Category: Dago

Just over two weeks passed, as Dago wandered the road.  A week was considered five days, a sixth of a month… and Dago counted them each morning as he awoke on top of a hill or against an old tree trunk.  He’d stand up and dust off the bugs and dirt and keep walking.  He could not afford the Crimson Highway, and didn’t have the patience anymore to work for them.  In the Radregar Highlands, he ventured with a keen eye, for bandits roamed the countryside and beasts hid under the hills.  Dago remembered when he had fought a stormsilder in the old jungles south of the Great Lake.  He had earned himself a long scrape scar on the back of his legs and one shoulder that day; the scaly bear-like beast had rushed him, tossing him effortlessly against a tree. Continue reading Dago 18

When Dago’s eyesight finally returned, more than a week later, he found himself staring into the wooden tray he’d been using.  Amidst all the commoners were a few crowns.  Three of them.  This is what Dago’s begging had amounted to, little more than two day’s meals.  He stared down at it for a long time with his fresh vision, before looking up at his surroundings.  He’d managed to find his way into the city of Ith, leaving the Low Dales behind, and seemed to be calling a shop’s alleyway his home.  He thought it was wider, a street.  He’d been begging an alley… Continue reading Dago 17

It was a long walk from the work site at Fork Crossing back to Master Nerlav’s estate; there were many ways to go, but the most direct route used three different roads throughout the Low Dales to the edge of the Inner City, where the businessman’s house, stable, and office were built.  Dago changed directions at a crossroad surrounded by rows of farmland tended by bent over women and children.  A few looked up and nodded to him as he walked along, and he nodded back without smiling.  He was feeling much better than he had at the beginning of the month. Continue reading Dago 16

Master Nerlav had three projects in the works at any given time; Dago had been tasked with guarding the most recent one.  They were building a crane against the side of a bridge; the local Mage King had hired the company to repair the structure that crossed the North Fork in the Low Dales District of Ith.  It was a tricky project, for the bridge was bordered on both sides by two-storey houses. Continue reading Dago 15

The crevices in the wood felt like the grain of a weapon’s handle.  The bar was rougher than Dago expected; friction caught his hand more than once as he slid it over the surface.  He sighed, pressed his fingernails into one miniature canyon, and took another sip of the treble he had been drinking.  It was a classic Radregan beverage, malted from maize into a stiff drink. Continue reading Dago 14

A knife’s blade, held delicately between two of Dago’s fingers, dragged through the cream foam he had lathered across his cut hair.  Tiny black hairs were strewn across the blade as it finished its track, and a dunk into the washbasin removed them.  Again, he pulled the razor across his scalp, and again washed it.  It was a ritual for him, a shedding of the last two months of chaos and sin. Continue reading Dago 13

Dago was more than a little irritated by the time he reached the city gate of Ith.  It was after he had passed through the Highway checkpoint, and spent the night sleeping on the ground next to people who had spat on him and picked a fight with him.  They stunk of the road, sweat and blood, and of illnesses their poor immune systems had failed to stop after spending their lives in brass bathing tubs and warm, feathered mattresses. Continue reading Dago 12

The Crimson Highway was smoother and faster to travel than the jungle terrain that surrounded it, but Dago quickly tired of the bland, grey cobblestones, stretching on and on.  He was relieved when the city of Ith finally came into view.  He could remember maps of the Highway, and the stretch between Elpan and Ith was one of the straightest. Continue reading Dago 11

In Dago’s opinion, the problem with the Crimson Highway, and, more specifically, its Highwaymen, was their damned choke-hold on the world.  They had become a fundamental institution upon which the modern world rested, and they knew it.  When Dago had finally made his break, dashing through the open gate of Elpan before another gang or revolutionary group caught him, he had found the highway abandoned.  It was, of course, not red in colour.  It was built of grey cobblestones, stretching east and west from the gate until the rise of jungle trees and the canopy overhead obstructed Dago’s view of it. Continue reading Dago 10