Mathan Campbell

@mathancampbell.bsky.social

153 Followers 74 Following

Author of "A Thoughtful Kind of Monster." Writer, Leftist curmudgeon, environmentalist, native plant nerd, lots of other stuff. https://www.scribophile.com/authors/mathan-campbell

“I’ve helped fight off raiders a few times. It’s part and parcel of growing up in the Borders. Sealgair ain’t people, they’re monsters - real monsters. You can reason with a human or a sihean, hell even a glic. We might not always get along but there’s a mind under there you can reach, even if they do look kind of funny.” He smiled at Bélan and added “No offense meant.”
Bélan quipped “None taken, humans do look funny” to general laughter from the group and Maol continued.
“A sealgair though, all you are to that thing is food.”
Richard interjected “They’re supposed to be fantastic metal smiths, that means they can think. They can’t just be animals. If we could find a way to talk to them…”
At this Maol practically snarled. “There was someone in the village where I grew up that tried that, and it cost him his life.”
“So a folk story from your village. That sounds reliable!” Mirabelle chuckled and Maol scowled at her before continuing.
“Not a folk story. I was ten when it happened and I saw the house, saw what that thing left in its wake.”
She raised an eyebrow skeptically and said “Well, go on then.”
“This fellow, well he and his wife couldn’t have kids and he found an ash-gray baby on the mountain and brought her home. A year later she’s growing fangs and claws and killing livestock for fun. His wife begged him to get the beast out of their house but of course he didn’t listen.”
“What happened?” Richard wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but asked anyway.

Far out in the desert she saw a reflection in the sand. She nearly dismissed it as the shimmer of heat, but the morning was still cool. Nor could it be water, all of the springs in this area were well known. It felt like something was drawing her eye to it, calling her. The sensation was eerie but soon gone and forgotten. Against her better judgement, she went to investigate.
In the countless centuries since the ancients fell, most of their works had been utterly erased by the passage of time. Only a few ruins remained, and in the deserts of Fasak the sealgairean and other scavengers had long since picked most of them clean. But there was steel here, half covered by sand and intact. It must have been unburied recently for there was no mark of rust upon it.
Working together, the women swept the dry sand away to reveal bare gray stone, pitted by time but intact, with a square steel door flat on the ground and inset directly into the stone. Amazingly, the dry sand had protected both stone and door from the countless years.
By now the day’s heat had come on in earnest and they were far from any shade or shelter. The other women were eager to return, but Ailith was unwilling to leave her prize. There was a thick place that might have concealed a lock but no visible keyhole, and their efforts to pry the door open were fruitless. Ailith carefully placed a small mound of precious aluminum shavings salvaged from other ruins on the door, adding powdered rust from another pouch and then striking her knife on flint to throw a spark into it. It caught and blazed brightly as she looked away, covering her eyes. The afterimage shattered her vision and it took several minutes for her to recover her sight. In the meantime, the fire burned through the steel and lock and Carag and Merris were able to lever the door open.

Far out in the desert she saw a reflection in the sand. She nearly dismissed it as the shimmer of heat, but the morning was still cool. Nor could it be water, all of the springs in this area were well known. It felt like something was drawing her eye to it, calling her. The sensation was eerie but soon gone and forgotten. Against her better judgement, she went to investigate.
In the countless centuries since the ancients fell, most of their works had been utterly erased by the passage of time. Only a few ruins remained, and in the deserts of Fasak the sealgairean and other scavengers had long since picked most of them clean. But there was steel here, half covered by sand and intact. It must have been unburied recently for there was no mark of rust upon it.
Working together, the women swept the dry sand away to reveal bare gray stone, pitted by time but intact, with a square steel door flat on the ground and inset directly into the stone. Amazingly, the dry sand had protected both stone and door from the countless years.
By now the day’s heat had come on in earnest and they were far from any shade or shelter. The other women were eager to return, but Ailith was unwilling to leave her prize. There was a thick place that might have concealed a lock but no visible keyhole, and their efforts to pry the door open were fruitless. Ailith carefully placed a small mound of precious aluminum shavings salvaged from other ruins on the door, adding powdered rust from another pouch and then striking her knife on flint to throw a spark into it. It caught and blazed brightly as she looked away, covering her eyes. The afterimage shattered her vision and it took several minutes for her to recover her sight. In the meantime, the fire burned through the steel and lock and Carag and Merris were able to lever the door open.

The world swam and she was conscious again. By some miracle of will, she dragged herself to the river that came roaring down from the peaks high above where melting snow fed a thousand little streams before they joined. She half-fell into the water, landing painfully on the stones and letting the icy cold of it banish the heat of the day. There were a few little fish here no bigger than her thumb and she grabbed at one of them desperately but missed.
The cold of the river quickly chilled her to the bone and she realized she was going numb, if she stayed in much longer she might not be able to get out. Hands scrabbling at the sand and stones, she dragged herself out and lay there in the sun letting it warm her up again.
Tenderly, she untied the strips of fabric from her hands to reveal the wounds, deep gashes where the glass had cut her. She washed her hands in the icy cold water before washing the makeshift bandages as well.
Attracted by the scent of blood in the water, a small river lamprey swam towards her and she snatched it out of the water, striking its disgusting head hard on a rock and then raising it to her mouth. She was too hungry to wait and had no fuel for a fire anyway. There were only a few bites of meat on the little parasite, but that was far better than nothing. Inspired, she repeated the trick, using her own blood as bait and catching and devouring another of the little fish. Further attempts were fruitless.
She gave up and re-wrapped her hands, bent to the river to drink her fill, refilled the water skin, and stood - too quickly as the world swam around her. She fell to her knees wincing as she landed.

“The Borders…” She sat up in bed thinking.
“Don’t tell me you’re worried about me?”
“Alright, I won’t. But you know as well as I do that the settlements out there have been reporting more raiders coming through the passes. There was an article about it the other day…”
“Bah, sensationalistic nonsense designed to sell newspapers.”
“Sure, but the raiders are real enough.”
“Well, that’s why we’re hiring extra swords.”
“How many and what’s the pay?”
“Are you thinking of hiring on?”
“Well, I miss you. And if you get yourself killed out there I’ll never forgive you and I don’t want to be angry at a dead man.”
“You really are such a romantic…” He laughed at her. “You know I can handle myself.”
“I know. It’s those other idiots I worry about. I don’t trust them to bring you back to me where you belong.”
“I will always come back to you. That’s a promise.”
“You’re sweet, but we both know that’s not how the world works. Besides, there’s no harm in me helping to make sure, is there? Unless you don’t want me to come for some reason?”
“No! I’d be thrilled to have you! But I don’t want you to feel like you’re having to compromise for me or resent me.”
“Tell me again how much you want to have me.”
“More than my next minute of air.”
“Well then get over here!”

Mirabelle had to duck to pass through the door, but inside the place was truly remarkable. It bore only the most superficial resemblance to anything she might have recognized as a tavern. The room was cut into the limestone of the cliff with ceilings a bit over ten feet tall. In the center was a circle of pillars framing a dome lined with softly glowing moss. Below the dome was an inverted round stage cut down into the floor, and all around it were tables and chairs. Sounds resonated strangely in the space, diffusing outward towards the edge and then deadening.
The audience was mostly glic - far more of them than she would have imagined lived in the city - but there were sîhean as well. As far as she could see at first glance, she was the only human. Many were already seated while others served themselves from a large table set high with glic delicacies - cave moss, grubs, roots. The presentations were beautiful, but there was nothing she had any interest in eating! She found an empty table near the front and waited.

“Among our people, negotiation begins with the exchange of names, I am Mirabelle.”
“I am Ailith, but among our people, we do not negotiate.”
“You are grieved at the loss of your son. We have also lost many friends, companions who were like brothers to us. We can avoid more deaths if we can reach an agreement with words.”
“Death is the price of life for a hunter, and it is the price of war.”
“But we are not at war with you!”
“We are sealgair, we are at war with everyone.” Ailith’s tone was dismissive, as if telling a very stupid child an obvious truth.
Mirabelle tried again. “We have had enough of killing, and our people do not kill except in self defense.” She felt the falsehood in the words. Knew they were a lie even though she wished they weren’t. She continued on regardless. “We will leave you in peace, but you must pay a death price for the harm your warriors caused.”
“What is this ‘death price?’”
“A ransom or penalty. We want our wagons and horses returned, enough clean water for the journey home, and the machines your warriors took from the ruins we were exploring. Do that and we walk away. No one else has to die. Your children do not have to die.”
“You would demand tribute and threaten a sword over our children’s necks?!” The sealgair woman snarled and Mirabelle recognized the shift of her weight as she considered attacking.
“I am offering you a way to save them. We have slain your warriors, what would a rival sealgair clan offer you?”
The woman did not respond but considered. “If we do this you leave and return over the mountain?”
“Yes.”
The woman shouted up at her friends on the wall who had gathered around to stare at them. There was a brief argument in Sealgarni, followed eventually by nodding of heads. Eventually she turned back to the humans and spoke again in Talan. “We will pay this death price. But you will not enter our keep. Stay. Wait.”

“Among our people, negotiation begins with the exchange of names, I am Mirabelle.”
“I am Ailith, but among our people, we do not negotiate.”
“You are grieved at the loss of your son. We have also lost many friends, companions who were like brothers to us. We can avoid more deaths if we can reach an agreement with words.”
“Death is the price of life for a hunter, and it is the price of war.”
“But we are not at war with you!”
“We are sealgair, we are at war with everyone.” Ailith’s tone was dismissive, as if telling a very stupid child an obvious truth.
Mirabelle tried again. “We have had enough of killing, and our people do not kill except in self defense.” She felt the falsehood in the words. Knew they were a lie even though she wished they weren’t. She continued on regardless. “We will leave you in peace, but you must pay a death price for the harm your warriors caused.”
“What is this ‘death price?’”
“A ransom or penalty. We want our wagons and horses returned, enough clean water for the journey home, and the machines your warriors took from the ruins we were exploring. Do that and we walk away. No one else has to die. Your children do not have to die.”
“You would demand tribute and threaten a sword over our children’s necks?!” The sealgair woman snarled and Mirabelle recognized the shift of her weight as she considered attacking.
“I am offering you a way to save them. We have slain your warriors, what would a rival sealgair clan offer you?”
The woman did not respond but considered. “If we do this you leave and return over the mountain?”
“Yes.”
The woman shouted up at her friends on the wall who had gathered around to stare at them. There was a brief argument in Sealgarni, followed eventually by nodding of heads. Eventually she turned back to the humans and spoke again in Talan. “We will pay this death price. But you will not enter our keep. Stay. Wait.”

List of sharing prompts for the #fantasyIndiesjune hashtag

With an act of will she tried again and stood, steadying herself on a hanging willow tree. A raven scolded her from above for shaking the tree and she bent to grab a stone to throw, but the bird was gone before she could. Gritting her broken teeth she started climbing again. She had to keep moving. She could not die here! Would not!
She climbed for most of the rest of the afternoon. The raven had followed her and several more of its friends joined it, waiting for their meal to stop moving. She managed to stun one of them with an improvised sling made from her bandages and a smooth river rock, but it recovered before she could climb to where it fell and for the next hour the birds followed her, dropping stones on her and harassing her as she went.
When night came she crawled into the bushes to hide, stuffing her jacket with leaves and pulling her hat down low over her ears for warmth as she clung to her stuffed bunny and shivered.

A wide-brimmed hat firmly on his head, he walked back out the door and into the light of an objectively lovely morning that he had no interest in appreciating. The alley here was narrow, paved in cobblestone, and crisscrossed with washing lines. Thick red brick walls slick with moisture from the fog and growing moss in places rose high above the alleyway, layer upon layer. To Richard, humanity here felt stacked nearly as tight as the bricks, the weight of them pressing down on him. He desperately wanted - needed - to get back on the road and away.
He tried to console himself, thinking that the city wasn’t all bad. There were significantly more book shops than you’d find in the average forest for a start! The thought made him smile and he pulled his journal out of a vest pocket and wrote it down before continuing on.
Up ahead the alley emptied out onto a wide boulevard busy with carts and people. He turned left and walked uphill maybe a quarter of a mile, purchased a pair of meat pies from his favorite cart, and walked down another alley until it opened up onto a wide square where he found a seat under a broad spreading oak tree.
By the look of it, the tree predated the city - one of the lucky few that hadn’t been cut. Broad spreading branches shaded a large portion of the square here, softening the sunlight that filtered through its leaves. Richard had first found it years ago when he came here fleeing that cursed farm and arrived homeless, nearly penniless, and looking for work. For a country boy, life in this rat warren of bricks had been overwhelming and finding a place he could sit in the shade and think had been like air to a drowning man. He had spent countless hours here in the years since and always made a point of taking lodgings nearby when he was back in town. He thought of the tree almost as an old friend and felt as if he could breathe a little better when sitting in its shade.

nursery rhyme from 1764:
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common
But let the greater villain loose
that steals the common from the goose

The law demands that we atone
when we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
who take things that are yours and mine

Richard dropped back and walked on his own for a while. He had been embarrassed when Darin asked if he was a philosopher, but it wasn’t so far from the truth. He was just a philosopher with bills to pay! He wondered ruefully how any person could claim to know the meaning of life if they spent it indoors instead of out in the world.
More than anything else he just wanted to matter. He’d spent his whole childhood hearing his father tell him how stupid and useless he was until he’d believed it. For the few years he’d spent at school he heard much the same from his teachers and even the other children. He missed subtext, took things too literally, could not see the invisible social rules that they seemed to all just know.
His current project was a set of quotes and observations about life on the road and what it would mean to be the hero he dreamed of becoming. He hadn’t started with much in the way of a role model or any specifics beyond being the opposite of his father, but he worked at it. Slowly he was building his own moral framework and understanding of the world.
Like its author, the work was very much a work in progress, but when it was done he hoped to finally inhabit a model of the world that made sense, that was internally consistent, that he could use to find his way in a larger world where never seemed to quite fit.
He called it his “Hero’s Creed” and secretly hoped that someday it would be read all over Talav, proof that he was not so broken as they had all believed. First though, he’d have to do something worthwhile, something that would make people care about what he had to say.

A map of Talav and Fasak, the (part of the larger) fantasy world where the Hero's Creed books are set.

The girl woke to find herself surrounded, tall gray shapes in the darkness loomed over her under the desert sky, lit by the last embers of her signal fire. Their conversation seemed animated, though it was in a guttural yowling language she did not understand. She tried to speak to them but they could not understand her - they did not speak Talan and she had never had an opportunity to learn Selgarni.
Still, she was overjoyed - the fire had worked! They had seen her signal and come to bring her home!
She tried to stand but was unsteady on her feet and was taken completely by surprise when one of them kicked her back to the ground roughly. Without thinking, she reacted in rage, lunging at them and slashing futilely with claws cut too short to matter. A blow to her head with the hilt of a sword sent her spinning and she finally caught a glimpse of him in the moonlight. He was tall - far taller than any human - and strong with forearms as big as her waist and teeth like blades. After a life spent among humans, he looked like a nightmare come to life. He seized her by the throat and lifted her into the air, legs dangling uselessly as she struggled to breathe and flailed at him. The stars seemed to dim and she heard a cruel laugh as she struggled against the closing darkness.
He threw her to the ground hard and she lay gasping as his knee landed on her back and he began tying her arms behind her.
She snarled at him like a feral animal, struggling but unable to escape. Of all the betrayals in her young life, to be treated so by her own people after fighting so hard to find them was one of the bitterest. She might have pleaded with them or made threats, but what would have been the point? They could not understand her and she would not beg.
Instead she grew silent and made a promise to herself - she would survive this, and she would find a way to win vengeance. Whatever happened, whatever it cost, her captor would die by her hand. She swore it there in the dirt of the hil…

A white cat with blue eyes

Ash Clan
Negotiation is battle by other means. Do not hesitate to use every weapon at your disposal.
- Words of the Queen

The night Rathmar first met Ailith, he had come searching for her husband. Vor had been a thorn in his side for years, a cunning and ruthless opponent who had killed many of Ash’s warriors. His wedding was the perfect time to strike.
When they’d found the gate unlatched and the guards unconscious, it seemed too good to be true and his men suspected a trap. As they slaughtered the warriors, their enemy’s new king was nowhere to be found. Even as his men died leaderless, Vor was absent.
When Rathmar and two of his lieutenants entered the great tent at the center of the camp he did not know what to expect, but he definitely did not expect the heavy scent of incense and a woman in bloodstained wedding robes sitting by her king’s corpse and leisurely eating a pickled sheep’s heart. As his soldiers approached her she ignored them, looking at him as if evaluating a cut of meat before standing.
“You were to be Vor’s wife, yes?”
“So he told me.”
“And do you not mourn your husband?”
“What is he to me? I owed him a debt and I have repaid it. Why would I grieve for a vanquished enemy?
“You wear wedding robes.”
“I am unmarried, my wedding bed lies behind you, undisturbed.”
He laughed aloud at her daring.
“He was your enemy as well, wasn’t he?” she asked pointedly.
“Not as much of an enemy as I thought, to be killed by a woman.” He turned to go and gestured for his men to take her, but in the time it took him to turn away, a hidden blade had pierced the eye of the first man and she had torn the throat from a second with her claws before his sword could even clear its sheath. Rathmar turned at the sound and suddenly she was inside his guard with her body pressed tight against him and her claws at his throat. She whispered into his ear “I have killed one king today, should I make it two?”