by Paul Yoder
“Lastly, myself! I won’t bother running through the details of what plans I have in mind, but suffice it to say, if we position our haltia subject atop a tall dune during the main heat of day, with me at their side to weave the hex, then an altered vision should be granted.”
Few were convinced, least of all Hathos, but Cavok, the large, quiet man Hathos barely knew, spoke up, vouching for the small one.
“Doesn’t sound near as dangerous as his usual antics. Usually gets the job done. I’d give him a shot at it. Low risk, high reward—easy trade.”
Hathos considered the stoic man’s words, adjusting in place, slightly uncomfortable, at length agreeing. “The hour grows long. You said you require the heat of midday? Are you saying we need to wait for the returning sun tomorrow?”
“That would be favorable, yes,” Jadu concurred, nodding his head vigorously.
“By then we may not need supernatural sight…,” Hathos grumbled, slicking the sweat off his smooth dome, frustrated at the runaround.
“Well, if we still have not spotted any activity by then, we have his scheme as a backup,” Arie suggested, trying to offer relief to the strained mood amidst the group.
Though none seconded the notion, Hathos only giving a slight nod to the whole thing, he called for all to return to their post and to continue their holding plan as before.
“If we still see no sign of arisen or Rochata by noonday tomorrow, we ride south. With or without Tarigannie’s forces in tow, we need to find that damned force and put an end to it.”
Throughout the night, Shadows came and went, scouts reporting nothing new as they returned late into the morning hours.
Hathos had not slept well that night, and it showed in his dealings with reports, his tone more terse than usual.
Kissa spoke, keeping her voice low in the quiet of the blistering morning heat.
“But why would we not see them make a move to follow? At this point, if they were to pursue, there should be some sign of trackers or scouts at the very least.”
Hathos replied softly back, his nemes headdress protecting him from the scorching sun that shown down upon them.
“We have two enchanters, one that said he could easily extend sight, and even a student that seems sure he can as well. You think Rochata, as large and powerful as they are, don’t also have those skilled enough with the hexweave to gain insight on our position? Perhaps they make no move on us because they see we hold here.”
Crossing his arms, looking to the praven that held what little hope they had left of getting some clarity on their enemy’s positions, he admitted, “I don’t know. Perhaps it is that—perhaps it is not. Regardless, we need to let this Jadu make his attempt he’s been talking up. With luck, he will come through for us.”
Kissa continued to listen to Hathos’ line of reasoning until he asked, “Have you a haltia that is willing to volunteer to work with him?”
She looked uneasily to her superior, turning to inspect the eccentric one immersed in his notes.
“I will volunteer. If there is harm to come from being associated with this endeavor, I will take the risk. I won’t buck it to those that serve under me.”
Hathos did not seemed pleased by the decision but could not argue that he would not have made the same choice if he were in her position.
The two walked over to the praven, ready to see if he would indeed be able to make good on the results he had promised the evening before.
Jadu had been busily preparing for his experiment, engrossed in a few travel books and pads that he flipped through, scribbling stray notes here and there, more entertained than he had been throughout the majority of their trek so far.
“Jadu, are you ready?” Hathos asked, the military man’s size and presence greatly overshadowing Jadu’s small frame, though if Jadu was intimidated by the looming presence, he showed no trace of it.
“All should be in order, yes. The sun is high; the air—scorching. I am ready,” he chattered out.
“Then let us gather Henarus,” Hathos answered, looking for the prophet as he spoke.
“And Reza,” Jadu threw in.
Hathos looked back to the praven, asking concernedly, “Why Reza?”
Jadu replied in a quick string of words. “For her healing ability, of course. Just in case something goes wrong. Always risks, you know, when trying anything new and experimental. Just want to have her there as a precaution. Surely we won’t need her, but…we should bring her.”
Hathos looked to Kissa, the two sharing a worried look before ordering the praven to grab his things and to meet them up on the highest dune just to the north of them.
Within half an hour, Hathos and Kissa, along with Reza, Henarus, and his priest, Josiah, sluggishly made their way up the steep, sandy dune, the heat of the desert sun making the trek truly miserable.
Jadu and Zaren awaited there, Jadu holding forth a tome before him, excited to begin the experiment, the old enchanter less so.
“Considerable effort is required for performing such a spell. A great deal of concentration. I’m wondering, Henarus, might I receive a blessing from your priest as you pray over our haltia here?” Jadu queried, motioning to Kissa.
“I can do that,” Josiah agreed, speaking for himself.
“Good. Now then, I’ll need the haltia to stand here at the peak,” Jadu began.
“My name is Kissa, little praven,” Kissa chided, giving him a glance that would have put the worry of death in anyone else, but Jadu brushed it off, correcting himself.
“Kissa. Never heard a name like yours,” he said, continuing with his instructions after the slight interruption.
“Priest—” Jadu started.
“—Josiah,” the man corrected. Jadu waved him off, quite over the menial details the group was being so picky with.
“You’ll be praying over me, hopefully helping with my clarity of thought…if there is anything to your religious convictions and power. I’ve sure heard enough to be hesitant to doubt it’s all myths.”
Pointing to Henarus, he said, “Prophet, you will be praying over Kissa here to increase her tremendous vision.”
He then looked back to Reza, adding, “You be ready to help if something goes wrong.”
Reza scowled at the recklessness she had come to expect of the man, but he was on to Hathos before Reza could contest.
“Sir…you just stand back, you don’t really even need to be here.”
“Zaren…,” he started, deciding at the last moment to skip giving any orders to his mentor, opening his book back up as he held it up.
“Okay. I’ll take care of the rest once the blessings are upon us. Ready to start when you two are, followers of Hassome.”
With that, everyone thoroughly ruffled and slightly confused as to what exactly was about to happen, Henarus looked to Josiah, both nodding their head, holding hands over both Kissa and Jadu’s head.
“Ah!” Jadu yelped, waving his hands frantically, all worried that something had already gone awry.
“Almost forgot,” he said, fishing around in his robes, producing a pair of smoky glasses, handing them to Kissa, ordering, “Wear these over your eyes…just as a precaution. Wouldn’t want ‘em to burn out of your skull!”
She flippantly snatched the shades from the junior enchanter, putting them on as Henarus and Josiah took a deep breath, placing hands on their heads once again.
The chanting echoed in unison, the hymn of faith weaving with each other to create a strangely soothing sound. The men’s voices quickly reverenced all there, and even though the majority of the blessing was being bestowed upon Kissa and Jadu, the others began to feel the effects of the blessing as well.
All in the circle began to feel a oneness—a peacefulness that stilled the tumultuous thoughts and feelings that had just moments ago, cluttered the mind.
Everything seemed more crisp, not just thought, but physical sensations as well—heightened to their peak.
Kissa’s sight was e
xpanded, all the haze along the atmosphere clearing, the tones becoming more vibrant, shapes in the distance having more depth and contrast to them; and as her lenses continued to focus, she could see further into the distance, seeing far across the desert plains to the mountain ranges days away from them.
Jadu sped up—if that was even possible. He flipped wildly through his spell book, dropped it, and produced a notebook within an instant, chattering senselessly as he looked blankly forward, churning calculations over on his tongue before snapping his fingers, going silent.
Plucking a wand from his sleeve, holding it high in the air, his large robe cuffs falling down over his face, he chanted incoherent word after word, the ground around them beginning to shake.
A burning hot gust of wind rushed out in all directions, followed by a cold blast up above it, rippling flat the heatwaves flaring in the distance. The ripples soon turned to waves in the air, growing taller as they traveled from crest to trough.
The distortions in the air grew, warping the view from their vantage point, bending their sight far above the surrounding dunes, allowing them to see up and over many of the obstructions blocking their sight from view.
Kissa turned slowly, scanning the warped horizons, awestruck at the sight before her, seeing through the warped lens the region tens-of-miles in all directions.
Jadu trembled, his wand glowing angrily as he continued blasting forth waves of scalding and chilled winds.
A hand patted his trembling shoulder, Zaren looking down on his pupil with a warning eye to watch his exertion with the spell.
Whipping the wand around in a growing circle, he cut the spell off, the tip of the wooden stick sizzling and hissing from the heat as Jadu fell to his knees, breathing heavily as he attempted to steady the swirling world around him.
“I could see the arisen, and the Rochatan army,” Kissa breathed, still overwhelmed by the sights she had taken in and the rush of the blessing that had briefly been bestowed upon her.
Jadu only half heard the announcement as he plummeted limply to the burning sands at the peak of the dune.
30
The Sullen Canyon
Dust swirled as Malagar touched down on the canyon floor. The shelf they had dropped down from was high. There was no return for them. He hoped they would eventually find a path out at the end of the canyon’s run.
Helping to catch Lanereth as she lowered from the shelf, he looked around their surroundings as she righted herself.
The canyon stretched on for a hundred yards or so before weaving around the bend. It was roughly thirty-feet deep, just enough to make it difficult to find an exit, most of the ledges and walls jagged and vertical, very few slopes issuing down into the crack in the ground.
There were black and orange vines of some sort, flat-topped mushrooms fanning out from them, covering the ground and walls.
Malagar was starving. It had been days since he had eaten. It was the same for Lanereth, save for the trail rations she had just had before the tower. His mouth salivated at the sight of the fungus that resembled the closest thing to food they had seen the entire time in the hellscape.
He plucked one from a vine, it creepily recoiling slightly at the motion. He stepped back, waiting, watching the vine to ensure that it wasn’t going to attack him.
“Don’t eat that!” Lanereth scolded, keeping her eyes cautiously on the vine as she stepped closer to him.
“We’re dead eventually if we don’t eat,” was his simple reply, gnawing off the leathery cap that flapped slightly upon touch, testing it in his mouth for a bit, chewing laboriously before swallowing.
He went for more, snatching off cap after cap, shoving them in Lanereth’s hands, ordering her to store some in the leather pockets as he wrestled the tangle of vines that sluggishly jumped and retracted from the assault.
“Eat,” Malagar issued as Lanereth looked to the writhing vine, stripped of its fruit. She trembled, holding up a cap, sniffing its leathery surface.
Looking to Malagar, who continued feasting upon the strange fungus, she took a nibble, having to chew hard to tear a bite from it.
“Just eat,” he said, as he helped stuff more caps into her pockets. “If they’re poison, we’re dead. If we don’t eat them, we’re dead. One death is quicker, that’s all. If they’re edible, then we may have a chance at surviving a bit longer, perhaps long enough to find a way out of this hell.”
She had stopped chewing as he spoke, and the hopelessness of it all seemed to weigh heavier on her then than ever.
“Can there possibly be a way out of this hell?” she asked, swallowing the disgusting fruit down as it wriggled inside her throat weakly.
“There was a way in—” Malagar answered, holding another cap up for her to take.
After a moment, his words lifting her slightly, she took the sorry excuse for food and bit hard into it, chewing angrily, the two moving on from the living vine.
Ash had begun to fall later that day, and the ravine began to show signs of development. Bones were scattered, some morphing in with the ashen rock along the walls and floor, and face-sized nodes stuck out of the walls as if looking at them, watching those who entered.
They had not liked the looks of their new surroundings, much preferring the benign network of vines they had passed through earlier, but the canyon walls were high, and Malagar knew that the canyon’s end led around the city, and if they were to get out prematurely, they’d come up dangerously close to the residence of the twisted civilization. They needed to see it through and stick to the safer route.
Around a bend in the canyon marked a drastic change in tone. The walls bled a dark, red sap, weeping out pores like the canyon itself was sick, trying to expel toxins.
Faces, torn in agony of all different creatures slowly pushed at the rock face as though it were a heavy sheet. The slow scratching of claws and bone on rock quietly sounded through the whole canyon.
Entrails pumped through holes in the wall, creating a living network of vines and membranes that grew into the cracks and floor of the canyon.
“I don’t want to go through there,” Lanereth whispered, eyes locked on the horror before her, completely exhausted at that point of it all, not hiding her fear of the corridor in the least.
Malagar looked just as uneasy as she did, but he had seen how close the canyon ran to the city.
“If we surface, and even one of those demons find us…,” he left off, knowing there was little chance of them outrunning or hiding from such a gathering of the malevolent giants.
They looked down the hell corridor a moment longer, frozen in place, neither wanting to move a step further.
“It looks like it ends further up,” Malagar hopefully suggested, pointing to the weaving trail a hundred yards further up the canyon, the faces upon the walls there remaining stationary and looking less defined, returning to the nondescript rock nodes they had just passed, the ooze and vines lightening as well.
“You first, then,” Lanereth said, waiting for Malagar to set foot on the bloodstained floors.
He looked to both walls, watching for reactions from both directions as he stepped into the red canyon.
He tread softly, the slick, spongy surface he walked upon sticking to his boots as he walked deeper into the nightmare, but he kept pace, and remained focused ahead, keeping aware of his periphery as the faces and hands reached out for him on either side.
Seeing that she was getting left behind, Lanereth started forward, following Malagar’s footsteps, the sappy, congealed blood squelching beneath her as she moved to catch up.
Her senses were pulsating, and at first, she was not sure whether she was panicking or if something was wrong; if the place they had stepped foot in was actually assaulting her mind.
The squelch and scratching grew louder in her ears, and Malagar, who was only a few steps ahead, began to blur in and out of her sight. The red along the walls began to flow together, sickening her and throwing off her balance.
She wavered and stumbled before catching herself. She stood in place for a moment to make sure she righted herself before moving on, watching as Malagar continued forward steadfastly, seemingly unaffected by the waves of disorientation she was withstanding.
“Mal…,” she slurred out, holding a hand up for aid, but none came. He kept onwards, as if in a trance, walking forward like a machine, disappearing out of her blurred vision.
She stumbled forward, forcing herself to take sluggish steps, each requiring a monumental effort, more so than the one before. The noise in her ears of the cries of the stone faces, the sloshing of her boots, and the scratching at the walls writhing around in her brain louder and louder, were driving her mad, setting a flaming itch in her skull that caused her to gasp for breath.
There was a shade behind her, she felt more than saw. Eyes, sullen, mournful—hateful—bearing down on her, hovering just inches over her shoulder.
It easily kept up with her debilitated pace. She struggled for breath, jerkingly taking steps, inching her way forward as she let out short coughs and whimpers.
The shroud floated closer, strands, black vines, and misshapen bones reaching out, creeping closer to her unprotected head.
She felt its chill presence, the penetration of its eyes digging into her, weakening her.
She could see Malagar again, only for a moment, and she saw there was a cloak following him as well, tethered behind him, reaching for him.
She didn’t want to turn and face hers. She didn’t want to look into those eyes she knew were there, waiting to snare her in complete despair.
She reached a trembling hand up to her chest, gripping her pendant. It was warm. The only warmth she had now.
She slowly turned around, pendant in hand, shoving it out to the horror of souls, and all the chaos of the walls shrunk as Lanereth held it forth.
The shade retracted its claws. Its eyes that at first lanced through Lanereth in an overwhelming wave of fatigue, broke its gaze, not being able to hold its lock on the woman in the face of the relic, looking down to the ground and floating off before dissipating into the haze of the ashfall.