“We’ll aim for Lowmark.”

In the wake of their fight with the raiders that were in the process of sacking Gamman Keep, they couldn’t stay there. They had escaped the battled, but if they got spotted again there was almost zero chance they’d get away in one piece.

They needed somewhere they could recover.

Lowmark was a small town with a fortified hall at its center a day’s ride from the Keep. It wasn’t built to hold off an army, but it was the best option they had.

Arakh had no clue how the raiders had made it all the way to Gamman Keep without any warning. There was a chance that they had simply ridden through Gamman territory and razed everything in their path, but if that was the case, at least someone would’ve escaped and sent word ahead.

Lowmark was probably fine.

We’ll be fine.

“It’ll take us days to get there on foot, especially if we try and avoid the roads,” Kione responded numbly as she leaned against one of the trees in the clearing, nursing her left arm. The deep cut on it stretched from her elbow to halfway down her forearm. Arakh had cut off one of his sleeves and done his best to stop the bleeding with it, but it didn’t look good.

They needed supplies. Both for her arm and for the trip. They’d both been on hunting trips before with their fathers, but practically everything had been done for them. Neither was sure they’d be able to manage on their own, which meant they had to make everything count.

They set their eyes on the corpses.

The beast had torn open one’s chest and was still slurping down every piece of soft flesh it could reach. Every time it flicked its head back to let a morsel slide down its throat, a little spatter of blood flicked off of its crimson stained face.

They had moved to the opposite side of the clearing to get as far away as possible. Kione immediately regretted her decision to look as her stomach threatened to rebel again, but there was nothing else to throw up.

Arakh wanted to just turn and leave right then and there, but the feeling of certain death was still fresh in his mind. The thought of Kione dying to something like hunger or blood loss after they’d gone so far to make it out of there steeled his nerves.

In the chaos of the fight and the darkness of night that fell not long after, he never got a good look at who they were fighting. The body being devoured was a young man, probably not much older than him and Kione.

“Hey!” he shouted instinctively at the beast. It froze and slowly pivoted to look Arakh in the eyes. The creature moved and acted exactly as it had before, but the blood glistening in the moonlight and the sliver of flesh hanging limply from its mouth suddenly made the familiar action twisted and sinister.

“Cut that out,” he finished, far more lamely. He didn’t know why he had snapped. He was glad they were dead so why should he care about what happened to their body.

Despite his uncertainty, the creature listened. It dropped that final scrap of meat and laid on the ground, keeping its gaze locked on him.

Arakh left the mutilated body where it was and kept one eye on the beast as he knelt down to start rifling through the bodies. Between the four he searched he was relieved to find a handful of rations. A half full waterskin, dried fish, cheeses, hard bread, a few small bundles of herbs. It wasn’t a lot, but it would be enough to make it to Lowmark.

He also discovered something else, far more disturbing.

As he was searching, he also tried to find any information he could about who the raiders were. They were all wearing simple armor without any distinguishing colors or marks, which only reinforced his theory about them moving stealthily through Gamman territory. They had to have come from a neighboring house that had a grudge against them.

Any group spotted with Kira, Themon, or Caldas colors would’ve raised alarms immediately, so that much made sense. He kept searching on the off chance that one of them had something hidden on them that would give a clear answer, until he found a smooth stone on one of them. It was wide and flat with carvings made in one side, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand,

It was a palling stone. Plenty of people carried them as good luck charms, but they were particularly common among warriors. The symbol carved in them were meant to bring some kind of desired outcome, like victory or safety. There were some well-known symbols for basic charms like that, but sometimes people made them personally with a symbol that held specific value to them.

His father had a number of palling stones like that. When Jarl Atan died and Jarl Utam took command of his army, his closest companions carved their own palling stones to mark the occasion with the Gamman sigil on it. They made ten, and when one of their holders fell in battle, they collected their stone and passed it on to Jarl Utam so that they could continue marching with him toward victory.

Jarl Utam was never a particularly sentimental person. Most people would describe him as ‘stoic’ and reserved. He was the type of person that made every word count and didn’t waste his breath if something was unnecessary. But Arakh remembered when his father first showed him that collection.

He was young when they received word of an assault on Stormcairn, a Gamman village up north. There were many unclaimed tribes up there, so occasional raids were expected, but that particular night was something else. One of his father’s companions, Haf Quinn, had retired there to serve as its protector. He gave his life to save the villagers, buying them enough time for them to evacuate and slaying countless fanatics.

Word of the attack arrived with Haf Quinn’s palling stone. His father accepted it during his regular public court with quiet grace and a quick speech about a warrior’s dignity and the invaluable service Haf Quinn provided the Gamman house.

Once court was over, he brough Arakh to his room and showed him the box where he kept the stones. There were six already and Haf Quinn’s made seven. He pulled out each one, told Arakh who it had belonged to and showered him with stories about their exploits. He laughed and beamed with each one in a way that he never showed in public. That night, when Jarl Utam showed Arakh the stone that had belonged to his mother, was the only time he had seen his father shed a tear.

Holding the palling stone he had pulled from the dead raider sparked a cascade of memories in Arakh that briefly relieved and relaxed him. As they drifted to the thought of his father holding out in the Keep, that relief soured and twisted up his stomach. He shoved the memories away and focused on the task at hand.

The palling stone might have a sign about the attackers’ allegiance. He traced the grooves in the darkness, but the symbol wasn’t one he recognized. That wasn’t particularly abnormal, since plenty of people carved their own. He tucked the stone in a pocket on his belt and kept digging only to find another stone on the next body with the same symbol. He thought that was odd but kept going until he found a third, then a fourth.

He stared at them in confusion and, just to confirm his suspicion, made his way over to the mutilated body the beast had been feasting on. Holding his breath and averting his eyes, he found what pockets and pouches he could and after a moment pulled a fifth, identical palling stone from its pocket.

Whatever that symbol was, he knew then that the stones held some sort of answer.1

He quickly wiped his hands on the ground to clean as much of the blood off as possible then hurried over to Kione.

“We should go now, but first: do you recognize this symbol?” He handed her the handful of stones.

She limply took them in her good hand and held one up to her eye to try and see it in the darkness.

“No… but it looks like founders’ script…”

Arakh felt his blood run cold.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not certain, but it looks similar.”

He wanted to keep pressing her for answers, but she was exhausted. They could talk once they’d put some ground between themselves and Gamman Keep.

“Let’s go.”

Kione nodded wordlessly and stood to leave. The beast, which was still sitting by the bodies let out a questioning trill as they started to shuffle out of the clearing in the direction of Lowmark. The sound made them both jump, but the creature seemed to just be waiting for another instruction.

“Just… follow us like before. Be quiet and if you see anything, come let us know. Quietly.”

The creature let out another little trill and dashed over to the trees where it scrambled up into the leaves.

“Do you think that thing really understands you,” Kione asked pointedly as they started shambling forward. It being out of sight helped her relax slightly, but each time she heard the rustling of leaves from behind them, a new spike of anxiety stabbed into her.

“I don’t know, but at least it seems to be helping…”

Arakh meant that to be reassuring, but Kione went silent after that.

Neither talked until they decided to set down and rest for the night several hours later. They walked for as long as they could until their legs finally started to give out, only stopping at a small brook to drink, fill the waterskin Arakh pulled from the dead body, and wash some of the blood off.

From the moon, they guessed it was slightly past midnight, but there was no way to be certain. All they knew was that they hadn’t heard or seen anyone for long enough that it felt safe to stop.

They found a grove of trees that was heavily obscured but had enough room for them to fit together in. They both theoretically knew how to start a fire, but they also knew one would only bring attention to them. It was early summer so the nights were cold, but they wouldn’t die from just one night without shelter.3

“I’ll take first watch,” Arakh said as he finished shuffling around fallen branches to clear the ground, but Kione refused to lay down.

“No. You sleep first.”

“Are you sure? You need it more than me.”

“We’re both tired,” she snapped at him. “You’re hurt too. Just sleep while you can.”

“Are you sure? I can-“

“Just shut up and sleep. I can handle this.”

“Okay…” he said with resignation. He wanted to argue and insist, but he was struggling to keep awake himself and Kione was stubborn once she made up her mind on something, so he knew it would be best to just let her take the lead here. “Just wake me up when you get tired.”

“Mmm,” she grunted quietly.

Arakh pulled a few branches on top of himself for a little bit of cover, rolled over and fell asleep almost immediately. He expected it to take time, given everything that had happened, but exhaustion overtook him quickly.

Nothing particularly happened during her watch, which made it all the more unnerving. She spent nearly all of it staring up at the canopy, trying to find where the beast was. When she eventually saw the sharp glint of its eyes peeking out of a gap in the leaves, she locked onto them and couldn’t look away. She only broke that contact when her arm accidentally slipped off of the knee she had been resting it on, reigniting the searing pain in her forearm.

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That knocked her out of the stupor and made her realize that she had no clue how long she had been sitting there. She found the moon through the trees and realized that hours had passed like that. It was nearly three quarters of the way through its arc in the sky.

After that, she powered through for another hour, until she was struggling to hold her eyes open. Only then did she finally reach over and shake Arakh awake.

He woke with a start, instinctively scrambling away from her touch.

“It’s okay. It’s just me,” she said, trying to soothe him. It took a second for his mind to register where he was and remember what was happening. “You thought it was a nightmare, didn’t you?”

He didn’t need to respond. That went without saying.

“Wake me up when the sun rises. We need to start moving as soon as possible.”

“Sure…”

She waited for him to clearly sit up and make it clear that he wouldn’t drift off then immediately passed out herself.

Arakh’s watch was similarly uneventful. He found the beast in the trees as well, and stared at it, trying to glean any information about its intent, but quickly gave up. It had saved their lives, so as disturbing as watching it eat those raiders had been, he resigned himself to feeling gratitude instead.

Once he came to that conclusion, he set his sights on the palling stones instead, but quickly realized that that was pointless too. Staring at the sigil carved into it wouldn’t suddenly change how little he understood it.

Finally, he set his sights on the sword in his grip. His arms were fatigued from carrying it for their entire march, but after a while, its weight had faded into the background of Arakh’s mind and it started to feel like a natural extension of his body.

He tried quietly whispering it questions again, trying to get some kind of response, but the voice in his mind was different from before. It was distant and muddled, completely unlike it had been while they were in the labyrinth. He couldn’t understand it before anyway, but he could at least sense what it meant, so now that that was gone, he quickly gave up on that too.

It was about then, barely an hour after Kione went to sleep, that he started to see dim twilight on the horizon. It took a second for him to realize why daytime had come so soon, but once he figured it out, he decide to wait a bit longer before waking Kione up.

After an hour of sunlight, he finally rustled her awake.

Just like he had, she woke with a start, lashing out with her injured arm to push his hand away, which left her to hiss and curl up in pain.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” she said through grit teeth, glaring at him as she pushed herself up to a sitting position.

Once they were both as awake as they could be, they took stock of what all they had on them.

They knew they were heading in the rough direction of Lowmark but running in the dark wilds made it difficult to know where exactly they were. Assuming they had made good pace and heading the night before, they would still be at least a day away, likely more.

The food Arakh had scavenged was limited. They’d be fine for a day, maybe two if they really stretched it. They both had a basic idea of how to forage, so they could manage.

The real concern was Kione’s arm.

“It looks… fine, right?”

They peeled back the makeshift bandage to check on it, but neither was particularly sure what good and bad signs were. It obviously didn’t look good, but there was no way a cut that big would. They knew extreme signs of infection and shock – which luckily weren’t present yet – but anything short of her skin turning different colors and they wouldn’t have any clue.

They used a little bit of water to wash away some of the caked-on blood and re-tied the bandage.

To take their minds off of it they decided to eat. It was hard transition to make, but they hadn’t eaten anything since midday the day before, so they were both hungry enough to get past the disgust. Arakh split the food up between them, but when he pulled out the bundled herbs he had to stop.

“Kione, unwrap your arm again.”

He hadn’t gotten a good look at them in the dark, but now that they could see properly, the herb looked very familiar. Bilumwort was a type of medicine that didn’t grow easily as far north as they lived, but plenty of trader’s brought it from down south to trade for a hefty price. It was a mild painkiller and it helped prevent infections. Not everyone could afford it but having some on hand was a priority for anyone who could.

Nakata kept a small supply in the Keep, but he only brought it out for emergencies. Still, those times stuck out in Arakh’s memory.

Arakh pinched off a small bundle of the dried flowers and – mimicking the process he had seen Nakata use – stuck them in his mouth and started chewing as Kione undid the bandage. In the few seconds he had them in his mouth, he felt his lips and gums tingle slightly. He quickly pulled the wet mush out – worried that too much of their healing power would bleed into his mouth – and packed it onto the cut.

Kione breathed sharply at the pressure, but just seconds after he applied it, the persistent pain in her arm dulled to a faint pinching sensation. Her shoulders relaxed and a tension she hadn’t realized she was carrying flowed out of her.2

“We’ve got enough to use it four or five more times,” he said, letting out a breath of his own. “Once we get to Lowmark, we can try and find someone that can do more for you, but this should help for now.”

“Yeah…”

With that sorted out, they ate their humble portions and set out for the day.

As they marched, it quickly became clear to them that the rest they had gotten the night before was not enough. They were still pushing their limits mentally and after less than an hour of walking, they already had to stop and take another short rest.4

They kept moving like that for the rest of the day, stopping whenever they felt tired to try and conserve any kind of momentum, but barely after noon their resolve started to falter.

Their first refrain from the oppressive fatigue was when they started to notice a subtle decline in the ground. They started going downhill.

Lowmark, as the name implied, was in the center of a wide valley, which meant that they were on the right track and were probably getting close.

“Wait here,” Arakh said, making his way over to a tree that he felt confident he could climb. “I’m going to see if I can get a good view so we can plan our course from there.”

It had been a while since they had taken a break at that point, so Kione sat down and took a moment to rest her feet.

Arakh made his way higher and higher, until he finally broke out above the canopy, just high enough to get a good view of the slope ahead of them. He let out a little sigh of relief when he confirmed that they were about to enter the valley, but that relief slowly hardened in his stomach.

He couldn’t see Lowmark anywhere.

He could see the river it was built on that cut its way through the valley, but not a single sign of a community itself. He clambered back down and shared the news with Kione. No words were necessary beyond that. She solemnly stood and they continued marching.5

They reached the river within the hour and decided to follow it. Based on how they had fled Gamman Keep, it seemed most likely that they had overshot to the north, which meant they decided to go downstream, but by the time the sun was ready to set, Lowmark was still far out of sight.

That night was just as rough as the one before, sleeping in shifts and jumping at the slightest sound. Sleep came more easily though, thanks to the exhaustion. In the morning, they woke and picked away at the food. Even though they were still hungry, they intentionally left a little so they could eat it later and push off the worst parts of hunger a little longer.

Ideally, they’d reach Lowmark that day, so it shouldn’t matter.

They focused on steadily putting one foot in front of another until just before noon, when there was an abrupt rustling sound from up above them. They both immediately froze and dropped to the ground, followed by a heavy thud as something else dropped beside them.

The beast crouched on the ground in front of Arakh, quietly trilling a low rumble.

“What? What is it doing?” Kione frantically asked Arakh, her hand instinctively going to the handle of his dagger that she still had fixed on her belt.

He wanted to question why she was asking him – he knew just about as much about the beast as she did – but that complaint caught in his throat as he did actually realize what it was doing. It was warning them about something.

“What did you see?”

The beast turned its eyes to the sky. The canopy made it difficult to notice anything out of the ordinary, but with the beast there to point it out, Arakh was just able to make it out.

“Smoke…”

There were heavy clouds of black smoke rising slowly, just like they had seen over Gamman Keep.

“Is that Lowmark?” Kione asked, as she followed his line of sight.

“I- I think it is…” Arakh said in disbelief. He couldn’t see the village itself, but the smoke was distant, directly downstream: exactly where they expected to find safe haven.

“It’s under attack…”

“We don’t know that…”

“Is it the same people?”

“I don’t know…”

“What do we do?”

“…”

Arakh knew that he had to answer, but his mind suddenly flashed back to what happened just days prior and he froze up.

“Rakh-”

“We can’t risk it. Lowmark isn’t a safe bet anymore, so we’ll go somewhere else… Thornbrook. It’s the next village east of here, right? We’ll go there.”

Thornbrook would be another 3 days on foot at least with the rate they were making. Kione was already reaching her own limits, but she just quietly nodded instead of objecting.

I won’t let my weakness get us killed. I won’t let that happen again.

They had to cross the river and sooner would be better than later. Keeping low, they made their way as close to it as possible, looking for the best place to make their move. Near them, the river was quick and deep, roughly 30 feet across. Crossing would be possible there, but risky.

Arakh remembered his last time in Lowmark. Since it was the closest town to the Keep, he’d visited many times on hunting trips and the like. The river was nearly twice as wide there than where they were now, with a much slower flow. There should be a better place to cross farther on, but how close was too close?

“…Let’s cross here.”7

There were only a few dozen feet of open ground before they could reach the rocky banks. They gave a cursory glance around and didn’t see anyone nearby. Taking a moment to secure their belongings and take stock of their situation, they got ready to make the sprint.

“You go ahead,” Arakh said to the beast. It nodded in understanding and clambered up the nearest tree to find a perch on an outstretched branch, then sloppily leapt outward, extending its leathery wings and gliding across the distance.

It was the first time they’d had a clear view of the beast’s flight. Something about the image lit a gentle light in Arakh’s chest. Almost like nostalgia, but he couldn’t say what for. Meanwhile, it sent a chill down Kione’s spine. She immediately imagined what it would look like for that thing to be flying toward her and was reminded of the last time she’d seen it at work.

Once it made it safely across and scrambled over into the brush on the other side, they realized it was their turn to act. They exchanged one final glance at each other and braced.

“3… 2… 1… now!”

They broke out. They cleanly made it to the water and started the awkward swim across. Early on, the water only went up to their chests, so they were still able to walk rather than swim, but even just halfway across, they’d already been pushed farther downstream by the current than they’d made progress forward. At the very center, the riverbed dropped just enough that they had to briefly float.

As soon as they kicked off, at the most vulnerable moment of the crossing, a scream rang out downstream.

They both instinctively jerked around to see where it had come from, but with their heads barely held above the water, they only got a brief glimpse.

A small group of people had broken out of the forest making a mad dash toward the water, just like they had only moments prior. The next instant, another group tore out after them with weapons drawn, rapidly gaining ground.

As soon as they saw that, they stopped looking and focused their full effort on moving as quickly as possible. Despite frantically scrambling, everything felt sluggish in the water.

Another scream rang out, but this one ended abruptly with a meaty thud. The sounds of the slaughter just over their shoulders drove them forward with the hope that they might go unnoticed.

“Hey!”

A gruff shout cut that dream dreadfully short.

They reached the point where they could stand again and risked another look back. The first group were all still on the ground, but the raiders had all fixed their eyes on the two of them as the one who had shouted pointed in their direction.

Two of the raiders sheathed their weapons and started pulling bows from their backs.

“Quick!” Arakh’s shout was pointless. They were both already going as fast as they could.8

The whistling of arrows rang out as a pair of splashes rang threw up water just behind them. Kione could feel the ripples of the arrow cutting through the water just inches from her back.

They were taking ranging shots.

Once the water was down to their waists, the second pair came even closer, grazing Kione’s shoulder just enough to cut her and glancing off of the curved sword Arakh had strapped to his back.

The next pair wouldn’t miss.

They’d made it so far. The water was now only up to their thighs, shallow enough that if they picked up their feet enough, they could almost start to run.

The twang of bowstrings pierced their eardrums. The shots were impeccable. Time slowed as Arakh looked over his should and the familiar feeling of death rushing toward him locked him in that moment. With his heightened senses, he could envision dodging in his mind, but his body would never respond quickly enough.

His mind cycled through memories, just like before, but this time he didn’t have to wait for an answer.

The beast erupted from the treetops.

Arakh watched as it glided out over the water, intercepting the arrows and taking the shots itself. Arakh started to panic for a moment, but the arrows deflect harmlessly off of the beast’s heavy scales.

The moment the immediate threat passed, time snapped back to reality and they finished scrambling onto the opposite bank. They didn’t stop to look back again until they had made it safely to opposite forest. When they finally did look, they saw the imposing form of the beast just barely managing to hold itself aloft in place with its heavy beating wings, staring down at the raiders.

It screeched unlike anything Arakh and Kione had heard from it yet. The raiders, who had been frozen in awe up to that point, bore the full brunt of the beast’s malice and immediately broke, fleeing back into the trees.

They managed to avoid death by the skins of their teeth, but as they heard the mournful wail of a warhorn in the distance, a moment of relief was all they got.9

They started to run again.