Blank. Nothingness. A vast white expanse in every direction as far as the eye could see.
Ioren awoke in a pool of white, viscous fluid. It surrounded his floating body entirely. When he raised an arm the dripping liquid made no sound as it fell back to join the larger body beneath him. He was naked, but felt nothing of the substance that engulfed him. A soft light permeated the entire expanse, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. He raised his head to look around, but was met with only more white void.
“Hello?” Ioren called into the space. His voice was louder than he had expected, booming in his head as if he had shouted into a cave, yet there was no echo. There was nothing for the noise to bounce off, no other object around to recognize his plea, nothing but the white emptiness that swallowed his voice.
Ioren lay his head back down in the blank sea and closed his eyes, remembering the events outside of Gen’s Pub. The pain of the knife cutting into him, and the guilty relief as he counted the bodies around him. The smell of the dirty, decaying alley mixed with the metallic smell of blood. For some reason, he was reminded of his conversation with Rys many hours earlier.
Am I dead?
“You are dead,” a voice boomed in front of him. Startled, Ioren leaned forward to view the creature that had not been there only a moment before. Standing around twenty feet away and fifty feet tall, the creature resembled a crab in a purple shell, though it was covered in hairs that ended in clear bulbs. It sat in a low squat, seeming to stare at Ioren from his eye level, though he couldn’t be sure where its eyes were.
“Who are you?” Ioren asked.
“I am the Deep God Cantimorelius. You donned my ring in death, and have been delivered to me. We are now bonded.”
Ioren raised his hand in front of his eyes and noticed that where his mother’s ring had once been, now a dark black mark stained his finger.
“As the ancient Bargain requires, to return to your world you must provide me with knowledge,” boomed Cantimorelius.
"Ancient Bargain? What are you talking about?" Ioren asked.
"For every bond you accumulate, I will provide you with power, so long as you provide me with knowledge."
“Bonds? Knowledge?”
“Tell me something that is true,” the giant creature explained.
“Then what? You send me back to Danet?” Ioren continued asking.
“You will return,” Cantimorelius boomed.
Ioren thought for a moment before answering: “My mother’s name is Abreya Cedars.”
The gargantuan crab creature seemed to chew on Ioren’s truth, moving its mouth in apparent delight as it crunched on the words, devouring them.
“Yes, this truth is accepted. In return, I shall offer a truth. Your mother lives across the Barrier River,” replied Cantimorelius.
“She lives?” Shouted Ioren as he scrambled to his feet. To his surprise, the liquid instantly turned solid as he pressed on it, and easily supported his weight as he stood. “Where? How has she survived in Danet for so long?” Ioren pressed.
Cantimorelius merely hummed softly, ignoring the human’s demands. Behind Ioren, a loud rip reverberated through the space. He turned to find the white liquid rushing out into the rip and becoming translucent rain as it fell over the world of Vanodel. He spun to search for Cantimorelius, scanning every corner of the rapidly disintegrating void, but the creature had disappeared. The white ground beneath him gave out as he tumbled from the sky.
Wind whipped at Ioren’s face and ripped icy tears from his eyes as he shot through the air past the enormous mountains of the Continental Divide. A column of traders in horse-drawn wagons returning to Temul in the night passed below him as he hurtled toward Yasha’s Step. Curiously, the voleons gliding above the Step moved out of his way as he fell ever closer to the ground. Ioren braced himself for impact just as he approached Gen’s Pub, but the impact never came.
Ioren awoke violently in the dark alley behind Gen’s Pub. Rats scurried away from the sudden movement into dark corners. Three bodies still lay scattered across the alley, illuminated only by the dim light of the voleons flitting through the air above the Step. The rats had made quick work of the soft tissue of the corpses, already exposing bits of skull in some places. In a panic, Ioren reached for his own face, but found his skin unbothered. He patted down the rest of his body, including his previously crushed ribs, to find everything intact. Even his clothes had been mended; where previously holes should have existed from being stabbed, there was now seamless fabric.
After thoroughly patting down his entire body, Ioren raised his hands near his face and saw the black band circling his finger where his mother’s ring had once been. It looked like a tattoo, but beneath the blackness there were no wrinkles like his other fingers. Just smooth blackness all around. As he turned his hand, examining it, he caught sight of his wind-up wristwatch. Sixty-eight hours into night - the boat would leave in an hour!
Ioren scrambled to his feet and nearly fell over from the force of his legs pushing off the ground. A side effect of waking from the dead? He moved to climb over the pile of rubble into the street, but took one last turn to look at Jeb and his two men. They lay pitifully, splayed in the grime of a dark alley in an unforgiving continent, never to return to their homes again. Hundreds of years of their ancestors’ lineage had culminated in a back alley stabbing. Though they had tried to kill him, Ioren couldn’t help but mourn the loss of his fellow Finders. After saying a quick prayer to Yasha, he climbed over the mound of debris and found himself in the road outside of Gen’s Pub. Ioren turned left and headed north through the empty street.
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The dock in the Forked River was little more than a large boulder used to moor small barges built of Danetian birch. The wood was soft and improper for use in homes, where it could collapse at any moment, but it was abundant in Danet and excellent for the construction of single-use barges that floated down the Forked River, to be abandoned along the coast wherever was convenient. A walk from the Step to Riverstop Keep would easily take twelve to fourteen hours, even in ideal conditions. Purchasing a trip on a barge, however, would cut that time down to under two hours. At this rate, they would arrive just as dawn broke, giving them ample time to explore the keep. It was an investment only the rich or the Vanguard could afford, but the extra daylight often meant greater riches as well.
Ioren approached the mooring rock just as the last of the group had boarded the white barge. The blank color of the wood reminded him of the void he had just been ejected from, and sent a shiver down his spine.
“Arriving last again, are we scav?” A voice called from below. “Let’s not make a habit of being late.” Ioren noticed the handsome nobleman waving to him from the barge, the mooring rope in his hand along with a small belt knife. He gestured for Ioren to hop on before he cut the barge free.
After a short running start, Ioren leapt onto the barge, miscalculating the strength of his jump and nearly overshooting it. A powerful hand grabbed him from behind as he turned to see the silver-haired bodyguard holding his cloak.
“Thanks,” he said in a hushed voice, embarrassed by the gaffe. She released his cloak without a word as Ardenel cut loose the barge. The group floated on dark waters in the Danetian night, flowing westward into the belly of the unknown.
“The flying lizards are so pretty,” a girl of around sixteen said from beside Ioren. She looked up with wide eyes, her dark pupils reflecting the green glow of a group of voleons above.
“They’re called voleons,” another boy of nearly the same age explained. “They’re lizards that fly around at night in Danet. They glow green and blue and eat lost children.”
“What?” The girl yelped incredulously.
“He’s only teasing you,” a kindly woman said as she rested her hand on the shoulder of the confused girl.
Ardenel returned to the group on the other end of the barge and made an announcement. “Alright, crew, from here on out we’ve only got ourselves to rely on. Linoor tells me it would help for us to do introductions, so let’s do that. You already know myself and my bodyguard Linoor from our meeting at Gen’s,” he said before trailing off. He raised a hand to the group, gesturing for someone to come forward, but nobody did. After a few awkward seconds of silence, a thick-chested Vanguard officer, clad in mail beneath a double-layered gambeson, removed his helmet and introduced himself.
“Thorne Brickwood, Vanguard scout,” he said. His dark brown skin made his nationality obvious. An Ivan, from the archipelago state of Iv in the southeast of Havan. The home state of the Red King.
“I thought Ivans were strict Yashanists and abhorred Danet?” Questioned Ioren. He turned to face the second, younger and thinner Ivan - this one a Finder - that also accompanied them. “Doesn’t your religion prevent you from coming here?”
“I can’t speak for the young man,” Thorne said. “But I’ve never been of the strict Yashan orthodoxy. I grew up a mainland Ivan, so our ways are different from the islanders.”
The group nodded in understanding. Clearly nobody else in Danet was a strict believer in Yashan orthodoxy, otherwise they wouldn’t be here. The other young man stayed silent, but glared at Thorne with fiery eyes.
“We’ll go next,” an enthusiastic girl announced from the rear of the group. She was shorter than everyone else, so everyone had to part to see who was speaking. A thin and sinewy young woman with short blonde hair, cropped just below her ears, stood next to the young woman who had gawked at the voleons earlier.
“I’m Ysmena Deornissian, daughter of Lord Deornissian of the western Rolakk province Deornis.” She finished her introduction with a clearly practiced bow and a flourish of her cloak before motioning to the girl beside her. “This is my cousin, Elune Deornissian.” Elune raised a hand slightly but did not speak. She shared the same dark brown eyes and sharp nose as Ysmena, but her long hair fell in curls to the small of her back.
“Hey, my western counterparts!” The mischievous boy from earlier shouted. He was a little chubby and had cleanly cut, short brown hair. “I’m Dal Eastwarden, ninth son of the warden of the eastern Rolakk provinces. I like good jokes, good stories, and good women.” Ioren groaned inwardly. Three more nobles?
The kindly woman, slightly older than Ioren and also slightly taller, stepped forward next. She had tanned skin with long black hair that seemed to flash purple in the moonlight, both telltale qualities of people from the Far North. “My name is Violet Quindlen. Admittedly, I am a newcomer to Danet, but I am medically trained. I hope to be of use during this trip,” she finished with a polite bow and a broad smile. A field medic was rare to find in Danet. Nurses, doctors, and apothecaries were lucrative trades on their own in Havan, so most avoided the dangers of Danet. It was the first time Ioren had traveled with one, and it helped set his mind at ease.
Another young woman stepped out from behind Violet and spoke up. She wore little more than rags and had short cropped hair, nearly as short as Dal’s. Of all the people here, she was the only one who looked like a typical Finder. “Petra Salmons, of Temul. I been in Danet for a year now, with little success. Hoping to find something good with you all,” she finished.
Ioren noticed the group had turned to look at him expectantly, so he stepped forward and cleared his throat. “I’m Ioren Cedars. I’ve been a Finder for a while.” They continued to look at him, waiting for more. “Um, originally my family is from Temul, but I’ve been here in Danet since the passage opened, so I don’t remember it very much,” he added nervously. Oh, and I died last night and was resurrected by an ancient crab-god, he wanted to add. He fingered the black band on his finger out of habit.
“Ain’t you that solo Finder that killed his friends a coupla years back?” Petra said. Ioren noticed Ardenel raise an eyebrow at the accusation.
“I think you may have me confused with someone else,” Ioren reassured her, though his palms became sweaty as he spoke. Petra shrugged, abandoning the topic, and Ardenel seemed to accept it.
The last person to introduce himself was the young Ivan man that Thorne had previously singled out.
“I am Onepath Acothley, of the Yasha-Blessed Isles in Iv,” he said in a measured voice, as if he were hiding anger. “Instead of worrying about everyone’s names and religion, perhaps you should be worried about the barge that is following us.”