I ascended a spiral staircase shrouded in darkness—my mind was a slurry of emotions.

Rolf gave me zero clue as to why he abhorred me so much, neither would his friends speak on it. That bothered me. I hadn’t interacted with the man enough to justify his hatred towards me. With his experience, I should have been learning from him, instead he despised my bones. Why did he hate me so? When they told him he was on watch duty with me, he begged to switch with someone else.

I passed by a small room with tall slits half-overgrown with moss that were responsible for what little light seeped into the staircase. Then I tripped on a step that was much shorter than it should have been and bashed my knee against the hard stone. It took nearly a minute to rub the pain out and continue my ascent.

Geraln was up there. The same kid who’d hidden me in his wardrobe when Father Yewan came to ask why I’d smashed every bottle in the church wine cellar. The same man who’d abandoned me and Renou to die in the jungle.

It didn’t help that the interior of the tower was like a furnace—a dank, muggy furnace that made the weather outside seem pleasant. I was drenched in sweat, the bruise on my knee punished me with every step, yet the dark staircase continued further up. The next flight offered a piquant bouquet somewhere between rot, piss, and body odor.

I had to forgive him. Scripture said I had to forgive him. Perhaps it was my fault anyway—I’d forced him to make that choice.

A square of light in the ceiling broke the darkness above. I ascended towards a heavy wooden hatch soaked through from the rain earlier, then slipped on some wet algae when the next step was much higher than it should have been. I smacked that same knee against the stone and had to sit down for a minute to try and rub the pain out once more.

Miyani. God, how I loved her. Every minute I spent with her, I loved her even more. I’d never felt this way, not with anyone, not even Sarina. She looked up at me while we guessed which word meant what in each others’ language until daylight receded and she kissed me. I fell harder and harder with every adorable blink of her bright yellow eyes.

I couldn't blame that boy in the cafe for appreciating her sublime figure, but that ‘æmiʃʌði tradition made my skin crawl. That I’d been too big of a coward to broach that with her twisted my gut into knots and made my soul feel sour.

Scarcely a month prior, she was the enemy hunting down men like me and killing us. ɣozʌ’ʌ, they’d called her. That Bitch. Kylen said he’d had nightmares of her tracking him.

I really, really, REALLY needed to talk to her.

I hoisted the hatch overhead, and the wood clanked onto the stone floor above. The excited voice of a Herali man called out, “bye!” and a guy I’d never seen before sporting a bare chest with a bear-clan tattoo on his right shoulder maneuvered past me before I could climb my way up completely.

I was in a stone circle about ten feet in diameter with crenelations like massive stone teeth as high as my chin separated by gaps a foot wide that gave a commanding view of the world outside. At the center were the burnt remains of one of those tube weapons like those at the Lake of Doom.

Geraln stood to one side and stared blankly at me. The chubbiness of his face returned, though his shirt still hung loose. His eyes met mine in silence, his face frozen in time. He blinked. His chest heaved. He swallowed, then turned his gaze out through one of the gaps in stone.

“Helo!” A voice came from the opposite side.

The man who greeted me was Na’uhui. Same dark-green skin with bright yellow eyes, though he kept his white hair cropped short. He was well-built, about my age, about average height, and wore a white bat’s wing tattoo on his bare shoulder. He smiled and stepped towards me with his fist out in front of him. “I… nem… izzz… ‘ude.”

He also carried a longbow made of Herali eupin with etchings from Cougar’s Lament. I tapped my fist into his and nodded. “Ude. I’m Caleb.”

His eyes went wide and his face lit up in surprise. “Kedib? Kedib uv Gath?”

I shrugged. “Yeah.”

He smiled wide and slapped the side of my arm, “ʃʌkæsu mɪyaŋi!”

Right. He continued. “ŋo’o satuse good! mewa tæ sæðiseya ʃa she deserves zuwiya. ya’uðese yu!”

“I’m sorry.” Geraln’s voice cut through our introduction.

Ude and I turned to face him, but his eyes were on me alone. “I shouldn’t have left you behind. We shouldn’t have left you behind. I’m sorry.”

Geraln resumed his attention to the world outside. Ude glanced between us, then pointed outside as well, “see,” and went back to the side to look out.

I told my best friend, “no worries, man. All according to God’s plan, right?”

“Yeah,” he lowered his eyes.

There was a river beside the tower, with a branched carved out and laid with stone such that the tower was on an island by itself. Upstream and to the North… I mean ɣaze, the lazy current left the waters murky and reedy for miles, and a family of alligators had taken up refuge on the left bank some four-hundred yards out. Right where the tower stood, the river bent southeast, crashed over an escarpment, and tumbled over massive rocks covered in moss on both sides.

The side we’d come in from, ŋaŋa, the grass had been kept low for a good five-hundred yards in all directions before surrendering to the lower canopy of the jungle beyond. On the left-hand side where the grass fought to claim the rocks, a native woman herded some goats.

On the other side of the river, dense trees and shrubs some ten feet high fought to reclaim their rightful place for five-hundred yards before the towering heights of the forest primeval mocked our puny human construction. All around us, above the crashing of water, chirps, whistles, and calls of all kinds filled the distance.

“How…” Geraln glanced at me and swallowed. “How's Renou?”

“Huh!” I smiled wide. “It’s a bloody miracle, man. I still can’t believe it. He should have lost his foot. A wound like that he’s got no right to ever walk again, but Dr. Zughi says he’ll start recovery in a week. Give him three or four weeks, he’ll be one-hundred percent. That's gebu’i. I’m telling you, this stuff will change the world, you have no idea!”

“That’s good,” Geraln nodded, then looked out once more.

I shrugged. “How’s Saewi?”

Geraln grinned at that. “Gods!”

I raised my eyebrows. “Good news?”

Geraln shook his head and smiled wide. “I have never met anyone like her before! These Carthian women, gods, I don't know what it is about them, but I like it.”

“Definitely,” I nodded.

He continued, “it’s like she’s… I don’t know. She’s got her own thing, and she doesn’t need me. Like she could get by just fine without me, but she simply chooses to be close with me. I can’t begin to tell you how good that feels.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “It takes the pressure off.”

“That's it!” he pointed at me. “It feels… authentic.”

I shrugged. “Well, I like that they walk around almost completely naked. To me, that's a big plus.”

Geraln laughed and shook his head.

Ude called out to us, “pʊ ʃo'ibiwe!”

Outside, a gray-green vita’o with tiny spikes down the length of its spine raced across the grass towards the goatherd, herself nearly naked with pendulous breasts that hung halfway down her belly. The three of us watched as the lizard stepped up to her. She reached out a hand and stroked the creature beneath its chin. It responded by pulling in close and rubbing its face in her cheek before stepping around her and sniffing at one of the goats. The goat stepped away quickly, the creature stepped after it, and the woman called it back to her. In the next moment, it turned and darted off, zooming back to the forest ridiculously fast.

After it had gone, the woman turned towards us and held up one hand, dropping it to her head twice.

Ude stepped away and glanced between me and Geraln, “means aklear.”

I asked, “gada todo? All clear?”

Ude nodded, “gada todo. Yes. Aklear.”

We all went back to keeping watch. Down below, adjacent the tower but in the middle of the murky river, the shattered remnants of a bridge had been taken over by a gargantuan brown snake with a black diamond pattern on its back that had to be at least ten yards in length. Its belly had bulged from something as large as a man.

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Geraln spoke to me. “Have you thought about it?”

I shrugged. “Thought about what?”

“About you and Miyani. As in, seriously.”

“I’m very serious about her.”

“No,” he said. “I mean kids. Marriage. Spending a life together. How would that work? What would that even look like?”

“Uh…” I looked outside. I shrugged. “I don’t know? Not really.”

He nodded and cast his gaze back to the jungle. “I have.”

“And?”

Geraln took a deep breath. “I don’t know, man. You've never had this problem, but I worry about what my mum would say; you know how she is.”

I shook my head. “No? What do you mean?”

“Come on, man. Half of Gath would come down on me about polluting the pure Herali blood. You think maybe I should bring sæwi home to meet my family?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think they’d be that bad—no one had a problem with you going after Talys.”

Geraln huffed and shook his head, “you’ve always been blind. Lucky you not having any parents to fuck you up…”

Ude snapped his face towards us and furrowed his eyebrows at that word.

Geraln turned to him and bowed his head low. “I’m sorry, man. kupade. weyiŋɪ ʃɪ’uvʌ. I'm sorry.”

Ude smirked. “Is OK. Uh… gʊyiŋɪse. xamæðʊ weyiŋɪ ʃɪ’uti ʃa gʊyiŋɪse.”

Geraln smiled and nodded, “ŋʌvɪdesa.”

My eyes went wide. “How the hell…”

Geraln smirked and slapped my arm. “Like I told Faren: it's not a race, but I am winning.”

I’d been up on the roof about an hour when something thudded against the hatch in the floor. It lifted, and a man stepped up onto the roof with us. He was in the unit I’d come with, the guy with the falcon tattoo who walked barefoot in the jungle.

Ude stepped eagerly to the staircase and greeted him, “ŋʌvɪdesa! ŋʌvɪdesa!” Then he waved us goodbye and disappeared down the dark corridor, closing the hatch behind him.

I spoke first. “Geraln, I’d like you to meet… uh… “

The man smiled. “Jaysa.”

Jaysa had a handsome, angular face and stood the same height as Geraln but with a lean build. Like me and Geraln he was Falcon clan, but from Ozaria county. You could always tell Ozarians from the bows they carried—they embedded diamond-tree stones into the wood. Of course whenever you ask, they'll tell you it's to improve the balance, but the reality is they did it because it looked sick.

Geraln asked, “how long have you been here, man?”

Jaysa's steely green eyes scanned the trees. “Maybe a year? I came in the rainy season, so about a year.”

I swooned. “And you survived that long?”

Jaysa smirked. “Yeah. Look, if you want to know anything, don’t hesitate. I can tell you the important people have something big going on in this area; we’re the third unit sent here in as many days…”

A voice shouted from the distance.

Geraln's face dropped and he turned to look. “Again?”

The three of us gathered at the north where a man stood three-hundred-sixty yards out on a fallen log that reached to the riverbank on one end and disappeared into a thick bush on the other. The man was a native, though from that distance I couldn’t make out the tattoo on his shoulder. He wore a patterned material for a loincloth and held a long stick in one hand with some kind of something red and fluffy dangling from one end. About his head he wore something like a black headband with colorful feathers coming out in all directions. He faced us. In his other hand he held a cone half as big as he was, brought it to his mouth, and shouted through it

He spoke a good length. I tried to listen, but between the noise of the jungle and the distance, I’d have struggled with Herali. After he finished shouting at us, Jaysa’s eyes popped and he pulled his face back.

Geraln asked, “what’d he say?”

Jaysa smirked. “He says that he’s uh… surprised? I think that’s it. He’s saying he's surprised that anything could survive coming out of your mother’s piggy cunt, but here you are wasting perfectly good air.”

The man continued to shout, and Jaysa lowered his eyes to listen. “He says all his life there’s been a horrid stench in the world. He says he grew up with it, and sometimes it was so bad it made you vomit, and… you couldn’t appreciate anything because of how disgusting and putrid that stench was.”

Jaysa laughing as the man shouted at us. “He says that when he became an adult, he vowed to find the origin of that horrible stench, and that his quest has led him to you.”

I looked at the man, then back to Jaysa. “I’m really sorry he said those things to you, man. That must hurt…”

Jaysa laughed. “No, he was talking to you.”

I replied, “I’m pretty sure he was talking to you…”

Jaysa grinned. “Yeah… damʌðefi‘eto. The tall man. It’s you he’s talking about.”

Geraln shook his finger and looked at Jaysa. “No, no, he said damʌðe vodo vayiʃo, guy with the tattoo.”

I nodded. “Yep. That’s what I heard. I heard him say that.”

Jaysa glanced back and forth between us and laughed. “Gods!” Then still smiling, he reached behind his back for an arrow and nocked.

The man turned around briefly and lowered his loincloth, baring his arse at us before turning around and shouting something else. I turned to Jaysa. “You’re going to shoot him over some insults?”

Jaysa drew back and aimed. “They're running an op. He's part of it. Look over those bushes; they probably got someone else close by.”

I tried to, but as the veteran loosed, my eyes followed his arrow. The man at the receiving end took a few steps to the side and watched as Jaysa’s arrow blew right through where he used to be. He lifted his cone to his face once more, “yo ŋuve! zɪta vʌ sɪkɪŋi ʃa peŋevi damʌvisa zaʃi!”

Geraln's eyes bulged and he turned to face me.

I shrugged. “I got the first part, what was that. The rest…”

Geraln shook his head. “Something about dry season, and then… I think… something about your woman's pussy?” He turned to Jaysa, “is that what that means?”

Jaysa laughed and shook his head, then nocked another arrow.

“Hold up,” Geraln strung his bow. “It's my turn.”

Jaysa grinned and stepped aside, while Geraln drew back and took aim. The enemy warrior fanned his fingers out with his thumbs in his ears and blew raspberries with his tongue.

The three of us watched as his arrow flew off towards him. He stepped back to where he'd stood before and watched Geraln's arrow crash into the mud behind him. “‘uzi θemovevisa ʃɪ’uvʌ ʃa xoso go’iyo’ise ŋuku! veke ɣʊ te’a’esa damʌvisa ʃa go’iyo’i dʌsekæviye!”

Jaysa laughed and shook his head. Geraln scratched his head and stared at his target. Then he glanced at Jaysa, “too much for me. What'd he say?

Jaysa chuckled. “He said… your ugly-arse should never get married because your wife would divorce you and marry her dildo.”

Geraln nodded. “Worth it. Absolutely worth it.” He nocked another, “if he keeps at it, we’ll have a whole library!”

I set my hand on his shoulder. “Come on, man, it's my turn!”

I stepped up to the gap between stone crenellations, nocked an arrow, and drew.

I had to think about this. He might surmise by this point that I'd aim for where I expected him to go and not move at all. Or he might anticipate me anticipating that and move anyway. Unless he anticipated that. I ended up picking some random spot on the log.

As I stared down the shaft, Geraln grinned at me, “watch out for a crosswind!”

I smirked,”pʊ ɣʊwose xatʌ,” and loosed.

The man saw my arrow go up and shuffled over to the far side of the log closest to the bush. When my arrow came down, it punched through his foot and nailed him to that spot. He let out a blood-curdling scream.

Geraln's face lit up in shock, “you got him! Holy shit, you got him!”

Jaysa grinned and rested his hand over my back. “Nice shot! He's all yours.”

“All mine?”

“Didn’t know you'd pop your cherry when you woke up this morning, did you?”

The shock of what Jaysa meant thrashed at my mind and sent a chill down my spine and across my skin. I would kill a man.

The enemy warrior sat down on the log with his knees up to his chest. I could make out where the wooden arrow shaft darkened in blood, and he pulled at it. It wouldn't move. He kept pulling, only to lean back and cry out in terrible pain.

I swallowed my breath and tried to steady my fingers. I would kill a man. This man who'd made such an effective distraction that an entire army could have lurked in the woods on the other side of the river and none of us would have noticed, I would kill him. He likely had a woman who loved him, children who jumped for joy when he came home, and a few chores around the house he'd been putting off.

And I would take all of that away.

I nocked my next arrow and drew back. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment.

Father in heaven, I don't know this man. I have no quarrel with him, I don't know his name. He's the enemy, and so I'm supposed to kill him. I don't want to. I trust in you, Lord, to guide my hand according to your divine judgement. Amen.

The man hadn't paid attention as my next arrow flew, not that he'd have been able to move. Instead he tried to bend the shaft once more only to let go and lean back again.

My next arrow came down and nailed his other foot to the log.

Once again he screamed.

Geraln exclaimed, “gods!” Then he turned to face me with his mouth gaped.

Jaysa laughed and stared at the man with his eyes wide. “You are beyond cruel, man! Go on, play with your food!”

At that, Jaysa led Geraln to the other side of the tower, and their conversation blended into the sounds of the forest and the waterfall downstream. I stood watch over my victim.

The enemy soldier stopped moving. Rather he sat hunched over with his head down and his arms at his sides. A few jerks of his chest told me he hadn't bled out, but other than that he just sat there. His cone had fallen in the mud before him, and his staff had fallen behind with the bottom end propped up on the log beside him. There were no more insults.

Across the river, an alligator that had to be at least ten feet slogged across the mud and into the water.

Someone tapped my shoulder. I turned to meet Geraln's face. He pointed towards the sky, where a dark cloud covering everything in mist rapidly approached us. “We're going below. You coming?

I found no words. I couldn't move. I wanted to nock an arrow, either save him from one alligator or spare him the terror of being ripped apart, but I couldn't do that.

And then the rain came. In a matter of seconds, a heavy downpour soaked my skin and glued my hair to my back. Water poured down my brow, and I continued to watch the man. He lifted his head and looked up at the sky to let water smash onto his face, then looked down again. All around us, the orchestra of raindrops on the surface of the water filled my ears.

Then I saw something in the trees nearby.

It was hard to make out at that distance, but it was someone's hand reaching out, holding a rag of sorts. I wiped the rain from my brow only for more rain to wash down my face, and another man stepped out. He was another native. He stood in the mud, facing me and holding up the rag, waving it at me.

I waved back.

At that, the new man turned and went to crouch low beside the one nailed to the log. He looked over his shoulder at me and stared, and I waved at him again.

With the rain crashing down he'd snapped both arrows and lifted his friend free, cradling him in his arms.

He stood and turned once more to face me while our taunter draped his arm over his shoulder. Finally, with rain coming down in sheets upon us both, he bowed his head low and disappeared into the forest.