45. The Believers
When next the Wayfarers became whole again, they were forced to reckon with all that had scattered into dust.
[The Huskbound Sanctuary] was, once again, a picture of calm and eerie complacency. Sundara, Meetra, and their terrifying, Bone-riven figures were gone. So was Dashi, presumably whisked away by the Maidens to continue his convalescence elsewhere.
The other children still remained, and they were back to their usual restless selves, as if the Maidens’ departure had released them from their own illusory prison. If anything, they were livelier than Serac had ever seen them: playing games, drawing pictures, and some even chasing each other around the caverns.
In a way, their playfulness felt almost vulgar, especially given the gruesome death of one of their number a mere few hours ago. In another, very important way, however, this buzz of activity felt much more preferable to the alternative.
This is the way children ought to behave. Focus on having fun. Leave the doom and gloom to the adults. Serac didn’t know much, but she knew this to be an incontrovertible truth. She also knew she wanted to be the kind of Wayfarer who could uphold the sanctity of that truth everywhere she went.
Welp. Would’ve been nice to start by smiting a couple of Bone Maidens who were diametrically opposed to her way of thinking. Would’ve also been nice not to have lost 1,970 क of Liminal Karma to said Maidens—one more setback in a journey that’d certainly had its peaks and valleys.
This moment right here definitely felt like a valley—about as low as Serac could go. Yet, there was no point moping about it. If she was at her low point, that also meant there was nowhere to go but up.
Speaking of low points…
“Just had a look around,” Zacko announced as he squeezed through [the Sanctuary]’s secret entrance. “The storm’s just about died down completely. I reckon we’d be fine to go on for a bit—even without Dashi’s lantern.”
Speaking of low points, the Manusya wasn’t much better off. If anything, he was in an even deeper hole, having lost his share from Hanuman’s smiting on top of the Karma he’d already burnt with [Sinner Aspect]. What Zacko needed most wasn’t so much a Wayfaring partner as a financial planner.
“So, Dashi’s gone and the storm’s gone with him,” Serac mused as she stood from her meditation/daydream session. “You think it’s a coincidence?”
“No,” Zacko said flatly, mirroring Serac’s own conclusion. “What did those hags say about him? That he was the Bone Lord’s ‘chosen vessel’? I don’t know what that means exactly, but I’m willing to bet Dashi is the heart of the storm.”
“And that means,” Serac added thoughtfully, “if we try to chase after him, we’d also eventually run back into the storm.”
“Yup. And this time without any form of protection. Got any ideas for a workaround?”
“Nope. Trippy?”
“None, Wayfarer. A solution might’ve been available had you resolved your differences with the Bone Maidens in a more amicable manner. But alas, I believe that option is closed to us permanently.”
Jeez, tell us how you really feel, why don’t you? What Trippy said might be objectively correct, but it was also a moot point, given where Serac stood ‘ethically’. Whatever the Bone Lord and his believers were selling, the Wayfarers weren’t buying.
“I guess it’s that time again,” Serac said with a shrug. “Time to canvass the locals for some advice.”
“Locals?” Zacko echoed dubiously. “You mean… these kids?”
“Yeah. I don’t see any other locals around. Unless you wanted to try the Bhoo—”
“No, the kids are good,” Zacko said quickly. “But… you really think they’d be much help?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Serac waded her way into the sea of playing and chattering children, glad just to have something to do. Yet, for all her enthusiasm, the kids proved to be somewhat tough nuts to crack.
Now that Dashi the leader figure was gone—or perhaps because the recent violence was still fresh on their minds—the Rakshasa children reacted to the Wayfarers’ presence with apparent caution. As Serac drew near, they stopped their games and backed away, eyeing her as one might a wild dog that could snap at any moment. It was disheartening—even a little hurtful—but Serac forged ahead, keeping her eyes peeled for an opportunity to earn the children’s trust.
One such opportunity presented in the form of a solitary girl who was busy drawing in the sand with her index finger. She was a tiny little thing—maybe the smallest creature Serac had ever laid eyes on—and she neither ran away nor looked up as the Wayfarer approached, absorbed as she was in her project.
Serac knelt down beside the girl, slowly as not to startle her. For some time, she merely watched the artwork come to life, which, as it turned out, was a veritable tapestry of rather epic proportions.
A large assembly made up of tens, perhaps even hundreds of horned stick figures. They were Rakshasas of widely varying sizes, all gathered in discrete groups and engaged in one activity or another.
Some were kids in dynamic running poses—playing tag like the ones in this very [Sanctuary]. Another depicted a tall figure—likely an adult—holding up a roughly rectangular object while a throng of smaller figures sat around him in a circle. It took lifer Serac a second or two to realize that this must be a classroom, complete with a teacher reading to his students.
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Did that mean this whole thing was a school? But no, there were other activities that suggested an even larger scale.
A cauldron that sat atop a furnace (the non-torturous variety), with a line of hungry souls waiting for their bowl of stew. The image, despite its crude construction, made Serac’s mouth water, as she tried and failed to remember the last time she’d eaten anything other than hot coal shoved into her by a Jailer.
Another group had gathered around a lotus flower that was even bigger than the largest Rakshasa among them. A Hubstation. And the souls that had gathered here did so in dance and celebration, much like the Hopers Serac had gotten to know on the other side of the Sanzu River.
Then there were houses. These too took a lifelong inmate several attempts to interpret. She’d never seen nor been inside one herself, and the only settlement she’d passed through so far had living quarters carved out of the side of a cliff.
As soon as she understood what she was looking at, however, she felt her chest tighten with a yearning that was at once alien and nostalgic. For she understood that houses were where families gathered in warmth, companionship, and nurturance—a sanctuary in the truest sense of the word. The object of Serac’s greatest desire—her hanging fruit.
Her eyes fell upon one simple house in particular, populated by exactly three souls: a tiny stick figure joining hands with two much larger ones. She saw this, and was finally moved to words.
“What’s your name?” she asked the artist, quietly as not to startle her.
The girl’s right hand—her drawing hand—kept moving on the sand. The left, rather strangely, was held in a tight fist as it stayed by her side. She didn’t look up as she gave her answer, prompt and unadorned, “Anita.”
“Anita. That’s a pretty name. And is that you in that picture?”
Serac had asked without pointing, but the girl seemed to know what she meant. She nodded.
“Can I ask who those are beside you? The ones holding your hands?”
Still, Anita refused to look up. She kept drawing in silence for some time—now working on a mural that appeared to depict animal figures—before letting out a barely audible murmur.
“My mama and papa.”
Serac felt her own chest tighten another notch. With apologies to Anita, however, she pressed on, sensing she was nearing a breakthrough.
“Did you… used to live with your mama and papa? Before you ended up here, I mean?”
The girl nodded.
“And… the other kids here. Did they have mamas and papas too? Did you all live as one big family—like how it is in your drawing?”
By then, a sizable crowd had gathered around Wayfarer and child. The other children stood in a perimeter around Anita’s epic, with conscious effort not to step on any part of the drawing. They also took care not to disturb the master at work, opting instead to stare at her interviewer in restless silence.
Eventually, Anita nodded her confirmation to Serac’s question, with eyes still focused on her task.
“Do you miss them?”
Silence. Busy hand.
“Your mama and papa, I mean. Do you want to see them?”
Anita’s drawing hand slowed a touch. After a beat, she nodded.
“I…” Serac hesitated, taking a Ksana to wonder if she was even worthy of what she was about to say. It was a silly thought, of course. She believed whole-heartedly in what she wanted to say, and for now, that had to be enough. “I’m going to bring you to them. All of you”—she looked around at the rest of the children—“back to your parents. So you can be one big family again. Where are they now, Anita? Your mama and papa. So I’ll know where to look.”
Anita’s hand stopped completely. The silence that followed—made total by the absence of scratching sand—filled Serac’s ever-tightening chest with a sense of terrible foreboding.
“There.”
Anita finally did look up. Not back at Serac, nor towards an imagined home in the distance, but towards the apex of the cavernous dome. And what her tiny, sand-covered finger pointed to were the bone-colored statues that made up [the Sanctuary]’s Huskbound walls.
The realization hit Serac like a speeding castle. For a moment, she swayed in place, as if she’d been Poise-broken anew.
Now, she finally understood the full meaning of the word ‘Huskbound’. Understood why she’d thought of these Rakshasa statues as ‘pilgrims’ the first time she laid eyes upon them. And the irony of it all burned her insides, hotter than hot coal.
How many mamas and papas had made this pilgrimage with the last of their [Ossified] breaths? Only for [the Sanctuary] to become a physical barrier to pen in the Bone Lord’s playthings? And how many more had erected a [Sentinel] in response—one whose one and only ‘intention’ had been to set the children free?
Serac swayed in place, racked by guilt and battered by fresh self-doubt. The children’s suffering had been more terrible—and the Bone Lord’s ‘shroud’ more far-reaching—than she could’ve imagined. And to think that, only moments ago, she’d believed herself fully capable of putting wrongs to rights…
Yet, when next Serac recovered her Poise, she did so with the help of an entirely different emotion. An emotion that was comforting in its familiarity and provocative with its heat.
Anger.
Anger like never before. Anger, the likes of which could stoke anew a Penitent soul’s flames of rebellion and then some.
She’d already had every reason to defy the Bone Lord—Naraka’s Realm Immortal—before her innocuous conversation with a local artist. Now, she could add a new item to the list. A burning desire—no, need—to drag this cruel tyrant off his ill-begotten throne.
As Serac stood, intent on making good on that list, the artist in question stirred. Anita too got to her feet, barely reaching the Wayfarer’s thighs as she did. The tiny creature, for the first time, made eye contact with Serac, before unclenching her left hand to reveal what she’d been holding onto all this time.
“I found this after they left,” Anita explained simply, ever a girl of few words.
It took Serac another moment to comprehend that the ‘they’ referred to the Bone Maidens. Something Sundara or Meetra had dropped in the heat of battle? If so, which one? Did it really matter?
Serac bent down and inspected the object in Anita’s hand. She saw right away that it was another piece of ‘art’, though one with considerably superior craftsmanship than a child’s sand drawings.
It was a—what was the word?—cameo of sorts, one shaped and carved from a bloodstone gem. Its cracked surface depicted two Rakshasa faces: a young man and a woman, both smiling brightly. And from its back dangled the two ends of a severed chain.