Chapter 29 - Ritual

"I want you to bite down hard," I said. "And scream if you need to, it helps."

Wanderer nodded with a scrunched piece of Keeper's coat stuffed in his mouth. The fire gave barely enough light to see his broken arm.

Moving with efficiency and purpose, like snatching a coin purse from a noble's pocket, I wrenched Wanderer's bone straight. His nostrils flared and a muffled groan came from behind the fabric.

I wrapped the area tight, added sticks, then wrapped it again.

"Done," I said.

Wanderer spat the fluffy coat from his mouth. "Almighty fucking Realm, that hurt."

His tone caught me off guard, and I struggled to hold back my laughter. "That's certainly true. You handled it well."

Keeper came running up from further down the trail. "Is it over? Can we sleep now? I almost passed out on the rock, waiting around for Nightmares is way more sleep-depriving than I remember it being."

"It's over. We'll put it in a sling tomorrow, and it should heal in a few months."

"Only?" Wanderer asked.

I narrowed my eyes, slightly confused. "I assume, at least."

He took that at face value and nodded, inspecting the makeshift splint around his arm.

"By the way, what do you guys wanna do with our friend over there?" Keeper pointed over her shoulder to the bird-lizard.

It was still stuck underneath her scissors, only now a Mauler trap was fastened around its head and upper limbs.

"His tail is growing back already," I said.

"My scissors can probably cut through it if we want it dead."

"It would seem a reasonable outcome," Wanderer said.

I watched the creature, it had stopped squirming for the most part. Accepted its fate. I felt slightly bad for it. "Do you think it would be safe to eat?"

Keeper gave a horrified look, but only for a moment. "Jesus, I thought you meant us eat it." She glanced over at it and tilted her head back and forth. "The Lurker would be fine to eat… but I don't exactly know if there are any side effects to eating a Dream. Eater never really mentioned anything."

"Oh," I said. "I think I've eaten a Dream before."

"What? When?"

"In Blink… Now that you mention it, I had completely forgotten."

I wonder how it got the bones to move so much…

Keeper shrugged. "Well, you seem healthy to me, so eating it should be fine." She walked up to it and reached for her scissors.

"Woah! Wait a moment. Just like that? At least give me some time to prepare, and let me take the bag off its head… I don't feel as if it would taste all that pleasant."

I walked up to the thing and tugged the Mauler trap off. It stared up at me and screeched the moment it saw me. I recoiled slightly.

Without warning, Keeper pulled her scissors off. My heart dropped and I readied myself to take the creature in, but it did not move. It only sat there.

"What are you waiting for?" Keeper said. "Before it runs off, go on."

I glanced at her and then back to the creature. "Right," I said.

In my head, the words came forth clearly. Consume. My body opened into the shape of a beast's jaws and fell on top of the creature, swallowing it into myself entirely. When I reformed, I stood a moment, waiting to feel anything.

But I felt completely normal.

"Uhm, Ferro?"

I looked around for the source of the noise, but all I could see was our campsite, completely empty.

"I guess the camouflage works," Keeper said.

"Where are you?"

She chuckled. "I'm right here. You can't see me though, because I can't see you. I was wondering if that's how it would work."

I looked down, and indeed, my entire body was invisible.

Then something whacked my back. "What was that?"

Keeper laughed. It was her hand, it rested on my back for a moment and then slowly patted its way up until it hit my shoulder. "Found ya," she said.

"Weird…"

"Well, now that we've got that all sorted, I'm going to sleep." And the pressure of her hand disappeared.

"Ah, goodnight."

Now how do I… make it stop?

I spent a short while trying to turn the camouflage off, without much luck. After a small panic, it began to fade on its own. I could tell because Keeper's curled up form turned from a dark splotch to, well, a girl curled up with her arm under her head.

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I came over and gently nudged her with my foot. "Are you asleep yet?"

"Yes," she answered.

"I've been meaning to ask. What did it mean, 'stop for Seers'?"

"Dunno," she said, shifting her arm under her head.

"Did the Seers send that thing out to stop me?"

"Why don't you ask it?"

Great idea, thanks. "Aren't you concerned?"

She sighed and turned over to look at me. "I'm tired, Ferro. Get some sleep. Nothing we talk about is gonna help."

I could only frown down at the girl. How are you so calm?

"You don't want to be tired when you meet the Seers, do you? You'd probably blurt out some sleep-deprived nonsense and scare them away from ever giving you Diction. Rest up." She tucked herself back into a ball and pulled her clawed-up coat over her shoulder.

I sat for a while, watching the fire burn itself out. Sleep was the last thing on my mind, so I grabbed some of the loose fabric from my sack and began tying it into a sling for Wanderer. At some point, I must have fallen asleep, because I awoke with a kink in my neck and the unfinished sling in my lap.

I rubbed my weary eyes awake, both Keeper and Wanderer were still asleep. They must have been even more tired than I was.

I began preparing a meager breakfast with our dwindling food supply and reached for the waterskin on my hip. I tilted it up and drank an invigorating gulp, then sloshed it around in the sack. Hm, it's getting a bit low.

I didn't need as much blood as when I held my old Nature, but it was still vitally important to energize me. We would have to finish this expedition into the mountains fairly soon.

Eventually, the other two awoke, Keeper with a refreshed bounciness to her, and Wanderer like an old, creaky door.

"It hurts more," he croaked. "How in The Realm is that possible?"

"Just don't move. I'll have the sling done soon, it should help."

He nodded and sat hunched over his food, working away at it bit by bit.

Keeper jumped about twice as high as what should've been possible and landed right next to me, almost floating down into place.

"What's with you?" I asked.

She beamed at me. "Aren't you excited to meet the Seers?"

"Excited is the last way I would describe this feeling. More like… something will certainly go wrong."

She huffed, patted me on the shoulder, and leaned forward to look me in the eye. "It's important for you to be confident. They'll sense your worry from a mile away."

"Is that so bad?"

She shrugged. "If you'd like to make a good impression."

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"I do not like this place," Wanderer said.

Keeper glowered at him. "Suck it up, it's just another forest."

The Forevergreens looked to be a modest valley woodland from the mountain trail above, but down on the flat forest floor, the trees blocked almost every indication of daylight. The instant we stepped foot into the valley, we were plunged into the dark and surrounded by towering trunks vying to grow the fastest. It seemed as if it might never end, as if stepping into these woods would forever keep you lost in the dense maze of timber.

"I agree with the wanderer. I'd rather run around the Valley of the Dead than have to come down here again."

Keeper trotted ahead and turned to face the both of us. "There is nothing scary about this place, you two are way over… reacting." The girl froze, her gaze fixed over our heads.

I spun around and searched the trees. There was nothing. "That isn't funny—" I began to say, until I saw Keeper crouched into a small ball, hands over her head. "Keeper?"

"Don't let it see me," she whispered.

"Don't let what—"

Wanderer tugged at my arm and pointed up into the trees. There was a tiny bird perched on a branch, looking at us.

"Are you afraid of the bird?"

"No! It's just, last time I came here they kept attacking me. By the time I was gone, my hood didn't have any fluff left in it. The little buggers think I'm nest building material."

I held back my smile as best I could. "So… you're afraid of the bird."

"Shut up, will you?"

After narrowly escaping the dangerous finch, it wasn't long until we spotted a flickering light in the distance. Keeper took a moment to praise herself for remembering the way, and I spent the time repeating the bird-lizard's words. Stop him for the Seers.

The light came from a clearing in the woods. Torches surrounded a circle inset into the ground, made from a solid piece of gray slate. Once I got closer, I could see rings carved into the stone, each holding a different foreign script. Shapes I did not recognize, save for the outermost ring, which I recognized clearly as my native language. Stranger, distance, fading, illusion. It's just random words?

Wanderer leaned over to Keeper and whispered something. She shook her head. "You're fine, we can watch from here." Then she nudged me. "Go on, they're waiting."

I couldn't see anyone, but I crept into the clearing nonetheless.

The air was different. It hung heavy. Stepping out into the open felt as if I'd been the only person to disturb its slumber in the past thousand years. I scanned the darkest spots behind the trees, and still there was no one. But that is not how it felt.

Eyes were watching. I looked behind, and I could no longer see the party I'd traveled with. It felt like I was standing in a different forest altogether. My foot met the cool slate circle, stepping on the word which had once been 'stranger.' Only now, it appeared nonsensical.

I rubbed at my eyes, blinked, and looked around at the other words in the ring. I could not read any of them.

"Ferrowill," a voice said.

A man wearing loose fitting garb stepped forwards, not quite a dress, but not quite distinguishable as shirt-and-pants. The clothing was simple though, and it reminded me of Surreal.

I twisted my head back and forth, careful not to make any sudden movements. It didn't feel appropriate. There were about fifteen more Seers. Most women, but a few men, and fewer of which I could not distinguish.

Behind me, stood Surreal. She was the only one who bore a smile.

"Stand at the center of the plate, Ferrowill," the man said. "You will be tested."

I thought I'd already been tested. What were all those steps Keeper had me do if not a test…?

I moved into the middle of the circle. At the very center was an eight-sided star, carved deeper than the scripts.

"Do not move," the man said.

And without sound, the rings began to rotate in opposite directions. At first no quicker than a young child might crawl. But soon they spun with the pace of a galloping horse, all while remaining eerily silent.

The blur of differing scripts raced through my head, and the faster they moved, the more they seemed to make sense. Each ring wanted to form a sentence. They became familiar, like the scripts I was used to seeing on ancient ruins. I strained my eyes on the outermost ring. Squinting. Focusing. I should be able to read this one. What does—

"Something's wrong!" The voice was behind me. Surreal. "Pragmatic! Make it stop!"

She was yelling at the man who'd spoken to me.

"Nothing is wrong, Surreal," he said. "You must concentrate."

And the ground began to rattle. The noise was sudden and all-encompassing, the spinning rings scraping against each other. I lost my footing on the center platform and stepped back to balance myself. The ring ripped my foot out from underneath me and I fell hard against my hip.

"FERROWILL!" Surreal yelled. "STAND UP! QUICKLY—"

But I could not find my footing, and the ground beneath me became wet and warm. Before I knew what was happening, the Seers' figures seeped into the background, and I lost track of Surreal's voice in the noise.