The Harvest Moon Consortium

[Winterhawk99]

Kano Makuni


A single campfire usually draws less attention than the campfires of an entire army, but twelve men would hardly put a dent in an enemy force if one did decide to attack. The chances of such were slim in the Braem Wood, anyways. At a few hundred miles south of the Blight, any trolloc or other shadowspawn would be seen and killed in the Borderlands before getting this far. Braem was nearly abandoned of people, too, so there was little chance of humans attacking.

Still, Kano thought, it would feel a lot safer back with the rest of General Cauthon’s army. He to worry about keeping his men fed and supplied during the extended scouting expedition.

His men! If someone had told him five years ago that he would eventually have command over eleven soldiers, he would have laughed. He isn’t a leader; he just has experience with fighting.

There was Angar, the only other Shienaran in the unit, peering into the trees instead of watching the fire. Once again, Kano wished he had been raised with the militaristic, Borderland attitude like the rest of the Shienarans, instead of having an upbringing like a Midlander.

The Borderlands were always at war against the Blight. During his days as a courier, Kano met many Midlanders who thought trollocs were just legends. Legends! And soldiers like Angar had to be ready to fight them any day! The Midlands needed to be awakened to the threat of the Blight, but the only way that would happen would be if shadowspawn started raiding deeper south.

The Last Battle is coming; the Lord Dragon was reborn to lead the fight against the Dark One, as prophesied, but the Midlands wouldn’t stand a chance in the battle. At least the Borderlands and the Aiel would follow the Dragon.

Kano’s thoughts were interrupted by Angar giving a yell and jumping to his feet. His sword was half drawn as a large, black crossbow bolt suddenly sprouted through his breastplate. Angar stared at it, slumped to his knees, and gave one last look at Kano before collapsing.

Time was not wasted, though. Because of Angar’s warning, the other eleven men, including Kano, had crossbows cocked and swords ready as looming shapes twisting parts of animals and men swarmed towards the camp. Bad luck, Kano thought. At least a fist of forty trollocs, and being lead by a myrdraal.

The men did not wait to fire, dropping half a dozen trollocs before the shadowspawn overran them. They dropped their crossbows and picked up their swords, fighting the hopeless battle against a force three times their number.

The fight was short. Kano lay in the dirt with a blade through his chest, watching the trollocs cut up the body of one of his men, he couldn’t tell which. His final thoughts were a jumbled rush of questions. Where did the trollocs come from? How many fists are marching through the Wood? Did someone get away to warn others? My men are dead; they’ll never see home again. None of us will live to fight the Last Battle. What will things look like on the other side of death? O, Creator, will my soul be reborn to fight again?

Blackness.


The yellow light pulsed slightly from the rough stone against Kano’s cheek. Stone? He was just in the dirt. Why was the stone glowing? When did it start drizzling? Wasn’t it just night?

He sat up and looked around. He was in a different, older-looking woods, and there was a house nearby. There was no sign of his men, the trollocs, or the campfire, and he was sitting on a low, hexagonal pedestal with spires curving away in each corner. The stone itself was glowing.

Kano jumped up and backed away until his feet crunched on old leaves and dirt. His chest felt like it never had a sword through it, and he wore foreign working clothes, not plate armor.

This must be the other side, he though, or maybe I’ve been reborn. It must be one or the other, for he could no longer feel the pull on his soul, trying to draw him towards the Shadow’s object he had unfortunately bonded with, early in his career. Thinking further, none of his men were here, so he must have already been reborn, but why in an adult body instead of a newborn?

At least he still had a backpack, with supplies in it. He looked at what he had. Some jerky: venison, by the taste; a strange little tool that resembled a handheld scythe; a very conspicuous absence of a sword.

Four feet, two large and two small, crunched in the soil behind him, accompanied by corresponding voices, just barely heard over the birdsongs of the forest. As he turned and looked, his eyes widened even more. There was a tall man with blue skin walking along an old road, and a tiny girl with him, walking quickly to keep up with his giant stride. No, she wasn’t so small. She was maybe about ten years old, but looked small compared to the man with her. They spotted Kano.

“Hello,” the blue-painted man said. Somehow it surprised Kano that such a surreal person would notice him, but he responded.

“H’lo,” his southern Shienaran accent seemed especially out of place now, with this man’s strange accent.

“We were just heading north to hunt a boar for the dwarves. Would you like to come with?” the woman said. Kano blinked. She said dwarf so casually, but isn’t it an insult to call someone that? Further, she herself must be a dwarf, because her voice was very low for being so small.

“Err... Sure. Name’s Kano. Kano Makune,” he said, holding out his hand to the man. The woman shook it, though.

“I’m Sweetpea Tinderblue, and this is Gil.” she said, brushing against the sleeve of his shirt, too. Kano just nodded numbly, and they set off.


Kano asked Gil why he painted his skin, and Sweetpea laughed at him. Gil explained to Kano that he was half Ogier (He said Ogier strangely, too.) and half human. Kano had heard and read stories about Ogier, but had not actually met one of the fabled Builders. They very well could have blue skin, even though all everyone described about them was their huge size and braided eyebrows. He also wondered how it was possible that a human and an Ogier could have kids. That seemed... impossible.

After further adventures, Kano found a set of armor and a sword that seemed similar enough to the ones he used to wear, but someone told him they were magic. He had never heard the word before, and questioned them further about it. Magic seemed to be similar to the One Power he knew of, but it was very different at the same time. When someone, such as Gil, started “casting” magic, Kano could see strange things happening. That didn’t happen with channeling the Source.

Most of the people he talked to said they were from different worlds. Kano began to suspect he was no longer on his own world, too. Things were just too strange. What people called dragons here looked more like rakken back home, and they weren’t talking about the Lord Dragon. They also talked bout gods a lot. Like magic, he had never heard this word before. It sounded like they were very powerful people with long lives and supernatural abilities. This was only a start.

There didn’t seem to be a Dark One here. The Shadow seemed to be fractured, and almost never worked all-together to wipe out the few people living on this world. Monsters seemed to live in groups of their own specie, rarely joining others, unlike shadowspawn such as trollocs and myrdraal.

One day, as Kano was returning to the dwarves’ house from a city of dragonkin (strange creatures that looked like a cross between a giant, winged lizard and a human), he saw something that made his blood run cold. A draghkar was sitting near the campfire. Not only that, but some of the outworlders were talking with it!

// Quick break: According to the Wheel of Time online encyclopaedia ( http://www.encyclopaedia-wot.org/ ), a draghkar is: A creature of the Dark One, made originally by twisting human stock. A Draghkar appears to be a large man with bat-like wings, whose skin is too pale and whose eyes are too large. The Draghkar's song can draw its prey to it, suppressing the victim's will. There is a saying: "The kiss of the Draghkar is death." It does not bite, but its kiss will consume first the soul of its victim, and then its life.

Kano drew his sword and approached slowly, telling the others to get back. The draghkar turned and looked at him as he approached it, and he got ready to lunge at it. Everyone was telling him not to attack, and he couldn’t figure out why this one had black skin and white hair, instead of white skin and black hair. In addition, it looked more like a woman than a man. What was going on? Kano was terribly confused, but he lowered his blade.


Kano Makuni


The creature did not attack, but just stared quizzically at him. It was odd that it had a sword sheathed at its side, too: a curved-blade sword similar to Kano’s, but smaller. Jodro, one of Kano’s newly-found friends, convinced him to sheath his sword and listen as people expained what was going on. The creature was actually a girl of a race called the Elder Fey’ri. She wasn’t evil, although many of her race were. She was not shadowspawn, and she even had a name: Ameilia Henner of House Thadrak.

She was actually a pretty good person, as Kano slowly came to discover, and a fierce warrior as well. Kano, Shana (she called herself a cleric, one who dedicates themselves to a god, Jodro, and Ameilia often began traveling together, and they were soon joined by another man, someone who called himself the Dark Wanderer, although Sweetpea, and later Kano, called him Fred. Kano tried to put some military discipline in them, but gave up. The tactics he used to use didn’t work as well on this world, against different creatures.


Leaning against the rock, Kano looked over the edge before him. He was sitting on a small outcropping in a sheer cliff face. Below him, the valley faded under the heavy clouds. The air was thin here, with the mountains being so high, but snow would often fall anyways. This reminded him of the Mountains of Dhoom along the northern border of Shienar, and he wondered if there was a warm, humid Blight to the north of these, also.

He thought about all that had happened to him since waking up, and he really thought about magic. People could be brought back to life with magic, here! Back home, only the Dark One did something that evil, but here it was not a bit evil at all. Kano even saw Shana bring people back from the dead, and she was a good person. Well, maybe not nice, but she had good intentions. There was nothing magic couldn’t do, it seemed. Light! These mountains were probably formed by magic, too! They just seemed too impossible, too vertical to be real.

He was starting to remember his skills; for some reason they just faded away when he was reborn. He was remembering his blademaster training. Ha. It looks like there is no way to be granted the Heron-marked blade here; he was probably the only one who even knew what that was. He was so close to getting his test before he died, too.

He was also learning things he never knew before, too. There was an inner calm he was feeling that he only used to feel when he summoned the Flame in the Void to push away his emotions. This helped him stop and think things over when he was by himself. With other people, he still seemed to get caught up in what was going on, and would stop thinking.

Kano felt the cool breeze from the north push its way along the valley, and he shivered, wrapping his cloak tighter around himself. He was still having trouble understanding Bahamut, the god Ameilia worshipped. What was worshipping on this world? On his world, worshipping meant you just didn’t give your soul to the Dark One. Here,--what did Ameilia say?--it was knowing that he would bring your soul to Heaven when you die. This would be hard to get used to.

Oh, well. This was a nice break, but he had to return to working on the village. Kano stood up and pulled himself up onto more level ground. One of those strange elementals was nearby, and Kano snuck around it, using a magic ring that hid him from being seen.

Think of how tactics would change back home, if magic was there! Armies like the Band of the Red Hand wouldn’t have to slow down to remain hidden as they marched; they could just turn invisible and keep a steady pace. Scouts would be much safer, too.

Kano passed a group of bugbears huddled around the warmth of a campfire. He really felt sorry for them; they thought they had to attack anyone wandering through this area. He was invisible so he wouldn’t have to fight and kill the poor creatures. Most of the “evil” creatures here didn’t serve some dark master. The were almost human in how they thought, but they hated everyone else. Minotaurs and goblins were the same way.

Kano eventually arrived at the offworlder village being constructed. Shana was using her magic to fire clay into bricks. It sure was nice that they didn’t need to keep a kiln hot for firing bricks. This was a lot faster. Jodro was digging out a basement for a building they said would be the town hall. Kano went over to help Jodro.

Shana and Jodro had gotten together a while back, after something Kano didn’t understand with Shana’s god. It was their idea, with support from Ameilia, to make the village for people from other worlds to come live. Kano didn’t think he would settle down just yet, but it would be nice to have a place he could go to just sit and relax without anything trying to kill him.


They had been at the forge for days. Kano was so tired, but he was too fascinated to sleep. Ameilia was blending two metals together that Kano had never heard of before coming here, in order to make a pair of swords. She had already done the same when making the blacksmithing hammers, but Kano just couldn’t get enough of it. She called it folding, and there was nothing like it on his home world. Ameilia would hammer the blade out to be twice as long as it should be, then bend it on itself at the middle, and pound it together. Then she would do it again.

Eventually she folded it enough times to her liking, and she began working on the shape. She hammered more gently, forming the edge, and filed away at the bottom, shaping the tang. She seemed to seek perfection in every tiny aspect of her work, turning it into a high art.

She finished by making a thong from an old cloak, and Kano felt an overwhelming amount of pride. His closest friend made, not just one, but two objects that would be legendary if they were back home. At the same time, he felt extremely tired. He had dozed off, despite the ringing of the hammer, more than once throughout the ordeal. He was ready for sleep.

The two of them traveled back to the village, and Kano immediately hopped into one of the bunks there, falling asleep just moments after pulling a blanket over himself. He dreamed of Ameilia at the anvil, shaping an object into existence. It was not a sword or a hammer, but was instead a tiny, platinum dragon figure, like the one hanging from Kano’s neck. He felt for it on his chest, but it wasn’t there and he realized Ameilia was making it. He tried to tell her not to, that he couldn’t figure out how to worship, but she looked up and Kano realized it was really Amothrawen, Ameilia’s mother.

Kano woke up and looked around. From the light shining through a window, he guessed he must have been sleeping for about twelve hours. He got dressed and left the dorm, joining the others in their labor on the buildings.



Story by Micteu