Aemoten
It was not long after the tree Thaler had been leaning against disappeared from sight that the quad of them fell quiet, and Aemoten was left to his own thoughts.
Etakar was hardly much of a conversationalist during travel - not only was his throat not compatible with human speech, but his hands were very much preoccupied, detracting from the distance left to Zerul City one long measured stride at a time. Though, to be fair, Etakar hardly struck as the type of personality who would be much of a gabber even if he
were to have the kind of voice suitable for speaking. He was at once much more wont to observe and analyze others than to partake in gossip, and too laid-back to bother with non-crucial affairs (if not, indeed, seeing himself as above petty squabbling). That was not to say he could not be resourceful, or lacked the ability to express himself. Quite oppositely, if he wanted you to know his opinion on something, you
knew. It was thus not usually due to lack of ability that Etakar used his literacy sparingly, but due to a lack of necessity - the noble beast did few things that were superfluous. Right now, he was fully intent on getting them all where they were supposed to be.
And then there was the one of them who had up to a few hours ago been their newest companion. The raven, who was still seemingly distrustful of them, watching them with her remaining good eye, beak (that she was not shy of putting to use) slightly ajar in a manner that gave her an expression of nigh human bafflement and uncertainty over the situation. All in all, she did not seem overly pleased. It was hard - if not impossible - to tell how much of her current attitude was due to losing her companion, eye and (though hopefully temporarily) power of flight, physical pain, the whole mess of today and being carried along by nigh strangers where she had formerly had free reign, and how much of it was, perhaps, her simply being a grump by nature.
Don't worry - it would appear that we are all broken here, the human man mentally noted at the bird,
you'll fit right in. Ravens were somewhat uncommon as companions; they were not nearly as inherently social as crows, and thus mainly tended to regard the humans they stuck with as either their parents or - as was more common with adult ravens, who tended to drift away from blood relations as they aged - their mates. A raven was thus more likely to be an one-person-bird, whereas a crow could get along with whoever they trusted and had taken a liking to, and introduce their spouse to you while they were at it. Either could learn some speech, if so inclined, but as their voices were more a tool for conveying messages than an instrument of art, and they tended to be not particularly motivated by routine treats, they usually did not bother to invest much in the language
you wanted them to learn. Curiously, though, crows were among the few animals who used currencies with no obvious function aside of peculiarity and prettiness, both among themselves and even with humans. If their new acquaintance could speak, though, she was yet to demonstrate it. In his presence, anyway - Thaler had called her Beatrice, though Aemoten was unsure whether it was something she had named the bird on her own accord, or whether she had managed to get it from the bird herself when he wasn't there to see it. (Nor, for the matter, did he know how she had figured the bird was a she ... male and female ravens looked exactly the same to him.)
Whatever the case, it nevertheless seemed likely that whatever fate had brought her and her late companion together would forever remain an unknown. For some reason, given his choice of companion creature and his physical disfigurement, Aemoten felt that he had been quite the lonely individual with a difficult past...
Had his demise really been just yesterday? It felt as though it existed in another time than the evening in the inn, when everything, for once, was going well for them. Koraakan knew that even the early hours before after that, when he had felt rested and in high spirits, preparing to reach Zerul City by noon, that even those belonged to another era. He had probably lost his calm a couple of times, afterwards. Said a few things he would not have if the entire thrice-cursed world had not suddenly turned against them. How many men would have fared better, if suddenly finding themselves trying to, at once, save the world, their beloved, and one's place in life, against one of the most powerful beings in existence, and having less than a day to do so? Did it even matter, anymore? They were alive, somehow, even if at least one of them had, if briefly, wished she were not.
He had
been dead, long ago - before he was resurrected as immortal, and what killed others began to only result in a form of stasis followed by slow and
exceedingly unpleasant recovery. Nevertheless, he
knew what being dead - dying the
good death - was like. It was a
nightmare. Quite literally so. It was a lot like a dream, one in which you were acutely aware that you were in a dream, aware of just how
wrong everything around you, and even you yourself, were. He could conjure whatever objects he desired out of thin air ... food, furniture, tools, it did not matter. But they tasted wrong. Felt wrong. Not real. Incomplete. Off. And if he stopped paying attention, they would likely just vanish. Nothing was permanent. Nothing
mattered. He was but a ghost in a fake body shaped after what he though he had been like, interacting with a false simulacrum of reality. Some of the other ghosts even made up fake routines for themselves, did fake work for fake results instead of just conjuring the fake fruits of their labor outright, just to
pretend that they were still ... consequential, that their actions had a point. It was, one could deduct, not a plane ever meant for mortals, and over prolonged stay probably induced a form of insanity, a desperate self-deception as a coping mechanism in one's yearning for reality.
He had not feared death as a mortal; he had looked his killer in the eye, knowing that it was the end, knowing there was nothing left in him to do anything against it, and merely resigned himself to the inevitable.
Being dead, though, the sense of futility and wrongness it entailed, he had hated. Was hell really that much worse, he wondered? It was so stated that there would have been demons hunting him for sport, but it was not like he could truly die again, and getting back at the damn bastards would at the very least have given one some kind of actual
purpose.
Maybe he would have eventually gotten used to that odd, false world of inconsequentialness - in a few thousand ... thousand years, when he had entirely forgotten what being alive was like, perhaps -, but as it were, he did not know how much a person would have to suffer to
prefer to die. Or, at least,
think one preferred to die. People occasionally recalled meeting the Wanderer, but to come back, as he had? Very few, he presumed. Not one in ten million. And even he did not think he could actually convey how
wrong being dead had felt to his mortal mind. Somewhat morbidly - if it indeed so was that the Withering destroyed souls - it occurred to him that perhaps the nonexistence provided by it would have been better for the dead, were it not untimely.
The Sekalyins usually buried their dead - and even many a fallen foe, if they believed them generally honorable - under the trees. As such, Aemoten was well familiar with living forests, and would not hurt an old tree if he could. Oppositely, burning someone was the worst "burial" you could give one - something reserved strictly for people and beings so atrocious and abhorrent they and their memories needed to be erased from existence entirely, just in case their lingering energy might otherwise further taint the lands. Being a tree seemed a reasonably nice fate, all things considered.
Did it not not matter anymore? Not for today, anyway. They had lived. They will see another day. The world would not implode upon itself. Not
yet, anyway. As long as they were alive, they could still do things. Fix things. Make a difference.
But rest ... rest they could not. Not truly. Not yet. The withering was still there, the civil war was still there, the Crusaders' Guild was still there, the devilgod was probably still there, grinding his teeth over losing today's battle... They could not hide from the world, and they could not flee. They had to hold their ground and fight, one way or another.
Remember what I told you, back by the borderhouse? We cannot keep fleeing. Even if we do not get tired, even if the thing chasing us does not catch up, we will eventually reach the end of the world, be it a sea we cannot cross or the prophetic end-time... And then we will have to fight anyway. Alone. He did not actually voice anything, however; it would appear Thaler had dozed off, and he did not want to perturb her with his thoughts.
Rest. You deserve it. I'm well enough to watch over you. Like you did for me. He can, at the very least, give her the rest of today.
He really had been away from actually acting on being a warrior for too long, had he not? He had kept physically fit, but it had been eight years since he was last adventuring
(fleeing!), and decades since he was in an actual war. While he still consciously knew things, the exact sense of how harrowing things were in war had lost its edge, up until he was amid everything again.
Sekalyns considered both killing and war inherently dishonorable. Something that you did because you had to. Deliph, to them, was a devil, and the common thing to wish before battles,
aletaria res, was no less than the wish to what was to ensue to be brought into the past. To fight not to win, but to end the horror.
You think too much, Ardjan had insisted, on more than one occasion.
Perhaps. But lamenting to himself seemed to be what he did. Not much else to do while they were on the way; it was not as if he could afford to fall asleep himself, even if the road was - thankfully - quite monotonous. Break. Yes.
The human warrior sighed, lowering his head and closing his eyes. Though his soul was no longer trying to collapse his body into itself in order to not be stretched too thin, he probably still lacked quite a bit, and his body and mind insisted he returned to slumber. That whole irritable, weighed down feeling. Were there no plans and no injuries, he would perhaps have considered just settling down against Etakar's side and sleeping it off in whatever secluded spot they could find by the road.
Etakar continued undeterred, not quite like a cat, not quite like a wolf, quite unlike a horse. A good horse would outrun a dekkun on plains - and Etakar was a plains' dekkun -, but not out
last one ... dekkuns could be truly relentless trackers if they set their mind to hunting someone down. Also made them brilliant at covering long distances in general, if you managed to convince them there was a point to doing so.
It was ... cool. The air was heavy, damp, even if it was not raining. It smelled like northern autumn, of moisture and decaying leaves. Odd thing that, seasons. His homeland had only had one, hot and raining. Not too many people originating outside of his home regions fared too well there. Either they caught some exotic disease (which was further exaggerated by the fact that compared to most northern peoples, the Sekalyns were neat-freaks; you
had to be if you lived in a climate where your shirt would grow mold on it
while you were wearing it if you did not change it daily, and everything that was unclean you could almost literally see rot), or the heat fatigued them. Oddly, even the desert peoples were brought down by the latter - it had been implied it was the moisture. Easier to keep cool and alert in dry heat, as long as you had water.
It was also lot quieter here and now than it would have been in a rainforest. No rain beating against broad leaves, no birds, no distant, ageless call of a beast. Just wind, and even that had barely enough strength to rustle leaves. Peaceful, perhaps. Was it but a calm before a storm?
Thaler seemed so small against him. She weighed almost nothing, too; just yesterday he had been able to pick her up with barely any effort. She was warm now. It seemed almost ... back to normal, he guessed. Yet, it also felt as if things would be all too easily broken again. There was something very tentative about the whole thing, but yet ... in all that, there was still some proof that he could hope, was there not? If he had told her what he felt, and the devilgod himself had intervened, and somehow they were still together here...? Here. Now. Real. Thaler was real. She was still alive, he was still breathing. Comes what comes... He will wait for as long as he has to. For now, just hold her close and try not to think about the future too much.
After a while, a slight twitch went through the human man, and he lifted his head to stare at the road ahead once more. Contrary to Thaler's concerns, ravens were quite capable of holding onto things while they were sleeping ... humans, not so much, especially if said things included a whole other person.
He should try not to fall asleep. Easier thought than done.
After some pondering, he settled on trying to recollect what was known as Nerekthe's Epic - or song-tale, if to go by the verbatim translation. Compared to northern epics, it was an odd one; in this, the war was already over, and who was presumed to be the nominal character was but an observer, someone who walked over the destroyed land and witnessed its rebirth. If this is what they were about to see - the razing of the land - then how many of them would see its rebirth?
Unlike the militaristic rhythm and counted syllables of Ienaphyoraem and other directive collections of verses, Retaleakata Atenerekthe seemed to have little pattern, and instead seemed to take after whatever tune seemed to fit the words; with song-tales such as these, the singer had the freedom to add their own flair and interpretation as they saw fit. It was the tale and feeling that mattered there, not so much the exact precision in the meaning of each word.
At this time, Aemoten did opt to voice the words, in what was more a melodic whisper than anything else. Much more would have been taxing on his voice as it now, and and if Thaler was fully asleep, he should probably not wake her. If she was not ... she had implied she liked how his native language sounded, even when he was just habitually speaking it. It had been a surprising, if generally pleasant notion - he had gotten the impression most people considered Sekalynic rather harsh-sounding, the way the usually pronounced things.
Ejit liatrakh em raneat akantrek...
Etri si aleraem anylotejietam,
eri aokeja tamatret anelija,
eri remnataonaet itnakatialem,
atparemjaet antelontentjaet...
Nari si akantrek ameratam,
ireimaet akhaet leim amerakajanaet,
irenaet ietonakaet tem atonjiltaet,
iresetinaet larak setnepeth,
irenaet testapeth lem teykjil...
Ralajigatjaet nateleikei lejinamnet,
etri teseitraket aleatera tamatretak
ireakhet leiematarajaet etenla teja,
ireamerjakhet latakara iokenaet... The first verse, mostly an introduction, the two next, the description of the land as it was then, people's - the titular character's included - realization that the war was over, and them rising again, fourth, the description of the narrative character as she walked over the land, fifth, the fall of rain, fires put out and blood washed away, sixth, the raising of wind, the clearing of air, seventh, the waking of the plants... On and on it went, describing how, bit by bit, the land repaired itself. Of how, in the end, nature set things right again, given time.
The first times he had heard it he had been so young that he - habituated to the war he had born into as he was, and unaware of the dark age and, for the matter, symbolics - had predominantly just wondered why was it posed as a
good, noteworthy thing that it was raining. It was undoubtedly so that rain did serve to make plants grow, and would help with everything burning and smoking, too, but it was
always raining where they lived, regardless of whether you could make use of it or not. Always wet, and always suffocatingly hot.
The various Sekalynic nations - the Northeasterners notwithtanding - spanned considerable area into the Malith Jungle, from lowlands to up in the mountains, and as the case was, especially the lower areas blocked the clouds' path and brought upon them heavy rainfall that was as certain as the sun rising. A scribe from past the Old Tenihurian regions (which had long since been assimilated into the Sekalynic nations, with the descendants of the Tehihurian tribes gradually losing most of their culture and becoming who were now known as Highland Sekalyns) had asserted that the only reason the Lower Sekalyn was not quite as dark-skinned as he was was precisely due to the perpetual clouds adorning the sky ... and the cover of the forest.
If he recalled correctly, the pitch-skinned scribe had been called Gao, though his full name was a long, complex one shared with some river of his homeland. He had forgotten so much, over time... Only a few individuals continued to stand out. Gao. Karakon Menepth. Elise. Öjenne Dabalimon. What was her bodyguard's real name? The man was alway there, watching with his distrustful, yellow eyes, towering over Lady Dabalimon (who was by far taller than most northern men and barely an inch short from matching Aemoten's height herself) and everyone else... He did not have any fondness for the Sekalyn, but he was the most trusted companion of the woman who had, after their loss against the Sekalyns, singlehandedly prevented the complete abolishment of the Egemic Empire. Yet, tried as he might, the Sekalynic warrior could not recall his name, just his rather insulting nickname. Who else? Ardjan Elantair-Amalegäs, the unusually talented Drylandic human mage ... not shying away from black magic or necromancy, either, as those were not shunned where he was from.
He had been fourteen when he first opted to travel with Aemoten, sixteen when they parted ways. It was not long before he entered Rodoria, but after that unfortunate incident that had killed him for the fourth - and thus far final - time... Ardjan, if he was alive, would be thirty-six now. Perhaps they should pay his people a visit, should their visit of Zerul City prove unfruitful. If not he, then Ramiyletara Temetara, the leader of those folks, should know something. There was only one person in the entirety of Rodoria whose magical knowledge (Aemoten figured) rivaled hers ... and Delian Gilmah was not exactly liked around these parts, nor, chances were, a welcoming host willing to admit guests. She would not be offering them their typical flatbread (they baked it under the sun, on flat pieces of darkened metal) and cactus fruit, for certain.
And if he managed to meet up with
karakon Menepth ... well, he had more than too many unanswered questions, after barely more than a week. Some answers were overdue, and if they could travel in the same general direction while they were at it, the better. While intrinsically passive in conflict,
karakon could be quite formidable if someone picked them as a target.
But one thing at a time. Zerul City. Healer. Housing. Bath. Tea. Sleep. The things he will do tomorrow can wait till tomorrow. It would not be too long now until the gates to Zerul City would come into sight, and he would have to deal with
today's matters. Etakar would probably catch quite some attention by the gates, a predator (omnivore, but fully capable of taking down beings bigger than anything naturally found in these lands) standing seven and a half feet tall at withers, ridden by a foreign man in a black coat, a strange woman and a raven...
Judging by some of those they were now passing on the main road, some further disaster had struck.
It's not us, it's everyone. Finding an unoccupied healer and spare housing could prove more difficult than anticipated, unless William had even more influence than he had figured. No matter. He would at the very least do this much.
Izurich
sandstorm
Alfhedil
Alby47
Tuujaimaa