Rehleian tales are often told by a choir of orators. Some in your standard harmony; others, calculated step-overs as if competing for stardom and the license to history. These dead men here, my work tonight: The Ward did say there were others, the stronger ones, the ones with knife-skills and a wolf’s temper, those who lived, and ran off with hands full as law enforcement rained down upon the dead and dying. Based on the tattooing, and choice of rags signifying to us locals what district they scoundrel’d out of, these men here were unacquainted, perhaps happenstance and hunger propelling their feet to the base of those standing tall on Do-Gooder’s Row. Yet they would be so eternally connected. Please remember this, the web and how the spiders tell of it, as it is our way, in the city of Nilghorde, all of Rehleia, and I’d be willing to bet a coin or two throughout all Mulgara.

It is convenient last night’s bloodbath allows me to mention Do-Gooder’s Row. When its knees or eyes were chiseled free from the towering lines of dull white, these moments have served as time-keeping devices for us Rehleians. The chiseling began the day our Years of Peace were declared. And much like my own life, happenings and fortunes have often been remembered by what stage the statues were in when life gave us our surprises.

These days, champions like Zaderyn Fover, a citizen who dove into the Black Tongue only to be carried off by its currents while trying to save a drowning child, shine bright and polished. But much of my tale will pull us back, back when the statues were but ugly rectangles crowned with faces and shoulders tortured by marble tumors.

—

My name is Seasmil Oleugsby. Most would say I am a large man. I’d concur; made from the heavy lifting, but not solely due to all the bodies. When I am lifting, my hair is tied in a ponytail; black hair, though like the many scars on my skin, it wasn’t always that way.

I was named after my great-grandfather, who led a charge on a camp of cannibal pirates off the coast of Suela. His name grew to legendary status, despite a rather gruesome end. He and his company were roasted alive in suits of hardened clay. Apparently there is a holiday in that idol-worshipping land that still mimics all of this. A ragged sailor once told how the women rub their clitorises on the face of the still-screaming meal to be. I often wondered if my ancestor had suffered this intriguing punishment, and if he had felt a final delight before the world went dark. It was a neglected portrait that hung from a wall during my youth that told me from him I’d inherited the Oleugsby menace: flat forehead, deep-set eyes, and a square jaw.