by Philip Read
‘’You fear your own power, you have been holding yourself back for as long as you have had an inkling of how truly powerful you are, you have now placed most of your power into that thing.’’ He sends pointing at my hammer by the door outside. ‘’The consequences of that action are interesting… yes. You have already diverged from your predestined path; you are an anomaly not bound by fate… That is all I can accurately interpret from everything I see, but we must speak further. I will now do the women.’’
I look up from the bones blurry eyed as though coming up from a trance, how does the man expect me to remember everything he’s said? There are a number of things I find interesting in what he said and might pursue further but I just look at him and nod before indicating to Kiera, might as well get to the point.
The bones are collected with practiced ease and I notice the little markings drawn on them as he collects them. He speaks to Kiera directly mind to mind and I frown having expected to be included in the conversation but I don’t really mind. Considering how private the things he told me are maybe its best I doth know the path Kiera’s life is likely to take, and what’s this ‘spectra of death’ thing that has apparently been feeding off me.
Kiera blows into the pouch as I did and the shaking commences but it doesn’t feel like it did when he did mine as he mutters to himself again. There is a depth and seriousness to the ambience in the room but I can feel none of the power I felt when I did my reading, there is no cold or movement of spirit energy, no deepening shadows in the hut. At least from my perspective, but looking at Kiera I can see something is definitely happening with her. She looks about ready to puke and her hands are trembling slightly.
Then the bones are scattered on the floor before us and Kiera sighs a loud sigh of relief for what I’m guessing is the return of her spirit energy. The man barely gives her a glance as all his attention is on the bones before him, bones that somehow seem different to the ones I had and I don’t just mean their arrangement. He looks at her in the eye for the first time since we’ve been here as they communicate silently. She looks like she is tempted to respond but doesn’t, only listening to what he is saying with his stick going from bone to bone. Finally she nods her accent to something and the bones are collected again before the entire process takes place a third time now with Vuyo as the subject.
She takes it better than either Kiera or I, testament to the fact that she’s done this before. Her reading is quick and before I know it we are standing outside the hut with the man carrying an assortment of strange objects and vials in his hands. ‘’You must all be naked.’’ He sends to all of us.
I look at Vuyo who nods, then at Kiera who is looking down on the floor thoughtfully and I start undressing. I might as well get this over with, and anything to do with deities and shit feeding off me is urgent enough on top of the reason I came here to begin with. My mates follow my example and we are instructed to face towards the sun as the tall lanky man circles first me then my mates studying us carefully. Its unary and I’m starting to lose my patience but he stops and comes back to me.
“Come.’’ He says and starts walking, we follow.
I’m uncomfortable openly walking naked this way, I feel unarmed, exposed and we have never been naked together at the same time Kiera, Vuyo and I. We don’t go far though as we come across a little brook from a natural spring bubbling from the ground.
“Wash.’’ We are again instructed with a finger pointed at a little area where the water is allowed to collect.
The man bends down and starts adding concoctions upstream of where we are to ‘wash’ without preamble. I star wit splashing my face and head and my mates follow suit. The water is pleasantly cool and rejuvenating to the skin, I’d be tempted to drink it if the man wasn’t adding disgusting ingredients to it as we washed ourselves. I feel a hand on my back and am surprised to find Kiera washing my back with her hands; I missed her hands on me. I don’t get to enjoy them for long though as other instructions are shot at us from the man.
We are instructed to drink foul concoctions that have us shitting in a ditch by the hut in the most foul and embarrassing manner possible, I’ve never been more red from both embarrassment and laughter at how uncomfortable both of my mates are at the entire ordeal. I find us laughing at each other for the first time in months. The smell that comes from our faeces is atrocious and the shit we leave behind unwholesome sticky, strongly coloured things. ‘’Let’s not drink anything else he gives us.’’ Kiera advises and I grin at her humour finally coming out again.
From that unpleasant experience its back to the little brook for another bath with the tall painted man mutters as he adds things to the water up stream. Then its wit a sharp honed knife and a stinging stinky substance that small wounds are cut into areas of my body and the foul substance added to the cuts. This is done from my head to my feet at specific places throughout my body before he silently moves on to Kiera and then Vuyo. They endure it stoically before we are instructed to dress then come back tomorrow. I’m not sure what that was but it felt like a rush job to me.
‘’How did you fell about all of that?’’ I make myself as we walk casually through the veldt. Vuyo is up ahead with her spear in hand excited about being home and able to hunt where she knows the rules, where she is a predator. Disappearing into the grass like a ghost and coming back carrying a large rodent for me to store in my ring.
‘’Honestly I don’t know how to feel about all these changes and new things and exposure to so many different peoples.’’ Kiera finally says. ‘’I thought trying to adopt the city life of Paradisum was hard with exposure to all these cultures for the first time. Now here it’s even elves and beastmen and other strange things I’m not yet sure I can name, I’m just a village girl you know.’’
I nod, trying to see it from her perspective and extending the silence between us. Filling it with as much understanding, patience, love…
“I don’t know what that seer did but I feel more clear headed than I have in months, maybe years.’’
‘’Me too, me too.’’ I say feeling as though a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I will get a good night’s sleep for the first time in years.
Chapter 130
Sachihiro
There is a sense of urgency to my departure both because I want to get home as quickly as possible but also because I have outstayed my welcome here. The purges by the assassination side of the Conclave of Shadow should begin soon and I want no part of a shadow war where you don’t see your opponent coming. I’m a hunter and know the value of ambush but I’m not a hunter of men to the extent that I relish it just yet in my walk of life.
Even with the hasty departure both from Tiba and the Brothel I have had arrangements made to hire myself out as a caravan guard for a group of halflings even though I have to go almost 1000km outside my route home to the town of Chuma in the Mbali Grasslands to do so. The little people can usually be found within the town border where they congregate and collect each other from their many scattered settlements when preparing for a departure. Safety in numbers and all that, I don’t think it really works for them though.
They cannot be found in any large numbers on Pangaea but those found outside slaver pens are generally found here though they’ve been trying to migrate off the continent for a while it’s been said. Halflings are not a wealthy people as they don’t usually put too much value into material wealth though they have been known to be hoarders of possessions. A possessive but unambitious people it seems when generalising them.
I travel on horseback from Tiba down into the desert sands as quickly as possible. I don’t head towards the Oasis where a person with a horse to water would be expected to go if they had any intentions of keeping said creature alive through the heat and dehydration. I’ve decided to avoid a confrontation with the creatures trying to harm me and let them die naturally or face them only if I feel them get close enough to be a direct threat. All I have for company now is my horse
and as we gallop through the rocky sandy desert on a straight path to my destination I practice my water cultivation technique.
I collect water from the dry desert air from horse back and I condense it into my hands before feeding it to my horse to quench it’s thirst. It takes a while to collect any substantial amount from the air but our lives depend on it and I have no other job to do as Norse gallops away occasionally panting for water. I concentrate, tapping into the mana within me and manipulating it in an intricate puzzle so it does what I want, visualisation is very important, and of course know how. This technique I was taught by Vevina during my brief training under her.
I suck the moisture from the air painstakingly; it’s as though I were passing through a cloud or passing through mist collecting moisture even in this dry heat. It’s an exhausting process that leaves my mana reserves dry after only a few mouthfuls of water and suffering from mana fatigue. I don’t even know why I Awakened to any type of magic at all sometimes if my mana pool is going to be so meagre.
Norse gallops oblivious of my struggle as long as I keep providing him with fresh clean water that has no sand in it. I feel pursued, not that I could with any accuracy point at an enemy I made while in Tiba and say, ‘this one wants me dead’. But I feel like I am being followed by those that wish me ill.
Another reason not to be where I’m expected to be or maybe it’s just my paranoia from being so exposed to spiritual attack. I have been having dreams since I’ve been open to attack and influence, some I can tell are not malicious others may even be symbolic or prophetic. Dreaming is not a gift I knew I had nor one I particularly want but knowing ma it makes sense that it would manifest in her bloodline.
The night gets cooler and the moisture from the air easier to extract before the temperatures drop to unreasonable levels and the nocturnal desert creatures start unearthing themselves from the desert sands. I’m stalked by a reptile the size of my horse for a while but it stays well away from attacking, simply tasting the air with its tongue as it runs easily on the soft sand to keep pace at our periphery.
Then ahead a scorpion the size of a mundane rhinoceros bull bursts from the sand ahead with stinger already shooting towards me but I manage to deflect the thing to the flesh of sparks as Razor meets its carapace before it’s retracted getting ready for another shot. I throw a water and aura honed Kata at the thing with all my strength and as I suspected it cuts deep into the shell of its exoskeleton killing it almost instantly.
This is something I’ve noticed about most desert creatures, they are susceptible to water based attacks, water mana infused attacks cut through them easier. I collect my weapon, the meat of the creature and what of the carapace will fit into my ring before galloping away on Norse before more predators smell the blood. This is the advantage of using horses or other beasts of burden on Gaia. They can travel faster and further than humans in most cases, Norse isn’t even a magical beast but at this current pace he can replenished his stamina at least three times before I really need to rest him for a few hours.
*
We gallop ahead having to kill another two scorpion creatures and mostly just slow down a third as I only shoot my meagre water bolts at the thing to discourage it. There are very little underworld creatures on this part of Pangaea but it’s now a known fact of life that to travel anywhere by night alone safely you have to be an Awakened of some sort to survive.
I walk my horse when he has had enough and I reward him with a stop and a rub down while he eats the goo and the meat from the scorpions. He carries no other burden than me, no saddle or bit put in his mouth like I’ve seen the knights do. It’s a torturous experience to have an object put in your mouth for the length of time I’d need to get anywhere and I’m not in the business of torturing those I depend on.
Even Keir Airell who is probably an evil fucker that has done many horrible things in his time on Gaia I won’t torture because I depend on the creature for things. Besides, he is still very useful and will keep feeding everything he learns about the Circle to the relevant contacts.
*
After another hours rest and recuperating I’m back on Norse and we are galloping across the harder sands and into the rocky regions with renewed energy. The light of the sun crests the horizon with me on his back moving towards the greener pastures of the Mbali lands. Birds start to sing and the small thorny bushes are being replaced by more robust gnarled trees. This is the mostly monotonous view we are exposed to for several hours in this part of the journey, and I quite enjoy it. The peace and the life of the desert, you’d miss it if you didn’t know where to look, or you didn’t have my dimensional awareness.
Then I’m in the grass and the smell of pollen and bees is heavy in the air here. Usually there is nothing that comes from the desert to harass the creatures that live here and so the ancestors of the halflings thought it safe to have the desert at their backs. Which it mostly is, but trading and travelling into the human lands has become perilous for a people that make the perfect servants and slaves.
I slow down a bit but I also want to be home within the year, I think it’s possible. To spend ten months on the road and then to be home with my girls and my loved ones again. I notice a few creatures and people at the edge of my awareness at times but none act threateningly besides simply trying to hide their presence and watch my passage.
.
I slow to a walk as I realise sudden that these hills I’m seeing rising and falling at regular intervals are actually hovels in which houses are built. I pass by a few halflings that come out of their houses to watch me or do other activities as dawn gets deep reaching its zenith. I talk to an old man who stands up to my waist at the shoulder and he directs me on how to travel if I want to get to the town before nightfall.
I am invited by a halflings woman for tea who ends up telling me all about her available daughter the entire 15 minutes I spend there. To the mortified and red faced state of the daughter in question who doesn’t contradict her mother once on her virtues as a potential wife, ‘even a wife for a human’.
I again gallop when passed the little village feeling even sorrier for the cute humanoid creatures with how fragile nature has made them. They are like children to the average regular man and they are treated as such in most human lands if they aren’t just flat out taken as slaves. They are not natural fighters but more thinker, tinkerers, farmers and thieves.
I’ve never been more glad to be a Barbarian than when I witnessed these people try to protect a caravan from raiders on my way to Tiba all those years ago. Their arms are too short, their ligaments to stiff, their feet too big, their muscles too weak to properly defend themselves against humanoid creatures. Now I guess I am making amends for watching that slaughter or I just want an excuse to kill slavers.
Either way I’m going to join a halfling caravan as a guard and escort it South as far as it will go towards my destination. Maybe I’m suicidal or most likely homicidal because from my understanding even the halflings know they are a prime species for the human and Elvin slave trade. And apparently orcs love them too and they are sometimes shipped across the sea to the orc kingdoms of Drada.
I start slowing down again when I notice the smoke up ahead. I start to meet more people on the road, not all of them halflings. Pretty soon I find myself in a town in the middle of the woods without even noticing the transition from woods to town. The buildings are between the trees and there are birds singing and an ambience of peace and prosperity.
The hammer from the smith’s forge is ringing out from at least two different directions. People are out and about seeming busy, walking the street, shops are open and so is trade. There is even a building on the branches of one of the trees like some sort of tree house. There is a group of halflings carpenters making beautiful furniture out in the open yard of one of the shops.
They seem to be at peace, they seem to be self sufficient. Why then the need to keep going South if in their own territories they live as they do? I tr
avel straight to where a small man directs me as were the convoys meet for travel.
Talking to the foreman there it seems I am over a day late as a convoy of 12 caravans has already headed South laden with goods and people. I get him to hastily write me a letter of recommendation for the leader of said caravan to read and believe the origin of my whereabouts. I hardly have time to feel the moisture of the sleepy little town before I’m on my way galloping South again and towards home.
Epilogue
Damian
”Are we all ready?” I send to everyone gathered in the Dyson Citadel, the stronghold and most well-defended position in the Walish Queendom. A nation completely controlled by the cults and lead by the Circle towards a single goal for the past 21 years.
”We are ready.” A recovered if slightly changed Diana responds for everyone.
Only having come out of her seclusion in the recent years all the more stronger for consuming the spirit that tried to consume her but also more quiet, more reserved than she was before the backstab by that fat Albert and Yolanda. The eerie Diana having taken a more prominent leadership role of late without the usual in-fighting from the others. I would almost think they were afraid of her had I not known them to be all heartless men and women that have looked death in the eye countless times.
There a hundreds of us gathered in the Great Roundhall around the vastly intricate heptahedral sigils drawn on the floor in crushed soul stones. A formerly useful people of the Cold Belt that mined and sold the precious stones no more as they have outlived their usefulness and the time for petty peddling finally being over.
The virgin slaves in the cardinal points taken from the dead corpses of their mothers’ by the killer. Raised to the age of their moon blood and used today as sacrifice to power the circle. The ritual stones already in place and filled to the brim with the spirit energy of thousands of dead slaves sacrificed for this purpose, a great purpose if a somewhat insane one if I say so myself.
