One day and two banked upgrades later, we hit a road. There had been another skret. I didn’t know how Ipoh was preparing them and I didn’t ask, but it was waiting for me when I woke up in unrecognisable fillet form. I ate it. Second Sun was in the sky again, and I cracked seedpods into my mouth to wash away the taste of consuming a life’s potential future.

The road was really more of a path, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. It was only visible at all by the fence poking out beside it: two strands of thin string strung between posts several metres apart. The strings were beaded with small, bright spheres painted in a multitude of colours and had been there for some time, judging by the notable weathering. These ones weren’t destined to survive the ages.

Its direction didn’t quite match up with the stone test, but headed off at a twenty-degree angle. It didn’t bother Ipoh, who cited gains in efficiency as a valid trade-off for some deviation. Not only did it make walking faster, but a road meant civilisation. That meant other roads, and a faster route to the pole.

I was less enthusiastic. After last time, showing my face seemed like a quick route to another showdown with local authority. The lack of further hunting parties also worried me. If they weren’t behind us, perhaps they’d figured out our destination, lying in wait to catch us there.

There was also the matter of my dress. I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with a fresh round of reactions. My rebirth outfit was also ripped up and clammy, the smell better left dispersed to the wind. Bits of grass were caught in the seams and through the straps in my boots. I kept finding them caught in my hair.

When we did hit the first dwelling, it snuck up on me. From a distance, it looked like another island. A small one, with something trailing off the bottom.

It turned out to be a weighted rope ladder, also beaded, and the island a shelter, with two whole sides open to the air exposing the comfortable palanquin within. I could see all the way through to a floor covered in bright, plush cushions and the occupant sleeping on them under a skret fur blanket. I slunk by in my quietest footsteps, positioning Ipoh between myself and the hollow, and didn’t speak until we were out of earshot. Not that it made me less visible.

Second Sun hung low in the sky, and Third Sun – the gradual white one – looked finally close to joining it. For a while, it looked like the period of darkness Ipoh had mentioned would be about to arrive early. But then the azure Fourth Sun rose on a completely different trajectory to its path the previous day, spiking sharply out of the horizon. With it, the sky took on an eerie blue hue, dimmer than usual and pocked with splashes of green and violet.

With it came a muted background ringing, so subtle at first I thought the wind was picking up. But it hadn’t really changed, and the ring developed into a more distinct multi-layered crackle. I couldn’t place the source, and it all sounded like it was housed in my ears. Tilting my head to the side, I tapped my ear gently with the flat of one hand, then with greater aggression. It did nothing to dislodge the source of the noise.

“Conductivity surge,” I heard Ipoh’s words. The Servant nodded at the rising sun. His voice also sounded like it was coming from inside my ears, and slightly muted, rather than at the volume it should have been. “Confusing but harmless. And sometimes useful.”

Around us, seedpods were starting to crack open, splitting along the lengths of the husks. Faint iridescent light spilled out, far dimmer than Ipoh’s portable spheres, but enough to light the plains with glowing strands waving in the wind. I expected their precious water to leak out to the ground, but oddly enough, none did.

Instead the air grew cloying and humid, even as the background crackle added yet more layers and increased in disorienting volume.

“Ipoh?” My voice sounded distant and faint, hard to hear above the rest of it. I couldn’t make sense of the sound in my ears; rumbles of countless thuds; distinct but blending together; thousands of high-pitched rustling whispers; a forest of staccato clicks, whirrs and trills, and an undercurrent of something almost musical in broken snatches. Long, ominous creaks in a deep bass snapped through the undertones, like the world might break apart any second.

The air felt heavy, like it might turn into water, and I covered my mouth and nose with an arm. A hand on my shoulder signalled Ipoh’s intervention. He shook his head and pulled my arm away. His lips moved and I heard sound, barely, but it was drowned out by everything else competing for attention.

He gestured for me to watch him and pointed at himself, then made an exaggerated breathing motion, chest rising and falling normally. Emboldened somewhat, I followed suit and tried to relax. The air felt heavy in my lungs, like breathing in a very thin liquid, but I didn’t choke and, although my breathing was slower, didn’t struggle for it.

Ipoh nodded and pointed further down the road, then continued on. I felt slightly vindicated that the thickness in the air hadn’t just been my imagination; our movements were slightly slower than before. Not enough to be immediately recognisable, but enough to alert an observer to something slightly off at first glance, even if they weren’t sure what it was.

The noise in my ears had reached din levels, each sound clear and distinct from the others rather than blending into a combined drone. There were far too many to make sense of, all hitting me at once at equal volume and no sense of direction or origin. I thought I heard human voices in the mix, but I wasn’t speaking and unless Ipoh could imitate a crowd, he wasn’t either. He also had his mouth shut.

Guide, are you there?

--Yes.--

Not the voices, but that was something.

Second Sun continued to set as we walked, and flashes caught my eye in the grasses. Fleeting sparks jumped between pod flowers, sending the already glowing fields alight with flickering colour. Even Ipoh was watching. Some of the tension had eased out of his face, the lines relaxing.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I found it harder to do so. In the cacophony, it was easy to picture a hunting group slinking up behind us in ambush, and I kept looking over my shoulder every few minutes in stressful spurts. I found nothing but islands, and those glowed too, capped with pale grass and shining from the iridescent veins in their stone.

We passed more palanquin houses hovering just above road level, and the occasional specimen tethered to the ground. All were draped with curtains and beads. There was no avoiding being seen, but with conversation impossible, no one approached. We provoked attention from locals nonetheless, people emerging from dwellings to fold their arms and stare at the strangers. Or more accurately, with Ptokt swirling through the grasses, at me. They weren’t always easy to make out in the dimmer light, but reactions ranged from naked curiosity and excitement to subdued awe, dismay, wariness and withdrawal.

I found the attention embarrassing. It was only when my cheeks ached with the effort of holding my face rigid that I realised how much. It was easiest to pretend I didn’t notice. I supposed I’d have to get used to it before long. And the moment I had a chance to change into new clothes, non-black ones, I was going to jump on it.

Whatever they were wondering about me, it wasn’t real. I wasn’t a ruler or warrior, or much of anything, really. I hadn’t been alive long enough to start figuring it out. Yes, I had an alternate self in my head who spoke strangely and doled out improvements, but if anything, that meant it was the one they ought to be looking up to. I was just the face of the operation, and I hadn’t had a great start.

If we could swap places, I asked it, pointedly ignoring a heavily beaded girl in a palanquin eying me with obvious disapproval, what would you do in my position?

The Guide didn’t really do emotions, at least not that I’d seen. But if it did, I imagined it reacting in mild surprise. --It is not my role to make decisions,-- it answered.

Poppycock, I said. If you can decide what qualifies as an emergency situation, you can decide on other aspects.

--There is a difference. My ‘decisions’ are reactions to determined stimulus, from which designated actions flow. Yours are true choices; selecting from paths I merely lay down for you.--

But what sets the direction of those paths but you? I countered.

--They are determined by the needs of your current objectives, as you know. Which again points back to you. Without your goals to build on, these paths would be random and meaningless.--

Perhaps so, but it wouldn’t be just that, or there would have been some randomness to it still. The way the Guide worded its response, I wasn’t so sure. But it didn’t look like it was going to tell me. If it had been less… itself, I might have thought it was evading the question.

Do you have a list of them? I asked instead, curious about the process. Do you pull them from a library of total possibilities?

--Yes and no. I see you, at your beginning, and the first steps on a thousand paths. Once the first step is taken, the next is revealed. Beyond that, I couldn’t say.--

What do you mean, the next?

--Your upgrades are a balance of resources and power. More of one requires more of the other. To optimise efficient delivery, ability has been apportioned accordingly in manageable quantities. In other words, you have more to develop in areas like Balance, should you need it. However, upgrades – --

– have been withheld for emergencies, I know. I sighed. It was hard to argue with such a system, given it had already saved my life on numerous occasions, but I would have appreciated being given the opportunity to at least speed along learning the local language, if nothing else.

It occurred to me I could have been doing that the last few days, instead of gawking at pretty flowers and letting Ipoh play the interpreter. At least enough to say hello. I had a mind, and time, and the ability to learn independently of whatever formal structure the Guide relied on.

From the way I was being stared at, I’d need to. Quickly.

For now, my ears rang with a territory’s worth of noise. Holding my hands over my ears helped, but every time I tried, Ipoh would pull my hands down, eye up any onlookers, and demonstrate a confident stance for me to copy, hands at sides. Failure to comply resulted in him doing it more. I complied. The dwelling rocks were still fairly spaced out, and whenever I got the chance, I took the opportunity to cower behind whatever respite I took take. He didn’t mind me doing it when he thought no one was watching.

I got it. Being an oh-so-marvellous Ancient was supposed to involve responsibility. I was probably supposed to be a symbol, show no weakness, or some other such fabrication that failed to represent anything about what I actually felt. Which was powerless. Aside from Orange and a few brief hopeful instants in Blue’s city, people had been trying to recruit me, capture me or both. My life wasn’t my own, with or without a promise. At the end of the road trip, however beautiful it was and however much Ipoh tried to distract me, another Ancient waited at the end for his prize to be delivered.

Was this what it would always be like? Was it like this for the others and my previous cycles? Were the wars between them really for dominance as Ipoh had suggested, or more to do with spending their lives constructing bigger and better obstacles in their enemies’ paths in order to maintain some semblance of freedom?

I’d thought Fourth Sun would burn across the sky in a linear arc, but it had slowed almost to a standstill, leaving its eerie single shadows frozen in place where they fell. Then it fell back along the same path it had come, not quite making it perfectly overhead. Fourth Sun was the erratic one, I hypothesised. Unpredictable, changeable, not quite sure where it was going and open to changing its mind. It was just a shame about the noise.

The path had widened into a proper road, the dwellings beside it becoming more private and frequent. They formed a colourful entourage to either side, trailing strings of multicoloured beads or segmented streamers, with others spiked to the stone in various decorative patterns. Compared to Blue’s city, the ornaments had a distinctly reddish theme, with whites, reds, yellows and oranges showing up far more frequently than other colours. Thinking back, I realised Blue’s had been similar, with its decorations favouring a subtle preference towards the cooler end of the spectrum. Subtle displays of local allegiance, while still following the law. I still thought it was a stupid law. Even if the end result was nice to look at.

Third Sun wouldn’t be coming up for a long time, I knew, Cartography making good predictions to fill in the blanks. First Sun seemed stuck below the horizon, and Second Sun was probably on its way, but not fast enough. Just when it seemed Fourth Sun would descend and plunge the Drift into darkness, however, Second Sun poked up again on its more reliable path.

The flowers – fewer, now that we’d reached civilisation – twisted closed, their glow fading as the air thinned. I appreciated having my lungs back again. The cacophony in my ears receded and allowed me to start to hear again, though not without patience.

So the other suns muted Fourth Sun’s effects. I wondered if it was mutual.