The heart of Tribe Tiro had, for many generations, been the village that had come to bear its name. Saketa had seen it from every available angle in her youth, as she’d climbed the surrounding ridges and peaks, but her favourite one was when approaching from the east, along the road. There was a period where the landscape rose and gave a beautiful view of the entire settlement and its farmlands and more outlying structures. She could also see all of the climbing spots, and reflect on the various adventures they had provided. And the dangers, of course. Oh, what one did for the sake of exploration, and frustrating one’s caretakers.

The only people they met on the final stretch were two youths who had the task of keeping an eye out for the wild. This was a dangerous period even under normal circumstances, and the chaos that the Exile attack had introduced to the overall system had yet to fully settle. They gave the decidedly exotic Dwyyk a lingering look, she gave them a casual wave in return, and that was it.

The wall around the main body of the village was old and sturdy. The top of it tapered out, and was lined with sharpened spikes, arranged at the intervals that had long since been determined as the most effective ones.

“Have you guys just considered getting electronic sensors?” Ayna asked. “And drones?”

“Some communities do,” Saketa said. “But they still do not abandon the old ways that have proven to work. Machinery breaks down. Spikes do not. And too much security makes one soft, unready to deal with sudden calamity.”

“True.”

There was no official gate guard, but an unofficial one awaited them by the post. It was a woman with an old face but a straight back, a tied up bundle of grey hair, and a stoic demeanour. She wore a plain woollen skirt, and a shirt with sleeves that ended at the forearms, letting one see the distinctive tattoos that only a very particular group of people sported. The woman stepped away from the post as they neared, and old, old habit made her hand drift to make sure her Warden sword hung the right way on her hip.

“Saketa.”

“Auntie Bucca.”

They met in a brief embrace, although it hadn’t been long since they last saw each other. The woman shifted her head enough to give Ayna a polite nod, before stepping out of the hug.

“I think your wildwalking has done you well,” Bucca said. “I sensed as much as you drew near.”

“The awareness of the elders,” Saketa mused out loud.

“A tradeoff for a weakening body,” Bucca said.

She fell silent, and examined her niece with those small, piercing eyes. Respect for the woman’s age, status and relation kept Saketa silent.

“You have heard the news, I think,” Bucca said after a few seconds.

“I have,” Saketa said. “A vorasondu.”

“And you have plans for it, I think.”

“I suspect the Council already shares my plans, auntie.”

“They probably do.”

Bucca crossed her arms.

“Go in prepared, Saketa.”

“I need no reminder, auntie.”

“Youngsters will receive unsolicited advice as long as there are elders. Just accept it.”

She smiled in that way of hers; tilting her head to one side, while lifting a corner of her mouth into the other.

“I suppose I must,” Saketa sighed, although she was amused as well.

They started walking. Saketa turned her eyes forward, but didn’t focus them on anything. She tasted the air with her mind, seeking confirmation of the impression she’d gotten during the approach.

“I feel tensions, auntie,” Saketa said. “Pain and grief and fear. And yet I do not think any harm has struck the tribe itself.”

“We have guests,” Bucca said. “Brought here from the attack, to receive more advanced medicine. Their experience left deep marks in body and soul, and their accounts have stirred up the community.”

“I will visit them,” Saketa said.

“Of course you will.”

The houses around them were mostly wood, and the streets were paved with rocks hewn from nearby cliffs. Most of the buildings were long, multigenerational dwellings, the smaller ones being generally for storage or food treatment.

Spears hung on racks at regular intervals, shielded from rain by eaves, but ready to be snatched up quickly in case something dangerous made it over the wall. People were just going about their regular business, but everyone knew the signals, and how to respond, in case of a breach. Like death itself, it existed in the background, not something to particularly worry about day-to-day. Of course, the village was blessed with a retired Warden.

So, within this sanctuary, people tended to houses and farming equipment, manufactured fabrics, and simply talked. Since they weren’t needed for planting or harvesting right now, children played, and their shrill joy sounded along streets and over roofs. A few people noticed the trio pass by, and Saketa gave greetings to familiar faces.

This was the life that would have been hers, had she not been selected for the Wardens, and had her parents not agreed.

For a brief stretch, Saketa allowed herself to close her eyes, ignore her ears, and experience her ancestral home as a smell. It was truly strange what scent could do to one. First her training as a Warden, and then her offworld travels, had limited the time she’d actually been physically present in this location, but now her nose and its odd connection to memory was reminding her that her roots lay here.

She remembered celebrations, bygone people, games and pains, and all sorts of small things that were so big to a child with little in the way of experiences. She remembered her parents; her father better than her mother, since he’d lived longer.

“I’m going to wander off a little,” Ayna said, and Saketa opened her eyes to find the Dwyyk pointing towards the centre of the village.

“Go ahead. If you want me, just ask where the clinic is.”

Ayna bounded off. They hadn’t spent a lot of time in Tiro Village during this whole trip, but the girl had a real talent for making friends on the fly. Saketa wasn’t worried about her getting bored.

She and her aunt came to the ‘fixing square’, as it was often called, despite not really being a square. It was where most of the tribe’s craftspeople lived and worked. The scavenging operations that had become a part of Kalero’s economy had reached here, and a family of mechanics had added a second storey to their house so the workshop on the bottom floor could be expanded. Meanwhile, across the street from all that, was the place for repairing people.

Unlike many other workplaces, the clinic wasn’t a home as well. All the space was taken up by beds and medical equipment. Neatly arranged in shelves and on treatment tables was a combination of old ways, such as ointments made from Kaleran plants and sutures made from silk, and more advanced tools and machinery. Some of it had been imported, some had been manufactured in Kalero’s now-diminished cities.

It was the only place in a large area where one could have cybernetics attached.

The doctor and his closest staff were busy with a procedure, but a caretaker did show them into a recovery room. Three people lay there on soft beds with monitors on the wall behind them, keeping track of the patients’ vitals. Two were sleeping, with the aid of mild drugs, as their nervous system adjusted to the replacement that had been carried out. The third one was a man in his thirties, and as they entered he was slowly clenching the plastic fingers of his new left arm.

“Grego,” the caretaker asked in a soft voice. “Are you up for conversation?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Yes,” he said after a moment, and beckoned them forward with his flesh hand.

“Greetings,” Saketa said. “You are of Tribe Seiho?”

“I am now,” Grego said. “My mother remarried into it, when I was four years old.”

“You were raised in strong soil,” Saketa told him. “I understand the tribe is fast rebuilding since the invasion.”

“We are,” Grego told her. “That is why we were there. We were gathering healthy soil to help with the farming.”

He looked at the tattoos on her forearms.

“You are Saketa, are you not? The… one who fell from the sky.”

“The one who broke,” Saketa said. “There is no need to talk around it.”

“I hear you are on the mend.”

“I am. My spirit is much recovered, and I expect to get my new sword soon. And I intend to let this vorasondu be my… second final test.”

“Not a typical test, is it?” he said.

“No. But I have always expected much of myself. But please, tell me about yourself.”

“Physically… I am adjusting.”

He looked at his plastic hand, and moved those prosthetic fingers again. The stump had ended just above the elbow, it seemed, and the seam was covered by healing wraps.

“It still feels so alien. I am told it will start to feel like a real part of me in time. And that I can get a more advanced one, though it is more difficult these days. But I was relatively fortunate.”

He looked over at the other two. One had had both legs replaced. The other was too hidden by a blanket to tell what exactly they had lost, but their face had been mauled as well.

“I must remember that. My body is being repaired. It will function like before. My spirit…”

He closed his eyes, as the horrors he’d endured assailed him. He spent some time getting his voice under control.

“My spirit is more deeply wounded, I think.”

His eyes were gazing out from a pool of despair.

“We had a lookout, but it made no difference. The beast came for us without a sound. It moved strategically, swooping through our ranks, disabling or at least knocking us down with great efficiency. My cousin was on the end of the sweep. It lifted him up in its jaws, but just shook him around, shattering his body, before throwing it far away. Then it started… playing, Warden. It played with us. That’s why so many of us are maimed, but alive. I think it wanted us to bleed to death.”

Grego looked at the wraps that marked the border between organic and synthetic.

“It pressed a foot down on my chest. It locked its jaws around my arm. I felt the teeth slice in, but it didn’t rip the limb free right away. It waited for my initial scream to pass, then it turned one eye to look directly at my face. Then, then it pulled. Slowly.”

The recollection took a visible toll on him. The caretaker reached out and gripped his plastic hand reassuringly. Saketa felt it was a nice touch: Providing human warmth through a new limb he was going to have to accept as his own.

“I have looked into evil…” he whispered, possibly just to himself.

“You have,” Bucca said. “But do not let it make you forget about good. The glow burns, in yourself and others, and shows itself in every kind word and look.”

“Yes,” he said softly, desperate to believe her. “Yes, Elder Warden.”

Saketa asked a few more questions, getting a full picture of the task before her. Then Saketa and Bucca left the patients to their healing and the staff to do their good work, and stepped outside.

“Has your mind changed at all?” Bucca asked.

“Do you not know me better than that?”

“And are you certain of your motivations, niece? Now that you have the whole story?”

“I meditated on the matter on my way here,” Saketa said. “I will meditate on it again in the evening, for the sake of absolute certainty.”

“Good. You are a credit to the tribe, Saketa. To your teachers, and to everyone who raised you.”

Bucca was always controlled, and her tone did not match the warmth of her words. But of course she meant it. Because a Warden walked in truth.

“Truth,” Saketa said, contemplatively. “Starting with truth to oneself, and radiating from out there into the world around us. That is our duty.”

“Yes?”

“I know some considered me dangerous after I broke,” Saketa went on. “And when I insisted on leaving, instead of staying to heal, I no doubt only made things worse. I know some wanted me contained. I never asked you what you thought.”

“I worried about you being a danger to yourself,” Bucca replied. “I had faith in all the people who shaped you, and in you. Now, be truthful yourself: Was I wrong? Were you ever in danger of going the way of the Exiles?”

The question didn’t upset Saketa. It was a natural one.

“No, auntie. I just broke in the manner of glass: I was simply diminished, with a lot of sharp edges.”

“Good. Well, you know what I mean.”

Bucca caught the attention of a young boy, and asked him to bring them something to eat. He ran off, sprinting with the reckless energy of his age.

“But you have not considered that perhaps you have walked the path as far as you need to? That you can allow yourself to stay?”

Saketa had considered it, for the sake of covering all of her options. Now she tasted it again, and somehow it was the scent that made the idea more appealing than before. It drew her into listening to the simple sounds of tribe and village, living in all the peace Kalero had to offer. Somewhere children were screeching with joy, and she was reminded of her desire for one of her own. For a flesh and blood legacy.

“You have done great things in your time, Saketa,” Bucca went on. “And once you have fully balanced yourself again, you will have countered your breaking in full.”

The woman turned to face Saketa fully.

“I was selected in my time. I passed the trials, I earned my suit and sword, and I did my part out in the lanes. I served the balance, shielded the innocent and struck down evil.”

Her hand played idly with the handle of the Warden sword, as if her body itself was remembering those times.

“Then, one day, I decided I had done enough. I looked over an alien landscape, on a distant world, and yearned deeply for a more familiar one. And the warmth of family, and stable friendships. No doubt I could have done more good, if I had stayed on the path. But it was time that I was good to myself as well.”

The little boy returned, still sprinting, and brought two fistfuls of peaches. Of course, given the size of his fists, that meant only four peaches. Bucca took the fruits, gave the boy a fond smile and a pat on the head, and sent him on his way.

“There is no shame in the small goodnesses,” the old woman went on. “I am old, but the village is still safer for my presence, and wiser for my guidance.”

She gave Saketa one peach, and bit into another one. Saketa ate hers in small bites, making the most of the flavour.

“This is a selfish desire on my part,” Bucca went on. “But I do want you to leave the path alive.”

Saketa nodded slowly.

“I know you do. And I do want to live out a full life. I want to pass on all the things I have learned. I want to be a teacher, be it formally, or simply through family, as you have done.”

She stood still, her eyes unfocused as her mind stared into the future, and into her own heart.

“But I do not feel ready. Not quite yet. I still have work to do, and things to learn.”

“And things to prove,” the sharp-eyed old woman said.

“And things to prove. I want to… I want to know that I can fully become the Warden I previously was. Before I step off the path for good.”

Now it was Bucca who nodded slowly.

“Saketa… I think you will be better. Pain is a teacher, after all.”

“Thank you, auntie.”

Bucca threw one of the peaches over her shoulder. Saketa turned. The fruit flew some distance before Ayna caught it. The Dwyyk laughed.

“The elder outdid you, Saketa!”

“They do that,” she replied.

Ayna tore into the fruit as she closed the distance, then worked on swallowing before speaking.

“And you didn’t randomly say my name out loud.”

“Indeed I did not.”

“Heh.”

Ayna ate another piece, and once it was in her stomach she switched out her glee for a demeanour more suited to serious talk.

“This wasn’t a long parting, but I think I caught people talking about that… that, uh…”

“Vorasondu,” Saketa said.

“Yeah. That. I didn’t get any details, but folks seem tense.”

“The wild is one thing,” Saketa said. “But vorasondu are something else entirely.”

“Right. Um, is it an umbrella term, or does it refer to a specific animal that gets… changed?”

“It is an umbrella term,” Saketa told her. “I spoke to the survivors, and they confirmed what I suspected. The creature that entered the Valley of Vartana, and was claimed by the forces there… was a greater skrax.”

“Huh.”

The latest peach-bite sat still in Ayna’s mouth for a few seconds. Then she rushed it down before speaking again.

“I’ve seen the skull from one of those things. Remember? In that river town?”

“I remember.”

“And you’re going to fight one of those, but worse, by yourself? With a melee weapon?”

“Yes.”

Ayna looked away and shrugged, with an expression somewhere between amusement and exasperation.

“Well, you never do half measures. Please tell me you’re going to use your powers this time.”

“I am.”

“But you’re still not at full power, right?”

“No. That will come after.”

Saketa’s hand drifted to where her Warden sword ought to rest at her hip.

“Once I have earned my sword. Once I am fully balanced. But first, I must pass through darkness.”