The air was bitter cold biting at his nose every time he breathed in. The fog was so dense he could hardly see beyond his own nose and the wind that blew threatened to unseat him from his saddle. Some whispered it was an omen of what this day held for the three of them today but Tarkan didn’t mind the empty words. Seventeen years of waiting was over now and their moment lay in front of them. The land the ceremony was done on had been disallowed for Tarkan all these years but now he could come there at last. Tarkan had begged to go to the Sea of Reeds for years, but every answer had been a curt "no" that held a locked door of secrets. Now, the weight of those unanswered questions pressed on him. He clenched his jaw, the memory of his burning village and the scavengers' chilling laughter a fresh wound in his mind. The ceremony promised answers, a chance to finally understand...and maybe, just maybe, a sliver of vengeance.
Scavengers were cruel beings he wished plague upon. Hardly even looking like humans anymore these creatures would enter entire kingdoms only to leave them toppling. They took the men and paraded their manhood on their necks and hands gleefully while they took the sanity of women only using them as they pleased. The children were offered to their Gods for such ‘blissful’ fun. A ‘X’ would be drawn on the children with steel only to have them gone the next day. Derya had told him their God descended upon Earth to take it.
“That's the only moment you can kill it.” Tarkan spat at the story, kicking his horse out of anger. Tarkan wished he could wage war upon every single one. Sometimes he imagined himself gathering his own forces and marching towards the nearest scavenger camp and burning it to the ground while he watched from afar. Not so far that he couldn’t hear their hideous screams. It had been his only dream since five years ago when their walls had crumbled since the first time they stood around his village.
His horse went faster passing the figures at his sides. Maybe a shout had come behind him but Tarkan didn’t bother to check. He trotted up next to another horse far more decorated than his own. Upon it rode his Shah, the leader of his Household and their Kingdom, Hajr. At first glance it was easy to tell he was not a full blooded Altan. His skin was red and his hair was long unlike the shorter, more unkempt hair of the Altan men. His eyes were more pulled back and his eyes mirrored Tarkan’s own. Blood red.
“The riding ends soon so I suggest you lessen your grip upon your horse. Your knuckles turn whiter than the nomad’s snow.” Hajr’s words did make him loosen his hard grip. His knuckles were indeed white but Tarkan didn’t know if that was from the cold or the excitement he felt.
“How much is truly left, do you know? I may go ahead to see if you need me to.” Tarkan suggested carefully.
“"Curb your impatience, boy. There's a time for a hound to strain at the leash, and a time to lie quiet in the kennel." His voice was a low rumble, like stones shifting in a dry riverbed. Annoyed at Hajr’s dismissal, Tarkan tried not to look so stupid even though he knew no one could see him. He slowed his horse down hoping to talk with someone himself but he found solace in no one. Every man’s lips were tied with a rope it seemed. It didn’t matter anyway. They had arrived at last.
The fog seemed to clear up as Tarkan dismounted from his horse revealing the reeds clearly at last. The wind whispered through the tattered reeds, each stalk a skeletal finger scraping against his legs. He imagined the scavengers, their eyes like glowing embers in the gloom, their raspy voices echoing in the hollow stalks. Dimer’s firm hand landed upon his shoulder and Tarkan felt an unexplainable shiver go down his side but Derya’s reassuring smile on his right made him feel better.
“Tarkan, Derya, Dimer. Come here and make your prayers to the Lion Stone.” Kadir’s voice called for them from the fog and it was a task in itself trying to locate them. They did soon enough and were met with a black rock with obvious slashes of claws tainting it clearly. Not a shred of moss appeared to grow on the stone and in truth it seemed to have blackened the earth around it. Tarkan hesitantly held out a hand and he paused for a moment unsure of what prayer he could make. Derya’s reassuring hand went over his and she placed it for him.
"What will you ask for?" she inquired. Tarkan shook his head knowing it was useless to explain anything to her.
“An untold prayer is a more accepted one.” He told her. She nodded at him but cast her eyes down before placing a hand on the stone herself. Dimer sat down on his left and winked at Tarkan before turning his attention to Hajr who stood on the other side of the rock.
“Seventeen years etched lines upon your faces no children as yourselves should bear. Now you are no longer children, but men in front of the Gods. Your lines tell of your will and strength and Gods be witness you three are that.” He reached out and placed a weathered hand on the Lion Stone, his touch sending a tremor through the ground. Each of them had their right hand on the stone and suddenly Tarkan felt his hand seem to freeze. It numbed so quickly that he didn’t even know if he could move it but he didn’t dare move it. Hajr’s eyes narrowed at them as if waiting for them to pull back but none of them did. Hajr's voice boomed, echoing through the desolate landscape. “We stand before the Lion Stone, marked by time and etched by trials. Seventeen years have passed since we last gathered here, yet the spirit of the Lion-Man burns bright within us. He who walked the line between beast and man, who embodied courage and resilience.” Tarkan felt a warmth spread through his hand, chasing away the numbness. He glanced at Derya and Dimer, their faces etched with concentration. “Tonight, we honor his legacy. We ask not for power, nor for riches, but for the strength to carry the mark he bestowed upon our ancestors.” A faint tremor shook the ground again, and a low rumbling sound filled the air.“The mark of the Lion-Man, a reminder that we are not merely flesh and bone, but inheritors of a warrior spirit. A spirit that demands courage in the face of fear, and unwavering resolve in the face of hardship.” Hajr's voice softened slightly. “May the Lion-Man guide your steps, may his roar echo in your hearts, and may his mark forever bind you to a legacy of strength.” The tremor subsided, leaving an eerie silence in its wake. Tarkan slowly lifted his hand and realized it was stained black. A quick glance at his friends told him the same.
A heartbeat passed, the black stain on Derya's hand seeming to writhe and pulse for a fleeting moment. Then, as swiftly as the fog had descended, it lifted. The mist thinned, revealing the desolate landscape stretching far and wide. On Derya's palm, where the stain had been, a new mark glowed with an inner light. It resembled a sun, its rays etched into her flesh with an unnatural brilliance.
Hajr's gaze, sharp as a hawk's, darted to the mark. A flicker of unease crossed his weathered face, a change Tarkan barely noticed in the periphery of his own astonishment. Even Kadir, ever stoic, seemed to stiffen in surprise. Tarkan, his hand still slick with the black stain of the stone, could only stare, a knot of questions forming in his gut.
“We had heard whispers of such a phenomenon, tales spun by firelight in our youth, when blood ran hot and reason was a fickle beast. But those were stories for beardless boys, and long years had passed since we last dared believe them true.” Kadir’s statement confused Tarkan even more and he got up not understanding anything that was happening.
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No whisper of the ritual's purpose had ever graced his ears, no hint of what trials it might hold. Tarkan had envisioned a simple rite, a touch upon the stone and perhaps a surge of strength coursing through his veins. Instead, a different truth had unfolded. His own hand, and Dimer's beside it, bore the mark of the blackened stone, a grim echo of the ceremony's touch. Derya, however, stood apart. Where the mark had marred Tarkan and his friend, a strange sigil, a sun etched upon her palm, glowed with an unsettling brilliance.He whirled towards Hajr, his voice tight with bewilderment.
"What... what has happened here, Shah? Why is Derya different?" Dimer furrowed his brow confused just as Tarkan was.
"Shah. What is the meaning of this?" Even Derya, usually composed, couldn't hide the confusion clouding her eyes. She raised her hand, the strange sun sigil pulsing with an inner light, and looked at Hajr with a silent plea for explanation. Kadir, ever watchful, shifted his weight uneasily. The air crackled with unspoken questions, a storm brewing in the silence that followed Tarkan's outburst.
"That mark's a song half-forgotten since our beardless days, Kadir speaks truth there. Why it graces her palm and stains your hands black, that's beyond me." Hajr stalked towards Derya, his weathered hand snatching hers to examine the mark closely. "The sun climbs higher, and time grows short. We need to get back, make sure our holding isn't left unguarded." Without a backward glance, he lumbered towards the horses, now clearly visible through the thinning mist. He threw himself onto his saddle, a mask settling over his face. Lost in thought, he spurred his horse onward, leaving them to follow at their own pace.
Kadir had a sly grin splitting his face as he rode towards him. "A young pup's eyes are blind to what they ain't lookin' for, Tarkan. What you never saw was hidden plain sight, because you never knew to look." He reached up, a grimace twisting his features as he peeled off his glove, revealing a mark of his own. A line carved across his palm, pulsing with a faint brown light, mimicking Derya's mark. Tarkan sucked in a breath, studying it intently. If even Kadir bore a mark, did that mean his own blackness was a sign of things to come? Perhaps the same fate awaited Dimer.
Dimer, his voice flat and void of any emotion, "Was your hand ever black like ours, Kadir?" He'd materialized beside Tarkan so silently, it sent a shiver down the young warrior's spine.
A weary chuckle escaping his lips. "Ceremonies take different shapes for different folks. Some faint dead away, some feel their flesh burn, some can't even bring themselves to touch the stone for fear of what it might do." He offered them a wry smile. "This mark, it ain't for everyone. You ask if I've ever seen blackness like that on hands before? No, I haven't. Doubt Hajr has either, but time has a way of revealin' secrets, one way or another."
"Time buries secrets as deep as it reveals them, maybe deeper." Dimer said with a bitter edge to his voice. Tarkan’s back itched unusually around Dimer. Tarkan felt a prickle crawl up his spine as Dimer rode beside him. It wasn't that long ago they'd been sharing jokes over the dinner table, yet now... there was something different about him. Not fear, exactly, but an unsettling disquiet. It was like Dimer carried an invisible blade, sharp and cold, pointed straight at him.
"What does your mark do, Kadir?" Derya chirped, her voice breaking the tense silence. Kadir stowed his glove back on, his face a mask once more.
"A marked man's secrets are his own, little one. Perhaps the battlefield will reveal them, though the gods forbid it comes to that." He nudged his horse, urging it to catch up with Hajr's swiftly retreating form. Dimer scoffed.
"More secrets locked away from us, then." Tarkan shared Dimer's annoyance. All this secrecy felt like a wall, shutting them out. Maybe they'd messed up the ceremony somehow, and that's why their hands were stained black. He felt no power himself, and he wondered if Dimer felt the same emptiness.
"They're older, Tarkan," Derya said softly, her words a beacon in the gloom of his thoughts.
"We can wait. Kadir said time reveals all, but surely a little effort on our part wouldn't hurt, would it? After all, a mountain doesn't become a canyon without the relentless bite of the sea, even if the sun rises and sets each day." She smiled warmly at him, her wisdom a welcome balm. Tarkan wished his mark would do something, anything, instead of sitting stubbornly on his hand. He'd hoped the ceremony would be a step closer to the throne, a path towards vengeance. Now, it felt like a detour, leading them deeper into a labyrinth of secrets. The weight of the unknown pressed down on him, a wearying burden.
A memory surfaced, a fragment from his childhood. Amaya singing a lullaby to soothe his fear of the moon. He'd dreamed of the moon crushing their home, a monstrous eye in the night sky. Amaya's voice, a gentle murmur, had chased away the nightmares. The lullaby was short, but it spoke of their ancestor, Altan, the uniter, who wielded the moon's power to vanquish evil. Tarkan would always imagine himself doing the same, righting wrongs and bringing justice. Now, staring at the endless horizon, he wondered if that dream, like the lullaby, was just a comforting fantasy.
Dimer rode up next to Tarkan looking distant. “Do you think we’ll see Striders out here? I hoped we’d see one while coming but now I hope we see one on our return. Otherwise only Gods will know the next time we can see them.” Tarkan thought about the stories he heard of the men and women who traveled in the Sea of Reeds. Merchants brought stories of these giant rock beings. They said they walked on all fours and a single leg was as tall as a small mountain. They said it was covered in moss and carried entire kingdoms on their back.
Tarkan blinked, momentarily pulled from his thoughts by Derya's question. "Striders, huh? Never seen one myself, but the stories..." He trailed off, the memory of the black stain on his hand a nagging itch. "They say they're massive, like walking mountains covered in moss. Some even say they carry whole kingdoms on their backs."
Derya's eyes gleamed with a spark of wonder. "Imagine! A city that moves with you, wherever you go."
"More like a target the size of a mountain for the Scavengers," Dimer muttered, his voice laced with a bitterness that surprised Tarkan. The comment hung heavy in the air, a stark reminder of the harsh reality that awaited them beyond the desolate landscape. Tarkan nudged his horse forward, the weight of the black mark and Derya's strange symbol pressing down on him.
"One day we will end them," Tarkan said, more to reassure himself than anyone else. "Right now, we focus on getting back." They rode on in a tense silence, the vastness of the Sea of Reeds stretching out before them like a canvas painted in shades of gray. The wind whispered through the reeds, a mournful song that seemed to echo Tarkan's own unease. Hours bled into one another as they rode. The sun climbed its peak, then began its descent, painting the sky in hues of orange and red. Just as fatigue started to gnaw at Tarkan's resolve, a flicker of movement in the distance caught his eye. He squinted, his heart pounding in his chest.
A dark shape, colossal in size, rose from the horizon. It moved with a slow, deliberate grace, its form vaguely familiar despite its immense size.
"Derya," Tarkan breathed, nudging his horse closer to hers. "Look!" Derya followed his gaze, her eyes widening in awe.
"Is that...?" "A Strider," Dimer finished, a hint of grudging respect in his voice. The colossal being continued its lumbering gait across the horizon, a silent testament to a forgotten age. As the last rays of sunlight dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows across the landscape, the Strider faded from sight. Tarkan didn’t think he had seen anything larger in his life. It seemed to tower over the clouds itself. With each faint step it took it sent tremors all across the earth as if alerting everyone it was there.
An uneasy feeling within Tarkan told him that Stoneland Strider would be the last he saw in a long time.