Interlude - Dark Passing

On the banks of the Washanok River, the Snappy Rambler had been driven onto the shore. Its sails still hung from their spars, not reefed as one would expect on a beached ship. Nothing, other than the sails, moved aboard the merchant vessel out of Peregrine Harbor. It was as silent as a grave. The ship listed at an angle, which made it easy for the jungle banderlings to board her.

Banderlings were lanky, teal to purple-skinned humanoids. These long-eared, tusked tribesmen were cousins to trolls; hardy folk who could move among the slicing vegetation of the Jagaluza Tangle without being bled dry by its barbed thorns and razor-edged leaves. They were not an overly territorial race, but they were fierce if provoked. They respected the predators of their jungle peninsula but were not overly fearful of them. They held the same sentiment for the pirates of Defiance in the north and the Kukkuzza King and serpent-folk of Gaz D'roog to the south. Besides a bit of light raiding, the jungle tribes stayed away from both cities. The northern sea raiders were untrustworthy. The bejeweled ziggurats of the snake-folk were tempting, but the serpentine people knew far too much about poisons, and they stayed to themselves, doing their best not to arouse the ire of the banderling tribes. The monstrous race generally possessed the temperament of a bar full of old thugs, as long as you didn't piss them off, one should be able to make it across the taproom in one piece.

In this case, the banderlings were celebrating. The bounty of a ship left by the great river spirit Washanok was a welcome sign. They whooped and hooted as they climbed aboard. When the hunting party reached the deck, the tribesmen stopped cold, their eagerness dissolving faster than fat in a scalding pan. This was not a gift from Washanok. It was a warning. The deck was littered with the corpses of sailors from the northlands. Most of them were bound and had been tortured or just beaten to death; the bloated bodies were still tied in their restraining ropes.

Ashwalk, their best tracker, read the scene. The deaths took place over days. The tracker reasoned it was as if the sailors had turned on one of their own. Then, after killing the offender, they moved to the next. One after another a sailor had been captured, bound, and then brutalized. The last three sailors had turned on each other, butchering one another in a frenzy of rage or shame, or maybe both.

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A vile essence still clung to the deck. Tigerhair, their shaman, recoiled from it, retreating the second she touched the deck. She waited for them on the shore, not willing to stand aboard a ship so steeped in spite and malevolence. The hateful taint of whatever specter the ship had been carrying was too unbearable.

Ashwalk found the revenant's trail, noting it was heading south-east, a path that would bring it to the Denmirror tribe. Lessroad, their leader, had them set off at a sprint, hoping to reach their neighbors before the dark spirit did. But they were too late.

As the hunters dashed into the camp, they found weeping banderling cousins and five bodies wrapped in shrouds. The spirit had come, a black figure so steeped in hatred that they had no choice but to believe it when it spoke of abominations and the unclean. It pointed at a family and decreed them anathema. Before the clan knew what it was doing, they had beaten the parents and children to death, driven to erase the stain of the corrupted family from their village.

It was only after the vile specter had moved on that their senses returned, and they realized what they had done. Otterhop, Bluefig, and their children … there were no words to unmake the horror.

Lessroad gathered the best runners among the Denmirror tribe and set off again. The specter's path was aimed straight at the walled city by the sea, which the banderlings sometimes traded with. The runners would clear the tribe folk out of the way. This vicious revenant was not their problem. They would let it pass through banderling lands.

If the dark thing wanted the fort on the shore, then the Forters could deal with it.

A band of hotheads decided to enact revenge for what the specter had done to their kin. They were found the next day. Six of them had been nailed to the trees with the long darts used by the hunters. They had been beaten so badly that they were almost unrecognizable. Yet that had not been enough; they had been disembowled as well.

Three more bodies were found a few feet away. The trio had killed each other. Their tracks told how they were so consumed by fury that they just attacked, not bothering to defend themselves. It was as if they did not realize they were hacking apart each other, not the apparition.

The last was curled into a ball on the jungle floor, broken in mind and spirit. Smokeshin's eyes stared at nothing, and his words were gone. If anyone touched him, he would scream and keep screaming until his voice ran out. The hunters left him to his fate. A broken one cannot survive in the Tangle. Best to let the Tangle take him.

No more attempts were made to stop the dark one. The tribes melted out of the revenant's way as it trudged deeper into the jungle, never wavering in its path.

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