Chapter 26:

The Steel of a Man

The days all blurred together and he knew that he was slowly dying. There were no good water sources in the desolation he walked, and what water there was only got scarcer and scarcer. He made holes, he drank from tepid puddles, he ate berries — he dug up roots and mashed them to suck out the moisture. Every trick he had, every little thing Ryza had taught him in order to last a little longer, to press on. If not for the advantage of health the Blessed had, the wastes surely would’ve taken him. An edge he had pushed to its limits.

He avoided the hottest part of the day, knowing the likelihood of such an attempt ending him with a stroke. The cold was nothing to him, though he still covered up by rote in the dead of night. It was like he was in a persistent fevered state, and day after day, he continued to be surprised by his ability to keep going. Sometimes he paused and lay down somewhere, just from the overwhelming migraine pain in his head, but it always faded, and he always rose back up to keep going. The beacon. The destination.

In truth, he knew he was barely making progress. The sensory extensions — being a waste of time — were dispensed with, except when attempted to locate water. He’d often lose track of what he was doing entirely in the waste, just chasing some dream on the horizon. Usually a dream of water. Most of them he simply forgot, but not all.

One day deep within it and dehydrated, he kept seeing aloga in the distance, and ran to them each time, only for them to get away. After the fourth time, he just stared and something clicked: not real. They vanished instantly. Just a gleam in the sand. Sheer madness. He was probably going mad. That fit, really… chaos and madness went hand-in-hand. It was the Curse of the Gods, after all.

Off and on, he shunted the entropic bleed of that curse away. Whenever he thought about it. That wasn’t always, but there was something to it… when he felt it ‘twisting’ or warping, it snapped his attention enough to stop it, to drive and chase it away. Perhaps he shouldn’t have. Maybe it would have given him his desires, maybe he was torturing himself unnecessarily. But he didn’t trust it, nor himself. His imaginations needed to stay damned and dammed so the body could live a while longer. He put what trust he had left in the natural world — the devil he knew. At least he would die to what he understood.

What he remembered of his nights existed in fragments. He searched even in the cold because scraps of moisture or frozen water crystals could be found, as well as certain dew-collecting beetles. He’d hunt to exhaustion at times, collapsing and unsure if he’d awaken again. His dreams and reality blurred together, filled in equal measures with regret and desperate hope. He’d dream of easier days spent with a smiling Palamera, or jesting with Aerion and Daexo and the other Azakan… then he’d fantasize about cutting down the Ironbloods he hated so, sometimes leading an army of Hamaleen on aloga, everyone with ridiculously effective spears and bows. And guns. Sometimes they had guns.

On one occasion he found himself screaming obscenities and acting out his revenge as though his stick were a spear, stabbing down into sand that he was certain was an Ironblood neck. It spooked him enough to get a hold of himself and push on, swearing he’d keep from going completely insane. He would not keep hallucinating such fantasies and talking to himself. He couldn’t survive that way. But whether he actually did stop…

Weak, pushing at the last of his energy, he got it in his head to try and find some real water. He cast his farsense out, willing it to work for him. And he felt it did. The horizon, it was there! He could sometimes even see it. But inevitably, it betrayed him. He could never reach it…

Can’t trust the eyes. Low. Lowland. Where water has been. Maybe. The thought was a logical beacon on a vast plain of senseless hysteria. He zeroed in on it, grasped it as the last straw he had. The landscape had been slightly rockier — a potentially good sign that he had been trying to follow… somewhere.

So he pushed as hard as he could to feel for his idea of water, formed the concept, weaved it into the rest like the substructure, the inner core of a net. Was it just more imagination, though? He didn’t care. Out, out, out, as far as needed, what he needed. He strained to feel it, to find it… or told himself that he did.

Resonance on the wind; patterns unseen.

As yet another dawn came to preside over his dryness, he chased after the hint, the taste, the maybe-illusions in his mind, of life-saving flowing nectar. Water. Rocky land got rockier as the day got hotter, and he noticed a tall cliff rising over other features that he was approaching, then there was a sudden spill and dip falling down in front of him. Hills dropped right into a valley, and at the bottom was-

He laughed triumphantly as he ran down, heedless of the danger, almost tripping and falling on rocks repeatedly. The gleam at the bottom was so beautiful, so glorious, a great pool — he was going to jump right into it headlong!

Alarm grew in him, however, as it seemed to shrink and recede the closer he came. No! He increased his pace, then tripped and fell — rolled and sprang up with a scuffed elbow, only to sprint again, eyes frantically eying the water ahead.

It’s draining, it’s getting away! It was a mad thought, laced with grief, laced with too many disappointments that did not have room for another.

Down to nothing the gleam disappeared before he arrived, vanishing like smoke — like a mirage — but he refused to believe it, he rejected that it could be so, after his hopes had risen so high. He fell into the sand at the very bottom of the pit and dug his hands in, scooping, scraping, digging for his life.

“There’s water here!” He yelled, the voice to his ears the alien croak of a spent and wasted — foreign — man. “I saw it! Water! I know it! There has to be! It’s here, it’s here, it’s here…”

He dug and dug with panicked furor, but there was only more sand, and what he’d thrown was spilling back in. With a cry of hysteria, he pulled out his tool, dug with it instead, as deep as he could. He stood and he smashed it down again and again, making a hole. A dry one. With fury, he swung the makeshift shovel down as hard as he could and it finally snapped on him. He tossed it aside and ran to another spot, dropped to dig again, dig until his hands bled at the nails.

“Gods be damned! I know there’s water!” With his farsense he focused it almost like a cone, pushing it down, feeling, searching, seeking, striving for it. Water.

He slammed his fists into the sand. “Water!” Again. “Water!” Over and over, cascading fine, sandy dust all around him like an aura. “Water!”

Water.

Numb and aching, his fists came down a final time, slamming into the packed sand with finality.

But a resonance answered that impact — or emanated, or mutually echoed. He felt it pass through him; connected below. Deep, deep below. And he felt it crack.

The sand jolted and shook under him, vibrating with a power he felt in his bones. Shortly thereafter, there was something like an explosion of sand upward, something he had to turn and dive away from, and the sand still sprayed him painfully. When he flipped back around on his back, there was a massive geyser of water spraying high up into the air where he’d been. He just caught sight of sand globs landing afar off, from where the water had launched it almost straight up. If he’d been directly over that first gush, it might’ve killed him. Fortunately, the violence of it gradually abated.

Water!

Laughing in sheer joy at last, Deros stood under some of the fountain’s spray and got soaked, mouth open to awkwardly drink. Under his feet, though, the sand was quickly turning to mud, and water was pooling just as quickly under the geyser. Spring. The water was cool; it was a spring.

He backed away from it, finding a nearby rocky spot and considering possibly waiting on the water to pool near him. But then he noticed two other smaller springs bubbling up nearby. Then three. He ran over to one and filled his waterskin quickly with the little fountain, despite his shaking, sore hands. He then drank deeply. Filled. Drank. Filled. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get enough again.

Though the water at the central spot was no longer shooting up high, it was cascading and pooling up fast, and only seemed to be widening. Deros spied the good half of the cracked digging tool and was able to save it before the growing pond swallowed it. He knew he had best not try the mud. A new spring forming in the sand was rather foreign to him, but he understood the danger of flood zones around sandy spots. The pool was nothing to play around in. Yet, anyway.

He glanced around at his location. It really was like he was in a bowl within the valley, surrounded by rising terrain that eventually became sheer rock in places. A lake dried up aeons ago, he was certain. There was even what looked to have once been a river outlet, a small but deep canyon stretching away. And around the area in the center of the bowl, five springs were bubbling, one an absolutely endless torrent making a pool crawling higher and higher over the sand, rivulets flowing everywhere.

It may be a lake again. He stared in wonder at it all. Wonder and clarity — for the fog that had been consuming his mind had cleared for once. He’d done it, hadn’t he? Somehow. But as far he knew — as far as he remembered — he’d not opened the lenseye in that way. Yet that resonance and echo had occurred. His farsense had been honed practically like an arrow, down, down past the sand into the rock. Rock that had been cracked open.

“Like Elserel.” He laughed giddily, shaking his head, staring at the unbelievable scene, soon overcome with emotion. And confused. “Impossible.” He had not really done it consciously. He had even less understanding or explanation than before with the transportation. He didn’t believe in miracles. Everything had an order to it, even ‘chaos’. A path that had simply not been mapped adequately yet.

If Elserel’s story were true, there was something missed by society there, too. Dying to unleash something was a waste. Not because it wasn’t worth it, but because the potential had presumably been there. Misunderstood, untapped, uncontrolled. How much more could she have done, wielding the power with mastery? She could’ve saved her husband, preserved the Guideway, and beaten the invaders. While living on.

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An effect stirred and operated subconsciously, but without the lenseye directly, or operating it without me detecting it. I’m missing something. He knew it and it worried him. But there was nothing he could do but press on. Eventually. The day was getting to the hottest part, and he was deathly fatigued.

After drinking until over-satisfied, he found a decent spot to climb up to higher ground, uncertain how much the water was going to fill the basin while he slept. He found a decent spot under the shade of a cliff and laid down his cloak, then used his coat as a pillow to lay his head. Almost as soon as he did, he passed out. The last thing he did was ensure he was conducting the shunting trick in his head. He had to protect himself. Always. Survival.

He awoke to Azrom near to setting, the shade of the sky just changing. It was a state he was accustomed to waking to, creature of the night that he’d become. Through the ever-present weakness and pain in his head, he pushed himself up, rubbing at the elbow he’d scraped falling in his mad dash down.

When he got up and around the rocks to see the basin, he marveled: it was a small lake at the bottom, with the fountain a thick pushing out from the center. He made his way down and around to a rockier portion of the shore, still a slight lip over it, one that was inevitably going to be overtaken, he imagined. He drank from his waterskin and reached down to fill it back up. He then took off his boots and footwraps and sat at the lip, lowering his feet into the water. It was a refreshing feeling.

Relief for me, but relief more for the desert itself. I’m glad I did this, at least, though I’m not sure what credit I deserve.

He looked around at the shore, wondering if one day a people might build along it. Live like the Taldecca. He hoped. If not, nature itself would still thrive off of it. Plants, birds, froul, aloga, corsinids. Travel routes.

Before he ran out of light, Deros put his boots back on and decided to have a better look at the terrain he’d come upon. He’d run down so far to get to the bottom of the bowl initially that he was curious whether there were more lowlands or if the dip was some bizarre exception. A prominent cliff close to the canyon’s mouth thrust up quite high and was possibly climbable. So he made his way over and up.

He paused and blinked when he saw some half-broken ancient stone stairs curling up the cliff. It reminded him of Heaven’s Pass back home. He took the steps up to the top — or near the top, for the constructed, sculpted stone formed a kind of platform jutting out from the otherwise natural cliff face.

The sight his eyes were drawn to first filled him with triumph: a volcano, far on the hazy horizon of a flat, cracked plain. Southeast, he guessed. It was huge, a flat-topped titan of a mountain… sixty, seventy, eighty kilometers away, perhaps. Directly below him and the platform, the cliff dropped steeply down past the lip of the bowl and what he soon realized was an extensive plateau he was at the edge of, like a thrust-out peninsula of land. All splayed out from the plateau to the lower wastes were extensive weathered formations, mesas rising up level with the plateau.

Strangest of all, from the great bowl he’d started filling, the canyon shot straight as an arrow right at the volcano. Perfectly. On its path, it even split two mesas in half, like a god had carved through it with their will, dismissive of going around and spoiling the straightness. Atop one of the split mesas, he saw some vague signs of ruins.

The Cutting River, straight as a blade. Seeing it, he recalled something like it mentioned in old legends, presumably passed down from nomadic days…

‘When titans walked the lands and made Hamellion as it was, they split the ground furiously and chaotically to make the rivers, but one was old and carved it with patience, perfect and straight. In the mountain at the end did he make his home to rest, and no man must disturb him lest he rise again.’

I guess someone did disturb him, then.

He walked over to the left-most side of the platform, to follow the great canyon’s path and observe the great bowl. No wonder it had seemed so perfect and odd. It had been ‘carved’ as well.

Founder? A settlement before Alnaseria? Or it was even before Founder… who Soriel mentioned… Relentara. The one that made the way here, first. The crafter of the artifact, then? Who may have designed the instruction that saved my skin, whom the keirtum called their singular deity…

The thought was a bit annoying to him as he turned around, but the sight that greeted him as his eyes rose was a shock banishing other thoughts. The cliff continued slightly up from the platform that jutted out from it, and in the center, obscured from the other direction, was a huge pillar made of some unique pearlescent stone. At its top, the stone was broken into a jagged, indistinct chunk, as if some carving once rose from the pillar — at least that’s what his mind immediately jumped to, from his familiarity with the many broken statues around Miracle Springs.

At the base of the pillar, a hundred or more urns and closed clay pots were placed, as if in tribute. As he slowly walked over to them, he realized what they were: preserved ashes. He recalled his father talking about cremators that kept the ashes instead of scattering them. Different beliefs and customs from afar. Once upon a time, it had brought some of them to the pillar for some reason. The protection of a god, perhaps.

He also noticed scattered bits of stone similar to the pillar, and crouched down to pick up a piece and inspect it. Whatever had been atop the pillar had been toppled or shattered by some means, and with great thoroughness, unless the larger bits had been hauled away.

Pocketing the stone, he approached the pillar and looked down at the urns, considering. Some of copper, pewter, even silver, all vastly ancient. All sealed. It was a bit surprising that numerous valuable metal antiques had not been stolen with the passage of time, but few had cause to pass through such a barren place, even nomads. And they likely considered the place cursed. He was potentially the first to make the climb in thousands of years, though he had no way of knowing.

Hesitating, he sighed and knelt down, taking up a fine, white ceramic bottle of sorts. Whatever had been painted on it was completely worn away. Only the hint of staining remained.

I’m sorry, if there’s a spirit in here. I need a little more carrying power for water. I need your home. Time for you to fly free. It’s likely your descendants have, for a long time… most of them, anyway.

Deros did what he could to carve a guide groove into the top of the bottle where he wanted to cut, then positioned it to hack it off with his tool, using the farsense to help aim as he swung down. He succeeded in chopping off the top without utterly shattering the bottle, though it shattered another jagged piece downward from the lip. It was as serviceable as he could hope. He approached the platform's edge and dumped out the fine, preserved powder into the wind until it was emptied.

All honor to you, ashen ancestors, for serving life even in death.

Deros found another bottle and chopped it, but he caused a fracture too far down. Cursing intermittently, he dumped the ashes then found another, and tried to take his time scoring the targeted break point. When he brought the chopping metal edge down, he cut it almost perfectly. Satisfied with his additions, he rigged them to either end of the long cord he’d finally cut free from his waist many days back, then slung it around his neck to walk back down the steps.

It was past dusk as he took one last look at the pillar and the vast landscape spilling out. The volcano. Soon. After… how many days? How many five-days? He’d lost track in the haze and fog of his desperation. One he’d surrendered to, that was pushing at him again, from inside his head. He was sick in some way, but sick and still moving. He supposed that was how a sickness of the mind must be. Making one into a carrier. A deliverer, as he had every intention of making sure his enemies suffered for it. No rescue would be a peaceful one, after all.

Regardless, he had not come so far as to die in isolation. He’d beaten the elements, beaten desolation and death. One more stretch, even out across the worst — the most barren of all by all appearances — was nothing.

I’m Deros Lakemaker, after all.

The thought amused him as he made his way back down. He planned to wash out the bottles thoroughly and rig them up better. Mostly, though, he’d rest. A day spent hydrating and resting would prepare him for the journey.

🙦⚜🙤

The night was spent resting for the most part, a relief even with the discomfort of his head. He slept extensively. Scouted somewhat. Drank continuously. The lake only continued to grow in size — by the dawn, it was full enough to begin threatening toward the canyon outlet. Deros noticed a few birds had already found the water, so he spent the morning stalking them with his sling. He missed on his first try, but an hour later he was on target and took down a sizable kill. A white-feathered bristlebird. A bone-eater.

In his scouting he’d noticed a few dead trees, so he set about cutting them up for a fire. The wood was as dry and ancient as he’d ever seen, even decay denied it by the inhospitality of the land. He was glad.

After stripping the bird of its feathers, he gutted it and otherwise cooked it in its skin over stones on the fire via a stick skewer, cooking the innards separately and directly on the stone. Unaccustomed to such rich feasts during his journey, his stomach would not let him eat it all. He decided to fetch and break another ceramic urn from the pillar monument, so he could dump the bones, head, uneaten organs, and other such remains in a vessel together with water, to slow-boil what nutrition remained into a broth for drinking later.

In the heat of the day he stripped out of his layers and went from a swim, ecstatic in the simple pleasure he’d been denied for what seemed a lifetime. He stayed away from the middle of the lake with its still discernible up-flow, uncertain if it were dangerous.

When he climbed out onto the rocky ledge, he shook the excess water off and strained out his hair, then otherwise sat down on a scarf to let the heat slowly dry him off. Nearby, the last thing he’d removed sat on the rock: his cothvmesi of polished gray-white wood, attached to a cord that was always around his waist. His token.

He picked it up, staring at the faded paint on both sides. On one side was what he wanted as a child, a crude but serviceable painting showing him in the library of the Observatory, a telescope in hand, surrounded by books. On the other was a more skilled, precise picture by the hand of his mother, an indistinct, well-dressed grown man sitting around no less than eight children piled around and atop him, all of them bustling and happy. Deros coughed a little laugh, shaking his head.

I was always so embarrassed about that. What child or adolescent dreams of such things? Now it seems like paradise. One I’ll never obtain. I’d never allow this bleeding curse to touch Palamera, much less my own children. That dream is dead.

When he was dried off somewhat, he wrapped the token back around his waist, then began donning the rest of his worn attire. He noted his physique was leaner, a little harder. It was to be expected with how he’d pushed and strained and starved it. Strength and muscle enough to finish what was before him, though. He hoped.

Feeling like a new man, he enjoyed lazing and sleeping in the shade, eating a little more of the meat progressively, determined not to waste it. Meanwhile, he kept adding wood to the fire and slow-cooking the broth, one broken piece of pottery atop the other to keep the heat and juices within.

Just before dusk, Deros bustled into action, moving the broth off to cool and collecting everything he was taking with him. He filled up his waterskin and the two new ceramic bottles that he had wrapped at either end of his longest cord, wrapping them around his neck. Staff in one hand, he took up the warm, tall pot of broth in the other and set out in the dying light, following the path of the line-like canyon, though above rather than down it. To begin with, at least.

The lake was bloated and already leaking into the canyon somewhat. He was certain he’d be walking much faster than the water made the trip, the sandy bottom it was intruding upon thirsty and likely to turn into a muddy slurry before it became a stream, much less a canal. Or river.

I like Deros Rivermaker in particular. Stopping briefly by some stony heights above the mouth of the river, he found a front-facing slab of rock to write thickly with chalk, ‘Water, courtesy of Deros Îýteron. Please enjoy.’

Grinning despite everything, he went along his way in the twilight, the volcano visible and magnificent on the far horizon. A mountain of challenge, a mountain of absolution, perhaps the final destination he’d reach upon his own world. If the captive Taldecca — if Palamera — were already lost to Hamellion, then soon he would be too.

He began to hum a tune he’d heard from caravanners, then sang softly,

“Here I go, the long way ‘round,

the long way ‘round,

the long way ‘round…

Here I go, the long way ‘round,

And maybe never home…”