[podlove-web-player]
Nightshade Unicorn Book 1:
Forerunner
By T. S. Pedramon
author@thorn.link
DRAFT COPY
November 9, 2023
Tylonus
“The Nightshade Unicorn is eight feet at the shoulder and is waiting for a boat to escape his island!” the sailor sneered at Tylonus.
“Don’t be preposterous,” he replied. “I only beware conning salesmen and bad product, let alone a fictional Nomord.”
“You’d best watch yourself,” the sailor insisted with alcohol on his breath.
“Yes, I’ll watch out so I don’t get frostbite. Then we’ll pull into port at Malnonny, I’ll make a few trades, and finally head home.” He pulled his coat more snugly around himself against the northern chill.
“He’s right, dirter,” another sailor joined in. “I had a friend what saw it once.”
“I’m sure he did.” Tylonus turned away from the men and looked to the horizon, trying to enjoy the sunshine without engaging them.
“We’re sailing into northern lands. That’s where he lives!” the first sailor said. “I have these charms what will keep him away. I just want to help you stay safe. Four marks each, and every one of them will guarantee the Nightshade Unicorn stays five paces away!”
Tylonus stood.
“Beware the twisted lands! 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.”
Tylonus stepped around the sailor and walked aft of the Armadillo, heading down to his berthing. He wouldn’t put up with this; he needed to draft a letter home, besides. He descended to his quarters shared with another passenger, a man from the university in Bolsnard. His roommate was in their room, already occupying the small board that passed as a desk.
“Do you think you’ll be long, Rubiro?”
“Oh, no. As a matter of fact, I’ll clear off now.”
“Thank you. I’ve had enough talk of old fables up top. Nightshade Unicorn and all.”
“Ah, yes. 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 a Nomord.” Rubiro finished packing his papers away and stood.
“Yes. I’m sure they do.” Tylonus sat and pulled 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 we have discovered battlefields where we have no historical record of a battle occurring. 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 changed and the Armadillo began to sway.
The Island
Tylonus landed his small lifeboat on a cold beach, looking uphill at curious vegetation. It was nearly as green as the vegetation he had seen farther south, but it was somehow…wrong. Misshapen.
He stepped out of the boat, freezing in his clothes, which hadn’t fully dried yet. The sailors were good men, even if their stories had been wild. But the storm had blown them into unseen rocks, puncturing the hull. As the ship went down, the sailors had helped him into the lifeboat amidst the buffetings of the storm. Two accompanied him in this boat; he hoped the rest of the crew and passengers survived, somewhere.
They had taken turns rowing. The sailors, strapping men of muscular bulk, had taken turns first. As the daylight came, they had headed west, which they said would land them on Ylonga. Now, sun high overhead, they both slept, keeping each other warm under an oilcloth blanket. Tylonus was the only one awake when he beached the lifeboat. He would wake his companions soon, but first he wanted a closer look at this curious island.
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.
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 that he got of the color change, 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.
This place was certainly odd.
Tylonus walked into the forest, observing all sorts of perversions of familiar things of nature. Deer that looked at him hungrily before baring canine teeth prompted him to draw his sword in case any came near. Yellow-gray moss stung his hand when he touched it. He felt sure this was not Ylonga.
Ylonga was supposed to offer good lumber for crafting musical instruments, but it did not look like any of the wood here would be usable.
They had been blown far off course. Tylonus did not recall having seen this place on any map he had seen of this part of the ocean. He certainly would have noted if there were any place that looked so alien. He continued walking inland, hoping to see some sign of civilization, but saw none. Those 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 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. He had never believed those stories before, but now he wondered.
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 Unicorn held him to be a huge beast, four paces tall at the shoulder, with sharp fangs, that demanded the blood of children. Others depicted a more traditional Nomord but with a dark disposition, even evil. According to the stories, the north wind was supposed to come, and the Nightshade Unicorn with it. The north wind would arise and resurrect the dark beast, who 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, well, twisted.
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. But, 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. Then he froze as a larger quadruped stepped up to the stream. It 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. The storm is coming. Are you ready?”
Tylonus looked up into dark, serious eyes, and found himself struck with fear. He sank into them as if he were struggling to escape quicksand, pulled under gasping for breath, and lost in a non-place, the stuff of nightmares.
The Nightshade Unicorn stared back, boring into his soul. Not only did it stand before him in the flesh, but it knew his name.
The dark beast preceded the calamity.
Tylonus shouted a guttural, primal cry of fear.