The Rogue of Turtle Lake II

Apr 15th, 2026

The Rogue of Turtle Lake II

By Connor | InTheAtticDev

The Story So Far…

Marla the Catperson, once servant to the Elordian Knight Commander, has turned traitor. After uncovering a ruthless plot to annihilate entire communities for resources, she fled Castle Elordia and the iron grip of the Red Knights. In hiding near Turtle Lake, she crossed paths with a mysterious crystal hero who retrieved for Marla stolen documents revealing the Knights' war plans. Now, weeks later, Marla is on the run once more. A mushroom cloud over a stronghold and a dead commander have ignited the Knights' fury, and the vengeful Volten Grimhawk is closing in…

Marla did not want to admit it to herself but she missed the stranger who visited her on the island. Well, visit was a choice word, as they unknowingly camped near her hideout, but they were soon introduced and the visit was fulfilling. It had been a while since Marla made a friend– a dependable one at that, one who could produce a Red Knight general's written orders to forcibly clear entire towns (human and Catperson and Lizardfolk alike) to make room for military farmland, all in exchange for a fancy poison dagger.

But then they had left to do more presumably heroic deeds, leaving Marla alone in her limbo state of living on Marisland– which was what she called 'her' island on Turtle Lake, humbly named after the only person to live there in decades. There were signs people had inhabited it before, but Marla figured everyone left long ago, probably due to the fact the island sucked. Little wildlife or natural food sources were to be found around the island, and while Alistair at the Douro Port Tavern sent weekly supplies over, Marla could only do so much on salt pork, wine, and hardtack.

All the birds learned to stay away from Marla within the first week, and even prancing on all fours and climbing trees made no difference. It took Marla one nasty fall from a tree where she swore she landed on all fours to realize there were better ways to catch food. At first she tried to catch fish from the lake using her paws, batting at the water after waiting for motion, but she changed course after a few pitiful attempts where she only got hit with backsplash from the lake.

Marla found a fishing rod was better. Alistair had included one on the first supply shipment and she slowly came around to finding it useful. It was boring but it did not make her look like a fool chasing birds, so at least the island would not get second hand embarrassment.

She was sitting at the end of her small dock like most mornings, fishing line in the water, Red Knight documents in her lap. Marla had memorized them by the third go-over yet kept reading them anyway. It contained pages of information on towns identified, farmland assessed, and projections made. It was clear by the depth of information that this had been a long time coming. Families who declined to vacate were labeled in the document by the word 'Resistant', which was a considerate way to avoid writing 'families who did not want to leave their homes.' They were to be dealt with through overwhelming military force. And at the bottom was the signature of the architect behind it all. Marla had not yet decided what to do with them.

Her left ear moved before sound registered, causing her to nearly drop the fishing rod in surprise. Then she heard it– oars, several of them. She counted as the shapes came fully into view: four boats moving in a straight line out of the morning mist toward the island's south dock. Silhouettes of plate armor caught what little light the fog allowed, and a pale tall shape of a blonde Dwarf stood at the lead vessel. Even from a distance Marla could tell they were Red and Blue knights. She rolled the documents back into their leather folder, tucked them under her arm, and bounded into the tree line.

Volten Grimhawk stepped off the lead boat into the shallows and waded to shore. He was the youngest dwarf of the Grimhawk family line– pale skin, tall and lean, blonde hair and yellow irises. A perfect image of military excellence among the Dwarvish people of Gort.

"Fan out," he said. "I saw that damn cat all the way from the boat."

Sir Kaelan stepped off behind him more carefully, his Blue Knight armor clanking against the rocky shore. He had been around these waters a month prior, under different and considerably more unsettling circumstances– the dying torch and fish, the green catperson rowing away through the fog... Kaelan was in no hurry to return, and would rather spend time talking about the nonsense Heartstone Crystal rumors than entertain Volten's fantasies. But orders were orders, even if Kaelan wasn't sure who gave Volten the promotion after Commander Etsteg's unfortunate passing.

"I want it noted," Kaelan said, "that this operation violates the divine sanction on Turtle Lake. The old law—"

"Is old," Volten said, already moving toward the tree line. "Like everything else that supposedly protected this place. If the gods were living they'd have done something by now." He turned to face the assembled soldiers, ten Red and Blue Knights mixed, none of them looking entirely certain about the air around them. Volten thought them cowards afraid of a superstition unable to bite back.

"The Catperson who was an accomplice in bringing down Captain Etsteg's stronghold is on this island– the very same cat who murdered the Elordian Knight Commander. She is in possession of documents belonging to the Red Knight command. Find her and find the papers. Bring both back… Preferably one left intact."

Kaelan was too tired to offer further objection. He signaled his Knights to follow.

Marla watched from thirty feet up a birch tree, tail wrapped around the branch, tracking the progress of the eight armored soldiers attempting to move through overgrowth. They were managing about as well as armored soldiers usually did in forests, and Marla noted their declining confidence the further they moved away from the shore and into the brush.

She let them get a look at her— not much, only a glimpse of green between two birches before she ran, but it was enough to send them into a frenzy. The path Marla chose as they chased her was deliberate. She had walked every part of this island over the month until she knew which soil was packed and which was soft.

Digging out a ditch in that spot was easy, the hard part was making a convincing enough cover that would trick someone into walking over it– but overager knights chasing cats made good targets.

Marla bounced through an overgrown section of grass with enough grace that the knights behind her did not suspect anything, trailing right behind her and stepping foot on the moss and reeds. The sound that came from behind Marla was more gradual than a crash, more akin to a collective chorus of snapping, screaming, sinking, and a clattering of armor. The Knights did not watch their step and discovered too late that the ground was but a flimsy cover and below it was a drop of roughly six feet. Four of them went in together, which at least gave them all some company.

The remaining soldiers on solid ground stopped, looked at each other, looked at their colleagues, and made the decision to stay where they were and assist rather than risk finding out what else the island had in store. Volten pushed past the group of them (causing a fifth knight to lose his balance and stumble into the hole) and went running down the path after Marla.

The camp he found minutes later was not much, consisting of only a fire ring, a bedroll, and a canvas sheet rigged to protect against the rain. On a log near the cold ash sat a cloaked figure, hood drawn, facing away from the tree line.

Volten had come around the far side alone, and he slowed when he saw the figure, taking immediate note of their green fur and black stripes. The rigid and slumped architecture of her posture made him confident. Volten moved toward Marla and laughed, kicking a stone into a patch of bushes causing some insects to stir.

"Good. You realized how futile the chase is," he said. "You thought the lake's old protections would hold. That the divine sanction meant something and Turtle Lake would keep you the way it kept you before. No... Etsteg was a good man. He taught me everything he knew. I was by his side during the Siege of New Juniper, did you know that? He built something worth protecting… And you helped a wandering stranger gut it from the inside. Did you not think we would hit back, make you give up all you know about Jhara? Yes, we know her name. Whatever you two intended to do with those documents ends today." As he reached out and placed a hand on Marla's shoulder his hand only pressed into dry grass. His thumb came away green with moss, and he pulled away the cloak to see a scrappily made decoy—

It was then an arrow came from the tree line. Volten saw where it fired from and tossed himself to the floor. The arrow crossed the camp in a flat line and struck a wooden bucket suspended by rope from a branch above him, splitting it down the center. A wash of thick amber sap that Marla had been collecting from the resin tree at the island's north end for the better part of two weeks came down in a wide, fragrant curtain over Decoy Marla, the log, the fire ring, and the fifteen square feet of camp included.

Unfortunately for the soldiers who had just arrived from the east side to see Volten's triumphant speech, Marla's camp was located by a Horned Bee nest she had spotted on her third night of camping. They were clean neighbors and were harmless… Well, mostly harmless. They rarely attacked people. Unless, of course, they were in the middle of mating season and caught a strong whiff of dinner. Oh, what time of year was it again?

Hundreds of Horned Bees swarmed the camp and stung anything with exposed skin. Volten threw himself to his legs, left the other Knights to fend for themselves, and cleared the camp perimeter in four long strides. He found Kaelan at the edge of the trees, both of them catching their breath as they watched the swarm attack three soldiers who had failed to stay clear in time.

"Not a word," Volten said.

"I wasn't going to say a single thing," Kaelan replied. Through the trees ahead, something low and green was moving fast toward the sound of water. Volten ran towards it.

Marla hit the shoreline and slowed. Her boat was where she'd left it nudged against the rocks. She had the documents– she could be on the water in ten seconds and she knew it, but the Knights would be following fast. Marla looked at the four boats pulled up along the shore in a neat line then up at the trees above the dock. She had spent several afternoons the previous week arranging things that had felt, at the time, like an unreasonable paranoia-driven response to being hunted. She picked up a stone as Volten and Kaelan broke from the trees. They were moving fast and pulled up hard when they saw her standing there at the water's edge.

Volten drew his sword. "It ends here," he said.

"Please, don't run anymore," Kaelan said, less conviction in his voice than his Red Knight counterpart. "Return the documents. Tell me who the wanderer was that destroyed Etsteg's operation. Do this and I will ensure you a fair hearing before the Red Knight command. That is more than what you deserve."

Marla's tail moved low in long sweeps of annoyance. "Fair?" she asked. "Fair like what Elordia has planned for the region?" Marla held up the documents in her left hand. "Didn't think I'd read them?"

"Oh, I know you would," Volten said, stepping in front of Kaelan. "That's why, no matter the offer this fool gave, you were never leaving this island."

Kaelan looked betrayed by Volten's words but Marla did not have the time to weigh the implications of that. She looked at the stone in her hand then looked at the piece of bark she had mounted on a rope to a birch at the tree line. It was a simple target that looked, to anyone who had not put it there, like it had no particular reason to exist. Marla threw the rock as Volten moved to approach her. The bark target gingerly swung on its rope causing him to laugh.

"Ooh, impressive! Cat distracted by gravity again?" Before Volten could take in the wit of his own humor, Kaelan was already pulling at his shoulder to look and run.

The rope swinging had pulled a second rope. The second rope released a tension that had been winding through a coiled length of reed-cord around a high branch. It flew free and dragged a weighted crossbeam (which took three afternoons to make) through a notch Marla had cut across into a standing birch trunk.

The crossbeam went through the notch and the birch cracked at its base. The birch came down across a pine she had cut nearly through and left standing with just enough fiber to hold until it didn't need to. The pine did not hold, the tree dropping at an angle she had not precisely accounted for, and it caught the edge of a standing oak that was tired and begging for an excuse to come down. The oak crashed across the four boats like it was aimed to cause maximum havoc and the wider area of dock ceased to exist. Timber and hull planks arced through the air before skipping off the calm waters of Turtle Lake.

Volten and Kaelan had both tossed themselves in different directions to locations that were not directly beneath any of the falling debris. As the chaos subsided and Volten dusted himself off, he kicked a nearby dock plank when he saw that Marla was already fifty feet out. She had slinked into the boat and pushed off the moment the first tree cracked, and she was rowing gently knowing full well it would be some days before anyone came to rescue the Knights.

She raised one hand and waved at them as she disappeared into the morning fog. Whatever Volten screamed at her did not carry across the water– but Marla's laugh in response was clear as day.

The fog had burned off by the time Marisland disappeared behind her. The lake was wide and pearl blue, and Marla rowed south with the leather-wrapped documents beside her in the hull. She looked at them, at the handwriting in the documents which penned such cruel words so easily without feeling. Towns cleared. Families resistant to relocation. Overwhelming force as necessary. The families in those pages would not survive the upcoming raids nor have the luxury of running. That was a fact as flat as the lake around her, and she had been sitting with it for a month on an island that sucked, trying to figure out what a person was supposed to do with knowledge like that.

Marla could not shake the disappointment in herself. Yet again, she had run away while calling it rebellion. She found the next tree line, the next safe distance, the next place that was simply not where she'd just been. Marla was very good at it; the instinct came naturally to her. Cats rarely ran towards danger. Survival had been her occupation since she was small enough to fit under a cellar door. She had always been too small, too curious, and too much of a nuisance to be the kind of person who came to save people. Marla was not a hero like the stranger– no, friend– who gave her the Red Knight documents.

The island had a name because it was hers, and it was hers because nobody else wanted it, and that had always been her life. But the general had a name– Zayan Azer. That name had a face and location. He was still in Gort, still writing the plans and doing the arithmetic on who to eliminate.

She rowed. The lake spread out behind her, blue and wide and quiet. Not running, she thought. Not anymore.

Marla's story will continue in 'The Rogue of Turtle Lake III'