“The Innaa will only become bolder.”
Bilsahani demanded before a council of elders.
“We should-
no, NEED to request assistance from Calhonquia.”
From remote lands across the continent, they had gathered in the Nepatche’s territory
Congregating in a tall square cabin in the village of Jaagekiya, stood the mystics who witnessed the fall of the great pine.
“Insanity.
Inviting the wasicu unabated, right into the heart of our families.”
One of the elders reproached, his silver-fox coat was nicely folded on the floor.
“We’ve witnessed firsthand their corruption of the Mezan kingdoms?”
At the center of the room, a crackling bonfire illuminated the overseeing council.
The six elders were clad in different vestments, some in elegant furs indicative of the tundra clans, others with turquoise encrusted robes notable to the western seas.
With a calm demeanor, they listened to the astonishing testimony of their tribes,
in response to the attack on Neeschit Gowah.
“Mezaxtal handed them their people without hesitation.”
Bilsahani words flared.
“What good is a treaty when they are now sending titans into our lands?
Elder Nokomis? You’ve seen firsthand the Mezax subservience to the invaders.”
He addressed an older woman among the council.
“What proof do you have?”
Nokomis’ hair was braided with large white and black feathers, draping down to her waist.
“Alikchi Kuruk managed to identify the Shakoshke.”
He turned back calling forth the shaman towards the blazing fire.
Bilsahani nodded at the approaching man.
“Great council, indeed what I saw was unmistakably a Mezakoshke.”
Kuruk’s overly decorated robe rattled as he approached the elders.
“There was no mistake, as to what it was but the titan showed no aggression or interest toward us.”
“We will not incite hostilities from Mezaxtal from mere testimony, worse things have happened with much lesser misunderstandings.”
Nokomis rebuked.
“Kuruk…the fragment.”
Bilsahani pressed.
Although hesitation shook the shaman’s hands, he reached beneath his cloak, producing a pronged jasper spike.
Rays of the gleaming sun pierced through from between the stacked logs that made up the structure, the light bouncing off the material.
Gasp
The council caught their breath, mumbling amongst themselves.
Four of them turned their eyes at the fifth, sitting at the edge of the group.
“Irepani…
What’s the meaning of this!”
Nokomis demanded.
“I can assure you my clan has nothing to do with this.”
The defensive man wore long pants of deerskin, and a simple headband pulled his silky black hair in place.
“This is the Innaa men’s working…their magic is…potent.”
Irepani responded.
“LIES! There was nothing but the Shakoshke…”
“Quiet Bilsahani.”
A man at the center of the elders ordered.
“Kuruk, bring me the antler.”
“Chief Dasodahae!”
He blurted.
Dasodahae’s headdress was taller than his contemporaries sitting beside him, the long side fringes flowed down the back of his shoulders.
Lifting his hand, the elders’ gesture silenced Bilsahani’s disrespectful tone.
The chief stretched out his arm and curled his fingers inward, calling the shaman.
Kuruk made his way to the crackling fire dancing between the two men, handing over the fragment of the Mezakoshke’s horn.
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Dasodahae held the jasper antler tightly and looked back and forth signaling the council.
The group of elders commenced chanting.
A bundle of glowing strands surrounded their bodies as they stood up, finding a place around the fire.
Flooding their palms with an orange glow, they circled the fire weaving their energies into the flames.
The antler drifted forth over the hearth.
[TEMPUS MEMENTO]
The fire erupted upwards, enveloping the fragment in its blanket.
Singeing the Mezakoshke’s fragment, white fumes painted the roaring flames with its seeping energy.
With the council’s continuous chanting, chief Dasodahae whispered a soft breath, swirling the vapors.
In the smoke, the form of the two strangely dressed men wove together.
The Innaa were unmistakable.
Near them, the smoke formed the body of the giant Mezakoshke.
Within the same vision, a smaller figure emerged, a small girl.
“ASDZA!”
Bilsahani exclaimed.
“Shhh…”
Kuruk reminded him.
The smoke flared and twisted, revealing the events that transpired in the Neeschitsin forest.
From the pale men to their thundering metal rods, to the titan stag’s interference and protection of Asdza.
The scene seemed to banish the darkness within the cabin.
FOOOOM
The bonfire brightened as the piece of antler disintegrated, consumed by mystical energy and into the resting ashes.
“It seems we might be misjudging the situation.”
Nokomis glared at Bilsahani.
“Indeed there is much we don’t know.”
Chief Dasodahae contemplated.
“Not only the Mezakoshke and the pale men, but the shooting stars and their destruction of the Neeschitsin.”
The council shook their heads in agreement.
“What did the Innaa want…?”
The elders could only stare in contemplation as the fire sang to the rhythm of the kindling.
Outside the smoking cabin, a series of pointed tents littered the prairies across the Napatche settlement.
Mounds and plateaus of stone jotted from the grassy knolls across their fields.
Their ancestral buildings were covered by years of overgrowth and deterioration;
and still, the tops of these magnificent structures peeked through the rubble.
One thing was missing from this once peaceful view, the towering pine which overlooked the landscape was gone.
At the edges of the settlement where the border of the forest meets the village, a patrol of men secured the area.
“Not with all the patrols.”
A boy whispered, hiding in the bushes across the guarding soldiers, their back holsters with quiver and bow, ready to go.
“We just need to go around them…”
Asdza assured.
“If we cut around the waste.
They’ll never know.”
The boy’s eyes dilated with shock.
“I am not going through there!”
“Yeah!”
The other girl in the trio said.
“You don’t need to.
The Shakoshke chose me…so I will go.”
Asdza corrected.
“You’re crazy Asdza,
you’ll die before if you get there.”
The boy protested.
“And then your dad will kill us himself.”
“Dad won’t find out?”
“That’s what you said last time.”
The girl remembered.
“Your dad ends up telling our parents.
Always.”
“I’ll get you guys your own shrooooooomy.”
Asdza sang, her eyebrows dancing in an attempt to convince her friends.
The two kids looked at each other, with lips curling indecisively.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Asdza held her palm upward, with a sly smirk.
“I get the biggest!”
The boy blurted.
“SECOND!”
The other reacted.
Asdza’s face straightened in mild disappointment.
“Fine.
Now go.”
She directed.
Abandoning any sense of inconspicuousness, the children rustled through the bushes, gathering the attention of the patrolling men.
“Go back to your parents.”
One of them commanded.
“The Neeschit is off limits.”
The boy ran out of the bushes making for the dense trees.
“Hmph.”
A soldier grunted, sending his men to stop the child from running pas them.
“AAAAAAAAH!”
The other girl then sprang from another bushel and made for the forest.
“UGH.”
The men complained.
Soon all the guards found themselves chasing after the rugrats, pulling the soldier’s attention from their posts.
As the kids ran distracting the patrolmen, Asdza made her way to the outer edge of the
fields;
Where the grass gradually shifted from evergreen to desiccated brown.
The blight had turned the prairie into a valley of drought and scarcity, juxtaposed against the lush forest.
Swiftly she ran around the guard’s sight and made her way through the waste and into the Neeschit Gowah.
She stampeded through he branches and shrubs smacking her along the way.
“YES!”
Asdza pranced with joy.
Her celebration was short-lived though, as she realized this was not the same forest she had known all her life.
As she made her way towards the once great pine, something seemed different, off, one would say.
The shrubbery and indeed the treeline, although damaged by what they could only describe as falling comets, were more or less the same.
The obvious exception was the Neeschitsin, along with the serenity and liveliness that were as absent as the missing centerpiece.
Well, half of it was, the other half still stood at the heart of the forest.
Even at a distance, Asdza could see the snapped trunk that protruded into the sky.
“Brrrr.”
Shivers crawled up her spine.
It was an eerie feeling.
A loneliness that made her queasy was the best she could describe it.
It’s like the waste…
Her confusion only grew, as she traversed the forest towards the decimated great pine.
I can’t feel it…
As she made her way deeper into the wilds, she noticed the chirping birds were quiet.
The shuffling critters were few and far between.
There were so many of the same animals she had grown accustomed to seeing, strewn across the floor, lifeless.
Worse yet…acres of land had been turned inside out.
Across every acre of the Neeschitsin roots, covering every inch of the pine’s once pristine grounds.
The dug out networks had lost their fungal nodules once buried, absconded with by who knows what.
The eviscerated forest was replete with cavities, and now the only thing left was the mycelium veins which extended across the entire Neeschit Gowah.
Kneeling down she examined the disturbed soil.
“Ewwww.”
A disgusted frown dawned over her face.
It was laced with the mysterious black substance the pale men had used to attack the Mezakoshke.
Asdza continued onward, finally arriving at the foot of the dying pine.
She closed her eyes, listening for palpitations of the forest, searching across the vacant tunnels underneath the vast fields.
Everything was silent, almost as if death had already reaped the sacred forest.
Leaving it was in its final throes, waiting for its imminent disappearance into the encroaching wastelands.
“Oh no…”
Asdza mumbled.
Her quivering lip held her emotions at bay.
Concentrating harder she dropped to the floor, placing her head on the macerated soil, carefully avoiding the goo.
“Don’t go Neeschit.”
She mumbled.
Thump
Thud
A faint knock rang in her mind.
Where?!
Her mind shouted.
Quickly she crawled along the ground searching for the source of the heartbeat.
THUMP
THUD
The hammering grew louder, more rapid.
Following the call she sprang forth.
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
Louder and louder it grew.
Asdza looked up and there before her was the great pine’s trunk.
A long tear split the massive log down the middle, reaching deep into it’s roots and deeper still beneath the ground.
BANG
BANG
BANG
A familiar sound tore through the gentle whispers of the trees.
Asdza stood up instantly, looking back in the direction of the clamor.
The metal staves….The Innaa are back.
Her mind shouted, her adrenaline accelerating her breath.
RUN
Furiously she ran into the opening, closing the distance towards the decaying trunk, climbing its fragile limbs.
The corpse’s bark shed as she climbed, hoisting her grip on the crumbling scales.
As she reached the summit of the root, her foot fell through the rotting wood, landing inside the forming cavity.
“OOOF!”
She groaned.
A familiar odor tingled her nostrils.
It was the scent of mildew, the aroma of the fungus she had harvested before the disaster which had devastated the wilds.
Soft mold and dirt had begun to compost the insides of the Neeschitsin.
BANG
BANG
BANG
Her neck swung, looking back at the direction of the shots.
The piercing sound had gown deafening, closer to Asdza.
Crouching down, he desperately dug out the pulverized wood.
Ignoring the splinters, she excavated further into the trunk, well past the disintegrating roots.
“OMG!”
Her fingers had hit a soft lump peeking through the soil.
Before her small hands, a mass of the fungus radiated.
It was the largest bud she had ever laid eyes on.
Three times the size of the first one she had exhumed.
Its emanating energy hummed with a blissful feeling.
Now within her hands, the heart of the Neeschit Gowah soothed her body and relaxed her mind.
The melancholy and emptiness that now haunted the forest, seemed to dissolve in its presence.
BANG
BANG
BANG
Asdza jumped to her feet.
The noise waking her, ringing between the trees, echoing across the forest.
Tucking the bulb into her gown, and folding it into a makeshift hammock she ran back home.
Without a second thought, without a second look.