Private The Trenches All the Half-Forgotten Things

[Evva Diyeus]

Evva Diyeus' home wasn't particularly opulent. Situated on one of the more southerly streets of the Trenches, so close to the Condos that it was able to benefit somewhat from the respectability without suffering from the same property taxes, it was best described with words like "modest" and "comfortable". More importantly for today, it was the sort of place that one might invite a training instructor of the Stoatorian Guard without immediately having him assume it was a thinly veiled attempt on his life.

The residence wasn't large. A town-home with three stories, the wildcat kept it full of antiques from here and specimens from there and more books than her younger self would have thought possible. Had she shared the space with anyone else, it would have felt... cramped. For just herself, it was a refuge. And more private for this kind of meeting than having it take place in her office in the University would have been.

This most recent project had been expansive, stretching her knowledge of history, zoology, and mythologies so varied that even different renditions of the same stories bore no more than a passing resemblance to each other. It was exhilarating. Or would be, had she not found herself at something of a dead end. Evva frowned at the graphite-smudged papers that now lay spread across the large table that dominated the second floor of her home. Of course they were in a more obscure dialect of Varangian.

She hadn't known the Varangians had made it that far east. On the one paw, a fascinating discovery. On the other, it was going to require a reworking of her theory. And that was without even knowing what it said. Or it was a fluke, a coincidence, and she had invited Caden Freemont and his adopted daughter into her home for nothing. At least it was bound to be an interesting conversation regardless.

 

[Asta Dalgaard]

It had taken nearly a month for Asta to be comfortable walking the streets again after the incident at the Niceties party. Even then, sudden loud noises would cause her to startle, and she kept close to Caden, who walked somewhat stiffly beside her. His burns from the explosion were mending, but the depth and extent of the injuries meant it would be months, if not the better part of the year before he was back to normal functioning. The doctors were not sure if his shoulder would ever regain full mobility--it was all dependent on how the scar tissue formed around the joint in the healing process--and he would have permanent scarring across the right side of his back, shoulder, arm, neck and jaw. Still, the albino kept in decent spirits despite the near-constant pain and limitations to his mobility. Asta was certain quite a bit of his positivity was due to the presence of Daniil to dote on him. The poor todd had somehow found a way to blame himself for Caden's injuries, and had to be convinced that he need not wait on Caden paw and footpaw whenever they were home together.

Asta was surprised Caden had taken so well to the reduction in activity prescribed by the doctors at Pyrostoat, and even more surprised and elated when he had given his approval of her joining the Unsmudgables. She thought to blame it on the laudanum he had been given prior to the conversation, but even after he had sobered, he told her he thought it would be a good idea for her to get involved in the Faction.

She had been nearly as excited when he told her he had received a letter from an academic who learned of their connection to Varangia and wished to speak with them regarding translation of a Varangian text.

"What do you think it could be?" she asked, elbow hooked on her adoptive father's arm as they turned down the street of the indicated address. She spoke in her native Varangian tongue, as they often did in public. It was partially so that Caden could keep up his practice of the language and maintain fluency, and partially because it afforded them privacy in their conversations.

Caden adjusted his spectacles as he peered at the address numbers on the townhouses. "I'm a mercenary, not a scholar or historian, so I don't have the faintest idea."

"Oh, but it's fun to speculate, isn't it? Maybe they've found some old mythologies, or something from fallen Armöst."

They came to the steps of the house, and Asta bounced up them as Caden took them at a slower pace, his paw resting on the hilt of his sword as he tried to keep the pain from showing in his expression. The jill knocked on the door.

"What if it's some new story from history nobeast has ever heard of?" she continued as they waited. "We could be famous for helping to bring it to light in the Imperium!"

Caden gave a non-committal grunt. "Could be? Though you can take the fame. You know how I am about that kind of thing."

 

[Evva Diyeus]

The knock sounded through the town-home and Evva started for the stairs, pausing just long enough at the window to glance down at the stoop outside her front door. Two martens, one albino and the other light-furred. Punctual beasts, then. A trait she could appreciate. A moment later, her paw was unlocking the door and drawing back the latch.

"Caden Freemont and Asta Dalgaard, I presume? Please, come in, and thank you for lending me your time." Her whiskers spread in a welcoming smile, even as her green eyes appraised them both. Caden was a beast of about her age. Someone she could have grown up with-- someone she might have played with when she was very, very small. It was possible; their parents had known each other, after all. The cat felt a twinge of some complicated and unnamed emotion. Odd. She had thought those feelings to be long since discarded.

As for the younger of the two martens, she seemed the sort of beast it would be impossible to dislike. And, if first impressions were anything to judge off of, someone it would be easy to work with. It would be something to keep in mind if she would be delving into Varangian history and mythology.

"I have food and drink upstairs, as well as the rubbings I mentioned," she said, gesturing inside and up the stairs.

 

[Caden S. Freemont]

Caden was surprised. He had expected an older beast, not one near to his age. There was something in the structure of her facial features and her coloration that caused an itch of familiarity at the back of Caden's mind, but he could not place the reason why.

"Ms. Diyeus, thank you for inviting us." The jack automatically assessed her for weapons and any ill-intent, then set to scanning the space behind her before he stepped in. Asta, however, excitedly entered the house and greeted the wildcat.

"Hallo!" she said in her sing-song Varangian accent. "I'm excited to see what you having for me to look at. I never thinking I will help with something like this. It is very interesting, ja?"

Caden quickly flanked his daughter and continued his careful, subconscious scan of the surroundings. Nothing seemed untoward, and he felt himself calming as much as he could in a stranger's home. She at least seemed to be who she said she was. They followed her up the stairs.

"You have quite the impressive collection, Ms. Diyeus," Caden said. "I'm not any expert by any means, but it seems you've done a fair bit of traveling outside the Imperium based on the variety of specimens and artifacts."

 

[Evva Diyeus]

Evva's eyes glittered with another smile as she noted both Asta's enthusiasm and Caden's caution that almost bordered on paranoia. Not that she was inclined to blame him. "I certainly think it is, yes," she said in answer to the jill's question. "Though I suppose some of that will depend on what it all translates to."

They reached the top of the stairs and the cat inclined her head in acknowledgement. "Guilty as charged," she purred. "A chance encounter when I was much, much younger resulted in a lifelong curiosity about--" she gestured to the shelves around them-- "all of this. Much to my mother's chagrin."

So much for long buried feelings. It would seem that she still harbored a petty delight in having earned her progenitor's disappointment.

"But please, sit, and I'll bring lunch to the table. We can eat while I tell you what I know about my Varangian mystery. My understanding is that context is helpful for translation, no?"

 

[Asta Dalgaard]

Asta readily took her seat, clasping her paws together in front of her on the table, brimming with enthusiasm. "I have only been translating mostly songs and stories, but ja, context can make it easier, I thinking."

She looked around at the various artifacts and specimens with distinct interest, curiosity nearly tugging her out of her chair to examine everything she could get her paws on. The jill kept herself seated, though she hoped there would be time after the translations to inquire more about the wildcat's work. She had always been fascinated with Caden's stories about other parts of the world, and after the voyage from Varangia to the Imperium--seeing some of just how large the world was--it seemed the possibilities for stories to learn were as endless as the horizon on the open ocean. And it also seemed that this Evva Diyeus was a potential source of information for Asta's curious, young mind.

Caden sat beside her, adjusting the sheathed sword on his belt as it caught on the back of his chair. Asta noted he never left the house without it, not since the incident at the supremacist tavern with Daniil. She certainly could not blame the jack for his caution, given all he had been through. As Evva turned away to fetch the food, Asta placed a paw on her adoptive father's arm and spoke to him in Varangian.

"Are you okay? You seem nervous."

He nodded and placed his paw atop hers, squeezing lightly. "Aye. I'm okay. Just making sure everything is as she says it is. Everything I've been through, I'm just cautious, is all."

Asta smiled and nodded. "The day you stopped being cautious is the day I'd wonder if you were still Caden."

Evva was returning as Caden chuckled at her comment. Asta was pleased to see him somewhat more relaxed as each minute went by. The jill looked up brightly at the wildcat. "So this work you are doing, it is for the university?"

 

[Evva Diyeus]

"For the university, for myself, for curiosity. I imagine you know what they say about cats in that regard?" Evva set down a platter heaped with bread, cheese, and cuts of cold pigeon, roasted the day before in anticipation of her guests. A moment later she returned to the kitchen and retrieved a bottle of wine and three clay cups that she set at each of their places. "Please, help yourselves."

The cat moved around the table and took her own seat, settling in across from the two martens. She felt a vague restlessness now, the old fear that she had spent so long buried up to her whiskers in her own academic pursuits that she had lost sight of the reality of the thing. A deep breath was enough to dispel the worst of it.

"This particular endeavor--" she gestured in the general direction of the rubbings spread across the other half of the table "--is the latest result of something I've been researching for, oh, more than a decade at this point. I haven't found an easy way to summarize what has become something of a personal obsession, so when questions arise, please feel free to ask them.

"Those rubbings were taken from the base of massive stone stele we uncovered on a small island I'd been interested in after finding it referenced in at least three different sources, none of which I would have expected to have much in the way of overlap. A captain's log from an Imperium ship the better part of a century ago. An oral history passed on from a clan of otters. An Alkamarian tapestry. The sort of thing I would find suspect and unreliable, were it not for the fact that together they guided us to the aforementioned island as well as if we'd had a map done by a competant cartographer.

"You can understand why I might be surprised to discover something of apparent Varangian origin, then, as nothing remotely Varangian was referenced by any of my sources. My question, of course, is whether the presence of this artifact is a coincidence, or whether there's something greater at play. If you would care to look at the reproductions? I'd be quite interested to hear your take on what they say before I explain exactly what it is that I've been hunting."

 

[Asta Dalgaard]

Asta made a sandwich of cheese and meat, standing to look over the rubbings, though keeping her food well away from them. Her gaze roved the documents as she chewed. Caden filled each of the cups with wine, watching Asta. The jill pawed through the various pieces of paper.

"It's all in the older runic language they using in Armöst," she said. "Very same...um, similar, to runes and language where I coming from."

Caden sipped at his wine. "Do you think you can decipher it?"

Asta nodded. "Maybe taking some time, and if you have any books about Armöst language, Evva, that might be helping me." She pointed to a line of text. "Like this here. It is very close to what I know, but just different enough so it could be meaning two or three different things."

 

[Evva Diyeus]

"Mmm. I don't have any books like that in the apartment, but the library at the University almost certainly would." The feline's green eyes were very bright, glittering with an almost greedy interest. "I imagine that won't be particularly helpful today, but if this is a project you would be interested in continuing, I could certainly have whatever the library is willing to let me borrow here by tomorrow."

Evva lapsed into a momentary silence, the claw of one paw tapping idly at the side of her cup. It was still possible the runes were a coincidence and had no bearing on her own project. Stranger things had happened. Or maybe...

"What is Armöst like?"

 

[Caden S. Freemont]

Caden watched as Asta slid her gaze towards him and gave him a pointed look. He rubbed at the back of his head with a self-conscious chuckle.'

"Ah, well, I think asking what was it like would be more accurate. It doesn't fully exist anymore, not the way it used to at least." He took a fairly large sip of wine. "There was a schism in the kingdom about ten years ago. A group of the ulkona wardens--ah, which means non-ferret wardens--took it upon themselves to rise up against the king, who had been trying to reinstate the superiority of ferrets in the Armöstian culture. Long story short--"

Asta cleared her throat. "You could telling her the long story. It is interesting, I think, given your part in it."

The jack adjusted his glasses. "The long story, then. All right." He folded his paws in front of him on the table, leaning forward. "When I first traveled to the Varangian continent, I did a stint in the Armöstian military before going private with a mercenary crew. Once I gained enough skill and wealth, I began captaining my own crew. We were a small force, only a score of us, give or take, and we tended to take high-risk, specialized jobs that took us throughout a good portion of the continent, though much of our later work was focused in Armöst and what became her sister kingdoms.

"We were hired by the ulkona wardens to take part in their coup to overthrow the king given our reputation for precision and success. It was the biggest job we had ever taken, and the fact that we would directly benefit by overthrowing a king who was calling for what would have amounted to the genocide of most of the non-ferrets in the kingdom, it was too important of an opportunity to let pass us by."

Caden's gaze went distant as he recollected with a hint of wistfulness. "The joint operation was a success, with my crew taking point on the capture of the king while the wardens' armies took the capital. I personally delivered the king to the wardens. From there, they split the kingdom into three, smaller allied kingdoms with each warden ruling their own territory. The furthest north is still called Armöst, the central kingdom is Varangia, and the southern is Akenata.

"Each kingdom is quite similar to the other, though they drew their new borders loosely along the ancient cultural lines, so there has been a re-concentration of sorts of the cultural groups within the kingdoms." Caden motioned to Asta. "I eventually settled in Varangia with Asta and her father. We lived in a small village about a day's travel from a city about half the size of Bully Harbor. Despite their military reputation, Varangia and her sister kingdoms are generally quiet and peaceful for the average working beast. Even the cities are not so dangerous as Bully." He sighed. "It was a hard choice to leave, in all honesty, despite the circumstances under which we left."

 

[Evva Diyeus]

Evva's ears pricked slightly at the mention of "circumstances". Yet despite her curiosity, it was neither any of her business nor pertinent to anything else that was. The former might not have been enough to prevent her asking about it anyway, but the latter meant that she had other avenues of inquiry to follow first.

"The Armöstians-- my impression is that they are a warrior culture, as is much of Varangia? Is that accurate or merely a hazard of my Bully Harbor upbringing?"

 

[Asta Dalgaard]

Asta had grabbed a blank piece of parchment and charcoal pencil and was beginning to scribble out notes as she looked over the rubbings. At Evva's question, she looked up.

"Warrior culture? Not everybeast is warriors. My family is musicians and farmers. Everybeast can fight in some way, that is true. We all learn something from our family. My birth father taught me bow, though I just using for hunting in Varangia, not fighting." She gestured with the pencil to Caden. "Somebeasts like Caden have lives of warriors, but not everybeast. Warriors are in one group, and they are very respected. Other groups are respected different. " Asta paused, thinking. "From what I seeing here, Imperium beasts have different structure to culture, beasts mostly learning fighting if they are training for military or a job."

Tapping at the piece of paper upon which she wrote, the jill focused her attention on the translation once more. "It seeming to be a poem or song maybe. It has structure like some music I know."

 

[Evva Diyeus]

"You mean it's in meter?" Evva's ears perked forward with sudden interest while her paw rifled through a stack of notes and other papers on the far side of the table. It didn't take long for her to find what she was looking for: a bit of worn paper, yellowed and stained and heading rapidly from tattered to disintegrating.

"Forgive the state of the paper, I haven't taken the time to make another copy of the original." Her green eyes passed over the now familiar lines for a moment, though she could have recited it from memory just as easily.

So here we stand to face the three-fold test:
The first-- the cold-- with fur and fire we best
The ice-floe maze we pass and sail on West
But now we are stuck fast
We pay you homage, God of Lightless Depths.

The she-cat handed the scrap to Asta. "Read this, and tell me if it changes anything. It's a translation, of course. Not from Armöst. In fact to the best of my knowlege, the original was written in a now extinct language. It is, however, a particularly clear example of what I have been hunting."

 

[Asta Dalgaard]

Asta took the paper and read the verses. She took a bit of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. Setting the scrap down beside the parchment that she wrote upon, the jill's gaze flicked between the rubbing, her notes, and the new piece of information. She muttered to herself in Varangian, pawfinger tracing along a line of text on the rubbing. Her eyes lit up.

"Ohhh, I seeing. Looking here on your translation, there is reference to God of Lightless Depths." Asta wrote a series of runes copied from the other text. "And here, this line referring to Njörðr, the Varangian god of the sea, then I thinking also speaks of a test and a passage of some kind."

Caden took off his spectacles to clean a spot from the glass. "If it's at all helpful, I do know of a place in Armöst, off the coast a ways, known as the Passage of Njörðr. It's something of a ship graveyard--nobeast sails there on purpose any time of year, and in the winter it is especially dangerous with the ice floes."

 

[Evva Diyeus]

Evva's brows knit together in a growing frown. Once again, for each answer-- or part of one-- she found herself with five new questions. This is what you said you enjoyed about this particular career, Evva. You liked the challenge, you said. Masochist. Another name to add to the list of legends to research, then. The wildcat reached for a small notepad and flipped through it with a claw, green eyes scanning down the scrawl of names and titles already put down in her irregular penmanship and finding that Njörðr was already written there, early on, half hidden among a list of other sea deities that she had already forgotten in the face of more concrete leads.

"Well, that is exactly the sort of story I've been chasing, at least." She allowed herself a rueful smile. "I suppose I ought to stop being so mysterious now and tell you exactly what it is I've been after. As previously mentioned, it's something of an obsession of mine and not easily summarized, so I fear you're about to be subjected to some rather extensive ramblings. If necessary, I do have more wine available. I won't take offense, as I will also be drinking more myself."

"When I was a kit-- or little more than one-- I managed to attach myself to a voyage of discovery that took us north in search of a lost city. It was my first time away from Vulpinsula, and the first time away from Bully Harbor that I could remember. It was also most definitely the first time I had gone on something so like an adventure of my own free will and quite against my mother's wishes. If memory serves, and in this case I'm sure it does, I believe I attempted to ask her permission, was explicitly forbidden, and ended up stowing away instead until the ship were far too well underway to offload me anywhere. You know, the sort of thing one comes to expect of Vulpinsulan youth."

She waved a paw and took a sip of wine. "But that's neither here nor there. What's pertinent right now is that when we found our mythical lost city, we also found ancient carvings describing a kind of cataclysm that came to them and led so thoroughly to their downfall as a center of civilization that they were all but completely forgotten. Ancient carvings written in the same language of that poem I showed you earlier, hence why I believe the language is extinct. I'm quite fortunate that there are beasts in the world who are far better linguists than I will ever be.

"In the descriptions of that cataclysm were references to something we translated variously as 'The Angry One' or 'Leviathan'... titles that fit well enough for our purposes but that were painfully incomplete. Even so, the picture that presented itself to us was of a flourishing culture laid low by various external factors. Including, it would seem, a sea monster. Or sea monsters; the translation was woefully unclear.

"You can imagine, the effect this kind of thing would have had on someone who was very young, very curious, and very, very far away from home. I believe I had nightmares every night for a week when we first managed the translation and connected it to some truly devastating destruction that was done to a seawall we found in our lost city. The plain facts were frightening enough, and my imagination filled in the gaps in a way that was not conducive to peaceful sleep.

"Amid all the other things we were busy discovering on that particular voyage, 'The Angry One' fell by the wayside. The professor and his assistant who were in charge of the voyage directed my focus to other things and I was so hungry for any knowledge offered to me that I was happy enough to go where they sent me. But I didn't forget.

"And so when, during various other expeditions, I began to notice repeated references to the same sort of shadowy, destructive entity, I paid attention. Finding that poem in the language of the lost city was a stroke of luck the likes of which a beast can only hope for once in a career, and I found that translating my mythical creature as the 'god of Lightless Depths' was a better fit than anything else I had tried before. Thank Mar'kan for context, no?

"The otter clan I mentioned previously were seafaring nomads best familiar with the waters to the northeast, and one of their favorite tragedies is the tale of how they lost a bold young chieftain after he became obsessed with hunting down something they called 'Depthswalker' after it sank a ship carrying his beloved. Come to think of it, I think they shared that particular story as a warning to me after I started asking too many questions, but it was helpful nonetheless. The log from the old Imperial ship spoke of them being followed by something dark and huge and unseen in waters not so far from the ones known by the otters, something that their captain, superstitious old fox that she was, ascribed a supernatural malice to, but that didn't leave their trail until what must have been the unluckiest pirate ship in existence fell in behind them as well and provided an easier target for whatever monster was out there. Unfortunately for our records, the creature didn't strike until after dark, and so the captain's descriptions are mostly limited to the distant and eerie sounds of screams and cracking timbers.

"The tapestry wasn't particularly interesting with its descriptions-- little more than text that amounts to 'here be monsters', but it happened to give directions to where a beast who valued their life shouldn't go. Which I followed, naturally. And found my island and the carvings in Varangian that I've already shown you. Unfortunately, I don't have any clear leads from here. Which is where you come in, I hope."

Finally, as she reached a conclusion, the feline exhaled a quick, sharp sigh and leaned back in her chair as she lifted her cup to her mouth and took a blessed swallow of the dark wine.

"At this point I'm both absolutely certain that I'm looking for something that actually exists-- or did at one time-- and not at all convinced that it's something I'll ever find. A wiser beast might have given up the search in favor of more balanced pursuits. I, however..." she trailed off. "I, however, am nearer forty than thirty and am still trying to prove my mother wrong. She was so insistent that the tales of sea monsters I brought home with me were so much poppycock."

And she lifted the cup to her lips again and downed the remainder of its contents.