Private Unreadable

[Zayad]

They were late. Three days, by the most optimistic estimate. Five if one chose to panic. A few of the scouts had returned. Brought back strange sketches. Shroud marked stones. Symbols like spines, curling down the vertebrae. Down roots. They spoke of a place that hummed even in silence. Of something watching. One man couldn't stop laughing since his return. Laughed even as he drew what he saw, lines jittery and uneven. Another wept and refused to cooperate. The third clutched the paper Zayad was looking at now like it was his own child. They had to break two fingers to get the notes from his clutches. Didn't scream, Zayad remembered, and it bothered him.

None remained.

Disappeared, each one, in ways that felt too silent. Even Takoumba would approve. No signs of forced entry. No calls for help. Just gone. Their names were already becoming mist in the minds of his men. The implication hung like a noose over his own head. Zayad still had the sketches in his pocket. Cursed, perhaps. The ink had dried long ago, but he could sometimes swear the lines were still moving. Perhaps that made him as mad as his men. He'd seen the ancient script before. Stylized. Sacred. But these were older than that. Grammar fractured and form overlapping, he could read no sense in them. Ambiguous in a way that made him hesitant to try copying them, scared what his magic might be imbuing.

It had been a long way.

Finally at her door.

She had many names, but only two were of interest.

She who reads what others bury.

The Warden.

*​

For once in his life, Zayad did not knock like a noble. He took the mask of a man with questions. The truth of it bled dangerously close to his real face. Three slow raps of gloved knuckles. Weight enough to suggest time was already wasted, and yet pause enough between the noises to suggest that he could wait. Had done so.

Even as his face bled into a commoner's mask, his attire remained dignified. Clean, save for the hems dusted in foreign road. No guards or retinue. Just him.

In his hand was a sealed package, its corners worn.

Under, the faintest shimmer of font ink. A spell that wouldn't work. A question that refused to give answers.

When the door finally opened, he realized he was born ready for this part.

„Cerridwen Castille.“ He said her name as easily as if he'd practiced it in the mirror. And he had. „I was told you read what the rest of us fear to touch.“

For the first time in a long time, his smile didn't arrive before he did.

 

[Cerridwen Castille]

The novelty of discovery was something that Cerridwen had always pursued. A driving passion to learn about the world and all her follies and firsts.

The first thing she had the delight of discovering even that morning, as she was sitting back down to her coffee and toast—cold now, of course, after being snagged by a stray reference in a field journal and losing three hours to an increasingly obscure rabbit hole—was that no one had ever knocked on her door before.

Not once.

Not in the years she’d lived tucked into this crooked old house on the edge of Urdshawl, where the fog clung like gossip and the birds were too clever by half. Working for the guild, she'd only ever received missives. Neatly tied bundles of parchment and wax-sealed orders of where she was being sent. Or, more recently, correspondence passed back and forth between her and the university she no longer pretended to tolerate. Letters, requests, never apologies.

She was rarely here anyway. A week or two between expeditions at best, and even then, spent mostly cataloguing, brewing, diagramming. The quiet mornings she did get, were things she guarded with quiet devotion. Spent curled up with strange maps, stranger books, and something bitter in her mug.

So, when the knock came, sharp and deliberate, she simply sat still.

Three raps. Not loud, not urgent. But weighty.

She took another sip of her coffee.

When she opened the door, mug in-hand, it was without fanfare. A pale hand on the knob, her cracked-lens spectacles already sliding down her nose. She gave the man standing there a quick, surgical up-and-down. His boots were dusty. Edges frayed. Eyes haunted. The package in his hand was worn, and she clocked the faint shimmer of a spell that had already failed.

Tired magic, she thought absently.

More interesting were the runes carved into her doorframe. Old safeguards tied to her wards. They pulsed faintly, and she glanced sideways at them. No flare. No color shift. No threat.

“Mm,” she said, mostly to herself.

Then she took another sip of her cold coffee.

“Well, goodest of mornings, I suppose,” she said at last, turning without checking if he followed, padding barefoot across weathered floorboards that creaked in familiar protest. Books teetered in precarious stacks along every surface. A half-sketched diagram of a wyvern’s jaw sat beneath a teacup on the table. Maps on the wall. Bones in a bowl. A faint smell of old paper and elderflower smoke.

“The coffee’s terrible and if you're so inclined after whatever you have endured, the whiskey isn’t. Choice is yours.”

@Zayad

 

[Zayad]

He followed. Quietly. The floorboards failing to sing of him. Peculiar for a man that size. The room was scented with paper and stone. Old and cold. Elderflower feeling out of place in the mix. He catalogued the room and learned the woman before him. This was an archive of someone too precise to be called a hoarder, yet too wild to be called organized. The jaw sketch. The bones in the bowl. The map with one corner torn.

„A woman with tidy shelves is not to be trusted.“ Softly. „And I am not here to trust.“

Once beside the table he would set the package down on the patch of clear wood. Looked aside and took up coffee. „Whiskey is for survivors. We haven't earned that yet.“ He didn't sit. He would nurse his cold coffee instead. Searching for other gaps in her mask. Weakness exhausted, he would continue.

„A few weeks ago, I sent men into the north.“ He pointed to one of her maps, outlining beyond Urdshawl. „A stretch of stone. Too symmetrical to be a natural formation.“ His nod gestured to the package. „Some returned. Shaking. Laughing. Bleeding.“

He made sure he held her eye for the next bit. „All vanished days later. Quietly. Completely. The kind of quiet my God might admire.“ His fingers tapped the wrapped bundle. Grateful that this mask didn't need to feign certainty. „The glyphs are Devahni, or something similar. You'll see for yourself. Old Empire or older. Rooted. They refused translation. Even the ink seemed to be playing tricks on me.“ Even wearing a lesser face, Zayad was still a man of precision.

He took a moment to compose his words correctly. Sipped the coffee even. Horrible swill. „I believe this place may be linked to the dracophage.“ His face kept blank as the horrible liquid bit its way down. „It is my belief that, if I go alone, I'll end up like the others.“ He freed his hands of the cup. „So I came to you.“

No persuasion or flourish. No charm.

He needed someone smarter than him.

Someone who would not fall for it.

 

[Cerridwen Castille]

Settling across the table from the man, Cerridwen cradled her mug in hand and observed him carefully. When was the last time someone had reached out for her expertise outside of the guild's laundry list of fetch missions? She would be lying if she said that she didn't miss the academic halls of the university.

Cherished memories of the dry scent of vellum and chalk dust, the thrill of unlocking something old enough to humble her own sense of mortality.

But more than the stone halls and the curated collections, she missed her students.

Missed the eager ones. The sharp, tireless minds who annotated the margins of everything she gave them and then asked for more. The ones who lit up at a scrap of half-deciphered script or a piece of painted shattered pottery found in ruins. Who stayed after lectures to argue theories and left notes on her office door at obscene hours because they couldn't sleep, not when they’d almost made a connection.

Students who burned with the same fever she did— that aching, impossible desire to know the world. To devour it. Beauty and horror and all. Cerridwen missed watching them wrestle with that hunger, knowing they’d never have enough lifetimes to taste it all.

She missed helping them try.

Her gaze slid to the package. She reached for it slowly, fingers brushing the edge of the binding as though it might bite.

“Dracophage,” she murmured, almost to herself. “The Devahni Empire’s most brilliant cruelty. A sickness that unmade gods.”

She leaned back, brows knitting as Cerridwen considered him anew.

“While the academic peacock in me is thoroughly preening at the recognition,” she offered, lips curled in faint amusement, “I dare say I am still in the dark about who you are and why I should help you."

@Zayad

 

[Zayad]

Zayad's step changed with the tune of the conversation. And even while her voice may have lounged soft, he recognized edge for edge. It was his job description.
So he didn't answer right away. He let the blade remain unsheathed between them.
An unanswered question. Impossible to ignore.

„My name is Zayad.“ His words missing title, rank, cloak.
„And my work takes me to places history forgot. Often for good reason. I retrieve things best left buried.“
He had a mask ready for this – hands that shook just enough, a voice that cracked at the right moment.
But no.
„And sometimes I fail.“

He glanced to the package on her table, resting near it, daring the ink to change again. Then back to her, gaze steady.

„But I've read your papers.“ It wasn't flattery. It was fact. Careful, deliberate, and chosen.
„And I came to you because I believe the person who wrote them would want the same thing I do.“ And he wouldn't allow his gaze to wander. That was for lesser men. And those with time.
„To understand. To document. To leave behind something better than silence.“ The voice threatened to crack, uninvited. He caught it too late for comfort, and hoped she hadn't noticed.
„We won't bury it. We'll study and map it. Trace its roots. So the next generation knows how not to die of the same mistake.“

At last, he sat. Not because he was welcome, or safe. Just tired of standing guard behind his own voice.

„Am I in the wrong place?“

He hadn't let himself imagine what it meant if she said no. Not fully. He just knew the other hadn't come back.
And this time, he couldn't afford to be a footnote to the same silence.

 

[Cerridwen Castille]

Cerridwen exhaled a soft laugh through her nose and gave a slow shake of her head.

“You know,” she said, “I think I have heard of you.”

She absently traced a fingertip along the edge of her mug, gaze gone slightly distant.

“I’ve been approached more than once to lead expeditions that were,” she lifted her brows, “rumored to be funded by a certain reclusive patron. Always the kind of dig that needed a field scholar who wouldn’t flinch at a few buried curses.”

She huffed a half-smile.

“Alas, the guild had me contracted elsewhere every time. Frozen peaks, shroudfiend nests, diplomatic baby-sitting gigs. You know the kind.”

Her singular gaze sharpened back to him.

“Although, I heard what you pulled from the ruins in the Suldaza Desert. The buried obsidian corridor, the mirrored inscriptions, the astral loom. Impressive work."

Cerridwen propped her chin in one hand, elbow on the table, smile curling slow and thoughtful as she tilted her head at him. "You’re a hard man to know, Zayad, and from what I'm told through the grapevine, you pay well, and you're a fair master.”

“But I’m glad to hear you’ve read my work,” She took a long dreg of her cold coffee, “Then you know I’ve always believed history has teeth.”

The grin that followed was pure mischief, wolfish and wry and unrepentant.

“Lucky for you,” she said, standing with a scrape of her chair, “I love to bite back.”

She turned and strode to the cluttered shelves behind her, already half-lost in motion, sleeves shoved up, scrolls and tomes in various states of rebellion. She tugged out a bound folio, peered into it, swore under her breath, shoved it back. More parchment followed. Maps, diagrams, loose ink sketches pinned under brass weights and dried flowers taken from the field.

Her voice floated back as she rifled through the mess.

“There was a mural once, Mhearra Mountains, west ridge. Little dig site tucked behind a waterfall, completely unrecorded until we got there. We were having a grand time until a Shroud-fueled automaton decided I looked like a heretic and threw me through a false wall. Rude and fucking painful.”

She held up a battered roll of vellum with hopeful triumph, unfurled it, then grunted. “No, that’s the temple with the flayed saint.”

More papers hit the floor. A moth took flight from a scroll case. Cerridwen didn’t notice.

“Anyway, nearly died,” she called. “Chest bruised, ribs cracked, barely managed to siphon the construct’s core before it collapsed— but entirely worth it.”

She turned, finally victorious, a glint in her eye.

“Turned out to be a mural for an old bread recipe used in ritual sacrifice. I happen to now enjoy it with tea on a cold winter's day.”

She thumped a battered scroll case on the table and rolled out its contents in a flourish. The paper was yellowed with age, but the lines were still clear, a sweeping, detailed topographic rendering of Ilia with towns that were missing or no longer there.

“Aha!”

She tapped one long finger against the center of the map.

“This is a replication of a map of the land before the Dracophage. And if it’s buried in the bones of the world, this is where we start digging.”

Cerridwen felt that familiar academic fervor begin to spin in her mind— the anticipation of finding stones, unturned, and mysteries, unsolved. The kind of passion that would keep her going long into the nights ahead until her sense of adventure was satisfied.

It was the pause before the plunge and she would never stop chasing it.

@Zayad

 

[Zayad]

He watched her ransack the shelf, scrolls fall and the moth rise. It seemed like his iron had stoked the fire proper. Even the horrible black seemed less biting a job well done coating his insides. „All seven dismissals of my envoys were most disappointing.“ He scraped the bitter off, tongue over teeth. „Though I admit, I was curious what would finally tempt you.“

She knew the corridor, the mirror and the loom. And for a moment, he let himself feel it. That the work had been seen by someone other than clerks and censors. Recognized by another scholar. He didn't speak of it. Not directly. Just smoothed his glove needlessly. „The loom was older than most of that desert. They'd built on top of it without understanding what they'd found.“

His hand traced names that history swallowed. He recognized its teeth as he followed a fault line that was no longer there. „I wasn't meant to be there. Honestly, the credit belonged to a lavaklai breeder trying to expand his pens. I simply arrived with the right permits and coin enough to make him forget the expansion.“ His own teeth lacked bite, a fond memory. „That's how it goes...“ Almost made it sound like a question. But no. He got the answer years ago. „Discovery doesn't favor the deserving. It favors those prepared.“

„It is gratifying to know I'm known in such circles.“ He always expected that his name would stain some pages. Benefactor here. Patron there. A client too versed. But he rarely got treated as a fellow scholar. He continued, carefully toeing the line between candor and treason: „You should see what we left behind. The eastern chamber's still sealed. We brought back sketches that made the censors uncomfortable.“

He stuided her with open interest now. Not just as an asset. A peer. „I thought of you then, actually. That if anyone could decipher the rest... it'd be the woman the automatons mistake for a heretic.“

„But that was the third dismissal, I believe.“

 

[Cerridwen Castille]

„The loom was older than most of that desert. They'd built on top of it without understanding what they'd found.“

The Devahni sucked her teeth in disdain and made a dismissively offensive gesture, "Yes, and now we've lost the only known source on how to properly weave Benkali purple silk, and I'm going to be angry about that bullshit until I die."

She pointed at him with her mug like it was a gavel.

“I wrote letters. I wrote papers against it. I had bloody petitions. I was even accused of ‘prying with a terrier’s tenacity,’” she added, voice lilting with mockery. “Which I thought was rather flattering. Apparently, tenacity is only charming when it isn’t directed at some posh bastard's pockets.”

„I thought of you then, actually. That if anyone could decipher the rest... it'd be the woman the automatons mistake for a heretic.“

„But that was the third dismissal, I believe.“

Cerridwen waved away his praise with a scoffing hiss of air, "Pfft. I'm a heretic because I ask questions and don't know how to keep my mouth shut. Simple as that. In fact, I disagree with what you said. Being prepared didn't do shit for me when I found that mech. Now boldness? Luck? Being an incorrigible and tenacious terrier?" She said that last bit with a grin for her own sake. "Now, those are the things discovery truly favors."

The Devahni sat back in her chair with a creak, flourishing a hand over her figure and then pointing to the leather patch over her left eye, that grin stretching to an indulgent flash of teeth. "And I just so happen to be all three."

@Zayad

 

[Zayad]

Didn't argue with her, even as she was wrong. Because being right wasn't of value. It was that she was talking herself into it. Zayad had long ago learned that it was easier to sell a story to someone who'd already bought in. Who already started drafting their own ending.

Let the grin stand and the patch glint. And let her own mind do the heavy lifting. What few words he'd offer were just rope – and one could just as easily climb or hang from it.

He wouldn't presume her consent. It was insulting. They were both more intelligent than that.

„If you were to come.“ Arms folded at his midsection, glad to be rid of the horrible thing they called coffee in these parts. „We'd leave in two days. Guildmarked crates and names obscured – in case someone asks too many questions.“

The explorer in him hoped they'd find the mystery. The saner voice hoped it wouldn't find them. He rarely got to be the academic these days – too much death was required. It was a nice, if dangerous, distraction.

 

[Cerridwen Castille]

Her palm slapped the table, jolting her mug with a wet clink of ceramic. The fire in her eye sharpening the pupil to a blade. “If?!” The single word rang out, dry and incredulous, as if the very suggestion were indeed some kind of insult.

“I served you coffee, did I not? I showed you my map.” Her brows climbed as if daring Zayad to deny it. “Of course I’m going.”

There was no room for debate in her voice— come hell or high water, she was getting her eye on those glyphs.

Cerridwen leaned in, the eager claws of adventure curling tight beneath her ribs. “Two days, you say?” Her grin curving something feverish. “I imagine that means we’ll be leaving by airship then? My my, someone’s pockets are rather heavy. How big is our crew? And what is the scope of my authority?"

She didn’t care whose coin fueled the voyage, not really. So long as she got to dive into that cursed book of his, it mattered not how they got there.

@Zayad

 

[Zayad]

His brow came up at the idea of this swill being dubbed coffee. But the rest of it was going his way. Strange – he had expected this to be a bigger battle. That he'd need to struggle or offer up more, especially following seven dismissals. Perhaps that was the error. He'd sent envoys instead of going himself. A different man might've allowed this to go to his head, but Zayad simply noted down the mistake in choosing the wrong tool for the job. And seven times, no less. He really should've known better.

„Airship.“ He nodded, going over proper calculations in his head. According to expert advice he'd need no less than twenty two to man the rigging properly. At least five fighting men would be needed to maintain order – so he could probably round up to thirty without causing a fuss.

„Some thirty strong, they tell me.“ And there would be thirty. Exactly. Zayad never wanted to be good at guessing games, so he just skipped playing entirely. She could delude herself all she wanted, but it really was all preparation in the end.

„Full operational control, Professor.“ He wondered if he should push the rest of the sentence to an afterthought, but the mask he wore was too close to his true skin. „In all matters relating to the exploration – once we reach the ruins. Second only to mine. On the ship we're both the Captain's subjects.“ And in truth, it was a poor practice to tell experts how to do their jobs.

That was for fools and censors. He hoped to be better than both.

 

[Cerridwen Castille]

​

The airship loomed above the dock like a beast held on a leash, ready to snap its tethers and soar. Its hull was sleek and built with light aged-oiled wood, reinforced in bands of burnished steel and shroudcraft. The top deck was flanked by masts that stretched spears into the morning air. A stack of sun-stamped sails climbed each one, white and gold against the blue sky, and unfurling in the briny wind with the snap of canvas and rigging.

From the main walls of the ship, sharp wind sails jutted back like swept wings, shroud woven into their joints, making them twitch subtly as if they could feel the air. And forward, rising above the prow, the glass belly of the helm glittered—a crescent-shaped enclosure of reinforced crystal and brass that caught the light in fractured glints.

The ship hummed and whirred, ready to sail from the bay of the Father's Fingers to the far north, into the teeth of the Mheara Mountains and the secrets that awaited them.

***

Cerridwen stood near the foot of the gangplank, overseeing the last of her crates as they were muscled up the ramp by sweating crewmen. She had one hand on her hip, the other gesturing to the quartermaster who was dutifully checking off the inventory she rattled off, her lists clearly not giving enough oversight for her liking.

"And remember, that crate is temperature-sensitive. No sun exposure. I marked it. I did mark it, mind you."

The quartermaster suppressed an eyeroll and instead gave a wordless grunt of understanding and instructed the crew to store it beneath the shade tarp.

She turned just as she spotted Zayad striding up the dock and waved to him. Clapping the quartermaster on the shoulder in parting, she stepped away to meet her benefactor with an eager grin.

"Good morning, Master Zayad. A grand day for departure! Could not have asked for fairer weather! And we’re nearly ready for lift off, unless you’ve any other business to attend to before we get going?” Her gaze flicked to the deckhands loading the last of the crates.

She looked every inch the scholar who had decided to dress for conquest. A deep navy frock coat cinched at the waist with a charcoal corset-lace. Her high collar was buttoned smartly under a bronze brooch in the shape of a Devahni canine, and her leggings and boots were built for decks and land ventures. A newly oiled black eyepatch shone over her left eye, stitched with a fine inlay of copper thread. Her horns had been polished to a dark lustre, and her hair was braided back into a tight, sensible bun.

“If not, I want to extend an invitation for a bit of tea? Captain Morgan has generously offered the free use of her office until we reach the Mountains." A fanatically eager light gleamed in her one eye. "And I'd like to discuss some of the early thoughts on that charming book of yours. I’ve been rather busy with it the last couple of days.”

@Zayad

 

[Zayad]

The loose flow of burgundy silk wasn't doing him any favors in the overeager wind. The gale of the open space made the fabric tug at his form – a tent mad with celebration. Where the wide elbow sleeves ended, the inner lining flashed a golden pattern, echoed in the trim and collar.

He hoped the the silver buttons holding it all together justified their styling – but every time they glinted in the sun, all he felt was exposed. A halfblind marksman could've taken him out with middling effort. But that, too, was good. No one ever accused you of being a spy when you looked like a whole wedding rolled into one.

His arms were much too strong to claim scholarship, but given the rest of him, he hoped people would assume vanity. And they often had. The only way to dress for the current role was overdress. He'd already peeled his skin too close to its true blood on the recruitment drive. But once the goods were sold, one needed to don the merchant's garb again.

No weapons. Never any weapons. He was a man of letters, after all.

Days passed and Legacy's crew screened for proper loyalties. His men were all already aboard the ship. Instructed not to know him. He didn't have time to pick for cleverness, so if one or two took a clouddip on the flight over – he wouldn't be overly bothered. There were nine fighting men if he had to include himself, though he very much preferred not to. Thirty and two souls aboard in total.

„Zayad, if you don't mind, Professor.“ Slapped his hands together in practiced excitement. „Unless you'd rather I refer to you as Mistress.“ His eyes squinted at the thought of drink, then relaxed. It wasn't whatever they claimed for coffee in these parts. So how bad could it be.

„Most certainly. Lead the way, and tell me all about it.“

 

[Cerridwen Castille]

Cerridwen was still talking when they boarded.

She was an animated creature, inexhaustible, and wholly uninterested in whether Zayad was keeping pace with either her feet or her words. She wove her way up to the main deck of the airship, rattling on about runic regional syntax, dodging crewmates with feline grace, slipping around crates and half-lowered ropes without ever losing her train of thought. Not that anything could really stop her once she got going. That is, until they reached the Captain's quarter doors, which she knocked at once before entering.

The room welcomed them with a smell of lacquered wood, brass polish, and old books. The large, beveled windows they witnessed from the outside, now curved across the front of the room, providing a wide and uninterrupted view of the open sky ahead. One wall was lined with leather-bound tomes and navigational manuals, while another bristled with inset cabinets and rolled charts. A heavy wooden table dominated the central space, its broad surface strewn with maps, a couple cargo manifests, a compass, and a brass astrolabe that jostled for space amidst a nest of Cerridwen's own papers and scribbled notes, and other reference tomes that she had stacked to the side.

Amongst it all was the book that Zayad had left with her two days prior, the pages open to the last place she had been working on translating.

A tea cart stood tucked beside the table, dressed with a stout porcelain pot, an assortment of mismatched cups, and a honey jar that had been left uncapped and sticky.

“Sit,” she said, waving Zayad vaguely toward a chair with zero ceremony or concern for propriety. If he wanted tea, he could serve himself. She grabbed her own long-neglected cup from the table and threw back the cold contents like a shot of something far stronger.

Then she clapped her hands, rubbing them together with a grin. “Okay! We are ready to get back to it, let’s see…” Searching the mess until she found her discarded spectacles, one lens blacked out, and adjusted them on her nose, glancing at Zayad and catching his expression.

“Don't laugh. I bloody hate monocles.”

Settling in, she leaned over the tome with predatory focus, her fingers already hovering above the margins, muttering to herself as she tried to refind her place.

@Bakromanser

 

[Zayad]

He slid in her wake. Carefully. Too carefully – he caught on. So he made himself clumsier, here and there. The balance of the ship caused him to elbow a crewman. Sway of the ballast allowed him to casually knock over a stack of crates. When you were too big to hide, it was important to make sure they were looking at the wrong thing. One of his own men moved aside too deferential, bowing as he made way. Nearly stabbed the moron with his own knife. But no. He'd known this was a possibility. He didn't have time to preselect the proper cadre. So he'd do the best he could with what could be scrounged up. But if this man went skydiving later in the voyage, Zayad wouldn't shed a tear.

Failures could only stay hidden for so long. And he hoped the Professor had been too deep in her own thoughts to notice the inconsistent facts.

The inside of the cabin allowed for more clumsiness. He figured dropping a cup would've been a step too far. He was aiming for casually careless, in the way of those better than you. Not a bumbling neurotic idiot. An important distinction when you practiced the craft long enough. He opted for landing into the chair too forcefully, making the wood sway and creak uneasily before it settled under his generous frame.

She made a joke, and he did his best impression of an encouraging smile. He wouldn't have cared if she'd read it with her tail – as he'd heard some blind were known to do. Sounded silly to him. But then again – he'd never had a tail.

„Wouldn't dream of it, Professor.“ Leaned forward in his seat to look at the work. „Please talk me through your discoveries.“