Nightshade Unicorn: Forerunner – Prologue
(Intermediary version, Jan 2024)
Tylonus
Tylonus sat on a crate at the bow of the merchant ship Armadillo, taking in the morning sea air and the open view, and trying to gather his thoughts. Most of the crew was off shift at the moment, the morning’s heavy work mostly done already, but a few worked to maintain the proper heading.
“Beware the Nightshade Unicorn!” one of the sailors bellowed in his face.
Tylonus rolled his eyes. “Please, not another sea story.”
“No story here, grass man.” The sailor held his arms out in innocence.
“Must you use a derogative, Pontil? We simply have different professions.”
Pontil wasn’t a bad man in Tylonus’s eyes, but his seafaring background cast him in a dubious light as far as credibility was concerned.
“My apologies, thank you for reminding me, stonefooted Tylonus.”
Tylonus breathed in deeply, consigning himself to the distracting experience ahead while he exhaled. He hoped it would at least be entertaining.
“Very well, Pontil. I’ve been all over the western lands, but please, tell me what I’m missing.”
Pontil harrumphed.
“Vlon, you remember what I told you, right?” he said to another sailor. “Grass man here doesn’t believe in the Nightshade Unicorn.”
Vlon piped up, “Listen to him, dirter. You don’t know what you don’t know.”
Vlon returned to adjusting some rope attached to the sails, casting a judging glance at Pontil for not helping.
Pontil didn’t notice the older sailor’s gaze and took Tylonus’s unenthusiastic invitation to heart instead.
“The Nightshade Unicorn lives on an island in the northern waters–”
“Yes, you’ve said as much before,” Tylonus interrupted.
Pontil was unfazed and continued to engage.
“–in northern waters, like we are here.”
“But I’ve been tracking our progress with the ship navigator,” Tylonus interjected again. “We’ll put into Malnonny within a week, to the northeast. You claim the island to be to the west, closer to Glosenstat. But we’re quite some distance from that, and of course it’s supposed to be over there because there are hundreds of small islands, and it’s too easy to be vague about which one you’re talking about.”
Pontil spread his arms wide again, making a professional show of innocence despite the alcohol on his breath.
“I didn’t pick the island. That’s just where it is.”
“And it’s where we might end up, Pontil, if you don’t help me with this rigging,” Vlon said. “I don’t like what the wind is doing this morning. It might get rough tonight.”
“In a minute, man,” Pontil deflected. He turned back to Tylonus again. “As I said, beware the Nightshade Unicorn. The dark beast was born of everything evil in the world, and he cannot wait to be free from his cursed isle to devour people and demolish cities.”
Tylonus couldn’t hold back a small grin at the ridiculousness of it.
“A Nomord, eating people? They’re the most peaceable of creatures. One of them might not like it if you painted its fur black and told campfire stories about it, but it wouldn’t resort to eating flesh because of it.”
“I’m trying to warn you, grass man,” Pontil insisted. “You need an iron charm to ward it off if you travel in these waters.”
“Oh? Is he swimming toward us?”
“Shrongelin forbid he should try to swim so far from land,” Pontil said. “Here, I have extra charms that I got in Dullsworthen. I had a friend what saw the dark beast once. He was first mate on his ship, and he swore they couldn’t find the island again because their compasses didn’t work. They was at least a day’s sail away, and overcast to boot when they could get their bearings again. Said they struck ashore looking for fresh water. Found the water, but the island was full of strange wildlife. Cast off quick as they could. But a great, dark unicorn stepped out of the woods, staring hate itself at them and at the water what prevented it from getting to them.”
He gestured widely, attempting to convey the great bulk of an antagonistic animal.
Tylonus sighed at the sailor’s ineloquence.
“Can’t you call them the Nomord?”
“Why?” Pontil looked confused.
“Because that’s what they’re called,” Tylonus said slowly.
“Is the Nightshade really one of them?” Pontil mused to himself.
Tylonus thought the sailor’s question might actually have merit, if the creature existed at all. “Unicorn” was just a slang word for the Nomord, after all.
Pontil shrugged it off. “Anyway, Rauling–that’s my friend–and his crew could feel the Nightshade’s influence. He was trying to make them ill, you see, every last man. Normal unicorns can heal, you know, but the Nightshade Unicorn’s magic works backwards. He unheals his victims before he eats them.”
Tylonus indulged in another eyeroll. Pontil didn’t notice.
“But Rauling and his men, they had charms. Those who didn’t have charms got seasick.”
“Could it be because they were at sea?” Tylonus asked rhetorically.
“No, they had their sea legs,” Pontil refuted. “Here, I’ll let you have multiple charms. Four marks each, and the big baddy stays at least five paces away.”
The sailor held up a collection of ramshackle knick-knacks bound with twine and wire, offering them to Tylonus.
“Don’t be preposterous,” Tylonus replied. “I only beware conning salesmen and defective product. I’ll keep my marks to trade in Malnonny, then I’ll finally head home. I came with my share of the cargo, I’ll make my trades, go home, and be done traveling.”
He pulled his coat more snugly around himself against the northern chill.
“Rauling’s not a dolt, dirter,” Vlon said. “If he says he seen it, he seen it.”
“I’m sure he did.”
Tylonus turned away from the men and looked to the horizon, trying to enjoy the sunshine without engaging them. After a moment he stood.
“Beware the twisted isle!” Pontil warned again. “The Nightshade Unicorn wanders there and eats poor travelers who wander in.”
“The Nomord don’t eat people, even if you paint their fur dark colors. We’ve been over this. Excuse me, I think I’ve had enough of this tale.”
Tylonus stepped around the sailor and walked aft of the Armadillo, heading down to his berthing. He would rather spend his time drafting a letter home. That’s why he had been trying to gather his thoughts before Pontil had other ideas. He heard Pontil start singing behind him, releasing a shanty from his throat that Tylonus had heard many times before.
Tylonus descended to his quarters shared with another passenger, a man from the university in Bolsnard. His cabinmate was in their quarters, already occupying the small board that passed as a desk.
“Do you think you’ll be long, Rubiro?” Tylonus asked.
“Oh, no,” the academic said. “As a matter of fact, I’m all finished. I’ll clear off now.”
“Thank you. I need to write and clear my head. I’ve had enough talk of old fables up top. Nightmare Unicorns and all that.”
“Ah, yes,” the professor acknowledged. “You know, we cannot say for sure there isn’t such a creature. In fact, the old stories my colleagues have dug up seem to mention something—mind you, they’re not the easiest to translate—which wasn’t a proper Nomord.”
“You, too?” Tylonus looked at the scholar in disappointment.
“Well, the stories have that in common. They speak of a great calamity that followed the appearance of a dark beast, and…most of them identify that beast as some form of Nomord.”
Rubiro finished packing his papers away and stood.
“Yes. I’m sure they do.” Tylonus replied, sitting at the desk and pulling some stationery from the satchel hanging on his rack. “But the supposed time of calamity was thousands of years ago, and the stories don’t actually say the dark beast was the calamity, right?”
“Well.” Rubiro blinked, thinking. He cocked his head. “Some do, but there is disagreement between texts. At the very least, the dark beast appears before the calamity. And there are old battlefields that we—”
“Don’t mention dragons again, please.”
Rubiro was indignant. “I wasn’t going to. Only that there are–um, that we have discovered battlefields where we have no historical record of a battle occurring. And the calamity that follows the dark beast is supposed to affect the whole world over. Indeed, we find intriguing artifacts…”
Tylonus ignored the man and put his attention on the letter he wrote, trying to focus as the winds outside, the winds Vlon had complained of, continued to play mischievously, and the Armadillo began to sway.
*****
Tylonus awoke with a jolt, falling out of his rack. His sleep had been hard-won with the Armadillo rocking the way it did in this weather. Now he propped himself up on his elbows, shaking the sleep from his head.
“Tylonus, get up!” Rubiro shouted, carrying a pair of handled scoops. “Captain says we need all hands to help. Take this.”
The professor offered Tylonus one of the bailers with one hand, then pulled it back and held it under his arm and offered his now-empty hand.
“But we’re not crew. I paid my passage fare,” Tylonus protested.
“So did I, but this storm is something else. I personally fancy the idea of making it through and surviving the night.”
Tylonus nodded, seeing the alarm in Rubiro’s eyes.
“So do I.”
Tylonus took Rubiro’s hand and climbed to his feet. accepting the bailer, he followed him above decks and into a cacophony of shouts, thunder, whipping wind, and the constant roar of the heaviest rain Tylonus could remember seeing.
Men rushed about, hollering at each other to pull this rope or tighten that sail—Tylonus couldn’t keep all the terminology straight—and one of the sailors approached him and Rubiro.
“Go back below!” he shouted.
Tylonus held his bailer up, wondering where he might be of help.
“Below!” the sailor bellowed again, pointing at the gaping great hatch in the center of the deck, a large, rectangular hole with a steep ladder leading down. “Go below, fill your bailer, hand it up, and receive another!”
As Tylonus understood the plan to keep excess water out of the ship, the sailor practically shoved him, making him nearly fall belowdecks as the ship’s heaving continuously robbed him of his good footing.
“Aye-aye!” Tylonus responded, using the sailor terminology as the clearest way to indicate his immediate compliance.
He jumped down, using the side of the hole to steady himself as he fell the modest distance. He still slipped when he landed, but got up again. It was easier to see down here, where the air wasn’t full of raindrops and the lanterns swinging from their hooks on the overhead didn’t require a hood to keep water out.
Looking to one corner of the chamber, Tylonus saw water gathered, while a man rushed from a forward chamber and handed his bailer up above decks. Rubiro climbed down the ladder in the great hatch, catching up to Tylonus, then both of them started bailing water out of this chamber while men continued to rush past from the chambers below, against the hull. Tylonus and Rubiro found themselves crowding each other as they tried to bail the same area independently.
“Stand here!” Tylonus said to the professor, pointing at the deck under his feet as he stood below the great hatch. “I’ll hand to you, you hand up!”
Rubiro nodded and Tylonus ran to the corner and filled a bailer, brought it back to Rubiro, received an empty bailer, and repeated the process. Another passenger, a smith from one of the Colnarn Protectorate states, had been pressed into temporary service as well, receiving the bailers that Rubiro handed up to him.
Tylonus worked as fast as he could, but the rain was insistent on filling the ship with unwanted water. He slogged and fought against the downpour, keenly aware of not only the rain that fell directly through the hatch, but also water that spilled in from the main deck despite a small ridge that existed specifically to prevent that. The torrent threw enough water at the Armadillo that it sloshed over continuously.
Tylonus quickly tired of the heavy work but pushed himself to continue until with a great smashing crack, the deck under his feet jumped and yanked itself against the bouncing and rolling it had heretofore been performing.
“What was that?” Rubiro shouted in the dim light.
“Aground, we’ve run aground!” voices shouted from above.
“Rocks! Rocks!” A lone voice screamed over the top of the din. “We hit rocks!”
“Let me see with my own eyes!” bellowed an authoritative voice that Tylonus recognized.
The captain jumped down the great hatch, landing beside Rubiro and barely noticing the slippery deck as he rushed fore, into the bowels of his ship.
Tylonus felt the chamber he was in seem to hang at one corner, making the other side of the room rise and fall more dramatically, sending the water washing from one side to another. He chased after the water with his bailer, scooping what he could, and tried to hand it to his fellow traveler.
Rubiro was distracted, watching the sailors above skit about. The storm continued to rage, but the human activity hit a lull as all ears strained to hear what news came from below.
Tylonus heard a cry raise from the deck fore and below, first one voice and then others repeating it.
“Abandon ship!”
The captain came running back past Tylonus, waving his arms and directing activity.
“Follow procedure, abandon ship!”
This caused a new, intense flurry of movement as all hands shifted to a new plan. Men left their stations, untying or even cutting ropes, letting sails flap loosely in the gusts that buffeted the now-dying Armadillo.
“First mate! Passengers! To my cabin!”
Tylonus and Rubiro climbed the ladder to the top deck and went aft, passing through a door to the captain’s cabin, following Clonnel, the smith who had been receiving the bailers from Rubiro.
Captain Yalnan and his wife, Hronalu, were waiting for them, bracing themselves on the captain’s desk to stand against the ship’s bucking. One more passenger entered behind the other three.
Yalnan spoke, “Our hull is punctured and we’re taking on water at an alarming rate. I don’t know how much you’ll remember, but we did brief you on evacuation procedures. I’ll remind you now. You each have a boat space on our lifeboats. They are small, each fitting three people, no more. You can bring with you only what you can carry in one arm, because you’ll need the other arm free to climb down into the boats. You’ll each ride in separate boats, because I want to ensure your best chance for survival. My sailors have been trained and conditioned to handle the small craft, and have better sea legs than you could hope to possess. Are there any questions?”
The four passengers remained silent.
“Tylonus, you’ll ride in boat one with Pontil and Vlon. I know you don’t like their stories, but they are good men. Trust them and cooperate. Are we clear?”
“Clear,” Tylonus replied quickly.
“Professor,” the captain address Rubiro. “you’re in boat two; Clonnel, boat three; Navvaron, boat four. They are numbered starting at the bow, on the port side. Don’t let me catch you four getting into starboard side lifeboats. This ship will have discipline to the very end, and that includes passengers.”
“Yes, captain,” the four of them answered.
“You’ll all be going west to Ylonga. We’ve been blown off course, so that’s your best bet. I wish you the best.” Yalnan stopped talking, staring at the passengers.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Hronalu spoke sharply. “The captain spoke, now make it happen! You have two minutes to grab what you will from your cabins and get on the lifeboats. Go!” Her face was hard, unreadable.
“Yes, First Mate.” Tylonus responded as he turned on his heel, nearly running out of the cabin.
Sailors crossed in front of him and around him as he rushed to his cabin, quickly threw a few things into a bag, and made his way to the bow of the Armadillo.
“Well, it’s about time you’re here!” Vlon belted, hoarse from the effort of the shouting match against the weather.
“You ready?” Pontil asked, manipulating a rope on a pulley to lower the lifeboat to the water.
“Ready to survive, if we’re so lucky!” Tylonus said.
“Then climb do—” Pontil started.
At that moment a thunderous boom sounded as lightning lit up the night and the mainmast snapped in two. It leapt forward and to the starboard, catching a sailor on the starboard bow as it tumbled into the sea.
“Umblan! Man overboard!” a nearby sailor called. “Man overb—”
“Abandon ship!” First Mate Hronalu screamed in his face, veins on her neck popping out. “He’s gone! Follow procedure and save yourself!”
Tylonus moved to climb into his boat, watching Rubiro approach boat two while its corresponding crew lowered the craft to the water line.
“Shrongelin save Umblan, but bless this day!” Captain Yalnan called to the sky with relief in his eyes.
“How can you say that?” Hronalu turned on her husband.
“As you said, Umblan is gone!” he shouted back. “Had we time, we would mourn. But I—”
“No!” Hronalu rebuffed. “I will not!”
Pontil turned to Tylonus, apparently caught up in the drama.
“The captain and first mate don’t carry boats for themselves,” he explained. “They were always ready to go down with the ship.”
“Shrongelin bless this day,” Yalnan repeated. “You will live, my Hronalu!”
“What life will it be without you?” she said back.
“Any life, whatever you want! We’re insured. Go live comfortably with your sister! Pay homage to Umblan if you like, for giving you his boat space. But most of all, live!”
Yalnan moved forward, grabbing his wife in a bear hug, and carried her to the lifeboat while she fought against him, hammering his back with her fists and bellowing cries of protest.
“No!” Hronalu screamed. “Not without you! You were always why I live! No! Come with us! We’ll make it work!”
“You well know there’s no room!” Yalnan shouted back, delivering her to the two sailors loading themselves into the adjacent boat, and they wordlessly took her over the edge of the ship by force.
Tylonus tore his gaze from the spectacle and climbed the rope ladder down from the port bow and into his lifeboat.
Pontil and Vlon followed, then cast off from the hull, putting space between lifeboat one and the Armadillo as quickly as possible to avoid being dashed to pieces on the side of the larger craft. They squeezed themselves side by side, each manning one of the oars to maximize their driving force.
Lifeboat two cast off as soon as they could be certain to avoid collision, then lifeboat three, and so on. The storm appeared to wane in this moment, its rain calmer, and its chill winds still driving but no longer casting up waves that would have threatened to topple the ship they had just abandoned.
“Shrongelin bless us all,” Tylonus said. “Maybe we will yet survive.”
*****
Tylonus landed the small craft on a cold beach, looking uphill at curious vegetation. Pontil and Vlon, along with the rest of the crew of the Armadillo, were good men as the captain had said, even if their stories had been wild.
In the dark of night with the wind howling, seas raging, and the rain pelting them, they could barely see well enough to hazard a guess at which direction was west, let alone keep track of the other lifeboats. Now they were alone. The captain was most certainly dead, but Tylonus hoped the rest of the crew and passengers survived, somewhere.
They had taken turns rowing. The two sailors, strapping men of muscular bulk, had taken turns first. As dawn approached, the wind calmed and the sun gave them a stronger sense of direction. They had adjusted their course accordingly. As the morning progressed they trusted Tylonus to take his turn rowing away from the sun. Now, sun high overhead, they both slept, keeping each other warm under an oilcloth blanket.
“Vlon, Pontil,” Tylonus said, “we’re here. We’re…somewhere.”
He leaned over and shook them awake.
Pontil pried his eyes open sleepily.
“Shh,” he hushed Tylonus. “We two rowed in the storm. Heavy work. Let us rest for now.”
“Fine,” Tylonus assented. “I’ll just have a little look around.”
He stepped out of the boat, freezing in his clothes. Yalnan had said he could bring only what he could carry under one arm, so he had grabbed trade documents that would be important when he got back to civilization. He wished he’d grabbed his coat.
The vegetation ahead of him was nearly as green as what he had seen farther south, but it was somehow…wrong. Misshapen. Walking up the beach, ahead of him was a solid line of pine trees, if he was to believe the signature needles growing on the branches. But the trunks and branches themselves were gnarled and grew at random angles, confusing him. Perhaps this was just a species he was not familiar with. Besides, the weather was fair now.
The sand underneath his feet moved the same under his weight as the sand at countless other beaches where he had landed for trade, but its color was a rusty brown with streaks of green and black. He picked some of it up in his hand to look at it more closely. As he did so, it seemed to change in hue to a more typical tan color. Despite this impression, when he looked back and forth between the sand on the ground and in his hand, he couldn’t put his finger on the difference between the two. The texture seemed the same but something about it was off.
This place was patently odd.
Tylonus walked into the forest, observing all sorts of perversions of familiar things of nature. A deer looked at him as it walked toward him, which Tylonus had never known a deer to do. As it approached, it seemed to open its mouth hungrily, baring canine teeth. Alarmed, Tylonus drew his belt knife and held the blade toward the cervine, hunching his shoulders forward. It cocked its head.
Since when does a deer do that?, Tylonus thought.
It bolted without warning, vanishing through ferns and bushes.
Tylonus didn’t want to be alone, but he appreciated the quiet moment away from Pontil’s ideas. The sailor would have a fit at all this. Tylonus willed himself to breathe normally, but kept his knife in hand. Maybe he should go back to the boat and wait for both sailors to wake up. Vlon appeared to have a more level head than Pontil, even if he subscribed to the same superstitions.
He came across a large, downed tree, giving him a waist-high hurdle in his path. Tylonus placed his hand on an adjacent tree trunk for steadiness, then yanked his hand away with a yelp. Looking where he had supported himself, he saw a yellow-gray moss or lichen. Moss wasn’t supposed to sting. He shook his hand, still feeling the burn.
Tylonus felt sure this was not Ylonga. That land was supposed to offer good lumber for crafting musical instruments, but it did not look like any of the wood here would be usable.
As the captain had said, they had been blown far off course. Tylonus did not recall having seen this place on any of his maps. He certainly would have noted if there were any place that was supposed to look so alien. He continued walking inland, hoping to see some sign of civilization, but saw none. The animals he saw and these plants that he walked past now did not appear in any encyclopedia he had encountered, either. He pressed on, lowering his expectations as he went, hoping to find help, people, clean water, and something that he could feel safe eating.
He hadn’t believed the sailors’ stories, but now he wondered. This place looked as though the Creator had taken his plans for it and bumped a table on the way from the drafting board to the fabrication board, resulting in everything being mixed up and painted in a darker shade.
There were some things in the world that he couldn’t explain, but they were at least consistent with each other. The Nomord did exist, and they had well-known magical abilities; they could heal and could make things grow. There were other commonly known creatures as well. Occasionally one might come across a jackalope and it would scurry away and find a burrow, jumping down a hole that would be impossibly small to fit its antlers, but down it went, fitting in somehow.
Then there were things that maybe existed, or maybe were true, like the belief that one could attract the Nomord by laying out certain herbs or fruits overnight. One could never really know whether that was effective. Sometimes they would show up and sometimes they wouldn’t, but that seemed to be the case no matter what people did, let alone laying out specific fruits. One just couldn’t know.
But any reasonable person would put no stock in these sailor stories of mermaids and dragons and griffons, let alone the ridiculous idea of the Nightshade Unicorn. Some stories of the Nightshade stretched even farther than Pontil’s version, portraying him as a huge beast, four paces tall at the shoulder, with sharp fangs, that demanded the blood of children.
According to the stories, the north wind would arise and resurrect the dark beast, which would kill anyone in its path. Tylonus placed no stock in these stories. But today… Perhaps today was a day to consider whether the impossible might be dangerous, even if it couldn’t exist. This land did look…twisted, but now his curiosity pulled him along.
He walked several more minutes and the air grew distinguishably warmer. The sun shone pleasantly down. To Tylonus’s relief, the plants looked more normal.
He came to a spring and jumped down to take a drink. He paused, wondering if the water might be poisonous. Assuaging his fears of poison, a deer walked up to the stream two dozen paces down from Tylonus, calmly bent its head, and drank. Tylonus straightened up to look at it better, but it bolted when it saw him. No strange teeth or odd behavior from this one.
Tylonus bent again and drank from the spring, quenching his thirst. Deciding to let caution get the better of him, he straightened and turned to head back to the beach. He knew where water was, so they could live several days at least while they found edible food.
Tylonus froze and looked at the water’s surface as larger hooves splashed into the stream. This beast was closer than the deer, apparently not afraid at his presence.
It spoke, the first word that left its mouth being the most terrifying.
“Tylonus. Perhaps you think you have weathered storms, such as the one you just survived. The true storm is yet to come. Are you ready?”
Tylonus lifted his gaze from black hooves, up midnight-colored legs, and finally looked up into dark, serious eyes which were perched on either side of an equine forehead from which sprouted a single, lengthy horn. The horn seemed to hide in shadow despite the daylight. While certainly not gargantuan, as was the beast in Pontil’s story, this creature was far from anything to be trifled with.
Tylonus found himself struck with bone-deep terror. He sank into those pits of eyes as if he were struggling to escape quicksand, pulled under and gasping for breath, lost in a non-place, the sensation of a nightmare.
The Nightshade Unicorn stared back, boring into his soul, pulling him farther under. Not only did it stand before him in the flesh, but it knew his name.
The dark beast precedes the calamity.
Tylonus shouted a guttural, primal cry of fear.
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