Chapter 5: Pleased to Meet You

Once Verrian gives the warning, it doesn't take a keen eye to notice something is out of the ordinary.

Within moments, the food the woman had taken is gone. Devoured. And she's looking around for other things to eat.

She sidles up to one of the men, as though trying to be sneaky, and her hand shoots out to try and steal something from him. He turns with alarming quickness and... you can watch it happen. His mouth and lower jaw quickly grow large and distended. He snaps his teeth at her -- teeth that haven't changed at all from their human form -- and she jumps back. Suddenly, she bellows out, "HUNGRY! SO VERY HUNGRY!" and jumps on the man. They begin wrestling on the ground, weirdly giant jaws snapping at one another ineffectively. The man's food share tumbles to the ground, and the other man and woman -- not the one who's been speaking to you, though -- scurry over to start gathering it up, snarling warnings at each other, muttering, "hungry... so very hungry" while their companions try and gnaw on each other.

The man who's been speaking turns crestfallen, his face falling into an almost comically large frown as his features broaden and elongate too. His speech is halting and slurred from his growing jaw. "Wery sorry... you see, we're so wery hungry." He gestures at the scene as if those words explain everything.

"Stop! Stop, you aglax iasutur wak!" he yells at them, waving his arms in the air to try and get their attention.

At least, you think that's what he calls them. It's not a language any of you understand, that's for certain. The situation is growing increasingly chaotic despite the ... man's? ... best efforts to calm it down, but they don't seem to be threatening you at all yet.

Everything goes crazy seemingly all at once. The two wrestling on the ground seem to have lost all conscious thought, and any intelligible language for that matter. They continue gnawing at one another, though they both whine at their apparent inability to do much damage with the meager teeth their forms have been cursed with. In trying to gather up the scattered food, the other two come to blows. "MINE!" yells the man, as the woman rips a sack from his hands, and he leaps atop her, his grotesquely sized mouth covering the entire top of her head for a moment. He spits her out, and you think you hear him complaining about hair in his mouth. She growls in response and starts swiping at him with her hands as though expecting to gut him with her fingernails... which aren't nearly long enough for that.

The fellow that had been speaking to you is darting back and forth between conflicts, flapping his arms ineffectually, continuing to babble in some unknown language, distraught. After a few moments, he speaks to Verrian -- yells, really, over the sounds of battle -- "Go! Please just go, and everything will settle down! Please, before they actually do hurt each other?"

His words are mushy and slurred through the bizarre anatomy of his mouth and jaw, but they're clear enough.

Ember's spell reveals no particular magical aura around the... whatever they are. Whether they're natural creatures or mutants of the war, their curious characteristics are a permanent and physical part of them now.

You ride away, though it's hard not to look back over your shoulder and see just how the bizarre melee is progressing. Try as he might, your liaison to the weird little group hasn't managed to completely separate everyone yet. There's little else to do but ride on.

The rest of that day and the evening pass uneventfully. Given your experience, you take a little extra time to find a secluded spot to make camp, but no one bothers you. On the final day of your journey, you reach the outlying farms and fields surrounding Hara. Like much of the city itself, this area has been laid to waste and barely rebuilt in the time following the War. There are a few scruffy farms here and there, though this early in the spring, there is little evidence of crops being grown. The farmers you pass are generally tired, worn-down individuals working with poor quality tools and rawboned animals. Those close to the road watch you warily as you pass: you get the sense that well-dressed and healthy passersby are a rare sight, and worthy of suspicion. A few head of cattle meander and graze listlessly on scrubby grass, certainly not well-fed.

Your companions who have spent time in Hara know that there is little money available to purchase new tools or hire any of the few extra hands to improve these places, and there has been little help forthcoming either from the newest rulers of Hara or from neighboring towns or nations. Everyone is caught up in their own survival.