Chenevog

Chenevog

\"Would you PLEASE shut up?” His constant chattering was getting to be a major annoyance. To make it worse, whoever or whatever he was talking to was of dubious reality. She couldn’t see it, at least. The plan seemed to be flawed, because now she had attracted his attention. He turned his disturbingly perceptive stare on her, which made her too comfortably aware that despite his strong and numerous faults he was still one of the most beautiful men that she had ever seen. Too comfortable because it made her feel like lapsing into old modes of behavior, and while blushing and giggling delicately might and had helped a rich merchants girl in attracting a fiance it was less helpful to a mercenary trying to cultivate a persona which got her jobs. Luckily what he next said reaffirmed his oddness and killed that feeling.

“ I’ve always wondered what it’d be like. It must be very boring where you live.” This all was delivered in Chernevog\'s musing monotone accompanied by his unchanging, mildly interested stare. He promptly went back to chatting with invisible things. She could never be sure if he was retarded or not. Damn Jack anyhow.

“ Forgive his oddness, he’s one of our best and you could learn a lot from him. He hasn’t lost a cargo yet, though you should still watch your back.”

“Lost a cargo? Strange choice of words.”

“The merchants and other escorts are another matter entirely. Four times he’s walked in with a full caravan and a pile of chewed bits of corpses. Three of the times one of the bigger bandits camps in the are has quieted down for a year or two. The fourth time he might have killed a Ruin.”

“ A RUIN?”

“ Shush, not as big as you think, though damn impressive. There are more than a thousand, you know, not just the twenty or so legendary ones. A little creature called Babi. Could teleport around, sources say. Looked like a mix between a cat, a dog, a furball, and a man. Vicious little thing. Anyhow, he’s better than he seems, be respectful.”

Forgive his oddness? Jack didn’t have to travel with the bastard for two months. Alright, I give in. I know you’re wondering. How did a rich merchants girl with a fiance become a near-broke merc? Simple. Not being a virgin. At least from the checkable definition, which for many meant the usual definition. Ran in her fathers side of the family, according to the whispers. About half the women in his line either had ghost lovers, the experimented too much, or were just plain sluts. Or so the stories went. Knowing the underbelly of the world, she doubted it muchly, being that she had no ghost lover, hadn’t known what a dildo was and was too “well bred” to use one if she had, and was twelve. Mind you, many girls were prostitutes well before then, but she had lived a cloistered life. She barely knew what sex was at the time. The time being age twelve, her father being enough of a bastard to sell her off early, though in hindsight maybe he had been trying to avoid just what had happened.

To get to the heart of the matter, when she had been gotten a fiance, got checked for a hymen, and didn’t have one. She had learned since that in this region about thirty percent of the underclass never had one, but there was no telling the upper class that. Long story short she had been kicked out and had decided that whoring for one swordsman and becoming a merc was vastly preferable to whoring to the broader populace and staying that that career, those being her two choices as she had no practical skills at the time. And, uh, huh. He finally shut up. Is that a good thing?

A flight of arrows suddenly feathered the ends of the caravan. A large and lazy fireball moseyed into the middle of the caravan. It was times like these that she wished horses could live in this country. And that she had one. A fast one. To say that they were outnumbered would be giving too much hope to her side. A slight pop drew her attention to Chernevog. Something that looked like the midpoint between a cat, a dog, and a man sped up the hill. She bet it was named Babi. The next few pops were considerably more ugly and hungrier too. Well, this explained a lot, was her last thought.