by Heath Pfaff
"Pardon me for not trusting them, but they were not exactly hospitable last time we crossed paths," I offered, interested to see what Weaver would have to say regarding that.
"I heard about your run in with the Shao Geok on your way to Fell Rock. Thankfully Tempest was able to hold them off until backup arrived. There is no need to fear these, though. They have been well compensated, and the Shao Geok, the vicious flesh eaters that they are, have a code of ethics that will keep them from backing out of our arrangement." His voice held a tone of assurance that didn't waver.
I wondered what sort of "arrangement" had been made with the monsters. I couldn't begin to guess what they would want so badly that they would be willing to serve a Knight of Ethan, even a fallen one, like Weaver. "In that case, I suppose my fate is in your hands." I replied. There was no denying the truth of my words. Though I didn't trust Weaver, there was little else I could do but let myself be guided by the red-eyed warrior. My body was still adjusting to its changes, and until it finished I would be unable to fend for myself. I suspected that if I had to, I could walk on my new legs, but it would be a risky endeavor.
"Don't worry. We're already through the worst of things. By this time tomorrow we will be in our camp at Howling Wind, a warm meal before us, and a warm bed ahead of us." He again spoke in tones of reassurance.
I thought for a moment and then said, "I hope many of our fellow Knights have made it there safely."
"Who knows?" Weaver replied, but his voice had lost some of its good cheer. "Tomorrow will see the world in a new light. Until then, let us not worry." We traveled on in silence, and for that I was just as happy.
Lucidil plodded on all through the night, dragging the stretcher - and me on it - behind him as if it weighed nothing at all. In the morning, I saw the first signs of civilization. We passed a crudely fashioned mud hut just past dawn, and all around it ran the Shao Geok. The young - and I assumed they were the young for they were smaller than the adults I remembered seeing so long ago - were nearly as large as a man when they stood erect, though they generally romped about on all fours. There were five or six of them rolling around and playing together like children of any culture might. As we approached, their attention turned to us and their fierce, wide-spaced eyes took on a burning light, noses upturned to catch our scent as we approached. With our cloaks on, Weaver and I were both difficult to see, though I was lying on a stretcher, and that went a long way toward breaking my illusion of invisibility. A sharp bark emitted from one of the children who was soon joined by the others. In answer, another of the Shao Geok emerged from the mud hut, crawling out on all fours through the small door and coming to stand fully erect as it exited. The creature's thick furred chest was lined with midsized breasts, four per side, for a total of eight. Its lip curled in a snarl at the sight of us. I guessed it to be the mother of the smaller beasts. It barked - a deeper, more resonant sound than the younger creatures had made - and the little ones quickly filed into the mud building. The mother took her place in front of the door and watched us, I thought with a look of suspicion, as we made our way past. Weaver did not slow on our course.
"You see, they know we are about business and will not bother us. They fear us more than we fear them," Weaver's voice was calmly confident. I had heard that saying before, "They are more afraid of us than we are of them." It was something that all mothers told their children when talking about the wolves of the woods, or the great bears that sometimes came too close to the cities. I had never believed my mother, but I found that I believed Weaver. It wasn't his words that convinced me, but the actions of the mother, concerned for her cubs. I was forced to reassess my view of the Shao Geok. They were terrifying, and perhaps dangerous to humans, but they were also just another creature of the world, trying to live their lives as they saw fit.
"If they are monsters, what are we that we are feared by monsters?" I asked Lucidil, though the question was more to myself than him.
His reply came after a short chuckle. "You worry too much. We are what we make of ourselves. That's all anyone can ever be."
His answer was simple, but poignant. Perhaps I needed to worry less about what I was, and think more about what I wanted to do with what I had become. I was changed. I could feel it, but I was also the same Lowin I had always been. At least, I believed I was the same Lowin I had always been. I was stronger, faster, more dangerous, but I still felt like myself. I could use my new power for the betterment of the world if I could only figure out how.
I flexed the muscles of left arm and clenched my fist. The arm answered my call immediately, the pins and needles gone from it. I could still feel some weakness in the limb, but it was fading fast. The night had almost completed my healing. I was the only one aware of that so far. While that remained true, I was at an advantage. I was, however, still greatly disadvantaged by the fact that I had never used my new limbs, and would likely be uncoordinated with them until I'd had some time to adapt. Still, I was already formulating plans of escape. I would need more time, at least another few hours before my body would be fully ready, but once the healing was done I would only need a small opportunity to make a getaway. I felt confident that if I could just get a head start, Lucidil and his ilk would never be able to catch me. Of course, I didn't have any idea where I would run to, or what I might accomplish by running in the first place. I wanted to sigh in exasperation, but I didn't want Weaver to hear and start asking questions. I would need to bide my time and think. Escape was pointless if I had no plan to follow it. The smell of sea air pulled me from my doomed circle of troubles. My ears twisted and caught the sound of ocean surf crashing against a shore. We were nearing our destination.
Mud huts began to pop up frequently. Their inhabitants went about their business, mostly indifferent to the strangers in their midst, though some of the Shao Geok did cast fearful expressions in our direction. Apparently they knew only too well the might of Weaver and his kind - my kind. Some few, though, gazed at us with a different look entirely, one that was filled with a terrible hunger.
"I've secured us passage." I heard a voice calling, and a moment later Silent trotted up next to us. He looked down at me for a moment and smiled. "You're looking a lot better."
"I'm feeling a lot better." I told him, and returned his smile, since it looked natural on his face. Silent was a conundrum. He was obviously serving Weaver, but he seemed little changed- other than his voice - from when I had known him as my guard. He was still quick to smile, and showed a genuine interest in my wellbeing. It would have been easier to know what to think of him if he'd been more like Lucidil, cold and always a bit distant. If such had been the case I could dislike him, distrust him, but his ever friendly and open face made it impossible to dislike the black-eyed warrior.
"That's good because the weather is not in our favor for a crossing." Silent seemed oddly cheery about this.
"The Walking Death are adept at sea craft and their handling. In these parts they've had to become so in order to survive. The game in the area is very limited, so they eat mostly fish. They will see us safely to our destination." Weaver assured Silent and me. We made our way through the rest of the ramshackle town of the monsters, past homes and buildings that looked like they served some form of public purpose, perhaps stores or meeting halls.
The extent of the Shao Geok society astounded me. They had a level of social interaction I had never anticipated. The males stood protectively in front of their mates, and their offspring, eyeing us as we proceeded to the ocean, some sporting sashes about their bodies lined with various implements and tools. For the most part they were completely unclad other than their fur, but some of the females wore necklaces of cord strung with feathers, bone, and occasionally a colorful rock or jewel. The loremaster in me wanted to stay longer in their village, to learn more about them as a people, but the more pragmatic part of me insisted that the less time we spent amongst them, the better off we would be. They may be intelligent, and they may have a unique so
ciety, but they still considered humans a loathed rival and easy source of food.
We reached the ocean front in short order, Silent leading us to the craft that would take us across the stretch of ocean between the mainland and our island destination. The boat was larger than I had imagined it would be, being sizable enough to easily sit fifteen or more of the south coast's native residents, and even more humans. The craft seemed constructed of a large hollowed out tree, the wood treated with a substance I was unfamiliar with that caused water to bead on its surface instead of soaking into the wood. There was one creature already aboard the vessel, sitting in the bow, its long arms draped in the water, and another standing on shore, obviously waiting for our arrival. As we approached, it made a croaking sound in its throat, followed by a gravely bark.
"Yes, just the three of us." Weaver said to the beast, obviously understanding what it had said. The creature barked again, and Silent aided Weaver in carrying my stretcher aboard the ship and laying it out amidships. The entire vessel weaved and bobbed as we boarded, my stomach weaving and bobbing with it.
"You understand their language?" I asked Weaver, already knowing the answer, but wanting to make some conversation to take my mind off of the motion of the boat beneath my back.
"Yes, and some of them understand ours as well. Some few even speak ours, and I can speak theirs, but it is generally easier just to speak in our native tongues. We are not vocally designed to communicate. Learning their language is easy enough, but actually speaking it is only possible to those of us with 'the voice,' and even then it is difficult. They have an equally difficult time mastering our form of speech, but they have sharp minds and can learn to understand us as quickly as we can learn to understand them," the red-eyed warrior explained, and I thought I heard a note of respect in his voice.
"You hold them in esteem." I said, a little surprised.
"Indeed. They have struggled at the fringes of human civilization all their lives, forced into the most inhospitable places in our world, but they still manage, and have become stronger for it." He smiled down at me as the boat lurched out into the water, the Shao Geok who had been waiting for us at the shore line hopping into the craft as it pulled away from the bank. "If only that humanity was so quick to adapt and strengthen themselves. Instead they spend all their time looking for the easiest ways to live, surrounding themselves in frivolous excess, and seemingly bent upon their destructive course. The Shao Geok will destroy them all someday, I think, if humanity does not become stronger."
"That doesn't seem to displease you." I probed at Weaver, looking for some further insight into his difficult to read personality. His crass and obvious distaste of mankind was alarming of itself, but I sensed a greater darkness beneath his words.
"Should it?" He said, no longer looking at me, but looking out over the turbulent ocean. The two creatures in the boat with us had each grabbed hold of two long flipper-like paddles that seemed molded to fit their inhuman hands. Together, they began rowing at the water, using their massive upper body strength to propel the boat in the direction of their choosing at a faster rate than I had thought possible. "Am I any more different from them than I am from humanity?" Weaver added after a moment, holding up his clawed hands.
"You are what you make yourself, Weaver." I told him, remembering the similar turn of phrase he'd used on me not long before.
He laughed loudly and looked down at me once more. "I suppose I am. You've a good head on your neck. Let us hope you can keep it there." Weaver walked to the edge of the boat and looked out over the sea, and after a short time Silent came to sit beside me.
"How are you healing?" He asked of me, his normal ready smile on his face.
"Well enough, but I don't fancy being carried around," I answered, returning his smile with one of my own. I could almost believe things hadn't changed between us, if I really tried.
"It's about an hour by boat to the island, and Weaver thinks by then you should be ready to start walking. I'll warn you, at first those legs are going to be weak, and you'll have to work on finding your balance all over again. It'll come faster than it did in training, a lot faster, but those first few weeks will be rough." He said, sharing his own experiences for my benefit. I could feel the strength in my legs, and it was building fast. I suspected that if I were to get to my feet at that moment, I could run until the sun faded from the sky for the last time. In fact, there was so much energy and power in my body that I was hard pressed to remain still.
"I will keep that in mind," I told him, and it wasn't an outright lie. I knew that the advice about the balance, at least, would come in handy when I began to use my new legs for the first time. "Silent, do these new limbs change anything else about my body? I've been feeling..." I thought about it for a moment. I wasn't sure how to phrase the changes I'd felt inside of me. I knew the arms and legs were completely new, but to me it felt like my entire bone structure had become denser, and that my heart pumped with a stronger rhythm.
"Like your bones are made of steel?" He said, a grin spreading across his face. "It's like with the eyes, you take a piece into your body, and you gain the functionality of that piece, but your body makes changes to accommodate the new pieces." He tried to explain, but when he saw the blank expression on my face he went on. "What good would those new arms do you, if when you fully extended the muscle in them they tore free from your shoulder socket?"
"Ahh, I see. So the new pieces are making sure my body is fit to handle them," I said, thinking I had the connection figured out.
"In a way," Silent answered, a thoughtful expression on his face, and I guessed that I didn't have it after all. "It's actually the eyes though, that facilitate the changes you're experiencing. They have already changed your anatomy, and as you add parts, they allow you to incorporate them into your body's chemistry, making the physical changes necessary for you to function in your new state, but you must form a bond before taking in a new part or your eyes will not be able to adjust your body to the new pieces."
I nodded, thinking back on my fight with the fell beast, and the subsequent attaching of its limbs to my body. "The blood bond?" I asked.
"Yes, that is the most common way to form a bond. The combat, the mutual injuring, they start the process, and then it is completed with the physical attachment of the new parts. It's a strong magic, and all strong magic requires a great sacrifice. If you really want to know more, though, you should talk to Luc... to Weaver. He knows far more than anyone else on the subject."
I caught his near slip, but pointedly ignored it. Weaver's identity was no longer a secret to me anyway. I wouldn't bother to cause trouble for Silent by calling him out on it. "I will have to make a point of talking to him about it," I told my travel companion.
"There will be plenty of time to talk once we reach the island," Weaver said from where he stood, a few feet away. With the sound of the ocean, and the paddling of the two Shao Geok, I'd have thought he wouldn't have heard Silent and me speaking, but I should have known that with his keen ears, so much like mine, he would have no trouble following our conversation. "Once we are there, I'm sure there will be a great many questions you would like answered, and I will see to as many as possible."
That was the first time information had been offered to me, and I felt I might have been better off without it. I laid my head back down, looking up at the sky that seemed to crest and sway with the motion of the sea. I could feel my body making more adjustments to my new arms, legs, and ears. I could also feel it adjusting itself to the pitch and sway of the boat. I had become keenly aware of the changes going on within me, and it was a peculiar sensation, feeling one's body change. I flexed a hand and felt it respond perfectly to my command of motion. I could feel every weave of the fabric used to create the stretcher I was on brushing against my fingertips, and was acutely aware that the claws on that hand would sharpen, at my willing, into blades fine enough to render the fabric into shreds. I don't know where the knowledge came from. It was s
imply there, as a person might know that if they turn their ear in the direction of a sound, they could hear said sound more clearly. I didn't need to be taught, I was just aware. I wondered if it was the same for all the Knights of Ethan.
My travel companions fell silent, and it seemed for a time that the only sounds in the world were the splash of the Shao Geok oarsmen and the lapping of the ocean against the side of the wood craft as it cut through the water towards its destination. I stared into the sky, and it stared back into me. I had the feeling that so many of my questions would soon be answered, but I feared what those answers might entail. I wished, not for the first time, that I could be back at Fell Rock with Kye, talking and enjoying her company. In the short time we'd had together, she'd always known how to make me feel better. The world had always seemed right with her. It was strange that Fell Rock had become a place of my fondest, and yet also my most loathed memories. It was stranger still that both those sets of memories, good and ill, had all happened within a single year of my life. A single year ago I was a completely different person, one less wise in the world.
I must have been lost in thought for a while, because it seemed only a short time later that I was jarred roughly back into my surroundings by our craft striking the shore of our destination. Before I knew what was happening, Weaver was at my side, leaning down to look at me.
"Do you think you're ready to walk?" He asked, and I replied with a nod of my head. I was quite ready to walk. "Alright, but we need to take it easy." He reached a hand out to me, which I reached out to take with one of my own. I gripped his hand firmly, but not as firmly as I could have, had I really wanted to. I didn't want Weaver to know exactly how well adapted I was to my new body parts. I allowed a slight tremor into my hand as I pulled myself, in a way I hoped wasn't overly theatrical, to my feet. As I came up to my full height, one that was at least six or seven inches higher than it had been before my acquisition of stronger, longer legs, I almost lost my balance and stumbled. It was only a momentary thing, my body quickly adjusting itself to the changes, but it was enough to convince Lucidil that I was, indeed, still in the process of healing. He immediately stepped over and put my arm around his shoulder, urging Silent to do the same on the other side of me. I didn't tell him that, after the initial reorientation, I felt fine on my legs, indeed I was eager to stretch them and see what I could do with all the raw power I felt inside them. Instead of bursting free and seeing just how far and fast I could run, however, I let my weight lay on Lucidil's shoulders as he and Silent proceeded to help me off the boat. As I cleared the craft, I got my first real look at the island we'd landed on.