Under His Red Wings

Chapter Three: Leaving Eternos

There was a very noticeable change in the city of Eternos after Prince Keldor was exiled.

Perhaps not everyone was consciously aware of it, but everyone felt it. No one more than the non-human residents of the city.

Kronis noticed it in the way a person might clutch their bag tighter to their body as they passed him on a public walkway. Or how a parent walking with their children would cross the street entirely to avoid having to pass by him. Small things. Nothing overt, nothing aggressive, certainly nothing violent. Just things that were noticeably different from when they thought their next King would be Gar.

He met up with Raqquill outside a café in one of the nicer neighborhoods of the city.

The Beastmen smiled at him and passed Kronis a coffee in a paper cup. "No dairy, just one sugar."

"One day, I'm gonna regret letting you people get to know me so well." Kronis muttered, but he accepted the offered coffee anyway. He held it in his prosthetic hand, which was unbothered by the heat that managed to seep past the thin cardboard cup-sleeve.

"How've you been?" Raq asked as he sipped his own drink.

"Ugh. I fucking hate this city! That's how I've been!" Kronis announced -loudly. Several people looked up from their café tables, alarmed by the sound of souting, and concerned to see that it was two non-humans. Kronis lowered his voice back to its normal volume. "You know what they did after Keldor got himself banished? They tossed my business!"

Before the war that came to be called 'the Great Unrest', Kronis was a smuggler. He dealt in the moving and selling of contraband over borders or between enemy lines. After he helped Prince Keldor in a plot that eventually leads to the defeat of Count Marzo, Kronis' criminal past was pardoned, and his business legitimized. His title shifted from 'smuggler' to 'shipping manager'.

After Keldor lost his fucking mind when his kid disappeared and tried to murder his brother in front of a palace guard as witness, Kronis' status as a 'known criminal' was revisited, and his warehouses searched for any evidence of 'conspiring to assassinate Prince Randor'.

But Raqquill already knew that. He was also picked up by the Guard and interrogated for any foreknowledge that might incriminate him as a co-conspirator. As if Keldor flipping his shit could have possibly been 'pre-meditated'. What a fucking joke!

It was because King Miro just didn't like non-humans. That was it plain and simple. It was a long-standing rumor that Miro hated the fact that he had a half-non-human child, hated it even more that that non-human child was his first born and heir. Miro might like to fuck non-human women, he might fetishize Gar's pointed ears and blue skin, but that didn't mean he actually cared about or even respected the Gar people. Keldor was an embarrassment to him. Now that Keldor was out of the picture, Miro was cleaning house.

"I fucking hate this city." Kronis said again, taking a sip of his coffee. "I should just go back to the Burning Sands. Nobody gave a shit about anything there. There was no society and no rules! It was a lawless wasteland, and it was paradise!"

"You wouldn't go back to Anwat Gar?" Raq asked.

"Fuck no!" Kronis shouted again. Some people in the café's outdoor seating moved their chairs farther away from them. "The sticks up everyone's asses there are even bigger than here! There's a reason I left. You wanna go back to the Vine Jungle?"

"Was thinking about it." Raq confessed.

Kronis was about to take another sip of his coffee but paused, lowering the cup he stared at his friend. "You wanna leave the city?"

Raqquill Raqazz was a Beastmen, and because of that, he had the ability to understand most animals. After the Great Unrest, he became the Palace's Beast Tamer, taking care of all many and varied animals the palace kept. Mounts for the Guard, hunting birds, even Keldor's familiar, Panthor before the cat left with him to exile. It was a nice government job that offered good pay and came with benefits. If Raq wanted to leave it, then things must be worse than Kronis originally thought.

Then again, it could just be that Raqquill thought of Keldor as a friend and after he left things just weren't the same anymore.

A shrug was the only answer Raq gave. So it was left up to Kronis' imagination.

"Shit." He muttered to his coffee cup.

"Eternos isn't the same." The Beastmen admitted. "And I don't like this new Eternos Miro is making. Randor seems nice, I guess, but I don't know him and I don't know what kind of King he'll be when Miro finally takes his Final Journey. I liked how things were when Keldor was preparing to take the throne."

Kronis ran a thumb over the steam-vent of his coffee cup. "Keldor would've been the first non-human King Eternia has had since Eternia became one nation."

"I was really looking forward to that." Raq admitted.

"Would have been nice to have a Gar in power." Kronis confessed. "Even if that dumbass hafu doesn't know a damn thing about actually being Gar."

They both shared a sigh.

Raq opened his mouth, as if to say something more, but didn't get the chance to. Before even a syllable could come out, they were interrupted by two members of the Eternos Guard approaching them.

"Is there a problem here?" Asked one of the Guards.

Raq blinked at them confused. "No. No problem that I'm aware of."

"We got a report of two dangerous looking men having a fight." Announced the other Guard.

"I've been standing here a while and I haven't seen anyone." Raq informed them in his best 'this is helping' voice. He didn't seem to get what was actually going on.

But Kronis did. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Raq! These palace-packaged action figures think we're the dangerous men having a fight."

The Beastmen only blinked at him, then at the Guards. Not understanding at all, and confused beyond reason as to how the city Guard could think that two guys sharing a conversation over coffee was a dangerous fight.

"Sir, I'm gonna need you to remain calm." The first Guard said to Kronis.

The Gar just crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the two Eternos city Guards, unamused and definitely, definitely calm.

The Guard took a step back, one had drifting to their sidearm. "Sir, I'm gonna need you to keep your arms where I can see them."

Kronis' glare intensified, but he did uncross his arms.

"Look, I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding." Raq insisted. "I'm Raqquill Raqazz and I work in the palace. I'm the royal Beast Master, I train and care for all the palace animals."

Raq started to reach for his ID.

But the jumpy Guard pulled his sidearm on them. "Put your hands up!"

"Whoa!" Both Raq and Kronis exclaimed. They did as they were told and raised their hands up above their heads.

"Search them." Ordered the jumpy one with the weapon.

Raq suppressed a humiliated groan as he had to stand there, with the rest of the café patrons watching them, as the Eternos city Guard stuck a hand in his loincloth, searching his pockets and belt pouch.

"I can tell you which pocket my ID is in." The Beastmen informed them.

"They're also searching for weapons." Kronis reminded him.

Raq was suddenly very glad he left his whip back in his room in the staff barracks at the palace.

Finally, the Guard doing the search stepped away, holding Raq's ID in one hand. "He is who he says he is. Raqquill Raquazz. Species: Beastmen, occupation: Beast Master. Works at the palace with the animals."

Finally, the jumpy Guard lowered their weapon. The other one passed Raq's ID back to him.

"Try to be more mindful of your surroundings." Said the jumpy one. "You might just be having a coffee with your boyfriend, but the people around you don't know that. They just hear raised voices."

Kronis -prudently- did not add a comment. He was remembering a time that Prince Randor and another Guard, Duncan, got into an all-out fist fight over the pronunciation of 'chowder', and no one bat an eyelash at them. But then, Prince Randor and his buddy-Guard Duncan were both lily-white humans. Kronis and Raqquill were just chatting over coffee and the city Guard was called. He could point out a what the defining difference in the situations was, but he wasn't going to. Kronis took a long, loud, sip of his coffee instead.

"I'll keep that in mind." Raq ground through clenched teeth that were supposed to be a smile.

Kronis waited until the Guards left before he spoke again. "So… you serious about getting outta the city?"

"Yeah." Agreed the Beastmen. Eternos just wasn't the same now that Keldor was gone. "You serious about going back to the Burning Sands?"

"Yeah." Kronis conformed.

"Want some company?" Raq asked.

The Burning Sands were exactly what Raq imagined.

Sand. Fire. Heat.

The place truly lived up to the name.

A long corridor of loose rolling sands, in ombre tones of golden brown and charred black. The horizon made blurry by heat waves rising up off the ground. In any given direction a person looked, they would see at least one plume of flame burst up from under the sand.

The desert of the burning sands sat on top of a large underground gas pocket. The pressure strong enough that it pushed the gas up out of the ground, and was ignited by the dessert's heat, creating the jets of fire that gave the desert its name.

It was kind of beautiful, in a primal, brutal sort of way. A gray sky clouded over by smoke and vapors from the fire-jets. Rolling sands of golden brown or charred black, the colors moving and dancing in the wind, making the dunes look like the churning waves of some sea after a storm. And the fire. Jets of heat and red light. The light sometimes caught on fragments of glass made by the buried vents. The glass acting like prisms and casting rainbows on the dunes. The Burning Sands were beautiful.

No wonder Kronis liked it here.

Raqquill was not so thrilled. It was, much hotter than the Vine Jungle, and the Beastmen's thick fur was not meant for such harsh temperatures. More than once, Raq caught himself panting in an effort to cool down. Gar, like humans, could sweat to keep their bodies cool, but the Beastmen race did not possess that ability and Raq was hot and uncomfortable.

They were in a Wind Raider that Kronis swore he did not steal from the palace. It was totally a gift from Keldor after the war. That's why the royal crest on the side was scratched off. Nothing untoward about it at all.

Raq wasn't sure if he believed his friend or not, but using the Wind Raider had allowed them to make great time. Flying up from Eternos, and over the land bridge that connected the western continent to the Dark Continent. The Wind Raider was probably also the only thing keeping Raq from passing out from the heat.

Kronis was keeping the vehicle at an altitude where they were high enough to enjoy the faster air currents that kept things cooler, but low enough that were weren't flying through the semi-permanent layer of smoke and vapor that blanketed the Dark Hemisphere. Kronis called it the 'Golden Line'. A narrow corridor of air that was just this-side of comfortable.

"You ever been this far east before?" Kronis asked, shouting to make sure his voice was heard over the rushing air.

The Beastmen shrugged. "The Ice Mountains once. During the Great Unrest."

Kronis just shook his head. The Ice Mountains were at Eternia's northern polar cap, and while the range did -technically- extend into the eastern hemisphere, the half of the planet everyone unanimously agreed was the Dark Hemisphere, visiting the Ice Mountains was definitely not the same as visiting the Dark Continent. They were two very different kinds of 'east'.

Shaking his head, Kronis tilted the Wind Raider so that Raq's side was dipped closer to the land. The Beastmen grabbed the dash with his paws to steady himself.

"Don't do that!" Raq snapped.

Kronis ignored him. He leaned over his friend and pointed to something down below.

With the way the Wind Raider was tilted, Raqquill had an unobstructed view of a vehicle of some kind parked on the sand. It had the large gear-tread feet of a tank, meant for rolling over a variety of terrains, but it wasn't a tank. Half of the vehicle was taken up by two large tanks, and a large thick hose ran from one of the tanks down into the sand.

"Gas harvester." Kronis explained. "They've found an inactive vent and are using it to get under the surface and syphon out the gas. They won't get as much as they would if they drilled their own shaft, but it's safer and less likely to blow up in the faces."

Kronis pulled up on the Wind Raider, then tilted the craft to the other side and pointed to a cloud of dust rolling towards them from the opposite direction as the gas minors.

"And that's a raiding party." Kronis continued. "They're moving fast, so they've probably already spotted the minors. There'll be a fight and the raiders will either get a cash of freshly mined gas, plus the mining truck. Or else the minors will kill them all defending themselves and get a new pile of weapons for themselves." He breathed in deeply and let it out as an admiring sigh. "Lawless. I really love it here."

"Is it always so hot?" Raq asked. He was panting again. Even flying through the Golden Line, it was just a hair too warm for the Beastmen with his thick layer of fur.

"You get used to it after a while." Kronis assured him. "It's not like the rest of Eternia that gets seasons. The cloud layer isn't just clouds, is all the vapors and chemicals thrown up by the gas vents, or the volcanos. It traps in the heat making what should be winter warm. You'd think that with the sun blocked out it'd be cold anyway, but it's not. It's more like laying under a thermal blanket. All of your own heat is trapped and reflected back at you. Summer, winter, fall, spring, they all feel the same on the Dark Continent."

"And people actually live here!?" The Beatmen could not believe it.

"Oh, yeah!" Kronis assured him. "Lots of people do!"

He turned the Wind Raider again, heading south now. The coast came into view and Kronis followed the curve of it, taking them away from the Burning Sands.

"I'll buy you a drink in Porttown."

Porttown was a settlement on the curve of the continent. Where the land coiled around for form a natural harbor. Several ships were moored in the harbor, either unloading goods from the western continent, or else awaiting new cargo to be loaded into their holds.

Kronis brought the Wind Raider down on a semi-flat patch of dirt close to the harbor. It lacked any kind of official markings, and was not very well maintained, but its proximity to the shipping lanes implied that the area was meant as a landing for air vehicles.

Before they got out, Kronis reached into the back for a box of tools. Then quickly removed the Wind Raider's navigation console, steering stick, and communications system. He left all the wires hanging and exposed, to give the illusion that the parts were ripped out messily instead of removed carefully as they had been. The Com system and nav console he locked in the Wind Raider's cargo trunk, the steeling stick Kronis stuck in his belt.

"Are- are we in a bad neighborhood?" Raq asked, suddenly feeling unsafe.

"Not for me." Kronis assured him.

He led the Beastmen to a tavern just off the harbor. The lighting inside was about as dim as the natural light outside, the floor boards creaked when anyone walked on them, some of the patrons' chairs wobbled, and there was a distinct wet smell in the air. Although, whether that was from the sea-spray outside, or the drinks inside was unclear. Either way, it was a dive. No doubt about that.

Kronis lead him to the bar and ordered them both the strongest drink the place had to offer.

The bartender filled two tankards with something dark brown and frothy, and Kronis passed her four Eternos mint coppers for them.

There were no empty tables, so Kronis kicked out a bar stool for Raqquill to sit down. They sat at the bar together.

"So, are you just gonna go back to being a smuggler?" Raq asked over the bubbling froth of his drink. It had an earthy, bitter taste that was different from most grain alcohols and the Beastmen found himself wondering if it was a grain alcohol at all, or if it was made from something else that grew on the Dark Continent. "After Keldor pardoned you and made you a legitimate businessman."

Kronis only shrugged. "The crime was always more fun. And besides, I was pardoned by Keldor. Who knows if that pardon is still gonna be honored now that he's fallen from grace."

Raq couldn't argue with that logic. The mood and tone of the city seemed to change overnight after Keldor left.

"There could be room in my crew for a beast Tamer." Kronis offered. "If I'm ever moving live animals, your skills would be invaluable."

The Beastmen made a slight groan of disapproval. As a general rule he didn't approve of poaching, or keeping exotic animals in ecosystems that were not meant for them. But he also didn't know what he was going to do now that he left his employment in Eternos. He didn't want to turn down the offer his friend just made him. But he also didn't wanna accept it either.

Instead, Raq ran a finger around the rim of his tankard and asked, "What about the rest of the Dark Hemisphere? What's farther east?"

Kronis shook his head. He lowered his tankard and wiped the froth from his mouth. "You don't wanna go any farther east than the Dunes of Doom." He warned. "That's Snakemen territory. And there's weird magic shit too. There's a reason there're so many superstitious idiots living in the Dark Hemisphere. There's older magic farther east. Stuff left over from back when Eternia was still one continent. Curses, or old gods, or ancient evils… I donno, I'm not into magic, so I steer clear."

"Princess-Consort Evelyn says she's from the eastern part of the Dark Hemisphere." Raq reminded him. "She's from Zalesia."

"You don't have to call her 'Princess-Consort', she's not here." Kronis informed him. "We've been calling Keldor just 'Keldor'. Anyway, she can say she's from wherever. People say things all the time. But the only Zalesia I ever heard of is some shitty ruin in the middle of nowhere. Zalesia is just a pile of broken stones. No one lives there."

"Oh." Raq looked back down into the foam of his drink. It was thick, and fluffy, and hadn't dissipated back into the fluid. No reflection looked back at him. "I wonder if Keldor knew that? He left Eternos to find her."

Keldor did not 'leave Eternos to find Evelyn', he left Eternos because he was given the ultimatum leave or be arrested for the attempted murder of Prince Randor. He chose to try and meet up with his wife because he left Eternos.

"He'll figure it out." Kronis muttered into his own drink.

Someone else came up to them at the bar. "Hey, you're back!"

Kronis turned around. He leaned against the bar and looked the newcomer up and down. They were a Beastmen, just a little shorter than Raqquill, with fox ears and boar tusks. Kronis had never seem them before him his life. "I supposed to know who the fuck you are?"

"I was part of the deck crew that sailed with you across the Harmony Sea." They supplied, looking hurt that they weren't recognized. "After you were banished from Eternos."

Kronis raised one ebony black eyebrow. "Do you… think I'm Prince Keldor?"

There was the beat of a pause.

The newcomer's hand flew to their mouth in mortification. "Oh! Oh, Goddess! I just thought-"

"I get it, all Gar look the same to you." Kronis growled. "Get lost, asshole."

They turned to leave.

Then paused and turned back. "It's just that, Prince Keldor went east, deeper into the Dark Continent. Where things are still wild and the old gods still rule. I was afraid he wouldn't come back. Then I saw you and I just-…" he trailed off. "I was just really looking forward to having a non-human King for once. Then Miro took that away from us." A sigh. "I guess we'll never see or hear about Prince Keldor again. Almost no one comes back from that far east."

Raq looked up from his drink in alarm. "You think Keldor went out there to die?"

The Beastmen sailor just shrugged. "He did not seem to be in very optimistic when he disembarked. People usually only get off at the Dark Continent if they've got nothing left to lose."

"Prince Keldor is a drama queen." Kronis announced. "He probably went to look for a cliff he could look out from while the black cloud cover rolled behind him. Trust me, if nobody during the Great Unrest could kill him, he's not gonna drop dead just because he went sight-seeing on the Dark Continent."

"You don't know that." The Beastmen argued.

"You don't even know who the fuck I am." Kronis reminded him. "You don't know what I know." He turned to Raqquill. "Can you believe this guy?"

Raq just cast a semi-apologetic look at the other Beastmen. It was true, this guy didn't know who they were or what they knew. Didn't know that they knew Prince Keldor personally. Fought alongside him during the Great Unrest and worked with him in the royal palace after. But still, Kronis didn't have to be such an asshole about it.

The Beastmen let out a low groan.

"You still here?" Kronis snapped. "Shouldn't you be on a boat somewhere? Go polish your mast!"

The Beastmen sailor walked away.

Raq drained the last of the liquid in his drink, and set the still frothy tankard down on the bar. He opened his mouth to say something to his companion.

But Kronis cut him off. "Now you wanna go farther east and look for Keldor, don't you."

Raq nodded. "I know you don't wanna go. But… Keldor was the King I wanted to serve. Not just that, but I liked him. He was good to his cat, and Dylinx almost never allow themselves to be domesticated. The fact that Keldor had a Dylinx familiar says a lot for his character."

Kronis drained his own drink. He stuck a finger in the glass and scooped out some of the overly thick froth. He was still licking it off his fingers when he asked, "And you think us going out there and finding him will… what? Suddenly make Keldor next in line to be King again?"

"No…" Raq admitted slowly. "But I don't want him to die alone in the middle of nowhere thinking he'd been abandoned by all his friends or anyone who ever cared about him."

"Ugh. What are you, his biggest fan?" His tone was taunting, but Kronis looked back into his empty tankard.

His own reflection looked back at him from the glass bottom, glaring at him from behind the foam. He had been looking forward to having a Gar as the King for once. And he kinda liked Keldor too. He might be a fancy court-trained asshole, but he was an asshole. That made him endearing to Kronis. He was an asshole too.

"We probably won't ever find him." Kronis announced, speaking more to the bottom of his glass than to Raq. "But we can take the Wind Raider and head east."