“Your memories are indeed ragged,” the Sunseeker muttered as he kept listening. They had now reached the vestibule and Kishirra was taking off her grey robe, revealing her underwear. If he had been any other man, the Sunseeker might have been swayed by Kishirra’s perfectly-balanced proportions, but he now perceived, with his blind gaze, her body as something that carried intention and refinement rather than mere attraction.

Ansàrra knew that the body had its needs and they ought to be answered. The sacred prostitutes at the Flame Temples made sure of it. But there was something else in Kishirra’s form now that he knew her a little better. In her grace he saw the echoes of the previous civilisation, the lingering will of the Kiengiri. “You have no idea how long you spent in the Kìtum?”

Kishirra stopped while she was already folding her tunic. She tilted her head as if she was listening to a secret tune.

“Not a precise idea. I could not even count the days. I would wager… maybe fifteen years before I managed to create a body resilient enough. Give or take a few months.”

The Sunseeker hissed.

“No wonder this Trial does not scare you. If I could apologise in lieu of the Kiengiri I would.”

“Never mind, Master. Ansàrra accepted me when I asked for help, that is all the apology I could ask for.” She paused, taking a deep breath. Then she took off her underwear as well, standing naked in the vestibule. Kishirra flexed her sable fingers, checking their nimbleness. “I was telling you about my brother,” she resumed, sitting on the floor in a meditation pose, kneeling with her hands up to the sky. “I would like to dedicate this Trial to him. To his memory.”

+++

Kishirra spent many long years alone in the ruins of the blasted land. No path would bring her out of the cursed place. Every time she felt like she had found a lead, she found herself brought once again to the place with the molten columns.

“It is pointless,” she cried out one day, falling to he knees on the noxious mud. “I cannot keep that promise, Mistress. I cannot.”

The seasons came and went with the turning of the sky, but the Kìtum did not change. Whatever had blasted its civilisation into fine cinder was lingering, and the weather was as it had always been: clashing winds, unbearable heat and noxious fumes.

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Kishirra survived on a diet of blackened rain and wizened roots. Her white teeth ripped half-dead plants from the ground, crunching on their wooden sinews, chewing on the paste. Barely enough to keep her continuing.

And then one evening, while the sun was disappearing over the western border of the Kìtum, she spotted something else.

Someone. Else.

A figure covered in rags, stumbling more than walking amidst the dust. Even her Hearthwomb-gifted eyes would only see so far between the broiling vapour on the ground, so it was only when the figure got closer than she recognised him.

At least parts of him. He had changed — he had been ruined, much more than she had been.

His black hair grew uneven, and one of his blue eyes had turned a milky, unresponsive white. His lips curled into a rictus, he stumbled forward on stiff muscles and un uneven gait.

But it was him.

“G-Gam’mu,” she croaked. Her voice was uneasy, it had been too much time since she had used it to form words and not screams or grunts. She walked towards him. When he saw her, he dashed across the powder, as fast as his broken legs carried him and he hugged her.

“Kishirra,” he coughed. “You have come back. You have—” the cough got the best of him. She held him as the cough intensified, then they found a spot under the shadow of a molten tower, where air was marginally cooler, and where to sit down and talk. Gam’mu hand felt so coarse into her own. Her skin was now leather-like from the wind and the sand and the heat’s relentless assault, but it still resembled skin. Gam’mu felt like holding a warm rock.

“I am here,” she said, holding him, just grateful for his presence after all these years. “Mistress…”

“Mistress is gone. Gone forever,” he explained. “I have crossed the entire desert looking for you, and all I have seen is other Elves, or their shadows. No Kiengiri had survived whatever…” he pointed his finger at the silver arc in the sky, “… whatever made that.”

“But you did. And I did! We can find a way to get out, and finally leave this place.”

“Easier said than done, sister,” he replied, still shaken by coughs. “But I feel like there is a way. Our souls are tied to the earth, but just like the Kiengiri folded us into this shape, we can try and fold ourselves back.” He looked at her with his one good eye, while his hard finger brushed a blonde lock away from her face. “At least one of us.”

+++

“Back then I did not know what he truly meant,” Kishirra relayed to the Sunseeker, joining her hands for the final prayer. Then she picked up the sacred oils and a brush, starting to use the ointments on herself, scribbling Sanctions on her body. She was getting closer to the Trial of Gold. In truth, her heart did beat a little faster at the idea of the pain that awaited her.

Maybe she was telling this story to strengthen her own resolve.

She was a bit of an self-serving egoist, after all: all this, getting ordained, the Trial, the Quest which would follow— it was all means to an end.

She would do anything and everything in order to avoid the final fate of the Elves.

The fate that had befallen her brother… and so many others of her kin.

“Where is your brother now?” The Sunseeker asked.

“Where many other Elves are, Master.” Kishirra grimaced. “He is still in the Kìtum. By now, he has become part of it.”