***
As the gate’s trunks slid back into place with unsettling thunks, Janurana, Dhanur, and Brachen felt a pressure along their backs as if they were pressed against a wall. When they turned in unison, they saw the space between the gate and the canopy was open and letting in plenty of sun, but it felt impassable regardless, like there was no way to return. The trapped feeling was exacerbated by Vatram’s defenses seeming to disappear again into the trees.
Ahead of them was the dizzyingly straight, cleared path through the intense greenery. It dragged on and faded into the darkness of the distance. The only things that dared intrude on the road’s beaten solitude were the gentle wafts of gray steam dancing over it. Not even the plants did so as they all stopped short of its straight edges. Even though the canopy seemed somehow higher to the group once they were under it, vines still extended to the forest floor as if to imitate the trees off which they leeched. The canopy’s cover almost faded the forest to the shade of night, despite the occasional ray of sun lancing through.
The jungle was silent as they took their first steps, until one trunk of the gate finally settled fully back into place and the world suddenly erupted into a cacophony of the various fauna. Calls of nearby cuckoos, deer rustling in the leaf litter, and a leopard bellowing in the distance, even Dhanur and Brachen winced at the volume. Despite the sounds, each of which echoed like an open southern valley, the group’s footsteps were much louder. Dhanur looked from side to side, barely able to see through the darkness and oppressively thick foliage. Far above, more birds joined the chorus, making Janurana have to raise her voice.
“How did you defeat your northern enemies if they use such magic?” she asked. She had s pent more time than she could remember in the thickest pocket forests of Daksin, but none were ever as dark as the northern jungle.
“They didn’t use anything like this before. Don’t matter if ya got an arrow in ya.” Dhanur replied in a poignantly quiet tone. “Come on.”
Brachen stifled a coughed, waving the steam from his face.
“Abba?” Dhanur snapped her head back, then looked over her father and to the gate, and saw nothing. “What??”
Both Brachen and Janurana spun and their eyes went wide. They hadn’t even walked the length from the inn to the market, but Vatram’s gate, and the whole of Vatram itself had vanished into the jungle as if they were staring at the unending path that was before them.
Dhanur tightened her lips and took in a long breath. “Should definitely bring him out now.”
She pushed through the motions to summon Dekha, fully used to the soreness and pain of her healing bones and feeling the magic working through her.
But the shadows didn’t coalesce.
“Oh… Dark. Dark dark dark.” She scowled, tried again and again, and got the same result.
“What?” Janurana ran forward as Dekha didn’t appear.
“Gwomoni magic don’t dowsing work here. Of course.”
Janurana turned to Brachen, who was straining to see down either end of the path and into the forest. “Far too dark,” he said as he made a tiny Light.
Dhanur grabbed his finger. “Do not offer our position. Save your Light, Abba.”
She looked for some kind of movement, past the slivers of sun spearing through the canopy. The forest didn’t have the same unnatural shimmering outlines as the south did at night, but the jungle’s darkness was just as oppressive. A few cart lengths was as far as they were allowed to see, not unlike the a fire’s light in Daksin. However, it was barely enough to make out a tangled thicket of fronds and ferns tied together by a curtain of vines.
Suddenly, the undergrowth glistened with a pair of reflective, blueish yellow eyes. Dhanur tensed, drew her bow, looked to her side as if Dekha would alarm, and turned back to the eyes.
They were gone.
A bush rustled. Before even Janurana could turn, Dhanur had dropped low to dodge any projectile, drawn, and pierced the boar that was observing them. She scoffed and pulled out her arrow.
“I doubt that was what the man meant,” Brachen said. He brushed off his hands on his thighs as the defensive Light he drew up vanished.
Dhanur put her arrow away, then whispered loudly, “Don’t make your Light, Abba.”
“So, I can’t defend myself?”
“Ugh. Since we don’t have Dekha, we need to keep a low profile. We don’t have our alarm anymore. This is their home, they know how to watch it and how to defend it. They probably spend their whole day just waiting for a blast of Light.”
“You’re grown into quite the woman.” He smiled.
“Yeah… Well…” She blushed, then spied the worry in his eyes. “My first time here too.”
Dhanur looked past him, seeing Janurana spinning in a circle, trying to watch all sides of her at once.
“Janurana. Let’s go,” Dhanur ordered.
Janurana curled her nose in disgust. “Don’t order me around, lower class.” She muttered.
Dhanur was about the charge forward, but Brachen stopped her, his wrinkled hand halting her towering bronze scales.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean anything,” he said, looking into Janurana’s eyes as she threw back her dupatta and pushed her hair out of her face to better see.
Dhanur tensed and untensed her hands. “Sure.”
Janurana brought up the rear of the group and walked backwards, refusing to expose her back, and eyed the bleeding boar corpse. She hadn’t eaten well since the vetalas, and even that energy had been quickly depleted. Animal blood didn’t attract her as well as Human’s did, but her stomach churned all the same.
A branch fell from the canopy ahead, drawing everyone’s attention. When Janurana looked back, the corpse had vanished. No weaseling rompo was tearing at it, nor were a gaggle of imps dragging it away. She didn’t even smell the blood in the dirt. Their own footprints had vanished as well, replaced by yet more jungle mist.
“Perhaps that is in fact why the slinger wished us luck.” Brachen forced a chuckle.
“Light lost savages,” Dhanur scoffed.
“Zirisa. They’re the same as you and me.”
“What? Oh. No, I mean slingers. Throwin’ rocks. Ooh. Look at me. I have some string too.” Dhanur waved her hands. She picked up a rock and quietly lobbed it. “‘Please make me an honored warrior, Maharani. I can throw rocks just like a monkey.’ Usin’ a bow actually needs skill. Looks cooler too.” A cocky smirk graced Dhanur’s lips, bringing a much needed chuckle to her companions.
Just as they dared to indulge in a few seconds of pleasure, a thicker fog rolled through in front of them. Dhanur stopped the group and she drew her bow and scanned the sides of the path. But the fog dug into her eyes. It burned both Janurana and Brachen too as Dhanur took in a long breath to push past the pain. Between blinks, a shuddering figure instantly strode out of the mist. One second there was nothing, and then it was popping through as if the world needed to catch up with its normal walking gait. Top to bottom, it was blacker than jet and taller by half than all of them.
The group froze as what they could see was a spirit stopped shuddering and stood perfectly still. It had no face, no features of any kind. No eyes, lips, nose, no fingernails, clothes, hair, nothing but the faintest outline of a man with a somewhat distorted head.
As the three of them mirrored the silhouette’s stillness, they figured it had to be staring at them with its eyeless face. Their blood ran cold.
It let out an ear splitting cry, despite its lack of a mouth, and rushed forward. Dhanur loosed, but it leapt to the side as smoothly as Janelsa had when she nearly claimed Janurana by the campfire. The fog suddenly snapped from its position blocking the path and cascaded over the spirit. Both vanished when they touched the undergrowth at the side of the road.
Dhanur had another arrow ready, sweeping her gaze side to side.
Brachen, who had kept his hands up but waited to loose his Light for the last second, shoved Dhanur forward. She nearly loosed her arrow into him by instinct, but he only pushed her more. “I’ll save my Light for that,” he said.
Dhanur continued to scan the edges of the path, taking Dekha’s job. “Light lost spirits.”
“How many did you face during the war? Or your travels?” Brachen asked in a tone he suddenly realized he hadn’t used since assessing past traveling companions.
“Yeah. A few. Just did what I did with Janurana’s mother. Being out of the spirit plane meant an arrow could stun ‘em, at least.”
“I’m glad you have more. Janurana, come along… Janurana?”
She was on the ground behind them, clutching her chest and unable to breathe, stuck in the moist dirt of the trodden road. When the figure screamed, she had wanted to do the same, but couldn’t even move her tongue. Her pupils were nearly as wide as her eyes. Brachen jogged back with Dhanur still keeping watch.
“Sh, sh, child. Slow your breathing. Slow down. Slow down. There you go. Okay. Come on.” Brachen stroked her hair as he helped her up.
“It was in front of us,” Janurana finally squeaked.
“Yeah. And maybe still around. We need to move,” Dhanur said, punctuated by a boar squealing off in the brush. She aimed at the sound, keeping her arrow trained as she started walking again. “You wanna be alone, fine. But I’m not dying unless Hegwous is coming with me.”
Brachen grabbed Janurana’s hand, pulling her forward. “Spirits do not like your mother, no?”
“No…”
“Then if we push into the forest, your mother must get through that thing before she can get to us.”
Janurana crushed her hands instead of her missing parasol. She felt the smallest twinge in her back and she shot her head around. For only the briefest second the spirit appeared behind them, only to dart into the undergrowth again without a sound.
‘Movement, movement,’ she repeated in her head. ‘It’s not attacking, just move’
The forest didn’t change with distance, getting no thinner, brighter, or quieter as the group made their way deeper into it. Macaques would hop between smaller saplings while dholes, porcupines, or martins jostled for the best fallen nuts or each other’s offspring. Dhanur, Janurana, and Brachen would snap to each one, trying not to halt their progress and watch while they moved. Occasionally, thicker blankets of steam would roll over the path in front of or behind them. The first time it did, Dhanur and Brachen had fallen in together without a word, standing back to back to cover all angles. The second time Janurana made sure to join them and have her back protected as well.
However, the spirit didn’t return. Instead, the fog would roll through as suddenly as it appeared only for a moss covered rock or cluster of palm leaves to look just different enough to make the group question if they had been moved.
Dhanur forced herself to unnotch her arrow, lest she wear out the string. Her eyes strained as they continued to fly from side to side, trying to observe every twitching branch that shook from any passing breeze. She was sweating from heat and fear, just as Brachen was.
“A lot of good these new clothes did us,” he whispered to Janurana, trying to catch any ray of sun he could.
“Mm,” she replied without a drop of sweat on her brow. She wasn’t as wide eyed, but more fear rolled off of her in waves, dwarfing the apprehension coming from both Brachen and Dhanur combined. Janurana still walked backwards and made sure to keep her back perfectly aligned with Brachen. Often, she’d walk right through the line of light Brachen took in, not even noticing the stinging red line marking her face. But it was too dark for any of them to see it.
Brachen wiggled his mustache. “Just focus and center on my voice. Suppose it’s not so different from a forest before the fires, yes? I haven’t been in them since but I have heard from Dhanur they’re much worse off.”
“No, guru, this is different.”
Brachen couldn’t argue that. The plateau’s pocket forests could be thick and clogged with dry grass or brittle bushes like a pile of tightly packed tinder, but the jungle carried an aura of malevolence the south’s Outside only had since the Scorching. The trumpeting of a distant elephant shook their bones as if it were about to charge them, where in the south it cried for its own reasons. The fearful drop in temperature from a sudden cool breeze, the occasional puddle that was deeper than it first appeared tripping them up, even the sweet scent of a freshly fallen fruit that seemed just too enticing to be real, they seemed to carry some underlying harm. Nature in the north felt actively hostile where in the south it was brutally ambivalent, treating anyone without any special consideration. The same thoughts crossed all of their minds individually. Dhanur rationalized it might be why there were so many wars with the south if the north was such a dangerous place to live that they wanted to leave. Brachen refused to believe that even in such a place devoid of life the spirits wouldn’t be trying to help their clans. Janurana only continued to repeat ‘movement’ in her head.
“How one can navigate this is beyond me,” the Light Guru said. “Perhaps the jungle stays brighter for its own people, hm?”
“I see them! Go! Go!” cried an Uttaran captain standing in the trees, her hand wreathed in red magic with the voice of the slinger from the gate coming through it.
Three more burst from the brush with one slinger staying behind and preparing his weapon. The one who yelled drew her sword, leapt down, and led the charge.
Dhanur loosed a shot at the captain, but her arrow bounced off a bronze chest plate. Brachen responded with dulled but practiced instinct. He erected a barrier, and the warriors crashed into the solid wall. As Janurana yelped in pain, Dhanur leapt around it, aimed at the quick witted northerner scrambling over the barrier, and put an arrow straight into his temple. His comrades stumbled back as his corpse thumped down, giving Dhanur enough time to draw and loose another shot into a spearman’s eye. They were stunned, not just by the quick repulse of their charge, but by the fact that the spearman had raised his arm, expecting a shield to form from his magic, and it refused to work. A gentle fog had begun rolling in from the path’s south.
Dhanur leapt back herself, knowing the slinger would soon loose. A stone striking the tree behind her confirmed her assumption. Brachen pushed forward with all his might, sending his barrier into the warrior and captain, but missed the warrior.
He was brandishing a massive bronze hammer and charged Dhanur, ready for single combat despite his lack of magic. Dhanur hopped back and then to the side, allowing him to miss. But he wasn’t a vetala or a simple animal. As he missed, he used the momentum of his hammer to continue into his next swing. She kept her eyes behind him though and jumped to her side again. A stone shot flew between her and the warrior, letting her get a better view of where the slinger was. She drew and her combatant froze. They locked eyes.
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Dhanur’s mind focused, shutting out the background noise of the forest to only hear the gentle whirring of the sling.
The northern warrior knew he was between his friend and their enemy. If he moved, she’d kill the slinger, but if he didn’t, he’d die. If the slinger moved, however, then he knew Dhanur would simply loose into him.
As Dhanur had her standoff, Brachen had his own. He had erected a dome around himself and Janurana, who screeched while curled up on the ground. Despite her clothes, the Light was burning. His arms burned too. Before he had made the dome, the captain had given him the run around, simply going around whatever he made before trying to climb. These warriors were young, agile, and in practice, easily dodging an old man’s Light blasts or barriers that burned Janurana in place. The pinpricks of sun shining through the canopy offered no extra support against his foes and his energy was fading drastically. The captain grabbed the dead warrior’s spear and leapt up, driving it into Brachen’s dome barrier with all her might, and it pierced through. He felt the strike in his hand and sucked in a breath to strengthen the barrier, but the cracks around the lodged spear only grew. His hands faltered and the captain noticed. She smiled devilishly, and drew a second sword, opening her arms.
“Come to mama,” she cooed.
Janurana staggered to her feet. Brachen whipped his head around, almost dropping the barrier and thinking someone had snuck in behind him. But she labored her breathing, stared right past him, and met the captain’s eyes. They locked gazes like two bulls, ready to charge. Brachen wanted some sort of confirmation, but Janurana’s red skin was all he got.
“Okay,” he said shakily. “One…”
The captain twirled her blades, readying for the fight.
“Two…”
Janurana didn’t even blink.
“Three!” He fell along with his barrier, and Janurana burst forward. Before the captain could even notice, Janurana slammed into her. The sound of her shattering bones reverberated through the jungle. At her impact, her shins bent forward and blood spurted from her lips. She was airborne before her hands were slack and her swords soared away, fluttering off into the distance. Her instantly lifeless corpse tumbled into the warrior Dhanur was facing, ending their standoff. The slinger and Dhanur loosed as she dropped to her knees to dodge. The slinger was down. She leapt forward, about to stab the hammer wielding warrior and finish him off, but Janurana was on him in an instant. She wrapped her hands around his ankles. He started to scream and claw in the dirt in the split second before he was in the air. With a snarl, she flung him by his foot into a tree many strides away. Blood and pink matter decorated the bark behind his head.
Dhanur looked to Janurana, then quickly put an arrow into the back of a final, fleeing northerner. She had no armor or marks, just a simple porter who carried their supplies and hid while they fought.
“Dhanur…” Brachen huffed as Janurana helped him stand, whose ferocity had quickly abated and was replaced with tenderness.
“She’d just come back. With friends. Try again from behind.” She ripped her arrows from the fallen warriors, kicking one over, finally getting a good look at the clan markings. “All Macaque.”
“What happened to the boars? Even the spirit Pavar called to heal you was Macaque.”
“Heard they got thrown out and the Macaques took charge. Something like that.”
Brachen sighed. He looked over the corpses, bowed his head, and clasped his hands to say a mantra for the fallen.
Dhanur bowed as well, but quickly ripped another arrow out, wiping it clean on her pants. She looked at the Uttaran captain whose breastplate was dented in as badly as some of her scales had been from a stone statue hurled by a powerful spirit. Dhanur quivered her arrow and began slowly unwrapping the bandage on her arm, glaring at Janurana’s back.
Janurana had stepped away, staring back the way they came. She blinked away the lingering stinging in her eyes as a drop of blood had gotten into them when she crashed into the captain, but the scent lingered in her nostrils. She tried to clear both her mind and nose of the temptation by breathing deeply.
“Janurana,” Dhanur called in a low monotone.
“Hm? Yes?” Her voice was quavering.
“Catch.”
Dhanur’s bandage fluttered through the air, soaked in her new garlic salve. Janurana caught it instinctively and instantly recoiled in agony as the paste touched her skin, boiling it away. She raked her fingers in the dirt to get it off.
“Dark.” Dhanur sighed, turned, and continued down the path.
Janurana’s heart sank, she wanted to run forward, but her skin still burned. “Please! Dhanur!” For a moment, the deafening symphony of the jungle died down.
Dhanur stopped, stared into Janurana’s eyes with unsettling calm, and looked her up and down. “Lot of effort just to kill me. Unless you wanna use me to get to the north and start a war.”
“Dhanur! That’s- How could- The gwo- They took everything from me!”
Dhanur continued down the path.
‘I think they could have just sent that Deiweb to do that,’ her inner voice said.
Dhanur stopped “… Whatever. I can handle one gwomoni if they try anything,” she said over her shoulder. “Just have a drink of them and let’s go. Light lost noble freak,” Dhanur whispered the last part under her breath but Janurana heard it.
Brachen rose to put a hand on her shoulder somberly, bending over as Janurana kept her fingers in the dirt. “It’s not your fault who you are. But we must keep moving,” he said before taking the bandage and catching up with Dhanur.
“Virala-” he began,
“Dhanur,” she interrupted.
“Zirisa,” her father finished and grabbed her wrist, stopping Zirisa dead. “Don’t act like you’re stupid. You’re my daughter. You knew, by the Light you knew that dowsing girl was a gwomoni.”
Dhanur sighed. She tried to take a step back to keep moving. “Okay, fine. Yes, I was just confirming. I said it’s whatever. We really need to go.”
“Janurana is the strongest we have and can hear as well as Dekha. Let her eat for a moment.”
Janurana could hear every hushed word and sucked her teeth, wringing her hands together, half to comfort her ruined fingertips, half to get the mud out of her skin before it healed, but all to console herself. Expecting her mind to race with a cavalcade of horrifying thoughts, she found it conspicuously silent with everything out in the open. Without thinking, her instincts took over. Her skin had slowed, but the boils were still not healing. Janurana got up, fell to her knees in front of a corpse, and meekly apologized to it as her body moved on its own. Her teeth extended and she sunk them into one of the warriors to take in a frighteningly intoxicating gulp of blood. She let out a ragged moan into his neck as she took another sip. Just like her meat, the body began to blacken and shrivel.
Then her back twinged and she knew the apparition was behind them again. Still on instincts, Janurana took flight, crimson dripping from her fangs as they retracted. She bolted away at full speed, the mist cascading around her, hanging vines off the path fluttering with the wind she kicked up. Catching up to her companions in a few, leap–like steps, Janurana bolted past them. A distant shriek echoed and the sound hit Janurana like a spear. She tripped, clutching her more sensitive ears and tumbling to a stop past Dhanur and Brachen like a rolling stone. The figure was a single dot further down the path, not obscured by any fog, but then grew in stages. It walked in place, shuttering as it came closer and closer, jumping from point to point, becoming more fluid the closer it got.
Dhanur drew and loosed, catching the figure in its leg. It fell, stuttering and ripping the arrow from its flesh.
“Go! Take Abba and go!” Dhanur yelled at Janurana as she loosed another arrow at the figure.
Janurana was struggling to get up and Brachen had to mount her back before she noticed what she had to do, bolting down the path at full gwomoni speed. With the figure busy tearing another arrow from its leg, Dhanur took flight as well. She couldn’t keep up, but was at least fast enough to keep Janurana in her sights. Once more she turned to loose one last arrow, then focused on running. The figure let out a final scream, then froze in place, and vanished as another blanket of fog rolled over it.
Dhanur looked back just in time to see it disappear and continued running. She still saw Janurana ahead, but she was getting too far. About to scream for them to wait Dhanur stopped herself and in the clarity of calamity she remembered the Uttaran word for it, and yelled that instead.
“Janurana! Stop!” Brachen tugged at her, hair but he got no response. She was completely lost in the flight, so he created a tiny ball of Light to snap her from her trance. “Sorry, young miss.”
Dhanur caught up as Brachen helped Janurana control her breathing again.
“I think it’s gone for now.” Dhanur holstered her bow, panting in the jungle heat. “If we run, we’ll tire ourselves out. Well, maybe you won’t,” she said as she eyed Janurana and got them moving at a brisk walk.
“How long did you know?” The gwomoni girl asked with her breath coming back.
“I’m dense, I know that. But I’m not stupid. Fought and killed your kind before. Just little things, added up. Probably other stuff I missed. Just thought you were weird before but I first really thought about it when you only wanted wet meat that time we cooked a squirrel.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you. You said you- And you wouldn’t- I got that root for you. I could have just killed you when you were sick.”
“No. You wouldn’t. Aarushi told me, you can smell sick blood. Probably just trying to make me healthy again to kill me. Did you figure out how to cure stuff to help other people you knew? Nobody would find it weird if a sick man suddenly died Outside, right?”
“… Someone I knew showed them to me.”
“Great. Did you eat them?”
“Zirisa!” Brachen scolded her, but curled his lips as the jungle went quiet.
Dhanur pulled her bow off her shoulder, glanced back at them, and scanned the brush line again. Then she stepped behind Janurana.
Janurana sighed and started walking forward. She couldn’t blame Dhanur for not wanting to turn her back on her now. But Brachen sighed.
“She’s been with you for how long?” he scolded his daughter.
“A week,” Dhanur replied then thought, ‘that’s it?’
“And how many nights of that week were you asleep and helpless around her?” Her father pressed.
Dhanur only pulled him to her side, the older man being moved like a child. He curled his mustache.
They continued down the path. Dhanur kept a rigid watch but Janurana warred between staring into the nigh hypnotic blackness in front of them and checking behind her.
‘Wonderful,’ she thought. ‘I have spirits between me and mother again but they’re probably just as dangerous.’ Regardless, she thanked whatever luck she had that Dhanur hadn’t put an arrow through her the moment she had caught the bandage. To her surprise, it was in her belt with the salve pointed away from Janurana’s clothes. She looked to Brachen who nodded, having slipped it into there when he was calming her breathing.
“Do you want this back?” Janurana offered it between two fingers.
“Take it, Zirisa.”
“It’s Dhanur,” she scoffed.
“It’s whatever I call you.” Brachen stepped forward, took the bandage, and reattached it. “This poor girl has had a traumatic time and you’re only making it worse.”
“And I haven’t?”
“At least Aarushi isn’t trying to kill you,” Janurana said with a hint of annoyance, looking down.
Dhanur raised her bow like a fist and quickly lowered it as Janurana didn’t move.
“I wish I actually could have tasted the soup I made for you. I miss food,” Janurana said.
“... It was good,” Dhanur replied.
“The wound is looking better.” Brachen sighed.
“It itches.”
“It will, try to leave it, yes? Let the Light inside you work. I can give you some of my Light when we make it out of this wretched place.”
“We will if you both keep moving,” she sighed and moved him through a sliver of light. “Sir.”
They continued and Dhanur slipped behind again, but she didn’t say a word when Brachen walked beside Janurana. She knew he was giving her time to think, like she was going on a walk to clear her head, but she had nothing to think or say. Dhanur’s inner voice gave a few weak attempts to chastise her, but it hit a wall of focus while she scanned like Dekha.
Janurana had the same issue. She wanted to delve into better memories or try to process how to handle Dhanur knowing what she was, but she knew the spirit they had seen and the warriors that ambushed them were just the start. Her fingers twitched as the blood began to energize her.
Brachen marveled, watching them boil back into place to leave only the slightest scars. “Remarkable. Faster even than me. Perhaps you have some Light in you after all, hm?” He gently stroked her shoulder.
Janurana rubbed her healing skin. It wriggled and remade itself like worms dancing in the grass during the rain. “It’s only because I ate so recently.”
“Of course they heal fast. That’s why you gotta take off their head if you don’t have garlic or an Ascetic,” Dhanur said. “Or an arrow in the heart.”
Janurana sighed. The blood would help her scan the forest with her better ears and night vision. She figured then maybe Dhanur could think and realize her companion wasn’t going to hurt her. Then again, it might give Dhanur time to realize the only way to be sure of that was to put one of those arrows in her chest. Janurana hands shook with energy so she tucked them into her belt.
The sounds of the jungle continued to clog the air as much as the rolling clouds of mist. Occasionally, enough of the animals would quiet down for a single screeching bird to perform a solo act that echoed through the trees.
Dhanur looked left as saw a patch of dense ferns, then right to a cluster of vines snaking up a tree, then back at Janurana. Then she was face to face with the figure once more.
It loomed over her, taller than before, bending down like a drop of water about to fall. She wasted no time and slammed the notch of her bow into its head. The figure shuttered, but seemed to endure the blow, and took a step forward. Dhanur stumbled back. Behind it, Brachen shot off a pillar of Light, but its suddenly much more discernible inhuman ear twitched, and it dodged nimbly, shuttering less as it changed form. As if it were coming out of a dim house into the light of day, it transitioned fully from the spirit plane. The spirit kept the black coloring, but was now bristled in fur under a cloak donning a boar’s head like the spirit itself. Its featureless face elongated to form the snout and tusks of a boar.
“You reek of the south.” Panri the Clan Spirit chuffed, blueish yellow eyes bulging with anger as he spoke Uttaran. He rubbed his arm to calm the burning from Brachen’s Light. When he caught Janurana’s scent he spun around, confused having never smelled something like her before.
Dhanur drew an arrow but Brachen stepped forward and bowed with hands at his side. “Great spirit, we want—”
“Shut your lips, Light monk!”
“Only to go north and—”
“I SAID SILENCE!” A cloud of fog barreled through the brush, knocking over anything that wasn’t a fully grown tree, including the entire group, then vanished. Dhanur’s arrow flew into the air as the spirit made his way around them, sniffing. “You don’t smell like home at all. And with a Light monk. Traitor.”
“The traitor wishes to kill the heads of Daksin!” Brachen blurted out before he could be stopped.
“Oh. And she travels with one?” Panri returned to Janurana, his snout curling in disgust. “Lighter skin, smell of the south, but wrong.”
“No, the traitor is a traitor of south. She wishes to kill the heads of the south too. The ones who rule, who set the fires!”
“And why would any southerner want that?” Panri snorted at Dhanur and Janurana, who were clustered together as Brachen negotiated.
“They hurt her, they hunt us, they do not want us. They want us dead. We want to find friends to help us kill them.”
“I think I remember you,” Panri said, his boar brow curling. “Yes. You were the monk who missioned in my city before the war. Yes. You wanted my people to abandon me.”
“I did not, I only wa—”
“I don’t care! You killed some of Uttara’s warriors and you say you want our help?” He took a step forward and Dhanur jumped to her father’s side. “Speak or be still, traitor. Letting this southerner speak for you.”
“She does not know her tongue.”
Panri burst into laughter. “You’re ridiculous.”
Brachen took the moment of laughter to think. “You do not want us here. But the warriors we fought did not want us here. Why did you stop their magic?”
“Oh. You’re not stupid.” Panri crossed his arms. Brachen curled his lips then tried to stroke his mustache to seem unperturbed, but Dhanur and Janurana glanced side to side and saw multiple pairs of reflective eyes watching them through the brush. “What Clan were they?”
“Macaque.” Brachen replied.
“And I?”
“Boar. I would bet that.”
“So?” He leaned forward, tusks almost touching Brachen and snorted in his face.
Brachen didn’t flinch, much to his own surprise. “So, you do not care. Macaque Clan warriors die, that is good because they have taken boar clan’s place.” Brachen winced as he forgot the honorific ending for Boar Clan.
But Panri laughed again, crossing his arms and smirking. “This Light monk knows more of the north than a sister.”
“She has told me of that.” He fought the urge to match posture and cross his arms, instead just keeping his shoulders back.
“Did she now? Does she know how the Macaque Clan stole our lands south of the jungle too? Any power we had up in Uttara too?”
Brachen turned to Dhanur, who had her bow ready for whatever leapt out of the jungle, and asked her.
Dhanur shook her head. “Just know they took power and the Boar Clan wasn’t happy.” Brachen translated.
“Feh. Claimed they could run the war better. Said they worked with and fought the south long ago. Lies. Lies!” Panri ranted and none of the group dared interrupt. “I knew them and how they fought. I saw their wars before this. Look where that got us. The borderlands were ours, now they’re no one’s! We still fight the haunted scouts the south sends into our jungle. The Macaques lost that war! Lies! You want to kill the head Clan. Maharaj? Whatever you southerners call your rulers. Might as well start with the Macaque and practice killing the loser of the last fight!” Panri paused and a boar piglet scuttled across the path with a mushroom in its mouth. “And maybe you could use some help. Best use the right warriors. Perhaps I’ll step aside.”
“As you wish, great spirit.”
Panri chuffed. “And,” he added. “I doubt you could even do as you wish.”
“That is why we are traveling north. We need aid.” Brachen couldn’t hide the bit of sass in his voice.
Panri’s nose twitched and every eye in the jungle’s darkness began to shutter with the chorus of animals breaking into a deafening screech. The Boar Clan spirit’s voice boomed as he spoke. “You are far from home, monk! Take any tone with me and you will never seen your Light buried between the ferns!” The forest calmed as the spirit snorted. “You will endure the trials of this land, prove yourself worthy of any aid you wish to find, or die to feed the ferns. If you can make it through this jungle I will consider allowing you to aid us and pay back how I just aided you against Clan Macaque. Perhaps during then you will convince me that your plan is worth a few warriors. Either way, I win.”
The fog rolled in again, thicker than before, and stung their eyes like a carved onion. When they were able to open them, dripping with tears, the jungle’s eyes had closed and the spirit had vanished.
“S-So?” Dhanur put her bow away, blinking through her tears.
“We should expect yet more fights ahead,” Brachen said.