"Can't see a thing."
Who would have thought that when I finally got the chance to visit the ocean, the fog would hide it all from us? I have seen the southern icy waters more than enough times, but that was way different from this. I assumed at least because it was all shrouded in mystery, but regardless, we traveled in style on our abyssal mounts.
"Well, Dio, it is the autumn after all," Fang noted, nibbling on some food in the saddle. "Land of the Summer or not, seasons are seasons."
"What poor timing," Bastion confirmed, waving his large hands as if he were trying to drive away the fog himself. "But the road will follow the shore for a while, right? By noon it should be cleared up completely."
"It probably will, but it's still quite a letdown," I complained, straining my remaining eye. "Now I got to listen to the waves all day without seeing anything. And what is this cold? This place is supposed to be always warm, right? The birthplace of the orcs."
"Don't ask me, I'm a beastmen." Fang shrugged, scratching his wolf ears as if showing them off. "And Bastion was born in Saipole. The exact opposite corner of the continent. But I guess the nights are cold here too."
"Where did you get that from?" The ogre asked, sounding offended. The fog carried their voice easily, but I could barely see them if they wandered a few yards further ahead. "I'm from Cranta Proper, just the eastern part of it. I have nothing to do with the Sea People or its orcs."
"But are you from an orc village at least, or one of your parents were ogres?" I asked if they already brought it up. "I was always curious about how this thing worked with the advanced specimens."
"I don't know." I heard the ogre scratching his neck. I started to rely on my ears a lot more, now that I was reduced to my right eye. "I never met them, or at least, no memories whatsoever. From very early on, I worked on a treadmill for humans. Until it closed down, thanks to the Collapse, it was a lumber mill first, then a regular one that made flour. Then I was freed, or rather abandoned."
"It's been two years since you've been recruited into the Twelve? And you never talked about it." Fang noted, sounding surprised. I knew some things about his background, but then, I was the one who recruited him. I ought to know my stuff. "I was practically free, already before the Collapse too. My wife ran a tailor workshop in the old capital and earned her freedom through work. She freed me as well."
"Right, and she gave you that beautiful daughter too," I added, remembering that orange-tailed fox girl we had met in Nateaser. "What was her name? Fenna? Lucky bastard. Why did you even sign up?"
"Well, as I said, my wife's shop was in the old capital, and she disappeared with it." The beastman changed his tone. I regretted asking, but he didn't seem to mind. "I left my daughter in the nearby refugee camp. Basically to organise the survivors into a proper village. I set out to look for her mother and that's how I met the Demon Lord."
"Wait, you left her behind to do all that? Just how old is she?" I asked, surprised. I never understood how he could leave behind a child, but she was left there to lead people. His family must have been a lot more influential than I expected. He seemed to be pondering.
"I think she just turned sixty a few months ago," Fang exclaimed, and I almost fell off the saddle. Sixty? She looked like sixteen at best.
"You beastmen and your ageless look. I thought you were no more than thirty yourself. Maybe forty, because of the gray hair." I complained. My hair was also grey, and I was half the age of her young and beautiful daughter. Not all of the Lesser Races were created equal. As a goblin, I got the short end of the stick, but how far I have come.
"I'll be hundred and eighty at the turn of this year." He claimed blatantly. I had to hold onto the reins. "You could say, I was a late bloomer, marrying at hundred, and my only child arrived twenty years later. I wish we had more, but I have at least one I can be proud of. And I would have probably joined the Demon Lord even if I had more."
"What the hell? You are ancient!" I yelled, feeling cheated for some reason. "And you never even told me. You're the same age as Gomel, but he has that huge beard and belly to show for it. Beastmen are crazy."
"The dwarf said he was three hundred, give or take," Bastion interjected, pondering himself too. "Which is twenty times my age."
"No way!" We shouted in unison with the wolfman. "You are only fifteen? That means you were thirteen when you joined the Champions?"
"Okay, then not twenty times. I'm seventeen, and bad at math." He corrected himself but was still a lot younger than I ever assumed.
"Makes you think. Different species look different at certain ages." Fang noted, and I couldn't agree more. Some kind of a Captain didn't know how old their subordinates were. "You are practically a child still. How am I supposed to look at you after this?"
"Age is just a number." The ogre shrugged. "I had to survive on my own at the age of five. But my species are pretty much developed by that point. I hear lizardmen only need a single year to reach adulthood."
"Well, us, goblins too. Technically we stop growing after our third year, but our mind takes longer to develop than our bodies." I claimed. Thinking about it, with my thirty years, I was closer to being elderly than the beastmen at two hundred. "The main reason we were kept around is because a new goblin colony only took a few years to grow up. Then they would be old enough to cultivate the noble's lands or do simpler work, that didn't require the orc's tremendous strength or the dexterity of the beastmen. Our small size came in handy in the mines too."
"Right, goblins came from the dwarven kingdom," Fang noted. The fog slowly lifted, and we heard a few people nearby, probably fishermen. They must have noticed us too, but our vision was still limited. I could only imagine, how much of a ruckus our rides would cause, once the locals realized we were traveling on Nightmares.
"So what's the beastfolk's origin story?" I asked if we were already talking about these kind of things. "I know, that orcs first appeared in these parts, then ogres randomly evolved. I know a thing or two about goblins, hobs, and kobolds, but your kind."
"Don't take my word for it, I have no academic background." Fang started, pulling his mount a bit closer to mine, almost as if he was about to share a secret with me, that he didn't want others to hear. "We weren't mutated the same way as the other Lesser Races. More like, some mages were experimenting on evolving the human species."
"What do you mean by that?" The ogre pulled closer too. "Were they artificially made? Like a homunculus or something?"
"As I said, I don't know the details, but there were theories that the humans were just a mutation of a precursor race too." The beastmen explained, his tail slowly swishing in the saddle. "They and don't ask me names, but some mages tried to recreate the elven race, or at least their longevity, using human subjects. And you tell me how close or far they got from the desired result. We age faster at first, then will look practically the same for the rest of our lives. But they did not want these animal features that popped up in our ranks."
"How long do you even live?" I asked, absolutely clueless. This was beyond my expertise and I knew him for over five years.
"Hard to tell when you see no signs of aging on your people. But I heard the oldest beastmen recorded was four hundred years old." Fang claimed. "Roughly on par with dwarves."
"How does that compare to the elves?" The ogre seemed curious too.
"Who knows? Never met someone, who has seen one." The wolfman laughed and put the leftover food away. "For all I know, they are practically immortal. But live for thousands of years."
"Well, they don't have majestic tails like your kind, Fang." I chirped in as well. "And if they are no longer around, there must have been a reason for that too. I'm fine being deemed a lesser being, as long as I know, my people will be around in the millennia to come."
"Do you happen to have kids too, Dio? I won't ask Bastion since he's practically a child himself." The wolf giggled. As the fog got thinner and thinner, our mood improved too. Even if it wasn't all sunshine and smiles we talked about.
"No, I had a proper slave contract," I said, and he nodded knowingly. I was unsure if it was the side effect of said contract, but I wasn't ever interested in having one in the first place. "It was customary to neuter goblins in one way or another. When the owner had a sufficient number, sometimes it was only by keeping only one sex around or making contracts. I heard worse methods too though. But not in my area."
"I wonder if there are ogre women on the continent?" Bastion threw in randomly. "I never met one and orcs seem so small and fragile."
"Orcs? Fragile?" I hollered, along with the wolfman. "It is true though, I've seen a few hundred ogres so far, but all were male. I haven't even thought about it before. Hobgoblins most certainly have females, even if rare. I thought about recruiting one not long ago."
"So how long do goblins live?" It was now Fang's turn to ask the questions. I didn't want to think about it, to be honest.
"It depends on many things. But usually, about twenty or thirty years. Which is a pretty bad average, if you ask me." I admitted reluctantly.
"So you are very old then." Bastion put it so bluntly. I almost felt like being slapped in the face. "But weren't those shamans a lot older?"
"This is why I said, it depends on things." I shrugged. "Yes, I guess I already lived longer than the average, but it's not rare for a goblin to live fifty or sixty years. And then there is Chaga, the high shaman who is already, like, eighty or whatever. Though it's thanks to the spirits."
"Well, I sure hope we'll have you around for a while still," Fang claimed with a pitying smile, that old wolf, treating me like an elder when he was six times my age. But it made me think.
"However much I have left, I should probably try to know my comrades better, so it won't feel wasted," I noted and suddenly realized, the fog was finally gone. "Oh, would you look at the sea?"