Forgotten Spaces

Splitting off of snakebite road is an old mountain road called Roper’s Reach, according to Ketha. It’s barely wide enough for the cart to squeeze between the overgrown thorny shrubs flanking them, and some places are like fording a small creek as the rainwater cascades down from the cliff to their left and flows to the perilous drop to their right. But no part of the road is readily visible from anywhere in Korben, the overgrowth is too thick.

The road is so steep that the drakes struggle to pull the heavy cart up the muddy path. At times, Ketha and Perra and Kurri had to climb out to lighten the load, or even help them out with a little push from behind. By the time they’re riding more comfortably on level ground, Kurri’s clothes are caked in mud.

“C’mon Kurri, you look like you’re carrying a whole other mud-Kurri around,” Perra says.

Envying Perra having half the clothes to weight him down, he concedes and throws his own jacket and shirt into the cart too, and feels half his weight vanish.

Ahead is a wider flat area where an old house sits. Vines wrap in and out of its long broken windows. An entire tree even grows out through the half-collapsed roof.

“There it is,” Ketha says, excitedly.

“Keth how the fuck did you know this existed?” Perra says.

“‘Cause they talk to people, and they listen,” Krev says.

“‘Cause I’m a storyteller and I can’t resist a story. It’s a local tale I picked up in town one day.” Ketha sits up straight and holds their hands up in front of them like they do anytime they’re going to tell a story. “Years ago, when the river ran clear, before there was such a thing as Korben or anybody had heard of discordium in this valley, an old man named Kelsus Allium built his home here on this cliff, one of the first colonizers in the Black River Valley.

“He said he was a ropemaker, and he kept to himself up here, spending his days plying his trade, growing hemp on the mountainside and spinning it into strong rope. And it was just as well he stayed up here, the Kogai village around here wanted nothing to do with him. But, as time went on, their people started...disappearing.

“One by one, each cycle of the moons, on the night of their conjunction, another would vanish in the night--all genders, all ages. A few people witnessed it and escaped. They reported being surrounded by an unnaturally dense fog, and a masked figure would appear, wielding a rope dart. The victim would be wrapped up before they could react, and dragged into the fog, until they vanished and their screams stopped. They came to call that killer ‘The Roper.’

“Folks were rightly suspicious of old Kelsus, but they were scared to confront him, because it would mean walking right into his domain. Rumors had spread far by then that he had this cliff side road laden with traps, and that none who came up here ever returned. They learned not to wander out at night during the conjunction, and they set up a watch to try and catch him.

“One night the ‘roper’ so audaciously came right into the village, slipping right past the guards in an impenetrable cloud of smoke. The woman he took that night was named Elder Erizh, a respected facilitator of the village council. The people’s lives were being thrown into chaos, and they had had enough. They formed an armed group and went up this road. Together as comrades they had no fear!

“The stench was overwhelming as they approached. And the sight they saw,” Ketha pauses, looking out beside the cart. Kurri turns and looks, as they pass through a grove of old trees. Rope hangs from many of the branches, each tied into an empty noose. “Here it is. Only, when the search party came upon these woods, a body was hanging from every tree.”

Kurri feels a chill deep in him.

“They hastened their pursuit, and stood together with weapons ready. And finally they came to the front of this little house, where old Kelsus had Elder Erizh bound and laid out on some kind of wooden alter, a noose around her neck, ready to hoist her up to hang from the branch above. Around were all kinds of alchemical components and magical sigils.

“Kelsus turned to look upon the band of armed Kogai before him, and he had a look of depraved joy on his face. He laughed as he reached for the rope to pull Erizh up to her death. But the villagers were upon him first. And instead of their facilitator being executed that night...” Ketha looks out the other way as the cart comes to a stop in front of the house, and hanging from the noose tied to an old oak tree here is a human skeleton, swaying in the wind as the rainwater runs through its skull and down its bones. “It would be Kelsus.”

Ketha climbs out of the stopped cart. “They searched all around this place, trying to understand. It seemed Kelsus thought himself some kind of sorcerer, and his monthly rituals were a spell to extend his fading life, at the cost of others.” They tap the skeleton’s fibula, making its leg swing side to side. “And what’s more--the records and correspondences inside the house told another tale. He had been in regular contact with a magistrate, and receiving research grants as well as regular payouts for...’population control.’ The benefactor? The Republic of Kogaku.”

Perra climbs out. “That’s fucked up, Ketha.”

“Yeah I didn’t really want to get into the whole story in front of Elliv,” Ketha says.

“You’ll find these hills are full of stories just as sickening,” Krev says as he climbs down from the driver’s seat. “Comrade El knows it.”

“Ketha, why did you bring us here of all places?” Kurri says.

They walk over to the cliffside and peer down, holding onto a young tree for support. Kurri approaches and cautiously looks down the sheer cliff overlooking the back of the village. All of Korben is below them, after a deadly drop. But just as Ketha said they would be, they are right on top of the one place they might safely store and distribute food to the workers of Korben--the Temple of Thea.

“Krev, I’m gonna need Lightning and Twilight. Perra, find the strongest looking tree.” Ketha walks over to the ruined house and ducks under the collapsed door beam to crawl inside, emerging a minute later with the end of a long coil of hempen rope. “Kelsus is gonna be of some use to us.”