Kali

Two weeks ago, a large group of armed men had entered Ostlind at first light. Every single window was thrown open and necks were craned as the army marched their way through the streets of the town and pulled the mayor right out his own home. He was dragged before the town and the church bells were rung until a sizable gathering had arrived to observe.

Standing there with their mayor in his hands was a large lizard man. He declared that his name was Salah and that, by right of conquest and justice, Ostlind was no more. Kali stood alone in the crowd, looking not at the spectacle in front of her but searching for her father.

“If you look to your left and your right, you’ll notice there are many conspicuous absences among your number.” Her head snapped forward to the reptilian man and she began drilling his every word into her memory, “In the night, your disgusting, putrid, filthy leader here had your entire town guard attack a neighboring town. Unfortunately for him, his forces lost. With no guard here and a lack of leadership,” The lizard man snapped the neck of the mayor as he said that, “I see no way for Ostlind to survive.

“Naturally, I am not one to create a point out problems without offering solutions.” The crowd, which had grown very loud all of a sudden, quieted right back down. “Pack your things, two weeks from now I am going to return and dismantle this entire town. Any able-bodied men here will come along with me to start building homes in your new town, Annahmia. It is to the south of here and will be much more prosperous than this cesspool you all call home.”

The army turned and marched their way back out of town to the sounds of silence. The mayor ended up hung from the town’s welcome gates and several other officials were strung up on crosses along the piers for traders to see. A contingency of the armed men stayed behind to keep the peace in the city, but for the most part they all marched south once more.

Two weeks had passed and, true to Salah’s word, the adventurers guild had returned. They brought several boats up the river to the Ostlind piers alongside an entire caravan worth of carts and horses. Aggressive introduction aside, the army was extremely kind, helping elderly and women load up furniture and valuables, as well as foodstuffs. The migration went relatively easy and was only a couple days travel south.

Even now, as Annahmia came into view for the caravan, a, most of the prior residents of Ostlind couldn’t believe that things had gone so smoothly. The entire landscape looked like a battlefield had taken place, displaying a town with scorched earth and burnt husks of building frames, with a few fresh-looking buildings dispersed amongst the mess. Although they did not attack the town they were being forcefully moved to, they were mothers, wives, and children of the attackers. In their mind, they were lucky they hadn’t been taken prisoner or murdered in the night.

“This way, bring the carriages along the east side of the town where the two-story homes are being erected. Look for the gnome man, he will handle titles for homes and the such.” A youngish man could be seen in the road directing traffic as the caravan entered. He was a sharp looking man with childish looks. Although he had a pitchfork slung over his shoulder, his entire bearing screamed seasoned killer, a stark contrast from his gentle looking facial features.

Any other day, Kali would probably ask the boy out for a drink or twelve. Today, however, she had a lot of ground she needed to cover. Her father, like many of them that had lived in Ostlind, had disappeared two weeks passed on the night that the town supposedly attacked Annahmia. Admittedly, the town looked like it had seen much hardship recently. That wasn’t her problem, however.

With her father gone, she was now alone in the world. She didn’t have a boyfriend to rely on, let alone a husband, and none of her family had been local. She had little money, only what she managed to scrape up and steal from abandoned homes in Ostlind, and a very vague plan of where she had to go with her life.

Not too long ago, she’d dreamed of starting a shipping business with her father, or signing up as a merchant in Ostlind. Now, she desperately wanted to figure out what had happened to her father. He wasn’t a town guard or a fighter at all really, just a dock worker. He wasn’t even wrapped up in crime, as he’d dropped that years ago, so she didn’t buy for a second that he’d attacked Annahmia. In her mind, somebody must have taken him in the night, using the cover of darkness and absence of the guard to carry out their kidnapping.

In order to find him, she needed money, that much she knew. But how does an eighteen-year-old girl with little-to-no assets earn money, one might ask? That’s where Salah and Annahmia came into her plans. The man who had forcefully dismantled Ostlind had promised a free home to any who choose to migrate south. Real estate in a newly developing dungeon town along the southern border of a kingdom that had too-few dungeons in it. Even if she didn’t stay in Annahmia, just waiting until the population boom and selling her free home would bring her a nice profit.

The carriage she was sat upon continued to rattle its way over the poorly cobbled roads, bumping and shaking the entire way. Kali took in the sights of the town as she was ferried over to the neighborhood were all the prior-Ostlind residents would be staying. Along the way, she saw several new faces directing traffic, building infrastructure, and just meandering about. Among those faces were several species she’d never seen before.

A cute little gnomish girl with bright blue hair and clear eyes talking to a couple of dwarves as they walked into town with a massive tree trunk on their shoulders. Two wood elves that could have been twins, speaking to the ground and causing all sorts of grass and flowers to slowly re-grow from the burnt remains of the land. Two female elves whose skin was a light blue and had hair that seemed to consume the sunlight were out drying herbs on clothes lines that were strung from a newly created apothecary.

Kali mentally noted all of the different stores and who seemed to work where before finally arriving at the building she’d been allocated. She stood on the road and looked around before observing her new home, slightly disappointed. For starters, it seemed like everybody from Ostlind was being crammed into a few roads that were distant from the town center, farther north-east.

The land was farther from the dungeon and farther from the newly crafted docks, lowering the value a fair amount. She tsked lightly before reminding herself that it was free land and that she hadn’t owned anything in Ostlind anyways, she and her father had just rented a room in an Inn long term. Another bright side were the frequent security patrols, obviously there to keep an eye on the new townsmen until they were assimilated.

The building itself wasn’t the best or the worst that she’d ever seen. It made out of sheared logs that were likely harvested from the forest just over the river. From the outside, she determined it couldn’t be larger than one or two rooms. Once again, it was a free meal and Kali was in no position to frown just because it wasn’t gourmet.

“Are you ready? We’ve got other carts to unload today.” One of the two large men behind Kali startled her as he put his hand on her shoulder. They were labor that the adventurers’ guild spared to help the transition. Both men were slightly larger than average and one seemed to have a slight bestial flavor to his facial attributes, not that Kali judged. Her father had always told her than all money spends the same, regardless of whose it is. Racists are just missing out on a bigger market.

“Yeah, sorry. I got a bit distracted. I’ll open the door if you don’t mind starting.” Kali walked forward and pushed the door open. With a slight creak of new wood, the door swung open revealing a dark interior. She used her hands to feel along the wall before finding the shudders and opening them, allowing daylight to break in, and sighed at her accommodations.

The building was one large room with a firepit for cooking on one side and nothing else. There wasn’t even a lock on the front door, so she’d obviously have to purchase one on her own. The men started bringing in furniture and Kali had them stack it along the far wall. She’d been given two of the larger men to help unload after one of their officers had noticed her cart. Of all the villagers of Ostlind, Kali had been one of the few to have her own cart packed when the guild arrived to help them move.

Chairs and bed frames continued to stack up against the wall, along with tables, lamps, pots, pans, woks, cauldrons, locked chests, and a whole other onslaught of things that hadn’t originally belonged to Kali. When the lizard man had told the entire town that every single guard had gone missing, Kali wasted no time collecting the belongings of dead men. She’d snuck into one of the mercenary camps and verified that nobody was there before loading up their largest cart with all sorts of things to sell in Annahmia after the move.

The two helping her unload gave her a strange look as the goods accumulated. It was obvious to them that a single girl didn’t need so many sets of cookware, or five dining tables at that, but they choose to say nothing. Their orders were to help unload the belongings of the relocated, not to question their strange collection of furniture. After about an hour of unloading, the two men were done and bid Kali farewell.

She saw the both of them out with a thank you and offered each one a copper deci as a tip, far less than their work was worth but also far more than she could afford. Much to her disappointment, the mercenaries she’d looted seemed to have left with their money on them and she was unable to get into their chests as of yet. She turned in the doorway and looked back at her collection of goods, dimly lit up by the fleeing sunlight slipping through the shudders, and single, isolated mattress.

With a ‘humph’, Kali unlocked one of the windows directly over the pile of furniture and dragged a heavy dresser over to block the front door. With her temporary stop-gap in place, she crawled over the mound of appropriated goods and out of the window, stumbling into the alley between her building and the neighbors. She brushed the dirt off her clothes and set off toward town center, headed in the direction of a newly built Inn she’d seen.