Sketcher's Row [Prototype]

Act II / Chapter I

Of course, the Efpias Elisque -- the most elite military unit in the Fourteen Republics of Gliwas (and, by extension, likely the world) -- bore no interest in Soal, of whose existence they neither knew nor cared.

It had busied itself for the last eight months quietly intercepting communications and supply routes between Qorkas (its heavily militarized northwestern border in particular) and an authoritarian regime in Aldekrime, where other Glewin troops had recently and irresolutely vacated before Qorkas mysteriously did the same. Traditionally, the greater the Elisque's progress toward achieving something, the more holes would be punctured through an enemy's prized possession, should it be acquirable.

Now, the objective of its mission differed. Once the campaign in Aldekrime abruptly concluded, the Elisque shifted its attention to something evidence claimed they would find nowhere but here: the former Qorkan embassy, in the Glewin enclave of South Poemant.

Soal drowsed before the arrival of the "lidcrawlers": metal galleons rolling laboriously on the axles of two dozen gearlike wheels, arduously carrying their weight under ashen skies toward the defunct sillingrock well.

When their proximity was so near that Soal cowered under the flagstaff, vexillological blanket overhead, such sheets were insufficient in soundproofing their underside from the cacophony of the motors' grinding bombination, or the permeation of their exhaust's toxic aroma.

Fifteen minutes of utmost auditory suspense elapsed, and this discord drew to a halt. Soal remained beneath the flag for ten more, until silhouettes of ewyk in unusual costume actualized through the holes in his cover.

"We know you're under there, kid," one of them concluded, his voice of a stranger, twangier accent than any other thus far heard. "Come along. Remove the blanket."

Soal peeled back the flag to find seven poised bayonets focused on his head, at varying distances, all of which would return to the hips of their owners moments later. They were garbed in moldy green uniforms, blue hats signifying rank ungainly perching atop some of their heads like their talons could to a lofty branch.

"Who're you?" the same introducer grumbled. His hat was the tallest, on which fourteen exotic feathers were mounted.

"Please, please, please!" Soal sank into a position of greatest innocence. "I didn't do anything. I just went to sleep one day and everyone was gone... and then when I shot him, I-I was just following directions... it was... I...!"

"Shot who?"

"I didn't... I didn't know his name... I..."

"Was his name, by chance, Milligant?"

"I don't know... s-sir..."

"And what about the leavers? The detectable captives?"

"Who... the... the charks?"

"Yes, yes!" the high-hatted speaker appeared vexed by Soal's naivety. "Where did they go? So far as you're aware, we came here to liberate them."

Soal shook his head sorrowfully. "I... I don't know. Somewhere in Qorkas, probably."

"To hell with liberation, then..." the introducer nervously snickered. "You say the captives left. Where did the true captive go?"

"...Henrab?"

There was some suppressed communication between the officers. Cordroud! one identified. You know, that 'hoarmer' son of a gun from the '10s? Didn't he have six wives, two dozen kids, and five that were named after him?

I thought we rounded up all the sons in '67, went another.

Nah; those were mostly Oshowors.

What's the difference? All the hoarmers may as well be Cordrouds.

This won't matter in three decades anyway.

The highest-hatted of the bunch cleared his throat, silencing those at his side. "Forget who owned the place. Why did he do it?"

"Well, he wanted sillingrocks..."

"And what did he do with these sillingrocks? Where did they all go?"

"Uh... I think he said something about a vault, where a chark died --"

"Take us there."

"...I'm sorry, I don't know where it is."

"We never needed your help." The men began to turn back, a couple beckoning their host toward their trajectory. "That's what you need."

* * *

The whole of the lidcrawlers' passengers, all armed and armored in the same dirt-swept cloth, endured no trouble locating the vault: an intimidating, albeit rawly built, safe of the darkest possible materials, lodged into the darkest wall in the darkest corner of the mine's darkest below-ground cavern, like a cubically sculpted cannonball on a stone blanket.

There was no penetration wide enough to permit the passage of any Elisques, or even the most flexible chark, of which Soal was the only one present. A masked soldier fumbled with a package of heavy bullets, settling a dozen of them at the foot of the vault, only to strike a match that caught the dozen in its wake, followed by the matchsetter's cigar. But these were not bullets, and they needed no gun to fulfill their placement. Nor did anyone wish to look as they did so, noisily and vividly, spraying the side of the vault in disparate portions to the sides of its naturally holding room. Bomb. That was the word for it.

"E.E. AT THE DOORS!" their supposed leader took center stage while the dust gradually cleared, his followers facing into the punctured structure with arms raised -- although not in a surrendering manner. "SURRENDER YOURSELF!"

When Soal seized a glimpse of the vault's interior, he gazed not upon an otherwise hollow and unsightly vase of silling, but a fully furnished, miniaturized parlor snatched from an upperclassman's manor, a chandelier dangling from the ceiling and its walls thoroughly painted yellow, complete a striped sofa, a dresser and a pool of silling-laced water from whence to drink.

It was inhabited by four distraught birds: there were three ewyk, one of whom had just awakened from a drunken slumber. Another was but a corpse, unlikely to have been injured by the present infiltration, as their body had been manipulated to sit casually on a chair like a living person would. The last was, from understandable anxiety, perturbedly clutching the wing of another resident: an intoxicated-looking seagull in peasant's attire, doused in some dried lavender liquid that must have been showered onto him days earlier with no intent to be washed away, and stumbling forward toward the outside, where so many feathered fingers rested on triggers prepared to cast him into a state of yet more diminished self-awareness.

"...Good 'gint at your service, how... can I help... you?" he slurred, practically drooling at gunpoint.