to do an ogre's books? 'One of the finest minds of Almaris'? If only you were here now, Cyril, to see me so reduced. 

 

The sun's rays were exceptionally strong at this time of the afternoon, and Vihai - a pallid-skinned mali'aheral of Ah'Larihei - was sweating beneath his white kaftan, almost as much as his corpulent master. The accountant's face was flushed red and wind-burnt, but at least the Sarissan Delta was calm today. The barge drifted along a canopy of sea-green, the music played by Nor'ogg's personal entertainers emanating across the waterway. In these parts, if it wasn't the sharks or the sun, it was the tropical cyclones, and if it wasn't those storms, it was the deadly Sarissan Fever. A bite from one of the alien insects of the west of the Terra del Sur was all it took, and within a few weeks, you'd be dead from all manner of purulent discharges. Why can't it take me? Why am I still in this hell? 

 

"Er, segnor Vihai," a slightly-accented, whispering voice interrupted his daydreaming, under the foreign twangs of Nor'ogg's music. "Disculpa. I have the documents."

 

"You do? We left you on the dock at Lurin. How the hell did you get back aboard?" snapped the accountant, his neck cracking as he turned to face the figure who had crept up behind his divan. It was Arrimadas, who he understood to be in the pay of those reprobate scholars at the Royal Balianese Academy. Sometimes they had helped one another at Nor'ogg's waterborne court, sometimes they had hindered one another. Like so many people the high elf had met in this situation, Vihai hoped that one day the Balianese spy would meet the ogre-lord's sharks, though preferably after he could provide no more help.

 

"Ai, segnor, I have them, but never you mind about that," affirmed Arrimadas, nodding obsequiously. He was always polite, but Vihai knew deep down that the antipathy was mutual. "There is a letter from a, ah, a Sir Paul Montalt." 

 

"What?!" hissed the accountant, snatching the pile of letters from the Balianese desperado. "Give me that."

 

"It is from your letterbox, back home. You can have it, but you must remember this favor from Arrimadas."

 

"Ti, ti, of course, I never forget a thing." The music, juxtaposed with Nor'ogg's drunken whooping and rumbling laughter, was sufficient to drown out their clandestine conversation. The high elf fumbled with the letter's seal - already broken - struggling to prize open the envelope with his clammy fingers. He glanced up furiously to Arrimadas, preparing to reproach him for opening his correspondence when he saw that the spy's features were not what he remembered. This was not the furtive, low-born renegado he had spent the last few years working with at Nor'ogg's enterprise. He was still tanned, and clearly of Balianese stock, but this new Arrimadas was a dignified gentleman, with an aristocratic bearing and black hair graying around the ears. What delirium is this? Has the Fever finally come? Vihai had wished it upon himself before, but now it was here, he was not so certain. 

 

"You should have done more, Adrasto. I always trusted you, after all," said Constanz-Anton, his presence as domineering as when he lived. Vihai stood there dumbfounded, his mouth agape, but finally the high elf mustered the courage to speak. 

 

"I tried, I - but why didn't you just do what I said?" he offered in gibbering protest, nervously fingering the hilt of his sabre. 

 

"What are you talking about?" demanded Arrimadas, and thus the mirage was dispelled. "The heat must be getting to you, segnor Vihai. Or your venerable age."

 

"Ti... the heat. That's it," sweated the beleaguered mali'aheral in relief. "Thank you for the letter, or graza, as you people say, but go away now. I must read it." And as Arrimadas turned and left him to recline in his divan, so Vihai read, growing increasingly uncomfortable with every line of Montalt's circulated polemic.

 

Spoiler

Let every nobleman, every snake, every befuddled wolf in sheep's cloth be burned at the stake.

 

This infernal, petulant brat is no ally of mine. A Pennyduke is a dime-a-dozen it would seem, and this sniveling coward shall pay the price. Clinging to relevance through the sham of impertinence. 

 

Running the realm deep into the ground so that she might move at a snail's pace to bow to the Alstion pretenders.

 

I regret every ounce of blood shed in your defense, and were I to go back in time I would leave you to your fate. 

 

Only by my rite of conquest do you remain, yet if I had an ounce the wisdom I do now, I would have killed you for the greater good, just as your own lover slaughtered your irrelevant husband.

 

Death to Renilde, and even more so death to her thoroughly bastard stock. The House of the Petra is a meek sham perpetuated by a weak-bellied harlot. Let her know the rage of my people, the Raevir, as they bash open her gates and smear her like a grease spot on the floor. Ignoble, contemptuous creature, begone. Flirt with devils no longer.

 

This was impossible. It had almost been eight years, but Montalt had destroyed the country to save her throne, and now this? What in the world had happened while he had been offshore? Vihai stood up from the plush chair, secreting the letter within his robes and downing a finger of rum. With this movement, all the eyes of the court in the immediate vicinity now gauged him warily. He heard Nor'ogg rumble unintelligibly over the music, and a wavering, goblinoid voice slithered into his ear. 

 

"His Magnificence would like to know where you think you are going, accountant," prattled the ogre lord's interpreter. Though the corpulent pirate's throne was near to Vihai's divan, and he had clearly noticed that something was wrong, Nor'ogg was so insensate on drink that he could not have properly deciphered the conversation with Arrimadas. 

 

"Latz'dreenk wit'oss, twegyzh!" chuckled Nor'ogg in his bizarre tongue, slapping his chalice against his enormous belly. The high elf could feel the barge rock from port to starboard with every one of its owner's sudden movements. 

 

"I have been made aware of an emergency with our accounts receivable. By your leave, I'll address it forthwith below deck." The excuse was thoroughly unconvincing, but the accountant's face was a mask of iron. After a few ponderous moments, the ogre nodded his assent, returning his attentions to his carousing, and so Adrasto Maeyr'onn departed to plan his escape.  

 

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Albert Salvian, the eldest son of the Petra - now Knight of the Realm, pondered long and hard on what could have been had reason prevailed. 

 

The memories flooded back. One day he had taken himself to his parents' study, glossing over a book detailing the expressive works of heartland poets. The next thing he knew, the palace had erupted with wrathful cries as numerous soldiers took up arms. Soon after, he was brought before his father, Constanz, whose gaze fell upon his son with what could only be described as doubt

 

“How can you be sure that the boy is yours…?” A faceless advisor muttered in a less than discrete voice. Anxious amongst the crowd and beset with a stammer, the eldest son could only look on as events fell out of his control. 

 

The stability Albert so desperately craved he found in caring for his younger siblings, the crisis demanding he stepped up for their sake, even if that meant taking a beating from a duo of opportunistic bandits. The boy also took it upon himself to write a public missive, desperate to prove that he was indeed his father’s son and in opposition to his mother’s contracting of foreign mercenaries.

 

A year of war dragged on and the boy’s innocence crumbled. Good men and women died upon the fields of Moere, and soon he bore witness to the death of Constanz himself, slain in single combat by the Haeseni Prince. All while his mother looked on, cheering as her new lover’s blade pierced the Duke’s heart. The sight had scarred itself into Albert’s memory.

 

Now another civil war plagued the heartlands, the fires of ambition consuming the lives of the innocent. “Has the world not had its fill of chaos?” The young knight asked aloud. Yet, there was no answer, only silence.

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