Chapter 5 Excerpt

Xavier has reached his destination with the aide of the Water Goddess, but did she send him to the wrong place?

It was Port King.

At least Xavier was pretty sure it was Port King. Everything looked different, older maybe, but there was definitely something off about this place. For one; the diversity of his last trip was gone. He saw nothing but Umani vendors. The Lunatician’s were gone, as were the Saurials, Elves, Dwarves, and the strange Gnomes. He could see a few Elves meandering in the marketplace near the dock but all others seemed to have vanished.
Less than two steps into the marketplace a commotion broke out and two people ended up in a vicious brawl. A crowd quickly gathered but no one seemed too eager to actually break the fight up. Cheers of enthusiasm and  calls for bloodshed surfaced as the louder voices. Xavier glimpsed it quickly and shook his head. This was definitely the wrong port. Leviathan had sent him to the wrong place, he was sure of it.

He walked away from the fight to look at some of the wares a vendor was showcasing when the Vendor gave an audible gasp. The squat man paled as he gazed at Xavier and the not-so-young wolf looked at him oddly. The vendor vanished into the back of his shop in a flurry of oversized robes and didn’t return. As Xavier continued to browse the shops, and getting the same reaction from more than a few of the merchants, was getting annoyed. He moved into a weapons Merchants display and the proprietor shrieked out an “Eep” as Xavier laid eyes on him.

Before the Merchant could run Xavier had snatched the front of his robes and pulled him close to his snarling muzzle. “Tell me why a man such as myself gets shunned so? Is my Gold not as valuable as the next or maybe it is because the Umani see us Lunatician’s as mere lap dogs!”

“N-no th-that’s not it at all Xavier!” the Merchant squeaked.  “I j-just…” seemingly unable to come up with a good answer on the spot the merchant went limp. “Please don’t kill me!”

Xavier’s brows creased in confusion as he looked at the timid human. He didn’t think he had expressed enough anger to make him think his doom was upon him, but it was more the fact that the merchant knew his name. A man he had never seen before in his life knew his name and apparently an un-warranted reputation.

“What makes you think I would waste my life for yours?” Xavier snapped.

The merchant paled even more, if it was possible, and forced himself to look up at the young werewolf. “You didn’t spare your crew sir, why would you spare a man you know not?”

“What!?” the werewolf choked out. He knew he hadn’t harmed his crew, why would an accusation like that be thrown his way now?

In answer to his unasked question the merchant motioned to a scroll that was posted on the wall opposite his stall. It was a very worn piece of parchment that bore Xavier’s likeness. His hybrid features of his wolven and human forms sketched in fine detail under the very bold words: WANTED; dead or alive. Beneath his image was a number that he didn’t even know. He could read and write, mathematics; simple addition and subtraction had been learned when he was a pup, but a number with seven zero’s behind it seemed impossible.

He dropped the merchant and focused on the wanted poster. Xavier pulled it off the wall and studied it from top to bottom. It said that he was wanted for questioning in the disappearance of the Morning Sun and her crew. That he was last seen boarding the ship of the Bloody Wench and headed north.

Xavier swallowed slowly. He turned slowly towards the rest of the marketplace, his eyes focused on the wanted posters that were plastered on almost ever wall. How had he missed them? An even more important question seemed to be; how was he linked to the disappearance of the Morning Sun? Hadn’t Captain Dust and Spirit left the island? He was alone on that God forsaken hunk of rock, he had explored everything and never found bodies let alone the bones of his crew mates. Where had they gone? What had happened?

Behind the wolf the fight had finally been broken up by the Royal Patrol and the crowd had dispersed leaving him quite exposed. The spectators moved back to the shops and displays that had drawn their attentions before and went about their business as if nothing had happened. Xavier knew he would stick out like a sore thumb so he dove into a crowd of wandering market goers. He would hide in plain sight until he could get out of the marketplace.

Just as he was about to leave the crowd he felt a slight almost non-existent tug on his hip and then the unmistakable feeling of a weight being lifted off his body. His coin purse had just been lifted. He scanned the crowd quickly seeing a small head bobbing quickly through the crowd with an odd golden yellow feather sticking out from his hair. Next to him a man shouted out to the boy “Todd! Get back here! Or so help me I’ll make you work the stables for a week before you get

Author's Note

just a taste of the new chapter

Reviews

[James Watts]

“N-no th-that’s not it at all Xavier!” the Merchant squeaked(“N-no th-that’s not it at all, Xavier!” the Merchant squeaked)

“You didn’t spare your crew sir, why would you spare a man you know not?”(“You didn’t spare your crew, sir, why would you spare a man you know not?”)

“What!?” the werewolf choked out.(avoid double punctuation. One or the other but never both)

One other nit: remember that the overabundance of the -ly adverb will weaken prose. Sometimes they cannot be helped, but for the most part they can by removing the -ly word or rewording the sentence and they should never be used in dialogue attribution. I didn't see many, but just wanted to point that out.
Other than that this was very nice and I enjoyed the read.