Appendix C · Companions, Flora + Fauna

Companions

Deathbringer

Cain's donkey. Nine gold in the Silverport market, and he looked like he had opinions about it. Still does — about rocks, mostly. Kicks. Doesn't want to carry dead bodies either.

Prudence

Zephyr's horse, Tylsa's before that. Worth more than everything I own. Carried the dead boys out of Mistyvale and would rather not do it again. Wants new shoes.

Saqr

My seahawk. Doesn't like enclosed spaces, so I leave him outside them. Circles over the tree line while the others go down holes. Sits on my wrist after.

Oso

Whatever comes when I put out the feeling that something big is wanted. A polar bear once. A cave bear lately, broad through the shoulders, smelling of stone. Goes where she's pointed. Pedro rides her. They're all Oso; it simplifies things.

Pantera

Panther, called up from the Fey. Careful with me, as I am with her. Leans into Pedro's scratches like any cat. Tracks well and makes a show of the stealth. Roars before she closes.

Flora

Fish-tongue

Large fern, grows near salt water. Svala asked for the leaves; I brought her five, whole. Mirabelle said it's a hallucinogen. Both can be true.

—

Black stems, white caps going blue at the edges. A side chamber under the field north of Mistyvale, no light. Never seen them before. Took six. Haven't asked Svala yet.

—

In a pouch on the dwarf, wrapped round with catgut. Sharp, green, wrong for this coast. Bitter underneath. Medicine, I think. For what, they aren't saying.

Fauna

Fish-folk

Up out of the surf, too many joints in the wrong places, eyes that catch firelight wrong. They hunt people and drag them toward the water. Junk weapons. The dead dissolve into the sand. Once, a horn to the west before they came.

Chuul

Shell-plated, broad, low to the ground. Claws the width of a forearm. Old scars on all of them, shell jewelry, one with a spear it knew how to use. They take people into the sea.

—

Rat-headed, milky-eyed, rotten. Not undead. Something dark wears them like a coat and tears its way out when the body's done. Two problems where there was one. The lean, hairless ones deeper in were alive.

Rat-folk

Hooded, rat-faced, talk in chirps. Obsidian daggers, obsidian lashed to their tails. Signal with birdcalls no bird makes. Took East Point in a night, shut the village in a warehouse with pitch at the door, went north to dig. A dwarf and a dragonborn drove them, or something like.

The Risen Dead

—

Under Silverport, standing in a room too big for it. A blue light in its chest, slow and steady, like an ember that had found its pace. Victor put it down. The light held a moment, then went.

—

Came out of the dark on the road east of Vogler. People once; buried, then back in armor over armor, glyphs carved into bone. Eyes lit blue, and it looks out at you. Kept at whatever they'd been sent to do with an arm missing.

—

Under the field north of Mistyvale. Faint blue in the sockets, still there after they stopped moving. They got up again when the god told them to.