167. Onwards I

Word of a young shaman spread through the forest village like a summer wildfire through dry leaves.

Tales told by the trainee hunters that Leawarra and Murrayn had taken under their wing told of an outlander that was a capable hunter, a beastspeaker, and a capable healer without whom Murrayn would have died. The men who had gone out to investigate the torchfires in the night described the visitor as young and tall, but they warned the people to take care as the young man’s unmarked face painted a lowlander.

Life in the village was hard and work was always plenty. The days were dull and repetitive and many a mind was gripped by this passing anomaly, some disturbed by his presence in their sacred woods, others curious to see the reaction of the Holy Ones and their own shamans, their imagination going wild with possibilities.

By morning's arrival, be it your or old, the entire village was on its feet. Some of them clamored to go and see if Leawarra was alive and well, some out of genuine concern for one of their own, others using it as a mere pretext to go and see and learn more of this mysterious lowlander shaman. Some of them had strange ailments that needed a cure and saw an opportunity to seek help from someone who could give it to them, others had a daughter or two of marriageable age and sought to see if this young man might be a good addition to their family. If he proved well enough, regardless of his lowlander status or a lack of proper tongue as some tales spoke, then they would not mind giving him a nudge to put his roots in their forest.

A crowd gathered and grew, gathering courage and curiosity on a pile. The old shaman of the village and his two young followers eventually left their wooden longhouse, curious of what had gotten so many people so excited and energized so early in the morning.

Too many tongues wagged all together and truth and tall tales mixed as such things were wont to happen. The words that reached the old shaman’s hairy ears were more concerning than anything else.

A shaman of some other Deity was out there, in the sacred grove, and his people were on a path to see him, meet him, seek his help, and who knew what else.

The old man's hairy painted brows furrowed as he stroked his long beard and shook his head, the many trinkets of bone and wood, so carefully woven into his white hair, making a clamor.

“Where is Murrayn?” he asked.

“In his home, where else? He’s still sleeping like a felled log,” one of the women of the hunter replied.

And so the old man slowly walked to Murrayn’s longhouse, his hunched back aching him with every step but he was too curious to see the work of this ember that had his leaves so aflame. As the woman said, Murrayn was asleep, his breathing regular. The pink scar on his leg was nothing big, but…

His eyes narrowed at the wound. “How deep was this?”

With hesitation, another woman of the hunter spoke. “It was like that when he was brought here,”

“Did anyone here see it when it was open and bleeding?”

People that followed him inside looked at each other and shook their heads, but that always frightened-looking youngun spoke up. “I was there. I saw it all. You could see the bone, Elder. Blood poured out of it and Leawarra bound his leg, just like you showed us we should do, but even so he still swayed and then fell.”

The old man gurgled something at the back of his throat as he stroked his beard. He was not sure that he could close a bone-deep wound so well. Even if he could, the loss of blood should have killed the man that now slept so soundly. So, there was something to this young ember after all. Something that even he lacked.

“And how did this… outlander close it?”

“He washed it first with water and took out the bigger bits, then he poured something inside. It just… hissed and closed.”

“Did he now…”

“Then he… he put his lips on Murrayn’s…”

Gasp and murmurs erupted in the crowded longhouse.

“Collyn, you twit, you didn’t tell about the dark smoke!”

His eyes found the slip of a girl that said that. “What dark smoke?”

Piece by piece, he collected the real story and the image became clear. This outlander was not a Skilled healer like he was, but rather someone who used the creations of others to mend the hunter’s wounds and ailments. Still, to close a bone-deep wound and keep a man who was so drained of blood alive, these creations had to be powerful.

Very powerful indeed.

“Is my man going to be well, Elder?”

"Hmm… It will be as the Verdant One wills. An offering or two in Her name would not harm your man."

The roots inside of him twisted with agreement.

With a purpose in his step and a crowd at his back, the hunchbacked elder was led to where this outlander and Leawarra were left to spend the earlier night. The Sacred Grove's ground and peace were disturbed by too many trampling feet, which made his face grimace in pain but he knew that his leaves were too taken by this foreign ember to turn back now. No, he had to guide them close to this fire and keep them from being consumed by its words and tales.

Grimacing with pains of age, he climbed up an incline and stepped around the exposed roots of the Grove. At the top he stopped, waiting for his breath to return.

But as his body struggled to do what it did with ease in years now past, something entered his sharp eyes.

Leawarra was there, with her red braids and the dark green paints on her face that marked her as a Hunter of the Verdant Grove, so alike her beautiful mother that a mere sight at her took him back an entire age.

Next to her was a beast, a great ram so tall that its shoulders stood higher than any man or woman that came after him. The corded muscles were visible under the gray hairs and the rectangular eyes were already observing him and the growing crowd that emerged up the incline.

A young man, tall and well-built and dark of hair, was sitting backward in a saddle while adjusting bulging leather bags on the beast's back.

The shaman’s hawk eyes shone seeing the bags.

His people were by no means quiet in their curiosity and both Leawarra and the foreign fire turned their way.

“What the— Elder. What is… why is everyone here?” Leawarra gasped. “Did the Holy Ones call for you to come?”

As Leawarra turned to the side, everyone's head followed her gaze. Where she looked stood a young tree, whose just widening trunk branched three ways— He stopped dead in place, as did everyone else behind him. At the base of the tree were the three Holy Ones, their small forms leaning on each other and sleeping.

As one, everyone fell to their knees on the forest floor.

*** *** ***

Tercius took a deep breath as he looked at the kneeling crowd of dozens, some of whom had come armed. Spears, bows, slings, and more were now on the ground as the crowd had silent prayers on their lips and their palms placed together, their eyes firmly on the sleeping forms of the spirits that had made themselves comfortable below the tree he helped grow.

Lucky snorted and shook his horned head, clearly agitated by the presence of so many strange people.

He was not the only one who was agitated.

A little while longer and whatever this was would have been behind him and he would have been none the wiser of it. Whatever the goals of this assembly were, as far as he was concerned they did not have anything to do with him.

Drunk on that pleasant buzz that the spirits left him with, Tercius frowned and looked at the last of his things on the forest floor. Silently and carefully, he climbed down from Lucky’s back and attached the final bags to their place, tying all the knots properly and quickly and making sure everything was firmly in its place. One last look at the cleared forest floor and he nodded to himself. Nothing was left behind.

Well… Leawarra had still to answer his query, but something in him told him that waiting for the answer was not a good option.

As slowly as he could, Tercius climbed into the saddle and tugged at the reins, turning Lucky northwards. With a gentle squeeze at Lucky’s sides, they slowly started moving. As the sizable mass of muscles moved it left hollow thumps of split hooves behind them. Lucky’s legs alone were taller than he was and so even a slow walking pace was enough to place considerable distance before the first shouts his way started.

For a brief moment, Tercius considered just urging Lucky on a gallop, but the woods ahead were full of dense and wild growth and both he and Lucky could easily get mangled by a branch or something.

Worse, galloping away might seem as if he was running away from them for some reason and Tercius had no idea if these people could control the spirits in whose domain he had spent the night. Well… he was running away, but actually running would only make his action appear far worse than the truth of it was. To some of those minds, seeing him run away like that would be all the justification and pretext they needed to get bold and act on their own desires.

So, instead of reacting to their shouts in any way, Tercius swallowed his agitation and pushed it all down, using all he had at his disposal to keep Lucky at a trot when the great beast wanted nothing more than to bolt.

“Put that down!” Leawarra’s loud shouts came above those of the crowd. “No! Don’t!”

His head snapped backward only to see a small dark object— the world went dark and a wave of cold weakness ran from the side of his head and down his entire body.

Shouts. Screams. Bleats.

The world was spinning and jumping and moving through a blur and he was spinning and jumping and moving in it, but he held onto Lucky with his legs and one hand. He painfully blinked the red away and grimaced and shook his head and it still fucking hurt. He separated the hand that cradled his half-shut eye and it came back red and sticky.

Wind and branches whipped at him as Lucky galloped and Tercius barely leaned forwards in the saddle and bowed his bobbing head low.

His bloody hand covered his open eye at the sudden blinding light.

The eye peeked open and saw trees no more. The morning sun was straight ahead, large and blinding.

The hand that gripped the reins pulled, trying to change the direction of the galloping beast. “No… no… Lucky… we must go… north…”

The words were hard to speak and a bit slurred. His head was swaying and he found it hard to pull the reins.

Tercius reached for {Meditation} and the pain went away as darkness descended.

The blurry veil that covered his mind out there was still with him here, but here it melted away somewhat— at least just enough to regain the capacity to realize what he had to do to get better. He waited for a moment longer before he released the Skill and the hand that gripped his head reluctantly moved to his neck and found the string. Following it, he found the vial at its end and brought it up for his teeth to unplug. The bitter liquid went down his throat with a groan, while half of it spilled down his neck and over his hand.

The deep thumps of Lucky’s hooves was all he heard as he called for {Meditation} to take him away again.

In the darkness he waited and felt better with each passing moment, a seething rage growing in him. It was not something that his Skill could dull. Over and over again, he saw that instant. The fuckers had thrown something at him, something small and dark, an object that had hit him just above the eye as he was turning around to see why Leawarra was shouting. If not for the stirrups and the wide saddle that were made to hold him in place well enough on their own, he might have fallen out.

Tercius waited, letting the potion do its work out there, before he let the Skill fade and the darkness of numbness be pulled back.

Lucky was still galloping at full speed directly east and Tercius slowly re-established the {Teaching} link with the panicked beast before he set to correcting the course back north and then a bit west.

His Mentor had left him at the exact point from where he just had to travel north to reach the monastery and he knew just how many streams and rivers and deep canyons he had to come across and how to reorient himself according to those.

To spend the night at Leawarra’s village, he had gone off route east and he had planned to correct that, but now he had gone even further east.

He touched his forehead and felt the formed bump on his eyebrow. What his bloody hand didn’t feel anymore was the open gash. Be it from the potion or even that injection of vibrant mana that still made his entire body buzz oh so pleasantly even now, or perhaps a combination of both, the wound was already closed and his head felt much better, his vision completely clear.

“That’s it,” he murmured to himself. “No more humans, Lucky. No more saving them, no more trying to find shelter with humans and spirits at all. Fuck them and their safe shelters. We’re making a cave tonight, you and I, just for the two of us.”

*** *** ***

They moved at full speed for most of the morning, Tercius urging Lucky ahead as he wanted to put as much space between himself and those people. By the time they reached a canyon-carving river somewhere around noon, Lucky was dead tired and thirsty and in dire need of some rest and recuperation.

Tercius needed rest too and more. Although the bump on his eyebrow was gone and the scrapes on his arms and chest and face were mended, his clothes were torn and despite spending hours taking them out when he saw them, he still had thorns all over. Lucky had gone straight through branches and hanging vines and Tercius was prickled all over. He needed water— and a lot of it— to sate thirst and to wash the blood and spilled potion off of himself.

Plenty of freshwater was right below them, but the canyon's stone walls were almost completely vertical and lined with jagged teeth that pointed straight up. There was no going down there, not even for Lucky.

Perhaps, with some rope and something like a stone amphora, he could fetch some freshwater while Lucky masticated on the foliage.

Tercius’ narrow eyes scanned the forested surroundings of both sides of the canyon, his hands on the reins but ready to slip to his thighs and the knives there. They were in the open here on the cliffside, but this was a good spot to make a stop. One side was completely cut off by the wide gash in the land and as far as he knew, nothing in these parts of Izmittor could make that kind of a jump.

All he had to worry about was his side and the open skies. The sun alone was still a problem, but not as much as it was yesterday. Here at least he had trees and bushes to hide under.

{Mana Sight} lit his eyes and he searched the surroundings once more. Feeling a bit calmer than before, he slipped out of the saddle and took off a coil of rope, letting Lucky graze with a little less burden on his back.

He rummaged around the surroundings and collected a pile of stones, then sat at its side, his fingers sinking into the stone as {Stone Shaping} worked its magic and moved the stone around, leaving the dirt to fall behind. The amphora he made was rough work, with finger-marks all over it, but it was good enough for him. Tercius tied the rope around the neck of his creation and hefted it up.

“Oof—” As gently as he could, he lowered it back down. “No… this won’t work. I need to trim some fat off of this thing…”

He kept thinning the walls and then even reducing the initial size until the amphora lost more than two-thirds of the weight. Slowly, he lowered his creation and as the amphora plunged under the pull of the river, the cord tightened and pulled at him. Tercius pulled it back, only to find a nasty surprise.

The bottom of the stone amphora was gone, the jagged edges cracked as if something smashed them.

Tercius’ face fell. “I should make it more shallow…”

Just getting water for him and Lucky's needs was a hassle that took him upwards of half an hour. All the while he kept thinking just how much it would take him to make a proper defensible shelter for the night and the answer was at least half a dozen sun-lit hours— hours that would have been better spent traveling. By avoiding humans and their shelters, he would extend his journey by a day at least. Still, even as he considered that, Tercius did not for one regret his decision one bit. On his way north, he had seen a few groups of humans but he had steered clear from all of them, even those that wanted to establish a contact.

At least he was back on the right track towards the monastery.

The wide canyon and river inside it that went from east to west was a feature that was present both on the map he had been given and then further described in the books he read. The river was created out of numerous smaller rivers that all started somewhere in the glacial mountain lakes of central Izmittor and ended in the ocean. According to the map, the wide canyon only had a few spots where he could attempt to cross it by mundane means. At these narrow points, Lucky was supposed to be able to jump over— if no erosion of the ground occurred in the past few millennia.

One of the alternatives he had was following the river all the way east, up into the central mountain range, and then cross the smaller tributaries one by one.

Another alternative was just telekinetically moving himself and Lucky across the gaping wound in the earth.

The second option was the easy one, but his Mentor warned him to be careful with using telekinesis in these mountains, far more than he should be careful of using Skills like {Mana Sight} or even Energy. That warning had to do with the origins of the mana type and all its subtypes that the magi today collectively termed under “telekinesis and its affinity-aligned subtypes”. Originally created in the Age of Alignment, more specifically in the first magi-spirit wars, the roots of telekinesis were found in the studies on the semi-physical nature of the magical bodies of mature spirits as well as the physical bodies of the elder spirits and the magical nature of juveniles. No matter how he looked at it, using telekinesis spells or Skills before a spirit was something like using animation spells of necromancy before a human.

Finally clean of blood and potion, his belly filled with biscuits and water, Tercius sat on the grass and heaved a sigh as he looked at the other side of the canyon.

Decisions, decisions...