In the morning, Perron gave Vayra and Glade a horse, then instructed them to head east from the Camp until they reached the Rallemflow, then to follow it south until they reached the mountains. Near the rocky culverts where the river disappeared into the mountain, they would find entrances into the Night Vale Chambers. Lastly, she gave them a map. It was a simple sketch of the region, and the Camp wasn’t marked on it.
Vayra and Glade parted ways with Pels, then rode out of the camp and travelled east. There wasn’t a perfect path to the Rallemflow, but there was enough room between the shards of stone that they could navigate their horses to the east.
Vayra checked her haversack to make sure her supplies were still available and topped up—aside from the valuable goods the Order had given her, she also had to ensure she didn’t run out of food. She doubted there’d be much to forage for on a planet like Muspellar.
‘You’d be surprised,’ Phasoné replied. ‘I’m pretty sure I sensed a deer. Well, it had the spirit of a deer, but it had a coat of thick coal-like crystal, and orange flames burned in its eyes. And magma dripped from its antlers.’ The Goddess paused, then added, ‘One of those would be much better as a pet than a mangy ship’s cat.’
“Oh, don’t worry your starry head off,” Vayra muttered under her breath. “It’s not like I’m going to form a soul pact with the ship’s cat.”
‘A soul pact? You better not!’
“I can…actually do that?”
‘If you knew the creature from its birth, you could take it as a sacred companion. Some God-heirs do it with some of the more…special creatures of the galaxy, for a bit of a power boost. Helps them form unique techniques and can give them some special cycling patterns.’
Vayra nodded slowly. “Huh. Neat.”
‘I’m still an advocate for peacocks,’ Phasoné said.
Vayra only smiled in response, then turned her gaze forwards again. The ground began to slope downwards slightly, and in the distance, Vayra could hear rushing and bubbling water. She looked over her shoulder at Glade.
He smirked subtly as his horse trotted beneath him. “I forgot how unnerving it can be when you talk to yourself like that.”
‘Not talking to yourself!’ Phasoné protested.
Vayra dropped her head, then whispered, “You know what he meant…”
For another half hour, they rode towards the sound of flowing water. When the spikes of obsidian peeled away and dropped them at the river’s edge, they navigated their horses down onto the bank. The water bubbled and steamed, and since it was seawater flowing inland, it made the air taste salty. Plus, the steam made everything more humid.
They had travelled slightly southeast, and now the mountains were closer. Vayra could make out dimples and ridges, and in the daylight, she spotted bluffs of glistening, smooth obsidian among the rest of the dull volcanic rock. But the direct sun and open sky wouldn’t last forever; on the horizon, to the west, a bank of ashy clouds followed them.
By evening, it began to rain, but the water was more steam than liquid. It was scalding hot, and though it didn’t hurt Vayra, the heat felt oppressive, like she imagined most humans would feel on the hottest day of a normal year.
Glade, however, was a mostly-normal human, and their horses had no resistance to scalding water. They began to whinny and whimper.
They hid beneath a ledge of packed, brownish-black soil, listening to the boiling rain patter against the ledge above. It was just barely bigger than the horses.
“I may not be able to enter the Chambers with you,” Glade told her while they rested. “but I will not wait around while you put yourself in danger. I will make sure no one follows you in.”
“Someone could follow me in?” Vayra shook her head. “Not for a day after I enter.”
“But they could, and there are better trackers than me in this galaxy. I do not suppose we have lost all of our pursuers yet, and where there is one bounty hunter, there are bound to be more.”
“I appreciate it,” Vayra said. Truly, she did. Perhaps the presence of Glade would be enough to scare away a few bounty hunters, and if not, his skill with a sword would hopefully be enough to deal with them.
When the rain stopped, it was dark out. The clouds blew away, leaving them stuck under a blank, vaguely starry sky. They rode for a few more hours to make up for lost time, then camped under an especially-thick canopy of stone shards at the edge of the river.
Glade took the first watch, and there was little she could do to convince him—or Phasoné—otherwise. He woke her halfway through the night, and she took her watch. She saw nothing interesting, save for a glimmer of one of the deer that Phasoné had mentioned earlier.
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When the sun began to rise, they set off. Vayra wasn’t sure how long the day and night cycle here was, though it didn’t seem too different from a regular planet. While she had no perfect way of keeping track of time, she also suspected they were near the planet’s equinox, seeing as the day and night cycle were about the same length.
For two more days, they rode along the river towards the mountain. Occasionally, Vayra spotted a wisp of Stream water slip past in the river, and she did her best to absorb mana from it. Although she wasn’t cycling, talking with Phasoné took small, small amounts of mana, and the Goddess nattered enough to make it necessary.
‘Would you rather I sit in your head and do nothing? No, no, I won’t do that. Not today. It’s not something I’ll do. I will talk to you.’
“I wasn’t complaining. Just making sure I was topped up.”
Late in the afternoon on the second day, when the mountains loomed ahead of them like a wall and the foothills rolled up and down like waves, they came upon a pair of deer. Phasoné pointed out that Vayra didn’t know how long she would be in the chambers and that it would be wise to hunt them for supplies.
But the only weapon Vayra had was a pistol, and it wasn’t accurate at the best of times.
‘Well, you’re not the only one who’s learned a trick or two. My brother taught me this one,’ Phasoné said. ‘Find a place to hide.’
Once she and Glade had dismounted and settled behind a ridge of obsidian shards, Phasoné continued: ‘We’re going to try throwing the scythe.’
Vayra raised her eyebrows. Throwing it? She kept her thoughts inside her head so they didn’t spook the deer.
‘Throwing it. If you give me your hand, and a little bit more of your arm, I’ll try to give it a good whip. We’ll make it spin, and hopefully, we’ll hit the deer.’
Vayra loosened her fingers and let all feeling fade from her right hand and arm, all the way up to her bicep. She kept it low so the ridge blocked the white light from reaching the deer and spooking it. There were a few wisps of haze in the sky, enough to restrict the starlight. The scythe took a little longer to form than usual.
‘Never tried this before,’ Phasoné said.
Vayra knew that well enough.
‘The scythe will start to dissolve as soon as it leaves our hand,’ the Goddess continued. ‘Hence why we need a little stronger Arcara for it—both with the help of your bracers and your body.’ She paused. ‘And it will want to come back. We’ll have to give it a hard throw if we want to make the whole distance. Ready?’
Vayra looked over at Glade. He’d drawn his sword, but he seemed interested in what she was going to try. She felt the same way. Cautiously, he backed away.
As soon as the scythe’s blade began to hiss and sputter, Vayra jumped up. She still controlled her shoulder, and she used it to thrust her lower arm as far forward as she could. Controlling the bottom of Vayra’s arm, Phasoné did the same.
Phasoné, however, had an enhanced body. The Goddess whipped Vayra’s elbow forward far harder and faster than Vayra ever could have. Vayra felt her muscles crying out in pain and her joints protesting, and her arm moved with a flash.
The scythe tumbled through the air, spinning on a horizontal plane. It dipped before it hit the closest deer, but the blade still hacked through its shoulder, incapacitating it. Vayra winced in sympathy for the creature; while it was food, she had hoped to kill it quickly.
The second deer bolted away. Glade ran up to the writhing body of the first deer and drove his sword through its head, putting a quick end to its suffering.
The scythe had begun to dissolve as soon as it left her hand. By the time it stopped, the force of it wanting to return to her body overwhelming the force she’d thrown it with, it dissipated into wisps of starlight. She had wanted to see it fly back towards her, but that wasn’t in the cards tonight. She retook her arm from Phasoné, and the rest of the starlight raced up into the sky.
For the rest of the evening, she and Glade worked to cut the meat off the deer’s body—all while Phasoné gagged and complained inside Vayra’s mind. They weren’t expert butchers by any stretch of the imagination, but Vayra used a sharp shard of obsidian, and it sliced through the dark-coloured venison easily enough.
They hung the meat in thin strips to dry. Glade produced a small tin of salt and they spread it over the meat, so when they left it out in the heat, it wouldn’t rot.
Vayra marched down to the river to wash her hands, and she figured wading in up to her shoulders couldn’t hurt either. It wasn’t unbearably hot yet. Besides, her clothes could use a little bit of a cleaning.
‘So, what are we going to call that one?’ Phasoné asked as they dipped into the river.
“That one?”
‘That technique. Throwing the scythe. No God-heir of Mediator worth their Arcara would pass up the chance to name a technique. Besides, it’s already put a nice little yellow storm on your seer-core.’
Curious, Vayra held out her hand, and cycled her Arcara a little. Instead of pushing their consciousness down into their guts to observe their techniques, Mediators and God-heirs could conjure a seer-core from their area of dominion. It allowed her to visualize her core better, but also keep tabs on her mana and her techniques.
Over her hand, a small ball of starlight formed. It was mostly white, like how her Arcara looked, but there were a few blue and yellow swirls mixed in, like storms on gas planets.
Already, there were a few yellow swirls. One for the Starlight Palm, one for mustering her scythe. A third, she suspected, for this new knowledge—of throwing a scythe.
‘If you can’t come up with a name, I’ve got a few ideas.’
“I’m open to suggestions.”
‘Searing Sweep, Pale Cutter, Star Hammer—’
“Let’s go with Star Hammer,” Vayra said. She laughed under her breath. “It’s the only one that doesn’t hurt my ears when I say it…”
Vayra stepped out of the river and walked back to Glade. He was sharpening his sword with a stone. “We should rest,” he said. “Tomorrow, we should arrive, and you will need all the energy you can get.”