The Tales of Mulhus

In the harsh, arid desert, where the dry winds blow around the ever-shifting sands. A tall, sandstone fortress stands alone. The fortress town of Solf. Home of the major sulfur mines that supply the world’s sulfur demands. But this ever-ending demand has a deep, human cost. Many toil in deep and revolting sulfur pits, while dealing with toxic gases and other questionable conditions. Outside the mines, many deal with the sulfur waters and the air that smells of rotten eggs, which they have become accustomed to.

One of those unfortunate souls is Garit Sulfmen. Garit is a young man whose light tan skin and brown hair are yellowed by constant exposure. In the dense center of Solf, he lives with his family in small rooms within massive sandstone complexes that many others live in. Like his forefathers, he works in the sulfur mines. He works from the morning sun until twilight with almost no breaks. Although with such hard work, he never earns any money from it. Many like him have also earned little to none from their backbreaking work.

On the rare off day, he goes into the market square with what little khips they earned to purchase the essentials. He looks around the stalls and stands, with meager produce on display. Garit continued to look around the market until he saw the Water Merchant. This decrepit old man had only greed in his heart. This parasite controls the only working well in Solf and charges a hefty price for it. Garit was tasked with getting some water for home, so he had to face the man.

Garit walked up to the man with his empty bucket in hand. He faced down the man while the man looked back at him with that greedy smile.

“Hey, boy, want some water?” The Water Merchant asked with that grin.

“Yes, I would like to get some water,” Garit responded, anticipating the outrageous price.

“That would be five khips, please.” The Water Merchant grinned and said.

Garit stared at him, astonished by his greed. A bit of red grew on his face, knowing that this man profited from the desperate. He could not stand this any longer.

“By lord, you are a greedy bastard. It was only the last time I got water from you!” Garit shouted at him, for all in the market to hear.

The Water Merchant’s face went a few shades of white. He stared back in horror, clutching hard to his khip’s pouch.

“You are an evil bastard who sucks the little khips we have in this forsaken place!” Garit continued to shout angrily.

The entire market square goes quiet. Everyone stares at the commotion. No one says a word. But then, a Solf Guard steps in. Both the Merchant and Garit turn towards the Guard. The Merchant smirks, knowing what will happen to Garit. While Garit gets a pit in his stomach, knowing that he screwed up big time. The Solf Guards are not to be messed with. They ruthlessly enforced the laws of Solf with little consequence.

The Guard came even closer, drawing out his short blade. While Garit went pale, fearing the end, the Water Merchant started to express glee. He bounced around, assuming that the Guard would be on his side. But the Guard soon turned to the Water Merchant. The Merchant froze a little, not expecting to be targeted.

“Ummm, you know that this simpleton over here is the aggressor, right? He wanted to steal my water!” The Water Merchant pleaded his case.

The Guard, with his helmet covering his face, just stands. Not moving an inch. The Merchant breathes hard, face turning red while still clenching his dear pouch. He stares deeply while hastily pointing at Garit for his supposed crimes.

“Guard, the criminal is right there, and you are doing nothing. Do something or I will mak-”

Whoosh.

Crimson droplets hit the sandy ground. Then, a hand hits the ground. No one moves an inch. The Water Merchant soon realizes that his precious hand was gone, now covered in sand and blood. The Merchant widened his eyes and was in deep distress as he noticed the Guard’s sword, now with red on it.

“Wait… What?” The Water Merchant exclaimed with horror.

“Y-You can’t do-o thi-ss?” The Water Merchant said before passing out.

Thud, the Merchant lay on the ground with a growing pool of blood coming out of his sliced right arm. The Guard then comes over and takes the pouch of khips from the now pale left hand. The Guard bounces the pouch full of khips on his hand.

“Let this be a warning to all: the water belongs only to the Sulfon’s.” The Guard exclaims.

Garit soon grabbed the water from the well and quickly ran back home. He worked to avoid seeing any of those guards, not wanting to be like the Merchant. Sand shifting around his steps, he soon made it home to the small unit in the sandstone complex. Garit’s mother sits at the makeshift table, working on dinner. She then looks up to see Garit’s worried face at the doorway.

“Garit, what’s wrong?” Garit’s mother said worriedly.

Garit explained the entire situation at the market and how he was close to being killed by the guards. Her face tensed up at each harrowing detail. The merchant’s willingness to kill someone over water, the guards’ eerily calm nature, and the sudden swipe of a sword. She then warns Garit to never do what he did again, or else he would be like the Merchant. Garit nodded, knowing now from experience.

Soon, Garit’s father comes home. His tired, worn face shows the grueling nature of the mines. He sets down the pickaxe and bag and sits on the ground, struggling to breathe. Every time he sees his father in that condition, he eagerly seeks to escape from his horrid place. But he knows that he needs to be there for his family when his father passes. So he tried not to think too much about escaping.

Family dinner comes and goes; Garit then soon heads to bed for the night, knowing that he needed to be in the mines tomorrow morning. He looks out to the stars from a little hole in his room. He hopes that one day, he would have a better future. And he soon falls asleep, not knowing what will come of tomorrow.

In the early hours of the morning, the sounds of horns play out from the distance. The Mine Horns are awake and ready to alert the miners to work. Garit wakes up and quickly grabs his rusty pick and big bag. Before leaving, his mother gives him his daily ration and water canister and wishes him good luck. He heads out of home, expecting to do the same monotonous work that he has always done.

After sometime walking across Solf and out from the sandstone gateway of the fortress walls. Out in the vast lands, plumes of sulfur smoke froth out of the deep mines. Hundreds of people swung their pickaxes into the sulfur-rich rock. Garit assumed that he was prepared. Walking to the mines on the rough sand path, he saw around him the suffering from the mines. Garit felt less and less prepared as he got closer to the mines.

Standing at the ramps to the sulfur pit, the fumes were intoxicating. Garit’s throat tightened, and his eyes watered. He then got shoved down the ramps by some other workers. Not caring one bit about safety. He soon adjusted to that push and prepared to mine some sulfur. He traveled down further in the pit, looking for some promising spot to mine with little interruption.

He found a decent spot and started to swing away. With every strike, sulfur chunks fell from the wall. Sweat from his brow. The sulfur continued to irritate his eyes and skin. It was torment as he had to carry all of the sulfur up the ramps to the collection pit. His bags, full of sulfur, were a pain to carry. His back and feet ached from all the mining. He wanted to be done, but he could not be done until the Mine Horns played again at dusk. So he continued to suffer.

As he kept mining, a fellow sulfur miner came to him, asking about something.

“Hey, do you think something feels off today?” The sulfur miner said, but with some worry in his voice.

“No?” Garit said.

“Hmm, I just have this weird feeling, as lately there has been more bloodshed in Solf by those Guards, and yesterday’s incident at the well was quite brutal.” The sulfur miner explained.

Garit asked him more about the recent bloodshed, as he was not aware of any more. The sulfur miner hesitated at first, but then he explained that a family was murdered by the guards for failing to pay up a debt. He kept bringing up more heinous stories. Each story was worse than the last. Garit soon wished that he had not heard of this bloodshed. This cannot get any worse today.

An unusual horn sound could be heard from afar. It was not like any other sound. Garit saw him and the other miners staring around, wondering what that sound could be. Then, sounds of screaming from several stories above startled everyone. Garit knew that something had gone deeply wrong. No way that a fortress with one of the most well-trained and armed soldiers in their part of the world was getting invaded. There were bandit raids once in a while, but this was something else.

Bodies then began to drop from above. The wooden ramps were streaked with blood from the corpses of the fellow miners. Everyone panicked; people bumped into each other, trying to find a way out. The wooden ramps shook from the enormous crowds piling onto them. The screams only got louder. Garit dropped his pickaxe and bag and rushed towards one of the less crowded ramps. He pushed as many miners away, hoping to get out.

Garit’s mind raced with thoughts about who might be invading. Did the bandits amass enough to launch a full invasion of the mines? But that did not explain the falling bodies. Why would they throw them down the pits? Actually, why would they even kill the miners? A lot of thoughts were rushing around, until he realized something horrifying. The bodies were quite disfigured and extremely gory, something that no simple bandit would do.

As soon as Garit made it up the ramps, he saw the scene that would forever haunt him. Around the ramps, stacks of mutilated corpses lay lifelessly. A bunch of body parts were thrown across the sands, and some were even close to the edges. This was the work of some type of sickos. Sounds of bangs could be heard from a distance as Garit started to see some strange raiders in red, riding around strange, crimson horses. They seemed to ruthlessly attack anyone nearby, either a Solf Guard or a simple sulfur miner. They did not seem to care one bit.

The raiders in red wore some type of disturbing red scale armor that pulsed in strange ways. They wielded deformed spear swords that oozed crimson and were ready to pierce anyone. While hiding behind some sulfur crates, Garit saw a Guard being sliced in half by one of those raiders. It grabbed the top half of the Guard, and it pulled out nasty, bloody claws and ripped off the now dented helmet. The Guard’s face shows countless layers of fear and pain in that expression. The raider then opened their crimson helmet slot to reveal a horrifying maroon tentacle, which wrapped all over the Guard’s face, and the head popped soon after.

“They aren’t human,” Garit muttered to himself.

Garit’s face went through fear and panic, and distraught. How did that sulfur miner earlier know about something this horrifying? Garit soon stayed in place, crouched and covered his face, ignoring the pain. Everything is now in misery; everyone around him is either dead or dying a painful, bloody death. He contemplated the idea of accepting his fate. But then, an opportunity arose for him.

Tied to some post, an unattended, gray horse stood in panic. The horse’s head moved around as it kept trying to free itself. Garit muttered to himself about being capable enough to ride it out to freedom. Either he could do it, or die trying. So he hastily moved through the bloody grounds towards the horse. As he got close to the horse, a Guard appeared. He noticed Garit’s efforts to escape.

“Stop right there, you scum! This horse is mine, and if you touch it, I will gut you out like a fish!” The Guard yelled.

The Guard then started to swing his short blade towards Garit, missing his slashes. Garit dodged them and tried to think of a way to take him down. He had nothing to use, but then he thought of an idea. He got the Guard to eventually hit the rope that kept the horse in place.

Slash, the rope was cut.

The horse then started running around like crazy, as it could hear the constant bangs and screams nearby. Meanwhile, the Guard, still focusing on Garit, went for the final attack. He raised the blade high and readied his swing at Garit. Then the horse kicked the Guard in the back, knocking him down to the ground. The horse was going crazy, but Garit just managed to get on him without being flung off completely.

But right after he got on him, the horse started to bolt. The horse ran straight into a crowd of miners. Garit tried to steer the horse away, but it caused them to disperse. Soon, Garit and the horse would end up facing one of those red raiders. It wielded a gory mace with extremely spiky points on it. It started spinning the mace around, readying its attack. Garit saw this and tried again to get the horse to steer away from it, but the horse refused. It ran straight towards it, and Garit had seconds to think. The mace soon reached Garit, but just barely missed him. Garit’s chest pounded heavily.

The red raider continued to pursue him, swinging around that bloody mace ball. Garit looked back again and saw the helmet slot still open. Instead of a bloody tentacle, a disturbed grin was shown. It showed its horrific teeth, stained with blood. While Garit saw that, the horse continued to be a mess, running towards people and objects with no regard. Knowing this, Garit had to be sure to keep the horse in check, so he could be out and alive.

Soon, though, Garit and now his horse would reach the road leading out of Solf into the vast desert lands. He just barely survived the invasion with no clue to who was invading him. Garit turned back to Solf for the last time as it was now in flames and the walls crumbled down. He worried for his family, if they even survived the invasion at all, and if he had the chance to see them ever again. But he was now all alone in the desert, with no gear and only an unstable horse.