OurCasts
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Ryou, a persistently quelled and controlled bookkeeper, inadvertently slips between measurements. Since he's a commonsense, cautious man and not a total blockhead, he follows his steps and slips right back out once more, but he brought somebody along side him. And presently his life is progressing to take a sharp turn away from "quelled" and "controlled" to exceptionally interesting places without a doubt: into a distorted picture of the past and into an awfully questionable future, through war and savagery, to the exceptionally edges of reality and past.
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OurCasts chapter 26
Ryou waited until the sound of his lover's footsteps faded, then he hoisted himself out of the bath. He didn’t feel like wallowing in luxury just now. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he didn't want to stay alone in this ringing open space with the occasionally echoing drip of condensation as only punctuation to his thoughts. He walked over to the alcove where the bath attendants had placed towels and Ryou's dirty, travel-worn clothes. It was a shame to slip into that after finally getting thoroughly clean, but it wasn't as if he had much choice in the matter. Ryou currently had two pieces of clothing to his name, that and the tunic Darius had given him, which was in a small pack last seen tied to his horse, location currently unknown. The bath was rich with the scent of oil, water, wet stone and soap, but a new smell made Ryou wrinkle his nose in surprise; a heady fragrance like incense. "I can see what he sees in you." Ryou spun around, shock a heavy weight in his ches
OurCasts Chapter 25
Though the style was wildly different, the principle of Sura's royal bath was similar to onsen, and Ryou found himself oddly reassured by this small familiarity. The light supper served on the benches of a warm anteroom was excellent; fine bread free of grit, meat that didn't taste a little funny, fruit that was not even slightly withered. The wine was almost as good as the one Ryou had barely tasted in Leyam's chambers. Urtupati took great care in shaving Ryou and anointing him with various fragrant oils, and then he gave Ryou a massage that felt like that Roman deserter, Gaius, working him over again. It wasn't for the faint of heart, but once Ryou cleaned off the oil, soaped, rinsed off and then slipped into the large basin of warm water with Darius, he felt just about as good as he'd ever felt since coming to the Outlands. The basin walls had tiers so that bathers could sit and recline with the water up to their chests. Ryou sank down in the warmth with a groan of relief. Darius
OurCasts Chapter 24
As they made their way around the dais to the rear door, Darius and Ryou were intercepted by a good number of men who wanted to talk briefly with the former, congratulating him on the battle's outcome and asking for some of his time the next day. Darius got out of each conversation with a minimum of time and courtesy, which nobody seemed to be surprised or too offended at, but it still took the pair twenty minutes to reach the exit. "Inder's balls, that's better," Darius muttered, giving the room behind them one last look over his shoulder as if expecting the whole pack to follow him, tugging at the corner of his tunic. "I love Sura, I swear, but five minutes back here and I want to go to war again. Ashur's Hall is one of the public places. From here on out, it'll be quieter. Cham, Zuru," he added, looking down at the dogs. The pair perked up at the sound of their master calling their name. "Home. Wait there." The two hounds turned and trotted off to the right. Darius didn't watch t
OurCasts Chapter 23
"That's the island of Mooncrest," said Darius, pointing at a meniscus of green ground parting the waters of a slow, wide river in the valley below. "It's the crossing to which Zaratusra himself brought my ancestors several eras ago. That's where I'd hoped to go directly from Essin, if the stars had been on our side instead of intent on dicking around with us. If we'd have come through here instead of the Tanatoria border, we'd have been only a couple of hours away from home." "It was longer, but it was a nice ride," said Ryou, belying the state of his backside and indeed his whole body. "And you did tell me that the mountain road was the pretty way of approaching Sura." "I never said 'pretty'. I said it was pleasant enough," said Darius with the dismissive air of one who was more concerned with well-defended rather than easy on the eye. But behind the gruff and tough attitude, Ryou could tell he was fiercely proud of his home country and didn't particularly mind this opportunity of
OurCasts Chapter 21
The room Ryou fled to was long and narrow, barely two meters wide. Footsteps in the larger space he'd just left prompted him to quickly pull the tapestry back into place like a door. A bit of light still snuck past it to illuminate rows of decorated wooden boxes, the larger ones on the floor, smaller ones lining two long shelves. Sandalwood and dried flowers scented the air, a relief from the charnel stink in the other room which Ryou was getting a little too good at not thinking about...he ditched that train of thought. It looked like he was going to have to reassert his moral compass here in the Outlands rather than in a shrink's office back home, and the result would undoubtedly be different, but one thing was certain: now was not the time to do it. He'd stepped further into the room without thinking. He could barely see the chests anymore. At the far end of the walk-in wardrobe, another curtain was pulled aside, leading to yet another room, but that one was darkened and provided
OurCasts Chapter 22
The next day started out wonderfully. Ryou's sleep was not plagued by any more scary visions, which his burgeoning instincts suggested was a good sign. Better yet, he woke up next to Darius, and despite the complexities of his situation here, the pitfalls that might lurk between them, virtual strangers that they still were, Ryou felt a rare and pure moment of happiness as he watched his lover sleep. Sleeping very soundly indeed, one arm thrown up above his head, eyes closed, face relaxed. He'd wrapped his hair in a twist of cloth tied at the nape to avoid having the disks braided into the ends clink against the roll of blanket that served as pillow. With his hair pulled back like that, Darius looked different, younger, and a little less fierce. A dog yipped in the main part of the pavilion, followed by a soft mutter of "Shhh, Zuru." Ryou, who'd glanced around automatically at the noise, jumped as he realized Darius was now sitting up beside him, bleary eyes fixed on the partition gi
OurCasts Chapter 20
In the split second during which reality changed, Ryou remembered the Honda falling a considerable distance through the air last time he'd tried to move through space by cheating his way past the usual three dimensions. And horses did not come equipped with airbags. Oh shit- His horse screamed in panic- but its hooves hit solid surface an instant later. The animal skidded and slid to its rump, legs splaying out until it was almost flat on the ground, at which point Ryou lost whatever support his stirrups gave him and tumbled off. He picked himself up dazedly. Nothing broken this time, though his right side was now as bruised as his left. He panicked for a moment when he realized he'd lost his glasses - but they'd only skidded a little away before fetching up against a fallen tapestry, and were intact when he picked them up. His hand was shaking when he fit them onto his nose, but he immediately felt more centered once the world lost its blurriness. The surface onto which he'd falle
OurCasts Chapter 19
In the mind's eye, the last hour of the Siege of Essin looked like a Kurosawa's historical movie blended with a Westerner's peplum. Imagination was all Ryou had to rely on. He could hear a deep sustained booming sound that could be felt through the ground; the tromp of feet, the clash of weapons, war cries and screams and possibly cannon fire, all so blended by numbers and distance they formed a homogeneous background noise like an earthquake. But a kilometer away in a dell near the river, Ryou couldn't even see the city's tallest buildings. The rear guard was composed of a few hundred men watching the dam, presumably to stop the defenders from making a sortie to destroy it and drown the troops invading them over the marshy ground where the forked river had flowed. Riders regularly came and went, stopping near a group of three men with plumed helmets. They didn't spread the information on how the day was going, though, so Ryou and the rest of the infantry were left in ignorance to li
OurCasts Chapter 18
Ryou woke in an actual bed, or what passed for one here. No larger than a couch, the carved wooden frame had ropes strung across it supporting a cloth pallet, but it was comfortable enough. Rand had informed him in passing that he could make free use of the bed, the tent and everything in it; they'd belonged to some officer of the Assyrian army who died during the first part of the siege. Despite that somewhat morbid provenance, it was much better than sleeping on a bed of bracken wrapped in a blanket. Rand had not taken him right back to the camp on the hill the preceding afternoon. He’d detoured to a small encampment in a copse of olive trees where wagons and tents had been set up in a clearing by a stream. Injured or sick soldiers occupied the pallets under the trees and in every tent . Ryou counted approximately two hundred. Young men and women, sometimes barely children, cared for them. All the attendants wore the same knee-length undyed linen tunics and a serious air a
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