Progress through the crack was slow. Saketa doubted the vorasondu would try to ambush her in such tight quarters, but with her sensitivity unreliable due to the corrupted waves there was no reason not to show caution. Besides, with all that was happening, and all that it meant, being brisk about it felt wrong somehow.

That one was a purely emotional impulse, not demanded by any tradition, formal or otherwise. But a part of knowing oneself fully was to acknowledge these irrational little aspects.

So she progressed with slow, smooth, deliberate movement, always keeping the spear tip ahead of her. Faint light made its way down, but at times she had to tap the weapon around to get a feel for her surroundings.

She found herself wondering how her ancestors had first learned of the Valley. No surviving accounts mentioned it before it was made to serve as, essentially, a gigantic open-air prison. But it had had a past, even back then. It had been a living place. Had people lived here? Had they farmed, or hunted?

The light continued to fade in and out, but the darker stretches got longer. It stoked the feeling of claustrophobia that was creeping up on her. Just like last time. The walls pressed in, the air was too still, too stuffy, and she probably wouldn’t be able to Shift, not with the deep corruption of the local energies. If something went wrong, then she would be stuck here, unaided, helpless. Trapped in the dark, and the merciless rock. And in the deepest blackness, if she looked into it hard enough, she could see hints of strange colours.

It was the Valley itself, or rather, the mark the Exiles had left on it. It was chipping away at her, seeking weak spots, enhancing what was already present, and the basic animal in her was frightened and wanted out.

But while she was undoubtedly an animal, she was also something more. And she had honed it for just this situation. So the energies found no purchase, for now. Her heart rate stayed steady, and her limbs stayed strong. And she continued to walk the darkness.

“We fought this battle once before,” she whispered. “And I won.”

There was no let-up. There would be none, until she did this walk again and left the Valley behind. But she endured, and finally, saw light at the end.

One didn’t get an immediate view on the other side. The crack opened before a hill, which she had found strangely disappointing the last time. Her first act now was to look around for the vorasondu, and her second one was to examine the dead earth beneath her feet. She had only ever been a middling tracker, but clawed feet weighed down by seven tons did not leave subtle marks. She easily found the beast’s most recent passage, and tracked it over the hill. It was there, up on the top of it, that she did get something of a view.

It wasn’t perfect. The Valley had many more hills and ridges. But she could see the mountains, and enough of the nearby territory to be assured that the vorasondu wasn’t about to spring at her at any moment.

The Valley of Vartana was a heart of death. Nothing grew, and nothing lived, and time had long since destroyed any evidence of trees. All around her was bare rock, and lifeless dirt, in shades of brown and yellow, depending on the composition.

But oh, were there energies. And half of her trial was to endure them. As for the other half…

The tracks went off in a general north-western direction, onto a long stretch of rocks. It wouldn’t surprise her if her foe was cunning enough to do that on purpose, to hide its trail. She might still take a shot at it, and search for recent scratches, loose bits of skin or fringe, and dirt tracked by those big, heavy feet. But it would slow her down, and extend her exposure to the Valley’s energies. Why put in all that effort when her foe would come to her anyway?

So she set her sights on the north, steeled her spine, and started walking.

# # #

The generations of young trainees doing the walk hadn’t managed to carve out a path. The corrupted energies couldn’t kill wind or rain, and those kept the soil moving, especially with no living roots to bind it together. But there was an obvious route that was shorter and easier than any of the alternatives. In speaking with other Wardens, after her own walk, Saketa had found that most had used it. But now she needed to worry about an ambush, and so prioritised open spaces with clear lines of sight.

She went over large hills, along the tops of ridges, and across stretches of soft, dead sand and dust.

The silence was every bit as eerie as she’d remembered. Birds not only didn’t live in the Valley: They would not even fly over it. So there was nothing at all to hear other than the wind, which the Valley’s geography blocked fairly well, and the occasional small stream that made its way down from the mountains.

Even out in the depths of space, one heard the hum of electronics, air flow, and of course the sounds of crew and passengers. But the Valley… the Valley held a deeper silence, that simply didn’t belong in such a large, open space.

In her darker moments, when her strength wavered a little bit and her mind threatened to turn on itself, there were the colours. They shifted the landscape before her eyes, or mind, rather. Distances warped and directions became muddled, and in the cracks in between were things ready to reach for her.

She had the spear, sword, and knife, but they were a last resort. It was best to not let them through at all. So she didn’t. She let the moments be just that: Flickers. Each one taxed her strength just a little bit, but it was a bleeding she had prepared for. She denied the despair and pain and rage, and the colours never gained purchase. And they stayed away. Or unseen, rather.

It was never about distance. They were always close.

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It was after about three hours that Saketa came upon the first ruins. They had been partially buried in sand. No one cared to maintain them, after all. But the taller portions, or ones built at higher elevation, could still be seen. The walls were of simple hewn rock, and so the only things that hadn’t rotted away ages ago. Just like last time, Saketa asked herself how the planning and division of labour had worked. Who among a collection of violent megalomaniacs was given straining physical labour?

It had probably taken a lot of cruelty, and a combination of might and manipulative politics, and had perhaps marked the start of the hierarchies the Exiles had since operated on.

Plain though the walls were, some of them were big enough to hide a greater skrax, so Saketa refrained from walking straight through, as she had the first time. She went around, and sharpened her focus back towards her dual challenges.

The Valley, quite simply, hurt. It wasn’t a normal pain, and the effect was complex and multilayered, but very real. It attacked the body through the spirit, weakening limbs, straining the heart, putting aches in the spine, the gut, the throat. It dragged one down and feasted on one’s energy and will. If one allowed it.

She did not allow it.

Saketa nibbled on the first of her meat patties, and carefully rationed her water. She maintained an even pace, one that her conditioning would be able to handle until nightfall. She continued her strategy of sacrificing some speed for the sake of circling around potential ambush spots, and did her best to stick to routes with a view.

Still, sometimes the landscape could not be argued with, and in time the only rational choice going forward was to descend into a gorge, carved by a long-dead river. It left her a fair amount of space to move in, but less than she would have preferred, and for most stretches one could see far ahead. But not all.

She walked the ancient bed, and could soon see hints of further ruins up on the edges. What little hints of wind there had been died down, and even the little streams could not be heard where she was. It left her all alone, truly isolated with nothing but her own noises. Unpleasant though it was, she accepted it as a disguised blessing. Anything to help her notice the vorasondu a bit sooner, when it came.

Where are you, monster? And when will you quit this game?

Rock, ruins and sand, rock, ruins and sand. Ever the Valley’s energies chewed away at her, and ever she fought back while also staying alert for her foe. The sun dipped below the mountain peaks, and the darkness of the Valley gradually became a lot more literal. Saketa knew, from prior experience, that she would not make it out of the gorge before night fully took over. Though by that time she just might have made it to fairly perilous territory. So she sat down in the centre of the riverbed, finished her patty, drank water, and waited for morning.

She did not sleep. Fending off the darkness was not a task for the subconscious alone, and staying alert for the beast certainly wasn’t either. So she meditated her way into a halfway state, and simply waited.

It was a lonely, awful, painful night, absent of the peace a healthier location might have provided. The silence continued to rule, relentlessly signalling that the Valley belonged to it, stripped of everything else as it was.

But like all things, the night ended. The sky lightened well before the mountains allowed the sun, and that was all she needed to get started. She stretched, relieved herself, started on her second patty, and got going. She reached the perilous area, where rocks had fallen from the banks over the ages, and soon after that there was the drop where once a waterfall had been.

Getting to the bottom would have been a minor Shift, and indeed she had managed one during the previous walk. But it had cut a deep hole into her strength, which she could not afford this time. So instead she climbed.

There was a relatively easy spot right by the edge of the drop, where there was a bit of an incline, as opposed to a sheer wall, and spots to grip with fingers or bare toes. But it wasn’t a climb to be made with only one hand, so she flung the spear up. It wasn’t balanced for throwing, but she was going for distance over accuracy anyway, and the weapon landed safely up above with a thump.

Her fingers were hard from all the sparring, but her feet hadn’t had time to harden properly since returning. She tested her footholds carefully before putting weight on them, and moved up at a leisurely pace. She thought back to her child self, and all those climbs around Tiro Village. That energetic brat would have scoffed at such caution, but that brat had had a short, easy trip back home, and a cut sole or injured toe had not been much of a hazard.

So, boring though it was, she let patience guide this climb, and hadn’t suffered a single slip by the time the edge was within reach..

The thing reached over it and struck at her.

Saketa’s sensitivity, muffled though it was, gave her reflexes just enough of a primer to save her life. The appendage struck where her head had been, and gouged into the rock, as she swung to the side by one hand.

It was made of the colours, bathed in them as they mixed with the morning gloom, and it shrieked in her head. Saketa’s choices were a straight drop down, or to go to the side, and she chose the latter. She went for speed and hoped for luck, and indeed her fingers found purchase. The thing reached for her again. She couldn’t draw on power. Not this quickly, not when battling the energies of the Valley. So she had to go for a desperate, scrambling leap further to the side, like a startled spider.

For a moment, she did fall, as her fingers found nothing but smooth rock. For a moment she was in for a leg-breaking landing. But her hands, clenched into claws, fastened on something.

Adrenaline finally punched through the weight that rested on her spirit, and she hurried up, sacrificing everything, risking another drop, for the sake of reaching the top.

Her hands found the ledge, and that was all she needed to spring up and over. She immediately rolled, as the thing struck a third time. It didn’t have a shape, really. It wasn’t as logical as that. But her fear, her own darkness, made it big, and well armed with biting, cutting things.

She had her own cutting thing, and she drew it as the thing started moving. She didn’t let it get far, not when she had it against a drop. She charged in, and swung downwards as another appendage came at her. The blade was heavy and inelegant, not good for parrying. But it could cut with immense force, and went through the not-flesh with barely a slowdown.

Then the weapon’s weakness came into effect, and she needed a moment to balance it again. She hopped back, evading two more strikes, then went back in for another chop. Another part of the thing tried to stop the blade, and failed just as badly. The sword travelled through, down into the main section. She immediately followed with a kick, and the thing went back to the very edge, sliding off the sword in the process.

It gnashed and swirled and shrieked and lashed, but Saketa’s will proved stronger, and her blade cut yet again.

The thing went over the ledge, and it took the colours with it. Both vanished halfway down to the ground, gone back where they belonged.

But there was a chance for this fight to be extended, and Saketa battled to prevent that. The haze threatened to come to life once more, drawn by the violence, drawn by the darkness, in the wake of the one intrusion. But yet again, her will prevailed. And after a few seconds, it all withdrew, as far back as it would in this tainted Valley, and Saketa was surrounded by nothing but sand and rock.

For now.

A quick self-exam revealed she’s bruised and scratched herself a fair bit during the frantic climb, but not enough to put her at a disadvantage. She picked up the spear, and started walking.