Kaleb pulled on the ropes, dragging behind him god-knows-what on the sled. The treasure hunters who’d saved him had been ambiguous about their goods, and even their purpose here. Kaleb had assumed that they’d been here for the skyfall, like his own party, but their talk had dissuaded him. They were wary about something, even from him, and he couldn’t fathom how he could pose a threat to them at all.
Three of them were ahead of him, while the ropewielding quill, Lorin, was behind him. Kaleb assumed it was to prevent him from absconding with their goods, though he doubted he could get ten feet away from them at any pace faster than an aging tortoise.
Right in front of him, Yezdriel, the shieldbearer who’d broken his arm, looked back at him. “So you didn’t take Blessed Body?”
Kaleb grit his teeth. “I thought I did, but I don’t feel any different.”
“You certainly don’t seem to be any stronger,” Yezdriel said. “Sorry you have to pull my weight.” He nodded towards the sled Kaleb was struggling to drag.
Kaleb shook his head. “It’s the least I could do. Thank you for saving my life.”
The quill looked bashful for a moment, then he shrugged. “We weren’t…” He hemmed for a moment as if unsure what to say. “Twinwoods are notorious for chasing down groups like ours. They wouldn’t have stopped chasing us. We had to make sure they couldn’t. We were fortunate there was only one left.” He raised his broken arm slightly.
Kaleb nodded. Yeah. The price for that luck hadn’t been light.
Running from the cavern to the cliff had made the way seem short, yet pulling a heavy sled back that way convinced him otherwise. His body ached, and his mind was in one of those places where you wished a trip ended as soon as possible or you would die. He couldn’t really blame Yezdriel. The warrior had a broken arm, and he was carrying a large backpack anyway. Behind Kaleb, Lorin was carrying a much smaller pack, and he had his weapons of choice, the ropes, out.
Up ahead, the bowman, Bird, was carrying nothing but his bow. Kaleb assumed that he was their scout and had to be the lightest; though he would still begrudge him the comfort of moving light. The young quill hadn’t been exactly kind to him.
Behind Bird was the party’s leader, Ziek, his rhinoceros-like armored head bobbing up and down as he walked, and the hunch specific to his people clear in his posture, even as he carried a heavy pack.
“Which one?” Ziek asked as they came to a crossroads of sorts, only it was several narrow passages.
“That one,” Kaleb answered, pointing at the passage he’d come from. As they trod their way into it, he glanced at the two other passages where his companions had gone. The feeling was new to him, something between nostalgia and guilt and pain. If you have survived, you can come back now, he thought at them as he looked at one of the passages. I hope you have.
He’d tried to bring up his companions, but he’d been shut down immediately. Only Yez had been sympathetic, but the rest of them hadn’t been up for a charity trip.
It was a while until they reached the cavern where the first incident occurred. Bird had started acting like an over-energetic child before the cavern had even come into sight, and once it had, he’d flitted into the relative darkness of the large space and come back quickly. “Corpses and a dead twinwood,” he reported to Ziek. The latter nodded and they continued their procession into the cavern.
The sight seemed like one from ages ago, though it had only been hours. Blood smeared the ground and walls at some places, and the bodies of Kaleb’s companions were scattered around the cavern. He spied the outline of Mark’s body in the spot he’d left him, unmoving and undoubtedly cold. He didn’t know why he’d wished it could be any different, but there had been this childish hope in him that he’d look and find nothing there, as if his friend could’ve survived and fled somehow.
“It’s late,” Ziek’s deep voice echoed. “We camp here tonight.” He gestured with his head to the passage that led to the outside of the mountain. “Get your ropes there, Lorin.”
“Aye,” Loring nodded and walked towards the entrance. He started taking ropes off his body, laying them on the ground and somehow hanging them on the walls.
Kaleb had pulled the sled a considerable distance into the cavern when Ziek pointed at him and back at where he’d come from, the command undebatable. “Bring the sled back there and clog the passage.” He looked at the others. “Everyone is to put their packs there as well. Should be enough to make it impassable without a lot of noise.”
The gruck then went around checking on the remnants of the twinwood monster while Kaleb put his efforts into bringing the sled where he had been commanded.
“You didn’t have to smash it to the smallest pieces you could,” Bird’s voice came from beside one of the shattered limbs of the twinwood.
“We didn’t know,” Kaleb said, his voice hoarse as he let go of the reins. He took out the last of his water and gulped it down.
Bird snorted as he held some splintered wood in his hand. “No wonder.” He shook his head. “Whose fool idea was this?”
“A friend,” Kaleb said, his voice clipped and angry.
Bird was about to say something else but was shut up by the pecking order when Ziek spoke. “How did you get here?”
“We had a guide,” Kaleb said.
“No guide would lead a dozen unawakened anywhere,” Loring said as he returned from setting his ropes. He still had one around his waist but his hands were empty for the first time.
“He could’ve been desperate,” Kaleb said. “I don’t know. He left us before we went into the cave.”
“Ha!” Bird yelled as if he’d figured it out. “At last, something that does seem right. No wonder, no wonder.”
Yezdriel came walking back from putting his own backpack on top of the sled. He was carrying stones that glowed green, and as he passed by him, Kaleb could feel the heat coming off them. He set them in a circle like a campfire and everyone took a seat except Kaleb whose eyes had wandered to the bodies of his former party again. Yezdriel gestured for him to sit with his healthy hand, and Kaleb did.
“The bodies won’t begin smelling for a while,” Ziek said from across the smokeless magical campfire. “We will leave before they do.”
Kaleb didn’t know if that was an attempt to console him or the opposite. He couldn’t read the gruck. He hadn’t dealt with enough of his race to decipher their facial expressions.
“We’re moving too slow, Ziek,” Bird said in his whiniest voice. “It’s been weeks. I’m–”
“Shut it,” Ziek growled, glaring at their, apparently, resident idiot. “We’re doing well.”
Bird lowered his head. “If this fool here had taken the right node, we’d be going faster.” He tilted his in Kaleb’s direction.
Lorin was munching on a bit of dried meat when he stopped. “Yes, why haven’t you?” he asked, looking at Kaleb.
Kaleb was at a loss for words. He stuttered for a moment. “I tried. It was the only one that looked like it.”
“What did it look like?” Yezdriel asked from beside him, his tone kinder than the rest of them.
Kaleb described the glowing man who was reaching for something unseen.
“Yes, you might mistake that for Blessed Body if you don’t have proper guidance,” Yezdriel said, nodding sagely.
“What is it then?”
Loring chuckled. “Who knows? There are countless nodes out there. Do you think we’re librarians?”
Kaleb was stumped for a moment. “Would a librarian know?”
Bird, the most annoying of their number, slapped one hand on top of the other. “This one.” He guffawed, his next words dripping with sarcasm. “Yes, librarians are the ones who know all about the web of power.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Do you not feel any different?” Yezdriel said, ignoring Bird as much as Kaleb himself tried to.
“No,” Kaleb said.
“He certainly doesn’t look different than when we first found him,” Lorin said, still chewing on dried meat. He tilted his head as if to observe him more carefully but seemed to give up on it soon after.
“Nascent node?” Ziek’s voice finally came out.
Yezdriel’s face brightened, the skin without quills widening its territory in his face as he nodded. “Yes.”
“What’s a nascent node?” Kaleb asked, exhausted.
“Something useless,” Bird scoffed.
A glare nearly drilled a hole in the young bowman’s head from Lorin’s direction. “My node is nascent,” the latter said in a sharp whisper.
Bird looked embarrassed for a moment. He gestured towards Kaleb. “You can’t compare yourself to him,” he said.
Yezdriel turned fully towards him and said, “your name is Kaleb, you said?”
“Yes.” Kaleb nodded.
“Mine is Yezdriel, or Yez.”
“I know,” Kaleb said.
“A nascent node should feel like a new limb to you, one that has never been used, so you might have ignored its presence.”
Kaleb did what he took for a body check of himself, moving his fingers and feeling for what his mind could feel. Eventually, he did find something odd. It felt like something that wanted to be squeezed out but was waiting for a command.
He gave that command, and something popped up in front of his face, causing him to almost tip over.
He rebalanced himself and eyed the open book that was in front of him; the empty book that had hardly any pages.
“Well?” Lorin said from across the heating stones. “What is it?”
“You don’t see it?” Kaleb asked, perplexed. It was a decently sized leatherbound book, starved of pages.
“No,” Yez’s curious voice came from beside him. “Sometimes it’s not visible to others. What is it you see?”
“A book,” Kaleb said. “Empty. There are almost no pages.”
“You should scrutinize it more,” Lorin said. “It takes some time to get used to nodes like ours.” He sounded proud as he spoke of his own ability.
Kaleb reached forward to try to turn the blank page the book was at, and it turned before he’d even moved his hand halfway there, as if by thought. He turned them back and forth and found that there were only three pages to the book, all empty. “I don’t know what it does.”
“It could take some time,” Yez said consolingly.
“Magic?” Ziek’s voice echoed.
Kaleb glanced up at him. He’d learned to appreciate the stoic leader’s insights, and he’d noticed that his words came brief and clipped when he wasn’t giving clear commands. Kaleb glanced at Yezdriel asking for confirmation.
“It could be.” The burly quill nodded. “It remains to be seen, however. Even if it’s magic, it would likely be a complicated affair.”
“Yes,” Lorin added. “Something like my ropes could be of more immediate benefits.”
As Kaleb stopped actively engaging with the book, it disappeared. A moment of silence passed before Ziek spoke. “We should settle in for the night.” His words were a suggestion but his voice a command. Everybody obeyed. Kaleb had brought his sleeping bag beside him, and he wormed his way into it as he tried to force his eyes from naturally seeking the corpse of his friend again.
He wished the others would speak again so that he wouldn’t have to think about it. He wished they’d talk all through the night, so that he wouldn’t have to dream of whatever he would dream of.
He didn’t get the chance to dream of anything. The sound of friction between scale and leather was what alerted him at first, and then he opened his eyes as soon as he heard Bird’s yell, followed by Lorin’s. As if a soldier by trade, Kaleb found himself on his feet, ready for desperate battle, even if unarmed.
He followed the eyes of the two quills through the mixed light of glowstones and moss to the passage leading deeper into the mountain. There, where he’d left the sled, three humongous pythons with pitch-black scales wormed their way through the piled goods.
Yez and Ziek had gotten to their feet before he had, Yez was holding an axe in his healthy hand and Ziek his large mace.
The first arrow out of Bird’s bow was more effective against the scaly monsters than it had been against the twinwood. It pinned the thinnest one to the wall for a moment, before the python shook itself and broke the shaft. Lorin had run towards the cavern’s other entrance to retrieve his ropes, while Yez and Ziek stepped forward to face the encroaching creatures.
Yez decided to step forward first and probe one of the slithering monsters with an overhand strike of his axe, but the python contorted its body instantly, avoiding a splitting strike to its length. Then it coiled and sprung onto the overextended warrior.
Yezdriel’s body produced its faint shimmer, covering him as the python bit down on an armored shoulder and found no purchase. He hooked his axe into its wrapped up body and threw it back on the ground. Meanwhile, Ziek was having a much more careful face off with the other python, while the third was coming up from behind, sometimes evading Bird’s arrows and sometimes enduring their punishment.
As Yez executed some threatening hacks to keep the python at bay, ropes suddenly came up from behind him to wrestle with the monster; and more ropes came up to engage the one behind it who’d finally come close enough to the combatants. Soon, the ropes were entangled with the pythons. Although they were outclassed by the living, slithering piles of muscle, they slowed them down enough for Yez to hack them apart methodically. He first cut the foremost python in half, then he cut off its head from its attached half, then he split said head apart. The ropes quickly liberated themselves from the slaughtered body and piled up on the one behind it.
Meanwhile, Bird had temporarily pinned down the python fighting Ziek, and the latter had smashed its head multiple times until it was no longer recognizable.
The fight quickly tapered down after that as Lorin’s ropes made easy pickings out of the last python.
“Rock boas,” Lorin said, glancing at Ziek.
“Do you think it followed us here?” Bird asked.
Ziek tried to glare him to silence as usual, but Bird’s attention was on Lorin. “Like the twinwoods. The fall wasn’t suppos–”
“Enough,” Ziek commanded. “We have had enough sleep. Prepare to move.”
“But it must still be dark out,” Bird protested.
“Something else could come, you idiot,” Lorin said as he gathered his ropes from the bodies, then he froze and knelt down beside one of the boa corpses. He dug into its flesh with a dagger and then came up with something as small as a fingernail. It was glowing with a faint yellow light. “A core.”
“Hah!” Bird yelled. “Fortune favors us, after all.”
“We’re still leaving,” Ziek said. “Gather the goods.”
Kaleb, still standing where he’d originally woken up, started into a cautious walk towards the sled. Who knew what might still come up from behind it? Noticing his caution, Yez ventured to approach the sled with him in lockstep. Kaleb’s eased nerves were grateful for the support.
The glowstones were gathered, Yez, Lorin, and Ziek hauled their packs, and Kaleb reoriented the sled towards the other passage that led outside. As he began dragging it, he found himself at a pause while everyone moved. Lorin was behind him again and he stopped at the same time. “Something the matter?” the quill asked.
“Yes,” Kaleb said, gazing at the neglected body of Mark. “I’d like to take the body with us.”
“You can’t take them all,” Lorin said.
“I just want to take him.” Kaleb pointed towards Mark’s body. “He was my friend.”
Ziek turned around as he heard their debate. “You can barely drag the sled already.”
“Yes,” Bird chimed in. “We’ll never make it back to the city with you lugging even more weight.”
Kaleb tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “We bury our dead. I’ll do it outside. I can make it outside with the weight.”
Ziek seemed unconvinced until Yez spoke up. “I’ll help him if he can’t.”
“Very well,” Ziek said. “Wrap the body up properly. I don’t want blood all over our goods.”
Kaleb nodded heavily. He let go of the sled’s reins, pulled a tarp off it and hurried to Mark’s body. His blood had dried and crusted over his armor and on the ground. His face was white, cold, and lifeless, and his eyes were half-open. Kaleb knelt down beside him and closed them for him. He patted him on the chest, near his wound. “I won’t forget my promise.” Then he began wrapping him up in the tarp.
He carried his friend’s body to the sled and put it on top of the pile. Then he moved to the reins to assume his involuntary obligation of pulling the party’s weight for them. He wasn’t ungrateful though. They had saved his life, even if they hadn’t meant to.
Overburdened, he struggled all the way through the passage to the outside. When they finally came out, the two large moons were clear in the sky.
“Clear skies tonight,” Bird broke the silence. “And the moons are so close. Reckon we could catch sight of a dragon?”
“Dream it if you wish,” Lorin scoffed from behind Kaleb. “It’s easier to witness a starfall now.”
“I wish I’d lived back when they still came down to land,” Bird said wistfully.
Kaleb had heard talk of dragons, but he’d never seen one, and everyone had assumed them to be sort of myths even in this magical world, as they were rarely mentioned. It was quite odd that they matched earth’s dragons in their prevalent description though. It had been one of the smaller mysteries of this world. He couldn’t help but chime in with a question. “Why don’t they come anymore?”
Bird didn’t deign to answer him as he kept his wistful gaze fixed on the moons. But Lorin did. “It’s chronicled that they stopped coming when one of them died in the void continent. There were stories of a great battle there, a dragon fell, and then nothing. They stopped leaving the moon. Word has it there were very few of them to begin with.”
Kaleb nodded in thanks. They were hiking down the mountain, and pulling the sled down the uneven slope had proven precarious varios times, but Yez and Lorin had helped him balance the sled whenever it got too risky.
The sun was beginning to rise when they made it to even ground, and Kaleb sighed in relief at not having to worry about being crushed to death by the sled after surviving so much.
The party stopped and Ziek turned to him, nodding to the ground. Kaleb got the message and nodded. “I can bury him here.”
It was a tiring affair. He was lent a shovel from the sled, but no one helped him. Yez had seemed eager, but he couldn’t do much with one hand. And even when he’d tried, he had been dissuaded by Ziek. So Kaleb alone dug at the ground and poured hot sweat in the chilling dawn. Then he carried his friend and laid him in his final resting place. He uncovered his face and nodded at him one final time. “Rest in peace.”