Kiravi
It snowed once more as we broke camp and began the arduous trek past the burbling creek. The first snow had been surprising, whimsical, just another exciting experience on our long journey. But, that time, it seemed more like ash tumbling from the gray-smudged sky to mix with the increasingly barren terrain.
I spent those first few days scowling and growling at everyone around me. The Kroyu took it with the same dark resignation they faced everything with. Leotie glared right back and barked her own insults at me, but the playful undertone was gone and replaced by legitimate fear. Serina was exhausting what little energy she had trying to mend the rifts growing between all of us. Despite the soft words and the quiet tears she cried every night, she was failing, and her night terrors were only worsening.
Of course, dear readers, I realized I was being unreasonable and infantile after the first day or two. But, again, I'm more stubborn than a senile llama. So I just kept glowering, thinking of the half-truths the Kroyu had fed us and the looming threat of this 'Undying One' and the rest of the bastard Gavicans. We'd go to the festivals, certainly, to protect those we'd grown close to, but then what? This was only the least egregious of a pile of bad options. I had no idea what would happen, and I feared for Leotie's fate in what was turning out to be just another land of hate. Just like Tebis.
Every bit of me told me to run, run like I always did. But, never, never, had I been threatened by such an overwhelming and omnipresent threat. I'd never even heard of a mage or even a high priest capable of such wide-ranging awareness and such extreme power. So perhaps, I thought, it was all a ruse, or a cabal of minor mages or shamans controlling the entire land and pooling their power into some figurehead demigod.
Roughly sixty of us tramped down the riverside path. The other forty or so were the old, the mothers with newborns, the sick, and the lame. A handful of the hunters remained to bring them along after us, but Tukyo was making a desperate gamble. His most vulnerable tribespeople would arrive after the festival was well underway, after whatever danger awaited us had mostly passed. That was his intent, anyway, but who could say? Not I, certainly not I, when no one would tell me the full truth about this descent into madness.
The land reflected my new and changing outlook on this suddenly hostile land. The highlands had been lush, green, and fruitful, minus the handful of areas where the Kroyu had burned away the brush. Exposed rock faces and boulders crowded the banks of the river, faintly scorched by some ancient heat. The trees were shorter, their bark gnarled in places. The brush thinned out, and the soil itself faded from a rich, deep brown to various shades of gray.
"The game here tastes as bad as the rats in the Eastern Wastes," Leotie grumbled one day, trying to maintain a low level of conversation with me while continuing to avoid offering an apology for the half-truths that had led us here.
"I don't think it's all that bad," Serina murmured back. She'd also declined to apologize, though the misery on her face and how she slumped through each day more than communicated the appropriate message. Instead, she looked at me pleadingly, hoping I'd break the soul-crushing standoff splitting the three of us.
But, dear readers, I was still a stubborn and angry fool, so I just grunted something appropriately neutral and continued.
Serina stumbled, and I turned back to help her with the heavy pack looped over her shoulders. Another strap ran across her forehead, padded with soft leather and downy feathers, but I could tell the load was still weighing on her heavily. Leotie, the other hunters, and I all carried similar, backbreaking loads, only further souring my mood. Beyond ordering us into the Akagi's arms, so to speak, the Undying One also requested that the Kroyu carry all their own provisions and the furs they'd gathered in the mountains. Had the three of us not provided so much, I struggled to imagine the Kroyu being able to provide for themselves at all.
A cry split the crisp air from high above, and I craned my neck to see a trio of the massive buzzards —
holhal
, the Kroyu said — circling high over the bedraggled band. They'd followed us since the moment we left the village, and the Kroyu pointedly avoided paying any attention to them.
"Well I'm not a Kroyu, so I'll damn well glare at them if I please," I grumbled while removing sacks of acorn flour from Serina's pack and cramming them into mine.
"What was that?" Serina said, wiping sweat off of her brow with one of her ragged sleeves.
"Nothing, love," I murmured and kissed her forehead. I was angry, dear readers, but I couldn't just avoid Serina's palpable shame.
"I wish...I wish you'd try and understand what we did," she said as I helped her back onto the path.
I scowled, "I understand what you did. What I don't understand is why you hid it from me and lied all those weeks."
Leotie appeared and took Serina's other arm. "You're the one that lied to both of us for months about what each of us meant to you. Come on, Serina."
"Well, that all worked out in the end, didn't it?"
"So will this!" She snapped. "No thanks to you."
We didn't talk much after that.
The valley grew gloomier but somehow more vibrant. Bony, bleached cliffs shared space with blackened dirt and piles of broken charcoal. The trees had darkened bark, nearly black, with thick but unevenly grouped clumps of dark green leaves. The air stunk of the sea, salt, and rotting seaweed, mixed with the constant stench of burnt coals and damp leaves. Birds perched in the gnarled and sap-weeping branches, staring intently at us as we made our way to the sea.
A few times, I thought I glimpsed hamlets or hunting shelters amidst the thick stands of trees, but Tukyo made sure to hustle us away before I could investigate. More likely, I'm sure his reaction was to keep any locals from noticing our passage. I didn't see any silhouettes peering back at us, but even the squirrels and other skittering beasts paused amongst the branches to stare at us as the crows did.
As much as it was to avoid any more bitter conversations, my innate curiosity also drove me to speak with Quiktu as we descended further into the valley. "This place...it's not exactly lush, but not desolate either."
His quills constantly twitched, like leaves in a breeze promising a storm. His aged form shook from his heavy load, even with the staff he clutched in his talons. "You're not wrong, young magus." He leaned against one of the darkly vibrant trees and swigged from a waterskin I offered. "It is just another conundrum, my friend. If you ask Tukyo or his spirits, this entire place was blasted clean, the spirits corrupted, and the gods evicted. But the land seems to be continuing just fine, no?"
I peered around at the towering, lush, nearly black trees shading us from the springtime sun. "In a way, I suppose. I never heard any of my professors speak of magic having this effect. Even where the god-stones fell."
He chuckled drily, sounding altogether too much like a crow taunting its friends. "It would be simpler, I think, to assume that your Academy knows quite a bit less about the world than they claimed."
I laughed more richly than I had since we'd left the village. "I thought the same while I suffered through those lectures of theirs, but I've been clinging to their knowledge since..."
"Since you were exiled, just as I was. Perhaps a little less violently, but exiled all the same." He paused. "You can feel it here, can't you?"
"What?" I asked, but I could feel the twinge just as I had off the coast of Anghoret.
"There's more magic in the air here than anywhere else I've ever traveled. More than the grounds of the Academies, more than the high caves of the Yavloni. But it's not magic that Tukyo can harness, it's not the benevolent gaze of the gods, and it's not a natural surge in the Great River's currents."
I furrowed my brow, "The Undying One? He controls all this power?"
Quiktu nodded but shrugged, "It is the only explanation I can think of."
"But a single mage, pulling that much magic? From where? And how hasn't he torn himself apart?"
"No one knows, certainly not I. I've made a point not to get too close to him those few times he shows himself to the masses. He's..."
"Don't say a god," I grumbled. "I am sick of hearing it."
He clattered his quills in annoyance. "Because it is the best description I have, young whelp. Do not forget that I am educated in the High Academies, just like you. I'm no Hill-tribe bumpkin," he laughed at himself, "at least, I wasn't always one. But, if there is any being that walks this world with the aura of the divine, it is him."
