Mayalyn’s Perspective

Mayalyn appeared amidst an ocean of green and brown. She spun in a circle, tail whipping out behind her providing balance.

Hills spread out like waves in every direction, gentle mounds without a single mountain or rocky crag in sight. The small brown and green trees that dotted the hills were unlike anything she had ever seen.

She scoured the hills for the familiar pink sorka trees and orange tilpa flowers. The grass under her feet was the wrong color and smell, a muted brown that reeked of rot.

A feeling of weakness began to set in as her body reacted automatically to the ambient Density.

There shouldn’t be a single island without sorka trees. It’s so cold and the Density is too thin to maintain my chakha.

Where did dad’s invention take me?

A creeping fear started in her stomach and spread to her heart and lungs.

What kind of island is this?

She dropped into a crouch and activated a masking as she continued to survey the surroundings, now looking desperately for cover.

I hope the local beasts aren’t higher tier than me. What was I thinking touching that thing? As if it’s so easy to unlock skills early. Stupid Maymay, stupid!

She could hear her mother’s voice, ‘You're not stupid little Maymay, just foolish.’

No, don’t get distracted. Focus, cover, survive.

Her beast instincts screamed to scurry into the nearest burrow. Except there were no burrows. Just rolling hills as far as the eye could see. She constantly scanned the skies for skalks and alphas.

With no landmarks to guide her and an instinctive need to find shelter, she set out at a brisk pace randomly moving away from the rising suns.

Mayalyn traveled in quick bursts from cover to cover, only moving from each location after making sure the skies were clear.

Why haven’t I caught even the slightest hint of the ocean in the air? Could this be the fabled Maldabra? That doesn’t make any sense, I would hardly call this decaying land paradise. Granted, I haven't seen a single beast, so in that sense maybe it is a holy land.

How nice would it be to live a life free of fear? To raise children in a land where the sky alphas wouldn’t claim them in the blink of an eye. But no, they must be here, they’re everywhere.

Focus Maymay! No beasts and no people so far. I’ll keep going in the same direction until I see something different.

It didn’t take long. A pack of low-tier scavenger beasts, clearly hunting, made their way toward her hiding spot.

They had brown fur that matched the surrounding grass. Her keen ears picked up their scuffling hooves long before they could see her.

Relief and sadness struggled for dominance. This was no holy land, but at least the beasts were low-tier.

She stalked them for half a day to be sure no alpha had laid claim to the meat. When she was certain it was safe, she pounced on the smallest of the pack. Her nails extended to skewer directly into the brain, ending the beast's life without suffering.

The rest of the pack wisely scattered, immediately understanding she was the dominant existence. With food secured, she scented the packs’ tracks back to a small river that flowed between the hills.

She was cautious in her approach to the life-giving water. Everyone knew sky alphas loved to hunt near water. They would strike only when you could see their reflections diving at you from above. Why such powerful beings loved to see despair in their food’s eyes was a mystery to her.

Hoping it would lead to people, she followed the water-flow up-river. That first night she slept in the deep shadows of a group of large rocks near the water. Each of the next three days she found similar places relative safety to sleep, always near the gently flowing river.

It was now her fourth day on this impossibly large island. The sounds and smells of the land were becoming more normal to her senses. The grass no longer reeked of rot. It now just reminded her of an unpleasant decay.

She jumped in terror when a hawk let out a keening cry. Without thinking she boosted her chakha to maximum strength. Her legs thrummed with power as they propelled her across the ground in a blurr, back to her previous cover.

Back in the safety of the shadows her lungs pumped air in tiny gasps as she scanned the skies for danger.

Only when she was certain no sky alpha was hunting her, did she continue her trek.

Not seeing a single alpha in all this time is making me so nervous. I’ll dig out a burrow tonight. Restless sleep with only a thin shadow for cover is wearing me down. My clothes are going to get so dirty but it's worth it.

I would give anything to see one of my father’s ridiculous inventions. Or smell the ocean, or have mom tickle my ears. It would be especially wonderful to feel uncle’s aura. I had no idea being outside of an aura was so awful.

How is it that being away from home for such a short time can make me crave what I used to hate?

Tears began to well up in her eyes.

I just want to hear their voices again. Any voices, I would even be happy to listen to Pritt rattle on about boys.

She was cut short by a most welcome sight. Rounding the slope of a hill, she saw four people who stood just inside the river's water. They appeared to be washing clothes while they chatted happily. She could hear the tinkling of their laughter on the wind.

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Relief nearly overwhelmed her. She would have dropped to her knees and cried but she needed to keep herself together a little longer. It would not do for her first impression with the locals of this island, to be as a blubbering child.

She scanned for their marks, she needed to formulate a plan on the best way to present herself. Knowing the marks and their dispositions was a fundamental lesson for children of every clan.

She reached up and brushed her fingers against the marks she had received from her father.

The ears of his clan were the keenest on their island. Pride swelled in her breast knowing she carried the best part of him with her.

Her nose came from her mother. While it did not exceed in capability, it was considered to be among the most beautiful. Fond memories of gently brushing each other's fine whiskers attempted to steal her focus from the present moment.

Recentering her thoughts, Mayalyn observed the villagers.

Their heads lacked large ears of any kind. The arms they used to wash clothes bore no trace of ancestry. Neither did their legs, nor backs. Even their faces were clear of a single greater or lesser mark.

Her feet stopped of their own volition at the realization of what she was seeing.

All four of them were ungarnished.

That’s not possible, how could there be four ungarnished all at the same place at the same time? Each generation has maybe one, per island. Yet my eyes see four, together. Happily washing clothes as if it’s the most natural thing?

Without interacting with them, Mayalyn sprinted back the way she came. Her instincts were screaming at her to burrow again. She did her best to ignore them as she crept to the top of the hill.

From her new vantage point, she found the nearby village these women surely called home.

An entire village of ungarnished. Maybe two hundred of them.

For the first time since her terrifying adventure began, Mayalyn considered that she might be much further from home than she thought possible.

A week passed as she observed the village and its ungarnished residents. Not once in that time did she see a single mark. She was even more startled to see them using strange abilities that her people could not.

She spent an entire day watching them make plants grow with nothing more than outstretched hands. It looked similar to the powers of a blessed, however, it was obvious these ungarnished were not yet Tier five.

Mayalyn spent the majority of each day hunting. The rest of the time she focused on her masking technique. She regretted not listening to her mother when she explained that it was important for her to learn how to hide individual marks and not just her entire body.

It was frustrating to need so much food. Never in her life had she pulled so heavily on her source. Needing to constantly refuel it was starting to make her jaw sore.

She was nearly ready to attempt an infiltration of the village. All that remained was clothes.

Mayalyn still wore the same house shirt and shorts her dad gifted her for her second nameday. They were now covered in dirt and torn from continual use with no maintenance.

The long pants and sleeves of the villagers, made in muted browns and grays, could not be more different from the skimpy brightly-colored outfit she wore.

The moment she had been waiting for came on her eighth day. Several women were out washing clothes when a pack of Tier two beasts descended upon them. They immediately ran screaming back toward the village walls.

With all the speed she could muster, Mayalyn dashed to the abandoned clothes. She took one pair of pants, one shirt, and a cloak several sizes too big for her. She stripped and left her own clothes behind along with a necklace worth far more than what she had taken.

It galled her to force a trade upon the owner of these clothes but she was beginning to feel desperate.

After changing into the new outfit and retreating back to the burrow she had found in a nearby hill, she heard a commotion coming from the river.

What she saw upon looking down made her blood run cold. The women had returned with five men. Mayalyn could tell by their movements they were all the same tier as her.

Even worse, one woman was livid, wildly gesticulating while holding up the clothes Mayalyn left behind. She spotted the necklace in the hand of the man who was talking to the upset woman. The other four men were looking in every direction.

Just as she realized the severity of the situation, one of the men spotted her and pointed while shouting.

Mayalyn fled. She did not look back or even consider trying to talk with them. She had heard enough of their language over the last few days to know she could not communicate with them.

If captured, she would eventually drain her source attempting to keep the masking up. Once empty, her consciousness would fade and she would be completely at their mercy.

It was possible they would forgive her and even take her to a village of her own people somewhere. But she was not willing to put her life into the hands of an unknown village of ungarnished. Especially if they could not even understand one another.

Now that they were aware of and actively hunting her, Mayalyn determined the best choice was to follow the only road exiting the village. It would likely lead to another village, or even a town.

Hopefully, she would find maps of the surrounding islands there.

As the days wore on, she tried very hard not to think about the obvious flaw in her plan. If her people didn't know about this island, what are the chances they knew about her people?

Two days after leaving the village, she came face-to-face with a group traveling the opposite direction along the road.

Mayalyn’s ears had picked up the sounds of their approach long before spotting them. The road wound around the base of a tall and steep hill, giving them little warning before sighting each other.

Her heart raced with nervous energy. With no mirror to practice the masking technique, she could only hope her efforts had been enough.

The small family on a cart loaded with goods waved at her in greeting while uttering their strange words. Within a scant few moments, they were moving away.

Mayalyn breathed a sigh of relief as the weight of uncertainty and doubt was lifted from her shoulders.

Her second encounter, the unfortunate individuals did not see her. They would never see anything again. Their dead eyes stared at the sky. Killed by some beast that didn’t even want to eat them.

She quickly picked through their few belongings, finding a small pouch of currency and a pair of dull daggers. Their clothes were ripped and bloody, she left them untouched.

Many opportunities to practice her masking were presented over the following days as more ungarnished appeared on the road with every hour traveled.

Soon, there were so many people that dropping the technique became impossible.

Mayalyn felt shame about hiding the marks of her heritage under the folds of the stolen cloak, but to preserve the precious source within, there was no other choice.

Not a single mark in well over two thousand people. That's more inhabitants than our entire island. Even their soldiers are ungarnished, how do they protect themselves from the alphas? But I haven’t seen one, so they must have found a way.

The road led to a sight that took her breath away. This was no town or village coexisting with its surroundings. It was something out of a dream, no, a nightmare.

Hundreds of thousands of little buildings stretched off into the horizon. There were even a few unbelievably large structures that reached so high it looked like they touched the sky.

She had overheard enough conversations on the road, the same word repeated enough times, that its meaning became clear.

What stretched before her was known as a city. The city of Cruex.