Leon stood on the prow of his ship, letting the rain wash over him, his body filling with power in the light of distant lightning. He needed the energy, even if it wasn’t the sort that was most useful right now.
The enthusiasm he had for his quest died out fairly quickly once he’d truly gotten started. His ship had moved quickly enough, the current helping to speed them along to the coast of the great central sea. The coast was just as rough and inhospitable as he’d imagined, with few human settlements anywhere to be found. But those that were around were small fishing hamlets and tiny ports for servicing passing ships.
It surprised him in the beginning, seeing these fishing hamlets. It was quite the sight, with all the power and influence of the Ilian Empire, to see such small and relatively simple settlements, oftentimes built out of timber and stone rather than metal or concrete. It reminded him of the Northwestern Kingdoms a little, especially of some of the same kinds of villages he’d passed through in the Bull Kingdom.
But the people were just as inhospitable as the land. They didn’t want his party poking around their homes and in their business, even with Leon trying his best to mind himself. Their mere presence was enough to have people giving them dirty looks—especially Anshu and Maia, their darker skin tones marking them even more than the others as being foreign.
Fortunately, there weren’t any violent troubles, and the small local branches of Heaven’s Eye proved willing enough to help them in their hunt. The only problem was that the people who’d reported seeing the tau were either unwilling to speak with Leon or his people, weren’t particularly reliable, or simply weren’t around.
There were a few shrines to tau set up nearby, and Leon made sure to visit them as they passed through the villages. However, those little sojourns had proved just as fruitful as the rest of the trip up until then—which was to say, not very.
In the end, in the three previous villages that Leon had stopped at during his journey, he’d left all empty-handed.
Making matters ‘worse’ was the weather. Around the great central sea, the weather was always terrible—at least, in most people’s opinions. The sky was nearly always overcast, the sea was choppy, the wind was strong and howling, and rain was frequent. Storms blasted the broken coastline constantly.
Leon found it to be perfect weather, but the rest of his retinue disagreed, spending most of their time in the shelter of the ship’s quarterdeck, only coming outside when Anshu, who was the only human member of Leon’s retinue who stayed outside with him on the regular so that he could see to the steering and maintenance of the ship, needed help sailing the ship—though Anshu was hardly enthusiastic about the weather, himself. Their attitude had worsened with the weather, and though Leon had no cause to doubt their commitment, he could tell that everyone wanted nothing more than to return to Occulara. They needed some stability, and he made a vow within as he stood on the prow that, upon their return, he wouldn’t leave the city again until they all had homes to call their own.
The only one of them who didn’t mind the rain was Anzu. The griffin frequently kept Leon company when he went out into the storms, but he’d mostly stayed either inside the quarterdeck sleeping, or flying about just over the ship. The griffin seemed thrilled to fly about at his leisure after the long time spent mostly cooped up in a Heaven’s Eye yacht or carriage, and Leon was content to let him do so, for he didn’t want a bored and stir-crazy griffin to add to his bored and stir-crazy party. He just hoped that this last village would have something promising for them to find, he didn’t want this whole endeavor to have been completely pointless…
As he stood on the deck of his rented ship, reveling in the weak storm that played across the cliffs and rocks to his left, the last village came into view. It had been built in a natural harbor along an inlet of the sea, protected from the worst of the weather by a hill and cliff on its eastern side. It wasn’t a large village, but it was more than big enough to have plenty of dock space for Leon’s ship.
Anshu expertly steered the ship into the village, and Leon shook himself from his reverie to get his retinue to tie the thing down. After the harbor master—a second-tier mage more than a little aggrieved to have to come out and do his job in the rain—met Leon as he disembarked, Leon paid the harbor toll and was directed to the local Heaven’s Eye branch.
Leon and his retinue then marched through the cobbled streets to the only stone building in the entire timber village. This was to be their last stop. If no more information on the tau turned up, then Leon could only resign himself to failing the Director’s quest, and thus, likely failing to sign on with Heaven’s Eye.
At this point, even with the power of the storm filling his limbs with power, he was frustrated enough that he couldn’t say if failing this quest was a bad thing or not.
---
Once dry and comfortable and with feet on stable land, the mood among Leon’s people improved greatly. Leon met with the local Heaven’s Eye manager about the report of a tau sighting, and the fourth-tier man, nervous as all hells with so many higher-tiered mages in his building, scrambled to fetch all the information he could on the report, leaving Leon and the rest to get comfortable in the small lounge beside the building’s atrium. Only Anshu hadn’t accompanied them, as Leon had left him to keep watch over the ship. Anzu had also accompanied them to the bank, but the locals had seen fit to give him a cell in their small stable. The griffin wasn’t too happy about it, but Leon trusted that he’d be well-behaved.
And there they waited for more than an hour, relaxing in the heat of the Heaven’s Eye bank.
It was a fairly sleepy village—at least, so it seemed with the storm outside. Not many people coming and going from the bank on business, leaving Leon and his people alone in the lounge. Still, even with that solitude, no one really spoke much. After a month on the ship with each other, Leon could sense that everyone probably wanted to get some time to themselves just as much as they wanted this damn quest to be over.
Finally, the Heaven’s Eye manager returned with two people in tow. One was an older woman barely in the first-tier. She was fairly plump, with sun-beaten cheeks and dry, wispy hair. She was clearly accustomed to hard work outdoors. The second person Leon guessed was her daughter given their similar features. The daughter was thin and waif-like, with a nervous, but somewhat dreamy look in her eyes, as if her mind was still preoccupied with something a thousand miles away. She was completely mortal and couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen.
The manager waved Leon into a nearby conference room with the two he’d brought, and then left, though not before stating sternly that he would be right outside, just in case.
Leon was a little aggrieved, but he couldn’t blame the man for his caution. The two women were clearly put a little more at ease knowing that he was still within earshot despite the privacy given, so Leon paid no more mind to it.
Joining him for his questions were just Alix and Elise. In his opinion, those two were probably the least intimidating of those who were with him, thanks to Elise’s expertise in dealing with people, and Alix’s natural exuberance. Hopefully, having them with him would help get the two to talk about their report.
Leon took a seat across the conference table from the two the manager had brought. They seemed ill at ease, though the mother more so than the daughter.
“Hello,” he said as pleasantly as he could. “My name is Leon. This is my wife, Elise, and one of my friends, Alix.”
Elise gracefully nodded as Leon introduced her, while Alix responded with a cheery wave and a quick, “Heya!”
The mother nodded, calmer by a shade or two. “Cora,” she replied in a thick, trilling accent. She laid her hand on her daughter’s shoulder and said, “Zoe.”
Leon smiled, nodded, and then dispensed with all greetings and jumped right in.
“I, and my people, have come here after hearing a report from Heaven’s Eye about a tau,” he explained, and immediately he saw Cora give Zoe a harsh look, but it was gone in the blink of an eye. “We journeyed here to verify that report. I understand that one of you made it?”
“Mistaken, you are,” Cora sternly responded. “Filed report, none did.”
“I did,” Zoe immediately contradicted her mother, her accented voice just as dreamy and distant as her gaze. “Found a tau, I did. Told many people.”
“She did not,” Cora declared, more as a reprimand to her daughter than to Leon and the others. “Mistaken, she is. No tau here. Never been.”
Leon arched an eyebrow, but it was Alix who responded.
Ignoring Cora, she asked Zoe, “What did it look like? Was it big? Did it do any magic?”
“Small, it was,” Zoe responded despite her mother’s hand tightening on her shoulder. “Flew right by me, it did. Landed on small stone, stared at me. White it was, like cloud. Eye like pearl, and looked at me, it did. Showed me the sky.”
“Confused, my girl is,” Cora growled. “Saw a gull, she did.”
“Know what gull is, wasn’t gull, it wasn’t,” Zoe responded, practically singing.
“Twas gull, it was,” Cora protested.
“Wasn’t,” Zoe replied with the fluidity that told Leon either they had had this very argument multiple times, or there were quite a few arguments in their house.
Jumping into their exchange, Elise asked, “What makes you think it was a gull? Was it not Zoe who saw it?”
“Saw it, I didn’t,” Cora conceded, but her expression was still defiant and combative. “Tau don’t exist, they don’t. White gulls around, there are. Been gull, it must’ve. No tau around here, there aren’t.”
“Twas tau, it was!” Zoe insisted, though her tone remained as sing-song and calm as ever.
“What makes you think it was a tau, then?” Elise asked, turning her attention away from the upset mother.
“Twas tau, it was!” Zoe repeated. “Know gull, wasn’t gull, it wasn’t! Was tau! Showed me sky!”
“What do you mean, ‘showed you sky’?” Elise patiently asked, smiling at Zoe to encourage her to share as much as possible.
For a moment, Zoe seemed unsure of how to explain what she’d seen, but with a few muttered words in a language that Leon didn’t understand, he figured it was mostly just because she couldn’t speak the common language well enough to explain properly.
“Flew by me, it did,” she said again, this time a little slower and less sure of herself. “Looked in eye, I did. Saw sky, I did. Twas pearly.”
“Do you remember where you saw it?” Alix interjected, asking after more practical information.
“Twas in woods, it was!” Zoe eagerly responded. “Can show you, I can!”
“She can’t!” Cora immediately responded, shooting Zoe another reprimanding look. “Wait for father to return with fish, she must. Have work, we do.”
“Can you read a map?” Alix inquired.
Zoe fervently nodded, a dreamy smile on her face.
With that, Leon quickly stepped out of the room and had the manager fetch them a map of the surrounding area. Leon returned to the conference room only a minute or two later, and gave the map to Zoe, who not only gave them the specific spot, she also highlighted the best route to reach it.
When Leon examined the map again, he noted that the sighting was about three miles north of the village outskirts, in a lightly wooded meadow on the western slope of a hill directly on the coast. The only way to approach this hill was from the west, as the northern, southern, and eastern sides of the hill were hundred-foot-tall sheer cliffs that plummeted straight into the sea.
“Thank you,” Leon said to the mother-daughter pair. “I think that is all we need for the time being. If need be, would we be able to ask you two to come back and answer a few more questions?”
Cora frowned and took a moment to answer, but Zoe just said, “Will do! Will do!”
Cora’s frown deepened, but she took an uneasy look at Leon, and then nodded her assent.
Leon thanked them again, and then let them go. Then, after asking the Heaven’s Eye manager how accommodating he was willing to be, he called the rest of his family and retinue into the conference room.
After Leon quickly went over what they had asked and the answers they’d received, Elise added, “Cora seemed kind of cagey. She was very insistent that no tau lived here, and that tau didn’t exist.”
“Yeah, that was a little strange,” Alix hesitantly agreed, “but it could’ve also just been a language issue. I think it’s also possible that she was trying to protect her daughter from the strange people who called her into Heaven’s Eye to ask her some questions.”
“Always a possibility,” Elise conceded, “but I couldn’t help but think she might’ve been trying to hide something.”
Marcus then spoke up. “There are a couple of things we might be able to do to verify these claims without trekking all the way out there, you know. Are there any maps of local cave systems or tau shrines?”
“Tau shrines, I doubt it,” Gaius replied. “Most tau shrines are small and not marked on maps. It’s only the big and famous ones that get cartographers interested, it seems.”
Leon nodded in understanding. For the most part, he’d tasked Gaius with collecting information on local tau shrines when they made landfall in a village. He’d gone out to investigate quite a few in the past month, and none of the tau shrines they’d visited had contained more than a small bird relief and altar for offerings.
“See if you can find any additional maps on local caves,” Leon ordered Marcus, and tasked Alcander with going with him. To Gaius, he said, “Ask around for tau shrines. Have them marked on a map, if you can.” He then turned to Helen and Anna. “Figure out what kind of herbs grow in the surroundings. If tau are as magical as they’re claimed to be, then I’m sure they need magical food, too. Or at least are attracted to it. If there’s any possibility that we can find them by keeping an eye on potential food sources, then we should explore that possibility.”
His retainers nodded, and rose to fulfill his orders.
“What about us?” Alix asked, nodding to Elise, Valeria, and Maia.
“Let’s head to some local watering holes and see if we can dig up any more information on local tau, or if that fails—”
“—as it always has,” Alix said with a cheeky smile.
“—as it always has,” Leon repeated with a smile of his own, “but that shouldn’t dissuade us from trying. At the very least, we might be able to find someone who knows something. I don’t have much hope for that happening, but maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
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Leon leaned back in the conference chair, mentally tired from talking to drunk fishermen and unfriendly bar keepers. He and his family had gone around to several bars and small local markets seeking anyone who knew anything about tau, even running into Gaius at one place, but few people were willing to speak to them about the birds. Not even when Leon flashed some silver did anyone loosen their tongues. One particularly unfriendly barkeep even threatened to throw Leon out of the bar if he didn’t stop ‘disturbing the customers’, who numbered a mere half dozen at best. Leon was momentarily entertained at the idea of the first-tier barkeep trying to follow through on that threat, but he wasn’t serious about it, and left in due order. He wasn’t trying to step on any toes, and there was no harm in leaving politely when asked.
His retainers were a little more successful in their endeavors. No one found anyone else who’d ever seen a tau—or at least, no one who was sober enough to take seriously—but they had acquired a reasonably accurate chart of some local cave systems. Only ‘some’, though, as the Heaven’s Eye manager was quick to point out, as the rocky coastline was absolutely riddled with caves, and no one had explored them all. Or, at least, no one had explored them all and seen fit to map them out. What they got was all there was.
Fortunately, Leon noticed several caves in the area around the meadow where the tau had been seen, and when Gaius came back with a map marked with locations of tau shrines, he found that there was one shrine near the meadow, as well. Finally, when Helen and Anna came back, they brought word that the grasslands further inland were replete with magical herbs, with that meadow in particular being a good place to find sweetroot, an herb that could relieve the symptoms of fatigue.
Leon’s heart sank when Helen also revealed that an otherwise harmless mushroom also grew in the vicinity that she knew induced mild euphoria and hallucinations in those who consumed it.
He was a little more subdued in his reaction, but Alix gave a loud, “Fuck!” when that information was revealed. When he glanced around the table, he found nearly everyone with similar looks of dismay on their faces. Even with their growing list of potential information, it still seemed that the most likely explanation for the tau sighting was that Zoe had simply been snacking on some mushrooms and thought she saw a tau.
Her statement that she’d ‘seen the sky’, and her general floaty attitude now made a little more sense to Leon.
Regardless, he ordered his retinue to get ready to head out. This was their last village, and if it was going to be as much of a waste of time as the other three, he was at least going to ensure that it wasn’t a waste because they gave up. They were going to finish this right, and they’d go home. Whether or not they had a tau pearl in hand hardly mattered at this point.
With some grumbling, his retinue fell in. He grabbed Anzu from the stables, and they headed out into the wilderness as the sun slowly sank in the sky. They only had a few hours of daylight left, but that, Leon estimated, would be more than enough time.
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