Don’t know the day, don’t know the month—don’t really care.
Frustration is an understatement.
And it’s not just Orv’s leg, that’s not even the worst part. Orvalys says the new leg actually works even better than the old one and it allows him to jump “sixteen percent higher than before.” He’s pretty happy about it.
I, however, am not happy about it because I think it was still an enormous lack of judgment for Ki to shoot it off in the first place.
And I’ll tell you what… the lack of judgment doesn’t end there.
When Orv and I tried to ask her about what she thought happened to Livrik, she replied simply “That’s not of concern.”
When Orv then suggested teaming up so as to make it easier to journey through the mountain pass, she rolled her eyes and replied “I suppose if it’s our only choice.”
And lastly, when we did start our snowy hike through the pass (I saw snowy because there was, in fact, a whole lot of snow) Ki insisted on only talking to Orv, and if she wanted to say something to me she insisted on telling Orv to tell me whatever it was she wanted to say, instead of, you know, just speaking to me like a normal person. And on top of that, she won’t answer any of my direct questions either. I am now forced to say anything to Orv as well and he has become our homunculus translator. Ki insists it’s because she can’t understand my “unbearable accent,” which is especially funny because of how well she said I learned Yarvan just a few days ago.
The worst part is, I don’t even know what I did wrong, probably mainly due to the fact that I did nothing wrong. I’d say if someone did something wrong it would have to be the person who accidentally shot off someone’s leg. Even then, Ki won’t admit it was accidentally because to admit it was an accident would be to admit that she can make mistakes, which Ki would never do. She keeps insisting she is an “expert shot” but that she simply “didn’t recognize” us.
Needless to say, I’ve been talking a lot less overall. I mostly just slog through the snow several paces behind Orv and Ki as they talk and laugh with each other just far enough so that I can’t hear any of it. And you know what? I don’t want to anyway. Who wants to hear what Ki has to say?
Anyway, that’s the main reason you find me returning to my journal. Like I said, I can’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve written and I have to talk about this somewhere or I’ll go crazy. Plus, it’s been a while since I’ve written in Nymian and my Rilnian runes were getting sloppy anyway.
I’ve been more and more anxious to get through these mountains. The sooner I’m out of this world where people decide to abruptly stop acting rationally, the better.
And… well there is another reason for me writing today though.
I’ve been getting flashes.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been having more time to myself, maybe it’s the mild oxygen deprivation and the strange, twisted shapes of the broken rock spires around me, but my mind has been wandering and it’s been seeing things.
Sometimes it will be simple. Like a certain cliff coming into view and looking a little too familiar, like I had seen it before. Maybe my nose wrinkles just before the arrival of a certain smell that comes in the icy wind. Other times I just get the flash of an image of me or Ki or Orv slipping a bit in the snow right before it takes place—small pieces of imminent future distilled into momentary images (sorry that last sentence sounded a little too like Lesh).
Other times it’s something bigger though—something foreign, more alien to me. I think it could be visions of things much further off. I see moments in time of buildings burning in purple flames, oceans rising up to swallow cities, and raging masses of warriors pushing forward, forming an unstoppable wall of death and destruction, which… isn’t great.
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They disturb me because I think at this point I can solidly say it’s the Athe. I’m still so new at drinking it, and I don’t want anything like my mood or current situations to influence my opinion of my new peculiar powers, but it all feels so real. And it all really got intense at the start of the climb through the mountains. Remember that feeling? The one me and Orvalys would feel pulling us toward this place… well it’s strong here. Sometimes it seems like it’s physically pulling me forward through the snow.. And I wonder if it has something to do with the visions.
I wish I could talk to Orv about them in detail., but that’s impossible with Ki around. She’s already proved she can understand a good amount of English and besides she kind of straight up sucks right now.
And they aren’t just vision-based flashes either. The Athe stuff I mean, tt isn’t all just mental pictures in my mind. Sometimes it’s feelings or… impressions more than anything. I don’t know if I should write this, but something that keeps coming back to me is a sense of future disappointment, and it feels like my disappointment. I have no idea what the interpretation of that should be, I only hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the portal we’re trying to find. I’m more determined to find Nymia than ever.
And then there’s something else too. It was shortly after we fixed Orv’s leg after we had agreed to gather as many resources and leftover warm clothing as we could and make our way through the pass. Orv was walking a short way in front of me and I was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming feeling of sadness. A huge sadness, like some sort of horrible loss. Somehow I knew it would be in Orv’s future specifically. There wasn’t more to it than that, just a feeling of profound tragedy. That mixed with Ki being stupid and my own disappointment and whatever all the other mixed-up stuff is going on has made for a really not very pleasant experience up here.
Because even if Orv and I were alone, even if I could speak to him in confidence and wanted to tell him about the future foreboding feelings, even if I wanted to let him in on my secret of something horrible coming his way… how would you tell someone about something like that?
----------------------------------------
Lesh emerged from the woods fifty Tinarian centi-stades from his wild Athen forest. Thankfully the journey has been generally bearable and supernaturally fast. His muscles and circulatory system had been trained for decades to facilitate optimal physicality and movement, and his athedrunk mind picked each footfall perfectly in order to minimize resistance. Leaves and stones and branches did not hinder him but instead propelled him forward. It was as if the land itself bent to his will, the universe coalesced for his purposes because his were the purposes of the universe.
As he had foreseen, around the next bend was the view of the Tinarian border town. It stretched before him like a scraggly, many-legged creature around a crystalline lake. That was the way with Tinarians, they lived in opposition to nature, acting as its subjugators rather than its partner. They saw themselves the masters of all peoples, and all places—it was the way of their ‘republic.’
And it was not altogether a new way of thought. The roots of this particular brand of empiricism reached back before the written word. Powerful people using immense resources to gather together even more power, even more immensity. It was an old story—a classic one—a tragedy told a million times and in a million variations throughout time.
Lesh had seen that story play out. He had seen things built so tall they obscured the orange light of the life-giving sun. He had seen the testaments to human power rise, crushing along its way those who played gears and levers to the war machine. He had seen the price of blood paid time and time again to reach that extreme height.
And he had seen that amount of blood dwarfed by the tidal wave of the eventual fall.
The old man replaced the skull mask he had briefly removed. The physical blinders of the mask served multiple purposes. When his actual vision was limited, his Athen powers could grow. Like an animal in the dark using its ears as its primary sensory organ, Lesh sunk once more deeply into the ever-present winding paths of futures splayed before him like ever-changing living coils.
One path was illuminated, it was the path that would be, the reality of realities—the unchangeable will of the Athe itself, and therefore his will, his will made manifest.
The path showed him go swiftly into that town and afterward would come a mighty death.