We were flying above the camp, heading for the center to meet the village’s chief. It was a refugee camp, so I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. There was a smell everywhere we went in the camp, like the air itself was stained with it; everything smelled like smoke. So far, no matter where I went in this world, I always had the faint smell of something like fresh cut grass hanging in my nose, probably from all the vines littered on the ground, but the smokey smell pushed that aside and hit me across the face with every step I took in the camp. There were Neame in the camp, plenty of them too, but they looked like children mostly. Very few of the Neame I could see were as large as Suma, Datahu, and Nok. Almost none of them were flying around like the ones back at base or in the cities. They were sitting or lying on the ground, so still I thought at first they might have been dead. Their feathers were a dark blue like Nok’s, but covered in so much mud, soot, and ash that you could mistake them for brown at a glance.
“Why are there so many children?” Suma asked, quietly.
“Because the only mercy the Southern Union showed them was to keep them as slaves rather than killing them like their parents.” Nok spat. “Our fighters freed them from camps like this one on the other end of the island. We captured this one first, and made it our base.”
“Not a bad strategy, but why hasn’t the Southern Union come to reclaim it yet?” Datahu asked.
“They tried. But we know this jungle better than them, and pushed them back. At least, until Harbinger came.” Nok said. We landed a few meters away from the trunk of a large, hollowed-out tree, and Nok told the three of us to wait outside for a moment. While we waited, a few Neame of various sizes started to gather around and look at me.
“What’s going on?” I asked Suma over our private connection.
“I do not know, but-”
“Are you a Viki?” A small voice called out from the crowd. It was a small blue kid. Younger and smaller than Suma was when we first met.
“I- uh… yeah.” I said, remembering what the Lieutenant had told me about playing along.
“Are you here to kill us?” The kid asked, sounding scared.
“No… no. I’m not going to hurt anyone. I just came to talk with your leader.” I looked over the Neame, and he seemed to be letting one of his wings droop. “Are you hurt?” I asked, kneeling down. I started to take of a piece of my armor, one of the parts with a healing rune in it. “I can heal that for you if you want.”
“That is not a good idea Sentinel. He is very skinny. He may not have eaten in a while. If you cast a healing spell on him, it could do more harm than good in that condition.” Lieutenant Datahu said. I pulled a few seeds from my bag and placed them on the ground. The ones I placed on the ground were called Red-Kuyu. They tasted like apples but had the consistency of an overly ripe pear. Since getting stuck here, I’d been mostly eating these and a few others; meat was in short supply unfortunately.
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“Here, you can have these.” I said.
“You should grow them for him” Datahu said. “He does not have enough mana.”
“She is right. I can barely feel any mana from any of the Neame around us.” Suma said to me privately. I reached out my hand to the seeds, and grew them how I usually did for myself. A few fruits appeared on a small tree that’d sprouted where the seeds were, and I plucked them off.
“You got this many from one seed?” Someone in the crowd asked.
“Uh, yeah. I have Chaos Magic, so my mana grows stuff better.” I said, remembering how I used to make money from it a few years ago. “If anyone has any daljars, I’ll fill them up with mana so you can grow more.” A few of the adults flew off, but came back a few moments later with several daljars and seeds.
By the end, I’d lost count of how much food I’d made, and how many daljars I’d filled. “They’re desperate, thank you for that.” Nok said, landing behind me.
“It’s fine. I’m just glad I could help.”
“Food and mana have been scarce for a while. You need to eat to produce mana, and you need mana to make food. We have had our wings clipped for a while now when we started to run out of seeds, and when we got cut off from our fishing spots; this should help with that. Thank you again, really.” I nodded, and looked at the Neame who were all eating, or passing out fruits to others. “Anyway, the chief is ready to see you.”
We went inside the tree, and found the chief waiting for us inside. It turned out to be an elderly female Neame, with a short cracked beak, feathers white at the ends, and a very feeble sparkle, though still brighter than Nok’s.
“Are you the Viki?” She asked with a frail voice.
“Yeah. I’m Sentinel.” She was on the ground, being supported by a younger Neame, so I sat down in front of her so that I wasn’t looking down at her.
“You speak our language well. Only the one called Lopt, son of Fárbauti, spoke with us before, and he was a trickster. Are you?”
“No ma’am.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m just… a guy.”
She scoffed, “I want to perform a spell to link our mind. If you are no threat, will you agree to this?”
“You’re too weak for that, chief.” The Neame holding her up protested.
“Quiet down, I know what I can handle. I was water knocking and keeping the peace between tribes when your mother was still an egg!”
“I know, that’s why I’m worried. Because you’ve already got one wing in your death-tree as it is!” The younger Neame said. I heard someone stifle a chuckle, and felt Suma’s growing discomfort through our connection as the other two continued.
“Um, why do you want to do that?” I asked, interrupting them.
“To see if you’re lying.” She said. I agreed, and she, much to the dismay of the younger Neame, started to form a magic circle at my feet. There were a few moments of quiet before she said, “Well, you’re not lying about wanting to help.”
“Good, then we can get started.” Datahu said.
“Yes, you’ve come here to kill Harbinger, the fallen Viki?” She asked.
“We have, and any information you can give us would help.” Datahu said.
“These two hunters have seen it and got away; they’ll tell you what they know.” The chief said, and motioned to two Neame perched nearby. We thanked the chief, and the two hunters agreed to let Datahu use a simple version of a memory delve to see the events.
“Thank you for the help.” She said as the magic circles faded away.
“Did you see anything useful?” I asked.
“I… do not know what I saw. You may need to see it instead… or hear it.” Datahu said, confused. She cast a spell, and I started to see memories. The hunters were hiding in a tree, waiting for Southern Union troops, when a sound started to ring out though the jungle. They listened and watched in horror as the sound grew louder, and one by one their comrades fell to the ground. The remaining two flew away before the sound got too close, and never actually saw what was causing it. But I recognized it immediately.
“What is that noise?” Suma, who was seeing the same memories as I was, asked.
“It sounds like a violin.” I answered.