Dim white light illuminated the inside of the cloth tent through the monotone fabric with sound of the wind howling outside disturbing the otherwise silent atmosphere inside the siblings' tent. Iris's body rolled onto her back before she opened her amethyst eyes. She lifted her head and looked around finding the siblings gone with the fireplace below glowing weakly with a few small embers burning among the large grey pile of ash. The elf covered her face with one hand, massaging her temple feeling a bit light-headed. Sitting up, she looked around and found the girl sleeping on her side with her hands under her head. She dusted off Kia's hair before standing up and lifting the door to take a peek outside.
Life outside seemed to proceed normally with masked humans walking between the tents. She saw many of the women carrying furs above their heads while chatting with each other occasionally giggling at what the other person had said. The smell of tanned leather and piss drifted through the opening and began to fill the tent. Iris quickly closed the folded door and coughed because of the horrible smell of the active tannery. She began to wonder if the nomads were dumb enough to put the tannery right inside their camp and perhaps they were used to the stink of it. Peaking her head outside and following the women to where they were heading she saw the white top of a tent far outside the village with a dotted line of humans stretching from here to the tent.
"How much time do we have until the ceremony?" One of the passing women asked.
"It should start as soon as the High phase starts." Another woman answered causing most of the humans to look up at the sun.
"By the... we have so little time to move all of these furs. Where are the men when you need them?"
"You should increase your strength instead of complaining, Mao. I think having a nice stroll with nice weather overhead is much better than having to process those furcoats and get all that muck on our clothes and between our nails." The woman in the lead of the small group turned around while still walking and caused the whiny human to drop her head.
"Yeah, and the boys look really handsome without their shirts unlike us."
"Wait, you saw them, where?!" A choir of female voices suddenly erupted and all of the humans turned at the women walking a short distance behind everyone.
"You can see their work through the gap between the tents. When we will be returning I will show you where."
Their giddy voices faded away as Iris heard something make a noise behind her. Turning around she saw the mage sitting on her knees while rubbing her eyes with snow-white hands.
Sitting beside Kia, Iris began to tug on the silky black dress smoothing out the few wrinkles which had appeared during the night.
"Aoww," Iris yelped in surprise before rubbing her chest where Kia had headbutted her. "Are you still angry at me for yesterday?"
"That was for trying to leave me now." Kia's glowing eyes glared at the elf before she rested her head on the elven shoulder near her.
"You can't just hit me for something that didn't happen."
"Why, you can't feel it anyway?" The undead resembling a human looked up at the elf. "Did you level up suddenly?"
"No, and it doesn't matter if I can feel it or not it's not nice to be suddenly hit for no reason." The elf explained before her hand snuck behind the mage and squeezed the back of her neck.
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"Hehehe! Stop! Iris, Stop, I get it now, hehehe!" The fragile girl began trying to wriggle out of Iris's grasp throwing puffs of dust into the air as her heels dig into their seat.
"You are one ticklish girl." Iris stated not expecting the girl to react in such a way before tickling her properly. Letting the gasping necromancer rest after her attack Iris looked outside once more to see what time it was, finding the sun was about a bell away from noon.
"Would you like to go outside?"
"I would." Kia answered.
"Seeing how Ba was able to stand up I say this is our last day with the humans," Iris stated before walking outside. "If something catches your attention tell me and I could ask Ruu if we could stay but I don't think other humans would like that."
The girl nodded to Iris's words as she covered her unadjusted eyes from the direct sunlight. Not knowing where to go Iris casually strolled through the nomads' settlement. Contrary to their reputation in Western Edor as fearless ghosts of the plains, the humans around her appeared to live a similar life to the humans in her village when she was little, with older people working on their crafts while the youth was travelling in small groups of friends holding conversations between each other as they worked. She also noticed that most of the humans carried weapons on them constantly, primarily small curved bows hung on either of their hips in a leather sheath with the quiver half full of arrows hanging on the opposite hip or on their lower back.
The presence of weapons didn't surprise Iris as almost every person carried some sort of weapon on them for self-defence and a lack of which usually indicated the person possessing more coins than wisdom or being the owner of neither. But the open display of the weapons was what shocked her as, besides adventurers, soldiers and nobles, everyone concealed their weapons for their own safety as it was illegal to carry a weapon in public. It was an old imperial law in times when allegedly forests were free of monsters which she heavily doubted in seeing the state in which Edor was now but at the same time, the imperial era had ended almost 550 years ago. This law, although completely ignored by everyone, was officially still enforced in most human kingdoms she knew of and it allowed guards to extort additional coins from somebody who they didn't like. She never saw that happening with her eyes since she travelled with the Hero himself but she would be surprised if it was true.
This law also extended to the villages like the one she lived in, making them reliant on their local lord to send troops to relieve them while the local militia bought enough time for the relief force to arrive. The idea probably sounded great on paper as it created a small group of people who wasted their levels on military classes while allowing the rest of the people to focus on levelling up their essential classes such as farmers making them more efficient and less likely to break their tools. Because of this law, it wasn't rare to find clubs or oddly well-sharpened pitchforks made from good-quality iron or steel scattered around the villagers' houses.
Iris's mind pulled itself into reality as she noticed her feet were no longer stepping on hard ground and she found herself in the endless sea of grass outside the village on the side where the giant hole made by the wyrm was. She stopped to orient herself and felt something bump into her from behind.
"Why did you stop?"
"I was about to turn around since we were here before." Iris responded to the undead mage.
"Can we still go there?" Kia pointed in the direction of the hole.
"Sure." Iris answered the girl who must have not been fascinated by things the elf found interesting.
Cresting the small hill with very gentle slopes, Iris saw a crowd of humans prostrating in front of the giant hole, she quickly looked upward and saw that the sun was slightly passed its zenith. Beside the crowd, an empty wooden wagon was parked with twenty-eight bodies laid on the grass behind it with five more painted masks with no owner.
The humans must have ended their prayers as they all stood up and Kasheng emerged from the crowd headed toward the layout bodies.Even from afar, Iris didn't have a problem seeing everything that was happening. The same ritual Iris and Kia saw before began to play itself before them with the shaman taking off the dead's masks and powdering them white. Beside the shaman, Nu stood with her spine perfectly straight while wearing the same long blue dress with red fabric wrapped around her waist as Kasheng. In her hands, she held the two bone-white shells of the mask used to cover the dead faces.
When all of the bodies had their heads encased inside the blank masks. The attending humans began to pick the bodies up in pairs before marching toward the edge of the massive dark void with the exception of one body that remained untouched.
"Tsk." Iris heard the ancient undead click her tongue in frustration as the first body disappeared into the chasm. She rested her hand on the girl's bare shoulder feeling an incomprehensible zeal leaking through their bond before the feeling slowly disappeared as the girl's cold body leaned into the elf. For now the ancient seemed content of watching the humans while resting on her throne, deciding her judgment on a later date.
Unaware of the silent necromancer watching them, the humans continued with their ritual, encasing the five painted masks in white cloth and throwing them too over the edge. Iris spotted Ruu's white mask with a red handprint on his left eye appear from the crowd beside Kasheng standing over the last body. He looked like he was comforting the shaman.
Kasheng knelt before the body of Tserei and took off his mask and repeated the ritual she had done for everyone else. Standing up, she lifted Tserei's gilded black mask and put it in front of Ruu's mask from behind him. All the assembled tribesmen dropped to one knee as Ruu undid the straps holding his mask, holding it in both of his hands and rubbing his thumbs on its inside which escaped everyone's attention except for the pair of the undead. With a sombre silence, Kasheng put the old Tserei's mask on Ruu.
“I am amongst you at this time of grief, not out of my will or pride, but for revenge for our kin, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all, to lay down, for my Unalig, and for my people, my honour and my blood I swear! For the Wyrm! ” Iris heard the thunderous speech roll over the plane, somewhat resembling how she remembered everyone with grey hair sounded to her.