RQ Network Feed Drop – Last Dance “S1E1 -Lesser Gods”

Hi everyone, it's Billy Hindle here.

Today we are sharing an exciting episode from one of the podcasts on the RQ Network, Last Dance.

This is the very first episode from their first season called The Lesser Gods.

Last Dance is a dark fantasy audio drama which follows Jericho Rake, a battlefield scavenger, traveling in a godless world where your body is your temple.

Forced to pick through the front lines of the most brutal war his home has ever known, the find of a lifetime drags him right into the center of the conflict.

Last Dance also features a full cast of Northern Irish voices and features guest stars, including The Walking Dead's David Morrissey, James Mackenzie, best known for his role in CBBC children's adventure game show Raven, and other great performers.

Find other brilliant episodes in this series by searching for Last Dance wherever you listen to podcasts.

Click the link in the show notes or find more information at rustyquill.com.

Have fun and enjoy the episode.

There are no gods here.

Only what we make of ourselves.

The year is 1453 after Fundament.

For over a millennia, we have lived isolated, alone.

If there was one truth that we've all accepted,

it was that nothing lay north, east, or west of this place.

Our Great South.

We were alone.

Alone and free to squabble amongst ourselves.

War has taken hold of this place for the first time in over two decades.

We are scared.

The Great South is no stranger to war, but we are used to fighting amongst ourselves.

Revolutionaries overthrowing despots.

Mountain folk slaughtering each other for territory.

Holy wars built on misunderstandings.

Little wars that always

felt so big.

We were alone.

Our little island, floating along in an endless and inhospitable sea,

left to our own devices.

And now a common enemy has landed on our shores.

Ruthless invaders from the north have broken the northern settlements without cause or demand.

They bring with them rumors of new magics, the likes of which have never been heard of.

Two months months since their first conquest,

the Great South now turns to the bleeding monks of the Eighthfold House.

The most ancient and powerful creatures to walk this land since the last days of the Formorians

to hold back the endless tide of what we have come to know as Northmen.

Even the Temperas, their sworn enemies.

Look on, you know.

Look inward now and ask yourself, if tomorrow is my last dance, where will my humours take me?

Will temperance lay me down to the rocks, the trees, the moss, to be with nature once more?

Or will Dicratia bring me to the lowest bed of that hell we call ocean?

Forsake the wanderer and take up arms within your own heart and without.

Look not to the bleeding monks and their dicratic obsession with blood, but embrace your humors in equal measure.

Let your phlegm give you the wisdom to fight.

Let your blood run hot.

Let your gall build spite against your enemy and your black retain it to see you through.

Know this, and know it well.

Salvation lies not in blood alone.

Let them not, I say.

say.

Let these Northmen cut them down and we'll see what's left standing at the end.

Dead gods know that I won't be anywhere nearby when it happens.

And at least I can cling to that.

You see,

my name is Jericho Rake, as I live and breathe.

Now what glorious bounty have you brought me today?

Colin, I have been out there for three weeks and it is nothing but scraps.

Can you get this over with?

Oh, hold your horses now, my favorite little scavenger.

Now you are an artist, and I for one would like to appreciate your art.

Now,

let's have a look.

And now here's why you're my favorite.

Four, that's right, four bottles of precious icor.

Straight from the Eightfold House.

Few odd earrings, some kind of fetish, and

a dagger.

It's a blood-letting knife.

Followers of the monks, they use it.

How much is it worth?

300 grade of silver.

Fuck off.

I'm serious.

That's considered a relic in the highlands, and it's in good condition.

It's probably worth more.

I'll give you 200 for it.

40 for the I-Core and 10 for the odds and ends, plus your supplement.

That's barely enough to last me a month, Underlord.

Barely enough is still enough.

The knife is worth more than that alone.

Oh, I believe you.

Then pay me what it's worth.

I'm not in the mood to play games, Colin.

You'll do what you're fucking told.

And you'll take what I give you.

And you'll be thankful that I pay you a tall.

Don't forget, I'm the only one this side of the violins that can get you this.

Oh, and I am happy to remind you that you're more than welcome to die a slow, painful death whenever you want.

All those gaps where your organs should be

finally catching up with you.

Or I can keep giving you this wonderful bottle of black tar that fills in those gaps so nicely.

So, for now, you work for your supplement and be happy that you're able to run freely at all.

What was that?

I think I deserve a thank you

again

with some gratitude this time.

Thank

you.

Fitz, pay the man.

Now, let's refocus.

There's been some news while you've been a busy boy in the back roads.

The Eightfold House is dead.

No one's writing any tombstones yet, but word is that the hobby's been breached.

That doesn't mean the monks are dead.

People have been trying to kill them since the dawn of time.

It can't be done.

Oh, well, well, I've got two deserters who swear they saw three of the eight being hung from the outer walls by Northmen.

Hi.

The Abbey's impenetrable for us, though.

And that's before you imagine hanging gods from Tars.

Well, that's just the thing.

It wasn't forced to won the day.

The two deserters I was talking about, when we found them, they were halfway through trying to kill each other.

We're raving about the other being something they called

Changely.

How am I supposed to know what that is?

Story goes the Northmen have a creature that can take on the form of other men without fault.

That's how they've been carving through the Highlands so easily.

They shut down the wards and open the gates from within.

Now by the time me and the troopers came across them, they'd gone mad thinking the other was the changeling.

Had to tear the poor bastards off each other.

That's not possible.

Even magic has its limits.

You can't mimic someone else's humors.

No, no, no, no, no, not mimicking, taking, raping, and pillaging.

They eat your tongue and give your soul to the ocean or something to that effect.

Fucked if I know the details, but don't worry your jaundice little head about that, my dear Rake.

Just worry about keeping out the Northman's way and you'll be fine.

Shouldn't be a problem for Elingson.

Ah, well, there's the rope.

We're not heading south quite yet.

You can't be serious.

You're a battlefield, scavenger.

This is quite possibly the most profitable battlefield there's ever been.

The Highlands are awash with the riches of the dead.

I'll never even get close to the Abbey.

If the house has one, then they'll recover their dead and their relics, like they always do.

And if the Northmen have one, they'll take everything

for themselves.

Get it through your thick skull, Scavi.

Northmen have one.

It's a dawn deal whether you believe it or not.

But there's nothing to say that they'll even know what they're looking for.

And you do.

If the house has fallen, then they'll probably have routed by the monkswood.

That'll be where the survivors have taken their relics.

It'll also be safer than going near the abbey itself.

Now, there's my favorite little vulture using his noggin.

And the good news is, demand just went up, and supply just went down.

And we stand to make a lot more coin off of this.

There's his coin.

Excellent.

And my supplement.

Ah, now there is something.

See, I have been having a thing.

Colin, don't fuck about it.

You know I need it.

Oh, I do.

I do.

And on any other day, this hall would earn you at least two bottles of that glorious black sludge that keeps your drum beating.

It really would.

These are now

exceptional times.

And the risk is high, so I'm gonna have to motivate you to do some of your best work before I can give you any more.

I apparently have enough in my system to get me to the monks with and back.

I know,

and that's why it's such a good motivator for you to work in a timely fashion.

A timely death at the hands of savage northern raiders sounds like a much more pleasant end than having your humor slowly shut down.

To me, anyway.

And the good news is that the price of Icor has just doubled on account of its makers suffering the noose.

But you just give me ten quitters for each bottle.

That is very true.

But you had no clue when you sold it to me.

But hey, at least you know the new price now.

And we'll be here at the dog tooth for the next month.

But don't worry about us.

If you're not back, we'll be sure to go on without you.

Fuck you.

Smile, Rake.

The world just ended,

and the new one

belongs to you.

Misery follows me like a plague.

Most of the days spent traveling north, I saw no one.

And those I did were refugees and deserters who sput in my direction.

They knew exactly why I was moving toward the source of their grief.

To rob the corpses of their husbands, their daughters,

their friends.

Some nights I couldn't sleep for the weeping carried by the breeze.

And all the while I saw not a single Northman.

Just what they left behind.

You have to understand that I am no mere scavenger.

I'm indebted.

Some would say I was born that way.

Since I was old enough to be called a man,

I was brought into slavery by means of harvesting.

Where I'm from,

you pay your taxes through means of bodily donation.

Vital organs are taken,

and in exchange, you're given a supplement.

A liquid that compensates for what was taken.

It's alchemical recipe kept secret to those bound to it.

Reliant on men like Colin.

Most who live in the bylands will never see you outside of the desert.

But there are those of us who are permitted to wander.

So long as we remain at the beck and call of our distant masters.

Well,

let's take a look at your friend.

Wanna figure out for me?

Hopefully, more than the last.

You

only got stabbed maybe

a few hours ago.

You died here.

But from the way you're slumped, I'd reckon you were wounded a ways back.

But where's your killer?

If there are so many Northmen,

where did they all go?

Because I haven't seen a single one of them.

Much less an an unstoppable army.

They didn't have any trouble running into you, did they?

Or

running through you, touching my head.

So why haven't they picked up my trail?

You're right, you're right.

You're right.

I should count my blessings.

Questioning luck is the fastest way to lose it.

That's a wise thing to say, friend.

Thank you.

I wish your bodily possessions were worth as much as your wisdom, though.

Because you've got fuck all on you.

And that's a real shame.

Because I'm getting weaker as the days go by.

And I really need you to have something.

But this

ring might be worth some scraps.

Usually I'd leave it with you, but I'm not left with much of a choice.

Not many of your friends made it this far away from the monastery.

Most of you used up all of your supplies.

I'm sorry, but I'll be needing it.

Ah,

draw,

and I'll spill you quicker.

Easy now.

Easy.

No need to spill me at all.

Towards going back in.

Look.

Good.

But I am going to spill you.

Let's talk about that then.

See if we can change that.

No.

Like to spill you

soon.

You speak my tongue well.

We can talk.

Yes.

We talk before I spill you

in our tongue.

What you have

is me

is mine.

Hmm?

What you have is mine.

Not me.

Yes.

What you have

is mine.

Well, as far as I'm concerned, you can share my words all you like.

Wrong.

I take word from you.

Wait.

Correction.

I will take your words from you.

You learn fast.

I take fast.

Important difference.

So you're going to kill me then?

Yes.

Soon.

But not now.

I wish to watch

learn

speak.

Like you did with this man.

He died quick.

You'll take longer

more to learn from you.

I'm just a scavenger.

Hmm?

I

take what's left.

Find things worth taking.

I don't fight unless I have to.

I am not a fighter.

Not like these men.

I just want what they don't need anymore.

You might be a Northman, but you are not my enemy.

Ardesh.

Ardesh?

Yes.

Ardash.

Northman.

Stupid name.

Okay, okay, Ardesh.

That's fine.

Well, I am no trouble to the Ardesh.

If anything, I'm thankful.

You long for death?

No.

But the monks that your people killed,

they wronged a lot of people.

We didn't think that they could die.

We didn't think they could die.

What?

What?

No.

What is that you're doing?

No.

What is that you're doing?

Have you gone

We didn't think they could die.

Aha!

There it is!

How did you do that?

I'm like you.

I pick things up that people don't need anymore.

And what's that to do with how I speak?

Ah, soon you won't need your words.

Because I'll be dead?

Oh, because you'll be dead.

And soon I'll do what you do.

Find rings missing from fingers.

That's an interesting gauntlet you have there.

Never seen purple metal before.

Looks like it's made from something else as well, is that right?

Oh, you're buying yourself time, little scavenger.

I will trade it to you.

When we sailed east and west and finally south, I was a dredger.

Collected things on the boats for this king and that king and every other king.

No,

just one king

for one people.

I used to man one of the great claws when they sent it down from the boat.

Learned to talk with it when it dragged along the ocean floor.

I guided it,

and it guided me.

I helped it drag up the bones of old Leviathans

and listen to the secrets in the marrow

now.

The claw is dead,

and I listen to its bones too.

It tells me what to find,

now that it guides my hand, tells me what to cut, what to squeeze.

It shows me things that you would miss.

Like him.

Like

him.

Look.

Look.

See how close you were.

We didn't think they could die,

he says.

You spent too much time looking through pockets, and now you've missed the greatest prize of all.

Oh, look, look, and see how you stumbled across one.

Look and see how he is dead and gone.

Forgotten.

It is

that.

Oh, yes.

Your bleeding monk.

One of eight.

the last of eight to die.

Watch now,

as I drink deeply from his flesh wounds.

Bear witness as I ascend to heights unfettered, drowned in power rendered sweet from your ignorance, oh little scavenger.

To think that power could have been yours, were your aspirations not so focused on the gutter.

Move to me,

and I will pluck your blade from the air.

And when I return it to you, your body will become its final sheath, placed thusly,

so that you might still bear witness

before you.

There's no reason for you to kill me.

I

will go my own way

with this man's bag,

and you will get no trouble from me.

Oh, but I can kill you,

and so I must kill you.

Such is my way.

I have taken your words,

and now

I will take your eyes.

Watch,

watch as I ascend to something more,

scavenger.

You're safe for now.

She will return for her prize

leaves.

What about them?

They were green and beautiful only yesterday.

Hold on,

hold on.

I can touch on myself.

I'll see what I can do

when the leaves grow back.

They won't be ours anymore.

Story goes that when the gods of death died themselves, as all the gods did,

their faithful chose to uphold the fickle cycle of life and death.

Their chief acolytes found the corpses of as many death gods as they could,

gouged out their own eyes, and replaced them with that of their gods, so that they might understand who must live and who must die to uphold the sacred balance of life and death

the blind jurors

those who still believed in those ways chose to follow the word of the blind jurors and became instruments of righteous death

to uphold this sacred duty The blind jurors shared secrets of magic that were best left buried and taught their devotees how to enchant their eyes as bleak mirrors of necessary death sworn to wear a veil over them until such a time as they were needed

and so were born the bleak eyes

warriors who followed whispers in the wind to balance the scales of life and death

It's said that when you stare into a bleak eye, they lock you into a frenzy that compels you to fight to the death, no matter how cowardly your soul might be.

We call that fight

the last dance.

The time that comes without reason or warning, where you must stare your end in the face and meet with it faithfully.

The belief is that you can run from an end or embrace it.

But the truth of the matter is that either way, you have to dance with it.

A final and definitive point of change.

Part of you might die.

All of you might die.

But something

has to have its last dance.

The bleak eyes are one agent of this change.

But sometimes the world itself feels compelled to make you dance.

This is the thought I turned to when I find myself carrying the last bleeding monk on my back.

His holy blood running hot down my furs.

Colin's gonna go mad.

He never believed me.

Fuck.

I might have to take the hair.

I should have brought another bottle, one for the Northman, one for him.

Maybe one for me.

Fuck.

It won't work.

You won't be able to bargain with my blood.

The second she realizes that it's useless to her, she'll kill you anyway.

You underestimate my ability to bargain.

You can't bargain with her kind.

First chance she gets, she'll swipe it from your corpse and hang your innards on the nearest tree to prove a point.

She might give your tongue to one of their changelings if you're lucky.

Thought someone as exalted as you are would be better spoken.

Suppose a few swords to the guttle wipe away that pretense.

I'm only what men make of me, nothing more.

Right now, it looks like they made you into phantom.

If you're telling the truth, then

I'm gonna have to figure out how to stop the bleeding.

Even if I am enjoying the irony.

Funny.

But they also made me powerful.

Powerful enough to save your life, scavenger.

Do you have a name?

Rick.

I'm not giving you my full name.

Folk knows what you'll do with it.

And

you are brother or

aren't you?

The very same.

And what might I do with your full name?

Command your soul out of your body for one last meal?

What makes you think I need your name for that?

Funny, but I know enough about your powers to know your limits.

And yet you still won't tell me your full name.

Taking chances has rarely done me good.

Well, don't take a chance then.

You already said you know enough about my powers, which means you know they can save you.

You're missing a canvas night.

I shouldn't be expecting her swooping in to save you anytime soon, should I?

I doubt she'd give much quarter to someone as lowly as me.

Alyssa.

I hadn't even thought.

So much for a bond deeper than life itself.

A bond that ends in death.

It is sorrowful, but I know she would have died in duty.

She's your sworn protector.

She shares that blood of yours.

Isn't her duty here with you?

It was my request that she remain at the Abbey.

To help in its defense.

I would explain had we more time, but there is no one else that can interfere in this choice.

So I save your life.

Hmm?

You kill that.

that dredger thing, and then we go our separate ways.

No, it's too late for that.

You need to do something more drastic.

You need to drink my blood and save yourself.

Come on, enough to it.

I'm serious, Rake.

Everything I have, all yours.

Drink deeply, just like the Dredger was going to.

The only difference is that it will work for you.

Because you have something she doesn't.

My permission.

There's no way.

You're going to have to understand that this is happening to you and make the right choice.

Soon.

In just over five minutes, I'll be dead.

You don't seem that close to that.

I know it.

Anatomical precognition, prediction and anticipation of the body, mine, and yours.

Magic beyond your wildest dreams, total freedom and power, unparalleled control over the most sacred and necessary of humors.

You have four minutes to make your choice, but it can be yours.

Why would you give that to me?

Because it's either you or everything I work to achieve in this life is snuffed out.

Secrets older than the advent of time would be lost forever.

I core that gives vitality to the meek, faith that gives hope to the hopeless.

And knights akin to butchers who slaughter armies to the last man over Semantic's doctrine.

Shrouded in secrecy, dripping with half-truths spewed at the unfaithful.

Executions for those you deem sorcerers.

Icor which saves lives, but makes them desperate for more.

You're well spoken, scavenger, but misled.

As are many.

But it doesn't matter what you think now.

All I care about is that it lives on.

What you do with it is your will.

There's more to it than that.

There has to be.

Look at me.

Look, you stubborn child.

You have little over four minutes until I die, and my blood becomes powerless.

The Dredger was mistaken, and I was all too happy to let her delude herself.

When I die, so too does my power.

And you soon after.

Your death will be a certainty, and she will make it a slow one that drags your soul to the very lowest of hell circles.

How can I trust you?

How can you expect me to make this decision so easily?

What I offer is a gift free of strings.

You best figure that out soon.

What's to say your power hasn't left you already?

You weren't strong enough to kill her before.

You will be.

What are you doing?

There is no time for this.

There is.

I have to know you're real.

What will this do to me?

What will it really do?

It will give you everything I have.

Everything history has given the Eightfold House will be yours.

Our powers, our secrets, our future in your hands.

What does it cost?

The cost is that you bear it.

The conditions of how are yours and yours alone to determine.

Don't complicate them, lest you influence the process.

Influence?

This has never been done before.

But your suspicion is likely to cause complications even I can't face.

But what does that mean?

It means your mental state is the only thing that could ruin this for you.

Just accept a good thing that came your way.

All you have to do is trust the process.

All you have to do is live with it.

Bullshit.

Magic always has a price.

You need to hurry.

What are you doing?

Looking for this.

Playing cards.

Playing cards?

In your likeness or less.

Here's you.

The jack of blood.

I am going to smear my blood on this card and hide it in the pack.

All you have to do is find it.

Use your powers and pick out the card from your pack.

Prove to me that your powers still work.

Prove to me that you really do weave fate.

My legacy in the hands of a child's game.

Humor me.

So be it.

I'm turning around.

Can't have you watching the cards.

When you die, you die?

You aren't going to possess me, are you?

No.

Don't even think that.

Why?

Because the process is influenced.

What I didn't mention was the second card that I marked with my blood.

Not my wisest decision, perhaps.

Find it.

You cheated.

Choose.

Right here, right now.

Fuck whatever predictions you've made.

I want you to guess.

I want to see what the world wants from this.

Maybe there's another will that wants us both snuffed out.

You die just despite it.

I die for less than that.

Your blood can't fix what's wrong with me.

I

what's that?

Last words?

Let them count.

I know I well.

Listen.

No, come back.

No!

You don't get to do that.

I don't remember when she reappeared.

I don't remember leaving the cave.

Or what I did with the monk once he passed.

Time was dragged away from me, stretched itself out, forced day into night, into day, into night.

I remembered my own birth, and my own death played out tenfold in front of me like some humorous pantomime.

My own body mocked me,

and all at once my loneliness became acute.

It freed me in one moment and smothered me in the next.

My bile turned to acid acid that threatened to burn through my stomach.

My bones ached as though their marrow had turned to ash.

Every time I sucked in the air, thick clots of blood invaded my sinuses and suffocated me until I fell once again,

face down,

in the dirt.

I must have thought I had died more than five times that night.

And when I awoke for the fifth time, it was to the Dredger's Claw

dragging me through the moth.

Come,

come, let's see you in the moonlight.

How your blood dances black-blue against the midnight.

Yes,

come on now.

Let's see you in the clearing.

Looks like you took the blood yourself.

But didn't drink deeply

or drank too deeply.

It hasn't taken

it's not enough.

I didn't take you for a glutton.

It's not working though.

It's poisoning you.

I wonder why.

I can't wait to do what you do.

Take from place to place all the secrets that I want

and then drown the rest for no one to find

all for me.

See, I'm a glutton all the time,

they like me that way.

Oh,

it's okay.

I'm thankful for you.

When they forced me onto land, when they melted down my claw, I wept and wept until my eyes bled.

They turned my purpose to molten slag.

But gave me the hammer to reforge it

and now you've taught me how to dredge here too.

I fixed the claw,

but you gave me purpose

now.

Your bones can whisper to me too.

When I heard Orr's voice again, I thought it was one last moment of delirium.

That a madness had taken me, and the voice of the bleeding monk was my own mind taunting me,

breaking itself against the tide of Orr's blood.

Maybe that is what happened.

All I knew for sure

was that whether it was his advice or my own,

it was my only chance of survival.

Don't react.

Don't let her know you can hear me.

Ardesh, Northmen, feed on what you give them.

Your words, your intonation, in battle, your movements.

Use that.

Victory.

He speaks once more

and speaks well.

Honor is a southern concept.

Fighting is best done in the dirt.

You have given me a gift, dear scavenger.

Good.

She acts the maniac, but there's precision and magic beyond your understanding in that gauntlet.

Look at her hand.

See how it moves of its own volition?

See how it searches the air?

I see.

You see?

Well I am glad.

She's precise, smart.

Use that.

Bring her in.

Swing.

He swipes and claws in his death rows.

She won't underestimate you until you sell your deception.

Show yourself weak and vulnerable.

Ignore the pain.

Stop.

Now buckle at your left leg.

Just a little.

Good that you struggle in the end.

What pride it will be to take that blood from you.

Good.

Good.

She's noticing.

Do it again.

Subtly.

Watch your eyes go to your leg.

That's how you'll know.

No.

Come.

Stay standing for me.

When she moves, she'll come for your weak side on the left.

Faint at the last second.

I can't.

I'm too weak.

You can.

You're not weak anymore.

You're so powerful you can barely handle it.

That's all this is.

Oh, but you can.

Just for a second longer.

And now I see you.

Truly.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Take a second.

Breathe.

Leave it, Rake.

Rake.

I don't know why I took that cursed gauntlet.

That claw.

Scavenger's instinct, I suppose.

Still present in my head, even when my brain had turned to soup.

Rake.

Rake, you need to rest.

I need it.

Not the blood, it's me.

Rake, God.

Rake.

I must have walked for days in delirium.

I don't know where I went, what I did.

Must have killed more Northmen because I had more blood on me by the time they found me.

And it wasn't mine.

Hey!

Hey, slow down there.

You're okay.

You're okay.

I'm a temper.

I'm here to help you.

Well, spending my leave only at times.

Within the circles outside, serve the spirals and fly.

The feast.

You're going to

Let's get you somewhere safe off the road.

Rake, you need to hear me again.

Get away from them.

Get away now.

Come on.

Get away from them.

Rake!

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