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Act I: A Blissful Life Upon the River Torrent
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I am Ma'athiel, just Ma'at among the clan or Maat to my friends. At age nineteen, I am already older than my father the Quarterchief was when he arrived in these lands. Older than the youth of the plains are when they're declared grown men. Which is why...
Ma'at took a deep breath. No matter how much he prepared, no matter how many deep breaths of humid Stormheaths air he took, no matter how many of father's truisms he tried repeating, some things were just going to make him nervous.
But even so... I need to teach these children to stay away from the deep rivers, lest they be carried away by a two-ton terrorfish.
"Now class," Ma'at repeated the script from his father's guide by rote memory. "Why do we stay out of the marshes, and avoid the easternmost tributary entirely?"
"Because they are cursed by evil spirits!" said one child with puffed up confidence.
"Because the bad humors lure monsters that ignore our defensive charms," said another.
"Those are effectively the same answer. Second one does have a grain of truth," Ma'at pointed at the student. "Father's guide says... 'partial credit'. Good job, Ty'lan."
"It's because Alabaster Catfish lurk in the more acidic waters north of the delta." Sara, one of Ma'at's distant clan-kin, said out of turn.
The guide said not to accept any answer blurted out without raising one's hand. Sara was also a year older than Ma'at, more a fellow chaperone than a student. But this was the only way the lesson was going to move faster than a border mountains cave sloth, so he'd have to, as the elders often said, "let it slide."
"Very good," Ma'at said. "And aside from Alabaster Catfish, what other predators must we fear in the rivers and seas?"
"Hey! You're just going with her answer because she's of your clan-kin."
The objection came from Kur’iel, a youth just two years Ma'at's junior. Despite this, he was already three heads taller than Ma'at.
"The answer happens to be right," Ma'at said, trying to move on.
"Your people deny the spirits at all our peril," said Sam'ien, a rather know-it-all teen a year older than Kur’iel. "Even the clanless speak of how your father denied the existence of the great river delta god to his face."
"My mother says that you humans are all are racists," Kur’iel added.
Kur’iel was from the Stormheaths born and bred – with a naturally meaty pink skin-tone that tanned a healthy shade of magenta. Sam'ien belonged to the smaller clan networks of the interior plains, whose skin trended towards a brownish green. Their respective clans and kin could not be more different – indeed, due to some physiological differences in the jawline and jowls, their birth languages were just barely reproducible by each other's tongues. But boy, would they team up to pick on the humans any time of day.
"The Quarterchief and his clan-kin took you in. Complain all you want, you're down here in the dirt with the rest of the clanless." Lloyd, son of Hector, interjected.
"You only say that because you and your sister are half-human," said one of the older Stormlanders. "Of course, you would side with them."
"Lloyd's mother has laid with a human!" cried Kur’iel. "Can you even imagine!? Not even one from beyond the seas, but an outlander. One of the perfidious Other-clan, with their foul smells and weird hairs all over."
Ma'at threw the lesson notes down into the whitish soil of the Stormheath's rainforest. "Look, does anyone want to learn how to build condor-proof camouflage?"
Again, he was ignored. The youths were squabbling amongst themselves, battle lines divided out by old clan lineages and place of origin.
"It's vital knowledge. If it's approaching midday and you can't make it back to the compound, you're going to want to know how to shelter in place," Ma'at continued.
The younger children at least found the idea of protection from the dreaded Stormheath Mountain Condors to be potentially quite fascinating. The older children, those who had been through similar lessons under the Quarterchief, had insults for the dirty humans at the ready.
"Everybody up, to the clearing," said Sara.
Oh, the children of their clan of exiles and outlanders would listen to Sara the half-human. But her brother Lloyd said one thing and it threatened to bring all the finely-chiseled obsidian knives out. It was probably because Sara's ears were wider and pointier. She was inarguably the cuter of the siblings, Ma'at had to admit. Maybe that had something to do with it. Nonetheless, she'd managed to postpone a low-intensity race war amongst the children and keep the day's lesson on track. For that, Ma'athiel, son of Quarterchief Michael, would have to thank her later.
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The class marched along well-tread footpaths, of the kind stormlanders had been using to endurance-hunt centurion birds for untold centuries. Ma'at kept to the front of the pack, an intentional choice to remind the rowdy gremlins young and old who the designated lesson-giver was today.
Clan-kin typically mingled amongst themselves. This meant that Lloyd and Sara kept close, and Ma'at kept within arm's length of them in turn. The twins were, as one would expect, near identical beyond their fraternal nature and the slope of their ears. Sara had a strange blondish streak through her hair from somewhere in her human other-clan lineage. Lloyd's hair was dark and his ears were short and rounder, more like their father.
"I appreciate what you were trying to do," Ma'at told Lloyd after everything had shimmered down a bit. "But it didn't exactly promote group cohesion."
"Well, they shouldn't have insulted my mom." Lloyd said all self-evidently.
"We're meant to be taking exiles from many clans and forging them into a cohesive whole," Ma'at said. "It's in the instructions, 'out of many, one.' Can't do that with everyone disparaging each other's ancestors."
"Out of many, one? What does that even mean?" Lloyd said.
"I dunno." Ma'at shrugged. "Something dad likes to say."
The way the Quarterchief says it is fancier, though. Different tongue. Some lost language.
"Maybe it's enough to just work together, even if we don't necessarily get along," Sara suggested. "Like eating centurion bird-meat stew with a side of lilyfern? Not the best meal in isolation, but together it's perfect."
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"Ugh. No food talk, please." Lloyd's stomach let out a mighty gurgle, audible to all. "Not before pre-twilight meal."
The group slowed as it neared the first of several great clearings. A rare example of raised and dry ground in the swampy Stormheaths. The glen was occupied by a flock of bottom-heavy birds taller than even Kur’iel with narrow heads, eyes looking out parallel on either end of a flat face, and blunt beaks like a shovel. A flock of walking calories, any one of them capable of feeding the group for a day and a half.
A steady "kwor-kwor-kworg" sound wafted over the clearing as the lizard-birds foraged for their staple meal of burrowing shell-rodents.
"Oh, yeah. Hell, let's take one of these home for dinner instead." Lloyd said.
"With what?" Sam'ien asked. "We have but one knife between us all."
Ma'at was in no way willing to get blood all over their bird-feather jerkins. It'd dye them permanently blue for one. Getting their clothes wet with anything other than a light sparkling of rainwater stultified their outfit's natural cooling properties, for another. The kids, especially the humans and half-kin, would sweat out all their fluids and die of heat exhaustion within an hour of the midday sun wafting overhead.
"We need the trees, not the birds," Ma'at declared, then led the group over to the tallest grove at the very edge of the clearing for their next lesson.
"This is an Albalast Whitewood." the appointed teacher motioned to a chalk-colored tree forty arm-lengths in diameter. "The tree for which our Isle is named. We have plenty to choose from, but this one is specifically to be used for training youngsters. Note the dye marks every four paces at eye-level. Do not cut this one down."
Lloyd and Sara presented a previously prepared, doorway-sized block of bark.
"This bark sheds naturally," Ma'at explained. "You can find a loose tab and tear off entire sheets with ease. Put two sheets together in a triangle shape and you have shelter from the rain. The above-ground homes are made of it.
"We already know all this," Sam'ien grumbled, arms crossed.
"Do the younger children know? Show of hands." Sara said.
Most of the youngest among them raised their hands.
"Ah." Ma'at pointed out into the glen. "But does anyone know why the centurion birds have white feathers interspersed with their yellow down? Any takers?"
Nobody, not even the older children, raised their hands.
"It's because the condors won't attack anything Alabaster-colored," Ma'at concluded. "Same reason they won't chase anything through the Whitewood forests. With no natural predators the only thing they must worry about is crashing headlong into these trees and dropping dead."
Kur’iel scoffed. "Everyone knows the centurion birds are the Condor's most frequent prey. Some camouflage."
"It only needs to camouflage any given bird better than the next bird over," Lloyd said. "Or any one flock better than their neighbor."
This piqued the imagination of all ages of children.
"Perhaps their camouflage doesn't work when they're in motion?" suggested one of the younger kids.
"An interesting theory," Sara said. "Perhaps it's something to look into."
Sam'ien and Kur’iel had spent the bark-camo lecture together in the back of the group. At the very end of the lesson, just before they were all about to head back to the compound for their midday rest, the two troublemakers rose to their feet early then took off running into the glen.
"Just where are they running off to?" Lloyd asked.
"Kur! Sam! Get back here. It's almost midday."
"Midday sojourning is for squishy humans and their half-breed spawn," Kur’iel yelled back.
"Go back to camp," Sam added. "Let those built for this land bring home a few centurion birds for supp."
Ma'at, his clan, and half-kin wilted in the hundred percent humidity and water-boiling temperatures of midday, this was true. But there were other reasons why wizened denizens of the Stormheaths wished to stick to the shade when the sun was directly overhead.
Kur and Sam were fifty paces away when a hundred feathered faces looked up, alert, in their direction. The birds scared easily, and without the element of surprise the two unarmed youths would never bag even a single target.
The entire glen was covered in a shadow all at once, though there was not a cloud in the sky.
"Get down, you two," Lloyd said.
There's a snap and a boom as a blur the size of a mountain fell from the heavens, upending reddish mud as it landed atop the flock of centurion birds.
Feathers twice the size of a full-grown man covered a wing as thick as a whitewood. Five centurion birds flailed about in each mighty talon, while four more had been caught in a waiting maw. The remaining flock of lesser birds scattered in every direction, including towards the class.
"Everyone behind the whitewoods," Ma'at said, startled but not yet panicked.
The class ran into the shadow of the nearest, largest tree. Here they were safe from both the stampeding centurion birds and the watchful eyes of the condor.
"Condor" was just a word the Quarterchief's generation used to describe this scaly feathered beast twenty-arm spans across and eight arm spans high. Proper Stormlander dialects were longer and more descriptive but included a lot of clicks and syllables unpronounceable by Ma'at's stunted outlander tongue.
A spindly neck and a narrow skull mostly served to support a mammoth jaw that could move, snap, and devour in a two-hundred sixty-degree angle. The only weakness was its speed on the ground – the condor had to drag itself around with its hefty wings once it landed. Taking off again required a considerable show of force.
Sam and Kur had fallen to their knees in the initial shockwave. They were out of sight and out of range of the creature's long neck. In most circumstances they ought to be able to escape while the Condor consumed its meal of centurion birds. Or would, that is, if Sam hadn't loudly gotten back up to his feet with a groan.
"Stay down," Ma'at said.
Too late! The scaled condor angled its head towards the pair. Ovular pupils narrowed, locking in on their targets.
Rather than hide in the grass, Sam took off running back towards the very whitewood the class was hiding behind.
"Everyone back to the path. Run back to the compound," Ma'at ordered. "Lloyd, keep the kids together."
Sara was busy ripping a panel of bark off the tree. Ma'at did so as well, then ran off into the clearing, towards the Condor.
"Where's Kur'iel?" Ma'at asked, but Sam only ran past him in a blind dash to escape.
Sara was ahead, knee-deep in the tall grass. The Condor lumbered over, dead birds still in its talons.
Kur's leg was stuck under a boulder. He couldn't run if he tried. Sara reached him first and planted her bark shield in the upturned mud. The white-facing outer layer confounded the condor, its eyes breaking focus. The creature's head moved about on its neck-stalk, trying to find its target.
Ma'at advanced under the cover of his own bark shield.
"Is he okay?"
The Condor snapped at thin air; it could hear its prey but not see it. It brought one talon-full of fowls into its mouth. That would buy them some time.
"It hurts." Kur’iel groaned. "I think it's broken."
Once Ma'at and Sara helped roll the boulder off into a waiting divot, they could better examine the wound. It was bruised, likely sprained, but not broken. He would walk again within the day.
"You'll be fine," Sara said. "We'll help you up, then Ma'at will have to carry you while I shield us with some bark."
The condor had by then finished its appetizer. Its neck-folds flared, and briefly it appeared as if the beast was about to throw up. Instead, a whiff of liquid chemical dripped from some interior gland, followed shortly thereafter by an arc of blue-orange flame that traveled the distance between the bird and the treeline.
Plants in the Stormheaths seldom burned. But the flame did char everything black at least temporarily. Their whitewood bark shields would save them from being burnt to death. Might not spare their fingers, though. More dire, the whitewood camouflage would be useless once the bark was charred.
The arc of dull red flame started far off to their right then followed the condor's swaying maw as it wafted from one side of the field to the other, burning everything in its path.
The flames were nearing the shields, now. Ma'at prepared to have his knuckles singed.
Just then, a strange sound of wind whistling through wood filled the glen. The condor screeched, ending its flame attack with a whiff of some foul chemical from its mouth-glands.
More woodwind sounds compounded into a cacophony as a lock of wooden cylinders filled the glen, chucked in by some mechanism or magic. The sounds sent the condor cowering into a defensive position.
Just then, on the far side of the glen, appeared a hunched over figure wearing the bloody, molting skull of a centurion bird like a mask. It clacked together two of these woodwind instruments in each hand. The rest of its body seemed to billow, perhaps a camouflaged robe, or perhaps a spectral miasma.
The condor hissed in defiance, tensing its wings to amble forward and devour this new annoyance. Before it could do so, the figure grew a halo of uniform, reflective white panels that sent the condor's head flailing around. With a screech, the creature turned and leapt off the ground with a mighty woosh of its wings.
"C'mon." Ma'at helped Kur’iel up.
The trio fled, Ma'at letting Kur balance against him so the taller stormlander could limp along. Sara took the time to pick up one of the strange wooden utensils on their retreat.
"The witch of the barrier mountains?" Ma'at said. "What was she during down here?"
"Ask the chief." Sara handed him the wooden device.
"Whatever the reason," Kur’iel began, then grunted in pain. "It seems to have, what is your strange outlander phrase, saved our bacon?"
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