The silent, gnawing assault on her being continued, seeking weaknesses, seeking something to hook her with to draw her in. There were wordless whispers, appealing to her worst aspects. They promised power. They encouraged rage and despair. They spoke of her failures and her fears. They whispered disappointment and shame.
The reprieve they offered was to simply give up. To let go of the tethers that made those things painful. An amputation of anything that mattered outside of herself. No glow. No love, or shame. Just the self, and power to lash out at anything else.
The walls were thin, and got thinner as she progressed to the centre of the Valley. There was constant risk of another intrusion. She would fail. The Valley would eat her, as the forces it represented had nearly done once before. She would die here, one way or another, unless she accepted it as an ally.
Saketa resisted. She resisted, and continued to watch out for the beast that wore actual flesh. She passed by more ruins, some little more than roofs or foundations poking out of sand, and some that stood as bleak skeletons of stone, wreathed in shadows and faint hints of those colours.
They changed as the day wore on, getting bigger and more tightly packed, akin to an actual urban centre. The heart of it all could first be glimpsed from on top of a rocky ridge. She could see it again, closer, as she topped the next ridge, and on top of the third one she finally had an unobstructed view.
Here one found the largest buildings, in the largest concentration. All the roofs were gone, leaving the walls and pillars that had held them up. Some stood on raised foundations. There were large empty spaces, some square-shaped, some circular, and most held great obelisks. Everything was too worn down by time to tell much about the quality and artistry of all this construction, but clearly this place had seen a lot of effort.
Saketa wasn’t sure whether to think of it all as one grand, continuous estate, or a town, or what. But it had been the centre of the warped society the Exiles had built for themselves. Here those that had risen to the top. Here they had planned, and experimented. And here, somehow, the Exiles of old had created a place of power where one hadn’t existed before.
This was where the Valley was at its strongest, and oh, was Saketa aware of it. This was the peak, the true threshold to cross on one’s way through. And trying to skirt around, by hugging the mountains, would defeat the whole point of this tradition. So Saketa continued straight on.
If there had ever been a road it had long since vanished. She simply walked across more sand, straight into the middle of the whole complex. The loose earth had shifted, over time, in a very uneven fashion, virtually burying some parts, while leaving others almost completely bare. The veil was at its very thinnest here, between bulky walls of weathered stone and obelisks with long-gone markings. The rites that had been carried out lingered still, and the past echoed through empty window frames and tunnels filled with sand, their mysteries forever hidden away.
If all the evil they had done out in the galaxy for the last two thousand years could be said to have a single origin point, then this was it. This was the heart of the heart.
Saketa kept to her straight line, and it took her to one of the raised sections. It was surrounded on all sides by steps large enough to be visible through all the sand, and lined with tall, thick pillars that stood in perfectly ordered lines. If they had ever held up a roof, then every single trace of it was gone. But Saketa could just as easily believe that this had been some sort of ceremonial space. The floor was large enough to comfortably hold hundreds, and there was no sign of inner walls.
She crossed the space, and the squish of sand beneath her bare feet echoed ever so faintly against the towering pillars. The past, alive though it was here, did not quite spring through the veil, and she made it to the stairs down on the northern side. Then she stopped. Because in this lifeless valley, here there was something new.
A boot.
Saketa stared at it, and double-checked that her perception was in proper order. That really was a boot, at the top of the stairs, and it wasn’t some ancient artefact, nor any style commonly seen on Kalero.
She gazed around, doing a sweep for the hidden menace, before walking over with both hands on the spear. She poked at the boot with the butt of the weapon. It was empty, not someone’s severed leg, and no trap was triggered. After yet another sweep she took one hand off the spear and picked the boot up.
It had been subjected to some sun-bleaching, but not to an extreme degree. Perhaps two or three years. She leaned more towards three, because the rifled style was quite familiar.
She stepped all the way to the edge of that top step and looked down. Halfway up the stairs lay a dead body.
Saketa dropped the boot and walked down to examine the owner. She couldn’t tell if it had been a man or a woman. There had been no carrion-eaters around to eat it, but the body’s natural inner processes had made some headway before falling victim to the Valley’s energies, and rain had probably aided the process as well.
But she did still recognise the semi-fleshy skeleton as an Exile from the invasion. Not a mere starship crewmember, or a mercenary, but a fully-fledged Vartana Exile. The armoured suit they’d worn for the attack was quite distinctive, and it had endured the years better than the wearer had. A couple of tears hinted at injuries, but they weren’t big enough to necessarily have been fatal.
There was no weapon within sight, nor an escape pod or some other way for this person to have arrived in the Valley, but they could of course have Tunnelled in. Or perhaps a transport of some sort was hidden in the wastes somewhere, and the Exile had walked some distance on foot before expiring. Either way, they had finally made it home.
Saketa prodded the skull with her bare foot, and turned it enough for her to look into the empty eye sockets.
She sighed.
“So. Was it worth it? After millennia… whether you were a true Ancient, or one of their disciples, reared on a diet of propaganda and legacy? All this time, all these conflicts, all this bitter hatred. The Old Exile, the Long Hunt. Ages of wounded feelings, insisting that you were wronged. Pining for the old homeworld, the birthplace, the planet from which you insist you should have ruled.”
She did another quick sweep.
“The basis of a culture, of sorts. Formed in the shadows of these mountains. At the heart of it, a desire to return. A mad lust for vengeance and vindication, carried from generation to generation, and from century to century in the hearts of the Ancients.”
Saketa stared into the dead Exile’s eye sockets in silence for a few breaths.
“And finally, after all that, after all this time, and an invasion you had dreamt of for so long… an Exile finally made it back. Finally, you set foot on this ground. The culmination of it all. And what did you find? Desolation. The true face of darkness and evil: Emptiness and meaningless destruction. Yes, there is power here, but I see it did you little good.”
She knelt down and took a handful of dusty sand. She watched it seep between her fingers, leaving nothing behind.
“You cannot eat it, after all. It cannot fill you.”
Saketa went silent for another little while. She pictured this person, and wondered about their life, and its final days, or hours, or however long they had endured in this evil valley. The darkness was there, in those thoughts. The temptation to hate, and to revel in the fruits this fool had reaped.
But it was the darkness that had brought this person to this point. It had engulfed them, smothering the glow utterly, leaving them as a half-person, a shadow without depth or joy or warmth. In the end, evil was, as Ayna might have put it, stupid and shitty. And Saketa herself had tasted that darkness, even if a mere taste was all it had been.
This moment was a battle too, of sorts. And as she stood up and disentangled herself, she found that she didn’t hate this person. She just felt sad.
“I hope you are more whole,” she said. “I hope you were healed on the other side.”
And with that, the battle was won.
Then the vorasondu struck.
The beast came at her from behind, running the side of the steps. Much taller than a lesser skrax, with an even mightier set of jaws, it was nearly on her by the time she could turn around. She leapt into a downwards roll and came out of it standing, as the jaws snapped together with a loud clack. It turned on her with startling speed, and Saketa immediately regretted not dodging into higher ground.
The Valley of Vartana had ravaged the animal. Its skin was discoloured, but patches looked blackened, almost charred, and other spots were simply flaking away. Not a speck of fat seemed to remain: The entire frame was lean, wire-tight and hard. All of this might have been mistaken for a disease, if not for the eyes. For there, hiding behind them, was the hideous, deep magenta-purple. Saketa looked straight into the forces that had turned an animal into a monster. She looked into evil. And she hefted her spear.
It lunged, and she tried for a strike, but the incoming attack stopped short, and the beast used its momentum to swing around and whip its serpentine tail at her. She’d been braced for a high attack, not a low one, and her leap over the tail wasn’t quite quick enough. It hit her foot as she was in the air, and flipped her on her back.
A big, clawed foot came down to pin her to the steps. She flipped her body to the side, then did it again as the head came in for another bite. The spear was still in her hand, and as she bounded up she adjusted her grip for closer quarters, and thrust.
The vorasondu shifted its head enough to take the tip in the chest rather than the throat. It swiped at the weapon with a foreleg, and nearly managed to bat it wide, but Saketa kept moving down, kept jabbing with the weapon. She struck two more times, but they were lesser hits, and the beast changed tactics. It moved more patiently, leading with its swiping forelegs.
Saketa, meanwhile, shifted her grip further down the shaft, increasing her reach. She kept the weapon constantly moving, unpredictable and confusing. Her bare feet blindly found their way across sand and rough stone, the hyperawareness of combat guiding her steps without falter or stumble.
She neared the bottom, where the beast would lose the high ground. And being no mere animal, it understood this. The vorasondu risked a more daring strike, and darted forth, swiping wide with both forelegs.
Saketa darted to the side, ducked, and stabbed at the left hind leg. The tip hit right behind and above the knee, slicing through stiff muscle and tendons. The monster’s leg buckled, and Saketa tried to seize the chance for a decisive strike. But now the vorasondu’s foreleg did solidly hit the spear, and it almost flew out of Saketa’s grasp.
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She needed a moment to recover her balance, but the vorasondu needed two. She rushed up and around the beast, and put herself directly between it and the top of the stairs. It turned and gave her a look of hatred. Despite its radically different facial structure, there was something disturbingly human about the expression.
It didn’t charge. Not upwards on a wounded leg, at a foe with a long spear and quick reflexes. Instead the haze descended, and it was Saketa who charged. She hoped to get it in time, but it was hopeless. The swirling, awful, eye-hurting purple-magenta-violet engulfed the beast, and it Tunnelled.
Her spear struck at nothing as the vorasondu vanished. It was gone, into the colours.
Saketa’s first reaction was to run up the stairs in great bounds, not wanting to get caught in the same position twice.
Her heart was pounding, but not as loudly as it should have been doing. She had been quick and strong, but not as quick and strong as she should have been. She could have made better decisions. She could have used her own power to prevent the Tunnelling.
All the ways in which she could be better pressed in, trying to drain her vitality, promising doom and failure. The colours threatened, on the edge of the vision. The veil was thin. So very, very thin.
She made it to the top, and found the temple, or whatever it was, as empty as she’d left it. She looked every which way for her foe from where she stood. Then she ran to the north-east corner and looked again, with a better view of the east. Then she did the same with the west.
There were no angry roars, no thumping footsteps, and no obvious signs of where the other side of the tunnel had been. This was no mere animal, after all. And while hatred and rashness often went together, they weren’t synonymous.
She jogged to the centre of the floor and shrugged off the straps for her bag and the waterskin. And she waited. And she waited.
She didn’t count the minutes. But when it occurred to her to check the sun, she estimated it had been north of an hour. And still nothing.
Of course. The beast could afford to wait. She could not. Time itself took a toll on her body, while the Valley never stopped chipping away at her spirit. The longer she waited, here on this ideal battle ground, the worse off she would be for the showdown. She had to leave, and set herself up for another surprise attack, to stand a chance.
She went back to the steps and took another careful look over the ruins. There was still nothing. She planned a route, and got to work on it. She passed by the dead Exiles again, and for an instant she reflected that the corpse would be a feature of the last test for a long, long time to come. In fact, it would serve as something of a lesson.
She touched back down on street level, if it could be called that in this uneven, sand-covered ruin. She had let herself become distracted, just a little, while focusing on the corpse. Even with the interfering energies all around her, she would be able to sense a Tunnelling coming. If the beast meant to sneak up on her again, it would have to do so the old-fashioned way.
Saketa moved on at a snail’s pace, straining her sensitivity against the interference. She went between a pair of long, slim houses, and their rows of dark windows. She went under a half-buried arch, and across one of the circular squares. She crossed what might have been a bridge at one time, now just a pair of stone rails poking out of the ground. She went by more husks of houses, and the length of a fallen obelisk, almost as wide as she was tall.
Saketa stopped. She was playing things the vorasondu’s way. Being predictable. She looked to the left, into a cluster of tall walls and other structures, all packed rather tightly. Wasn’t it best to spring a trap deliberately?
She gave her cloak clasp a light tug. It was designed for a quick release, in case of trouble, and the garment came off. Then she advanced into that jungle of stone.
The wind remained quiet. The nearby river beds were long since dry. There was absolutely nothing in the air save power and anticipation. Saketa followed no particular pattern. She simply allowed her legs to travel, as her wits were focused on other things.
She let those two draw a map, as she passed further and further along. As the picture formed, the net tightened. There were only so many routes and only so many pieces of cover the enormous beast could make use of without giving itself away. Her efforts eventually paid off in the shadow of an enormous obelisk.
Footprints. Wide, deep footprints, left by the only other bodily entity in this entire Valley. They passed from Saketa’s left to her right, vanishing around what seemed to be some sort of row house. The map she’d been drawing listed potential hiding places.
Every instinct in her agreed. The beast was near. And it knew exactly where she was.
She didn’t look for it. She just took one, long, steadying breath, and made sure everything was perfectly primed.
She picked her route, fixed her eyes forward, and started walking.
Predictably, the vorasondu came at her from the side. It sprang out like the ambush predator it had originally been, head low to catch her in its jaws. Saketa threw the cloak with her left hand. It only obscured the beast’s vision for a moment, but it was the moment she needed. She shot to the side, put the butt of the spear against the ground, and angled the tip.
The monster’s weight and strength plunged the spear into it with more force than she ever could have. Half the shaft went in, and the vorasondu let out a shriek. The spear was torn from Saketa’s hands, and then the beast’s flailing tail hit her.
It knocked her down again, and the vorasondu itself fell into a brief slide that threw up a cloud of sand. Saketa’s hand sought out the sword by pure reflex, and her legs acted on their own to get her upright. But her brain was still rattled, and it swayed everything along with it as she rose. She stumbled, first onto her left left foot, then onto her right knee.
The beast was thrashing, kicking up more sand, and her hunter’s instinct was to rush over and end the suffering. But this wasn’t an animal, and her body wasn’t quite obeying her anyway.
They came.
The haze returned. It shone through empty doorways and windows, swirled around pillars and changed the sky. The figures within detached from the madness, drawn not by her, but in the wake of the vorasondu. And they attacked.
Saketa rose, and swung. She swung again, and again, deflecting attacks until she remembered how to walk. She dove between two of them before they could cut her off, then turned and slashed as the closer one lashed out.
Some footwork brought her over to the other one, and she gave it a blow as well. The rest were catching up, and everything around her, the sky, the ground, the hewn rocks, was blending together into a shade of magenta that hurt the eyes and the mind.
She pushed against the madness, demanding clarity and form, and through all the swirling she spotted one of those empty windows. She ran over and dove through it. They kept coming for her, with awful keening noises, but the wall remained a part of the surrounding for the moment, and they were forced to go around, or through the window. She stood by the window, chopping one apart as it tried to flow through. Another struck out with a long appendage. She sidestepped, then cut it apart. She had hoped it would come through as well, but it just stayed where it was, guarding the escape route as the rest now swarmed her again from two directions.
She picked the fourth direction available, and made a fighting retreat along a ground that was half-sand, half-haze. She fought with her body and will both, demanding that the things disperse, that they stay on their side of the veil.
And it worked. As tight quarters funnelled them into her in a manageable fashion, she wore them down. Even here, in the heart of evil, she found the strength to push it all back. The attack on her wore down, the surrounding ruins came back into more focus, and her mind endured. As she exited out into a more open space, they were little more than phantoms, too faint to strike or be stricken.
An enormous head smashed into her, throwing her to the ground.
The vorasondu was up. The spear had snapped in two, but was still lodged in the beast. It should have died, just as its maimed leg should have stopped working. But the forces that had taken it over were straining to break the rules.
The clawed foot stepped down on her torso, crushing her into the sand. All the air left her lungs as her ribs pressed in. Saketa gritted her teeth, but didn’t even have the breath to groan.
One claw pressed into her right shoulder. It wasn’t very sharp, but all the force behind it gave it some cutting power. Spots appeared in Saketa’s vision, and all around her was the haze, and the glee of the vague, writhing figures. Above her loomed the disfigured bulk of the greater skrax turned vorasondu. The evil, shimmering eyes looked into hers. The scaly lips pulled back from those enormous teeth.
It was a smile.
Saketa’s free hand felt for the sword, but couldn’t find it. The beast pressed down a little bit harder, and a little bit harder, and Saketa expected the sound of something popping at any moment.
But there, on the edge of death and surrounded by the haze, she sought focus. And she found it. For one moment, she had clarity; peace with herself and with the nature of the universe, and the waves were open to her.
She raised her hand up at the leering beast, and sent out a Push.
The seven-ton monstrosity went flying. Saketa’s ribs rose again, with a sharp, loud wheeze. Through the buzzing in her ear she heard the thump of the beast landing, somewhere ahead of her.
An animal would have gone straight for the kill.
Her body refused to obey for a second, but though the clarity had been passing, she still managed to pull a bit of power into herself. Strength flooded her limbs again, and she sat up.
The vorasondu had hit the top of an obelisk and knocked it over like a felled tree. A body that heavy wasn’t built for big falls, and the monster was a broken mess. Yet still the forces of the Valley were trying to keep it going. It rumbled and managed to switch over onto its belly. Through a new cloud of sand its eyes shone, fixed on her.
Saketa got up and looked for the sword. The vorasondu got one foot underneath itself. Saketa spotted the sword, and the beast steadied itself with its two forelegs. Saketa went for the sword, and the monster started the work of getting up.
Her fingers closed around the hilt and she pulled it out of the sand. Saketa ran, and the monster’s maw opened in an angry growl. Its tail swept the sand, kicking up yet another cloud just before she closed the distance.
She leapt blindly, betting everything on her sensitivity. Even limited power sent her flying high, and before her slowed-down senses the beast’s jaws appeared out of the sandy cloud. They slammed together in a bite, but she overshot the vorasondu’s head.
Her feet touched the top of its neck, and she forced herself to an abrupt stop on its back. Then she turned, and drove her sword into the spine. The beast shuddered, and her footing along with it, but she immediately raised the ungainly weapon and struck again at the same spot. It sank deeper this time, through dense bone and hard scales, and the vorasondu dropped.
She jumped off as the huge body hit the ground. Through the sand and dust she still saw those shining eyes, as well as the magenta shining out of the dreadful wound she’d inflicted. The vorasondu was still trying to cheat the rules. It was still trying to act, and kill her.
One foreleg lifted shakily, and the tail moved a little. Saketa took four steps, and brought the sword down on the wound again. Two more blows followed, and the neck was now almost completely severed.
The beast lay still. The light was gone, and so was the haze. She was left with just the general slow assault of the Valley itself, and what looked like the ordinary carcass of an animal. But an animal, of course, would have gone straight for the kill when it had the chance.
“Stupid and shitty.”
# # #
She walked until she reached the slopes of the northern range. From there she continued on upwards, as straight as she could. The ground was a bit more damp here than down in the Valley floor, thanks to year-round snow caps up above that fed several little streams. The air got cold, and bit at her nearly naked flesh, but she pulled the cloak tighter, and endured it.
She didn’t look back, nor did she look up. She knew the route. She simply kept her attention on where she was putting her feet down, until she finally reached the area where the lower slopes met the upper slopes.
Here, high up above it all, fed by freshly melted water and more abundant sunlight, a bit of life had endured. It was humble, just some short, rugged grass, and similarly rugged mountain flowers. They were a familiar sight on Kalero, if one went high enough, and in any other place she wouldn’t have spared them a second glance. But here, here above the valley of death… they were beautiful.
Now she finally turned around, and took in the distance she’d travelled in two days. The sun was low, and the shadows of the mountains had already cast the valley into darkness. But for the moment, it could still reach her. And though she had all the way back to look forward to, the light would reach her again. And once out of the Valley, she would have passed the trial. Both of them.
The glow endured, always. Even if only in small, out of the way places. It endured.
She plucked one of the flowers, to present to the Council, and put it behind her ear. Then she started walking again.