Andal's class and a couple others were on a weeklong trip on the Tower of Tubarai, the tallest mountain in the country. The point was to give them practice in a different environment, which was going to involve simulated combat. There were several professors with them, a few of which were accomplished illusionists, and they would be providing the "enemies" to fight.
That was going to start tomorrow, so first they had to find shelter for the night. The Tower wasn't known for its caves, but professor Tharow already had a spot in mind that made excellent shelter. It was a wide grotto that could have potentially held twice as many people as they had, and the ground in front of it sloped down so snow couldn't pile up on the entrance.
Secondly, they had to gather wood. They had brought spare clothes and blankets with them, but a fire was still absolutely necessary. They were traveling with a spell of warmth over them, but they couldn't expect a professor to wake up every hour to cast spells on them, nor were they particularly fond of the idea.
Frie and Panlo were Andal's closest friends in his dorm, so they were walking together as they gathered. Between a mild snowstorm and the light of day fading, they couldn't see any more than 100 feet ahead of them. That made it pretty hard to find wood; they could make light, but they weren't effective enough with it to brighten an area over 100 feet away through falling snow. They had picked up sticks here and there, but then they found a dried, fallen tree. They started breaking away branches, joking about getting back to the grotto with ten times as much wood as anyone else.
Then they heard a heavy *thwack* sound coming from just out of their sight in the direction that they had been walking. Panlo started walking further tentatively, "What do you think that was?"
Andal and Frie continued to break off pieces of wood, glancing up at Panlo as he investigated. He had walked 30 or so feet, and he could see it then, "I think it's a mountain goat? There's a cliff behind it, so I guess it fell."
He walked back to Andal and Frie, but Andal walked past him towards the goat, "Is it dead?"
"Probably. If not it will die."
"I want to practice healing on it."
Frie protested, "But couldn't that take a while? Look how much wood we have, we should start carrying it back now!"
"You don't have to wait for me, just leave a stack for me to take and I'll grab it once I'm done. It might be dead anyway, in which case I'll be right behind you."
Frie hesitated, but Panlo picked up a bundle and started walking, so Frie followed. Andal passed where Panlo had seen the mountain goat from, but he saw something else. The goat was being carried up the cliff side, but he couldn't quite make out the shape of what was taking it. He started running as best he could over the layer of snow, and he cast his spell of light. He got a clear look at what was taking the goat before they went over the top of the cliff, and stopped in his tracks so suddenly that he almost fell over. It was a humanoid, with gray skin, and scars in a distinct pattern.
Andal turned around and ran as fast as he could; he had to tell the professors. He hadn't expected them to get so far into Tubarai so quickly. He hadn't heard of any attacks, so they must have been able to kill every messenger so far.
He reached the grotto and ran to professor Tharow. Panlo and Frie saw him, and Panlo threw his arms up in frustration, "With your stack we would have brought the most wood!"
Andal ignored him, "Professor!" He spoke in a strong whisper, not wanting to cause a panic, "I saw a Haverdash! The Haverdash are here!"
Tharow looked down at Andal with a critical gaze, "No, they aren't."
"I saw him! They must have attacked somewhere in Tubarai already!"
"You didn't, and they haven't."
"But they-"
"Andal!" He fiercely interrupted, "Stop! You're obsessed. Don't tell anyone else your crazy idea, and don't concern yourself with what you thought you saw in the dark. You understand?"
Andal begrudgingly answered, "I understand."
"Good." Professor Tharow turned away.
Andal stormed off away from the grotto. Panlo and Frie watched him go with confused expressions, but they left him alone because they could tell he was upset. He went back to the fallen tree, and went to the cliff where the mountain goat had fallen. He could see divots in the cliff face from where the Haverdash had to dig his hands in to pull up his catch, and so Andal followed them up by using them to help him climb.
When he reached the top he immediately saw the path it had taken. The snow had partially obscured the rut of a sled, but the banks made from the snow it pushed to the side made it obvious. He ran as fast as he could down the rut, knowing that it would only get more hidden as time went on, and not knowing how long the spell of warmth would last. He didn't have armor, or a sword, or a shield, but he wasn't going to attack unless there was only one Haverdash anyway. He mainly wanted to spy on them.
It took several minutes, and he was extremely worn down, but he spotted a log cabin with the mountain goat strung up outside of it under a light. He wished he had Jeva's endurance, but since he didn't, he hid on the backside of the cabin where it was dark. At this point he couldn't see more than several feet ahead of himself, but he had no idea if Haverdash could see in the dark so he hid on the backside of a barrel.
He stayed there until he caught his breath, then walked to the front side of the cabin. There was a Haverdash cutting up the mountain goat. The Haverdash hadn't noticed him, so he looked in the window to see if there were others. There wasn't, it was a simple home with nowhere to hide.
"Hey.” The cold voice of the Haverdash startled Andal. They locked eyes with each other, and Andal raised his fists. "Does anyone else know I'm here?"
Andal wasn't a good liar, so he wasn't how he should answer. After a prolonged silence, he felt like he lost his chance to lie. "No, but everyone will learn that you're here soon enough!"
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The Haverdash signed in relief, then he gestured at Andal's raised fists, "Are you trying to fight me, kid?"
"Don't underestimate me! I'm a Templar, and if you don't answer my questions, I'll kill you here and now!"
The Haverdash glared at him, "That's reasonable, if I'm an enemy soldier. What if I'm not?"
"There's no such thing as a Haverdash civilian, we learned that at Nalye'ed."
He bitterly answered, "That's true."
"So what are you, a scout? Where's your backup? Is there already an attack force in Tubarai?"
He spoke slowly to be extra clear, "No, there isn't any, and no. You think I built this cabin while on a scouting mission?"
"I think you killed the person living here and are using it as a base, don't try to trick me. I won't fall for it."
"I see." He sneered. "Well I have no answers to give but what I've already said, because that was the truth."
"Very well!" Andal made a sword behind the Haverdash that shot at him, and made a sword that he could hold in his hand.
The Haverdash’s eyes darted to the left, seeing the illumination from the sword of light reflect off of the mountain goat. He leapt to the side to avoid it. Andal had been ready to make a shield and stop his movement, but he didn’t expect a jump to the side, so he made it too late. Andal made a flash of light to blind the Haverdash, but he didn’t react at all to the intense light. He ran to a tray by the mountain goat where he had set a knife to carve it, and ran at Andal, carefully, with the knife in hand.
Andal made a sword behind him again, and made a gust of wind to blow him back into it. The Haverdash swore under his breath, but turned in the air to face the sword. He grabbed it with his fingers mid-air, his palms an inch off of the blade, and redirected his momentum to fall off to the side. He fell in the snow, and Andal lunged forward to try to catch him unprepared. He didn’t struggle though, turning his fall into a roll that found his footing. He leaned back to evade a downward stroke from Andal, and flattened him with a punch to the face.
The Haverdash grabbed Andal while his face was still buried in snow and held his knife to his neck. Andal thought of a way to reverse the situation where he stuck a sword of light through both of them and counted on his ability to heal himself, but then the Haverdash said a strange thing, "Disband your weapons, I don't want to kill you."
Andal wriggled his head to where his mouth wasn't covered in snow, "You don't?"
"No!"
Andal squinted and thought about that for a second, "Why not?"
"Because I'm not an enemy!"
Andal didn't respond immediately, but then disbanded the sword of light in his hand. The Haverdash got off him and walked away several steps before sitting in the snow. Andal propped himself up with his arm, "So, you're not like the other Haverdash?"
He shook his head, "No.”
“Is there anyone else like you? Are Haverdash in factions, good and bad, and I’ve only met the bad?”
He shook his head again, “No, no factions. There are others like me, but I don’t know if any are alive. There are these prophets that show up, and I’d say they’re like me. I left because I listened to them, and they should leave too, but they never do, and they never live long.”
Andal scooted forward and leaned in to listen, “Who are these prophets? What did they say that affected you?”
"It wasn't necessarily what they said, but how they changed what they said." He pursed his lips thinking of how to explain, "Haverdash religion is… different." Andal was clearly intrigued though, never having imagined a situation where a Haverdash would be telling him about their race's inner turmoil, so the Haverdash continued. “In a way, there is a god, but it isn’t like gods how you know them. The Haverdash refer to their god as a person, but never as something like ‘him’. Their god, a person, should not be treated like an individual.
"Only the most self-aware among them realize what they worship. I understand it because it is easier to see from outside, having once been inside. There is the idea of the Haverdash as a collective, like the word ‘humanity’. If humans worshiped ‘humanity’, as a person, that would be the equivalent. The self-aware would never put that to words though, in voice or in thought, because it would be sacrilege.
“These… prophets… who emerge, they have different ideas. They disagree with the rest of the Haverdash in many ways, but the consistent difference they have is that they talk about Haverdash like an individual. They’ll dare to say ‘him’, even. I don’t know where they come from, but they showed me something; the religion is changing, fast. When I was young, across the sea, there was a prophet who rose up in my neighborhood. He was telling us to not drink our wine to excess, but have moderation in all that we do. That was… unacceptable, and so he was of course killed.
"On the ship ride over, there was a prophet in the crows nest. He called down to the ship, telling us that we should not take what we see under the influence of our wine to be true, and not to forget what is truly real. You see, the Haverdash work primarily with hallucinogens, and our hallucinations are of great religious importance. We are told to regard them as real, and so reality becomes a confusing thing. Not least because, through willpower, our hallucinations can influence reality.”
Andal asked, “How does that work?”
He frowned, “I don’t know. Perhaps someone has seen a vision that gives some reason for it. I can give you an example of it, but not why it works. For most Haverdash their willpower is limited, and so only small hallucinations can change the world, like seeing themselves as slightly faster or stronger than they otherwise would be. When I say visions I mean a much stronger form of hallucination, which I have no experience with."
"Sorry for making you go on a tangent," Andal said. "Why did what the prophets say make you realize the religion was changing?"
"You're awfully excited to talk despite wanting to kill me not two minutes ago."
"I didn't imagine that there'd be a Haverdash worth talking to! But, now I'm curious. You seem awfully willing to talk too."
His gaze drifted off to the right, "Yea. Well I haven't talked to anyone in a while. So, I thought about what that prophet on the boat had said, and I remembered the first prophet, because it's pretty memorable when those guys show up. The thing is, the first prophet didn't mention hallucinations at all, and the second prophet didn't mention moderation at all. I thought that was a little strange. I thought about it, and remembered that hallucinations were common at the time of that first prophet, but they weren't integral to the religion yet. These prophets, they never try to get people to change longstanding ways. They're only ever against the newest thing, and that coincides with there always being a newest thing. The religion constantly progresses to be of greater and greater intensity.
"When I realized that, and had the courage to admit it to myself, I stopped following the Haverdash faith. I began to question our whole lifestyle, and it seemed to me that if you were a heretic like me, most of it didn't make sense. Most of our time is spent in religious practices, and so having left that, I didn't even know what to do. I decided that I didn't want to live like the rest of the Haverdash; I left six months ago, and have been trying to wean myself off my old ways ever since."
Andal eyed a pouch at the Haverdash's waist with skepticism, "If you left six months ago, why do you still have that awful drink on you?"
The Haverdash looked down at his pouch as well, and took out the bottle of Haverdash wine that they were talking about. "This stuff?... I'm trying to stop, I take a little less each day."
"It's poison, actual poison, I don't see how still drinking that stuff fits with leaving your old ways behind."
He lifted the bottle and stared at the liquid inside. "I suppose it is poison. But, that doesn't change the situation. You don't understand what it's like to be a Haverdash, not at all. Even in the womb we suffer from a lack of feelings. This stuff changes your anatomy over time, even affects your future children. We're all a product of past generations drinking the filth. You don't know what it's like, you can find happiness in the warmth of the sun or the softness of snow, the exhilaration of running and jumping, or singing and dancing. We cannot, the feelings are too small.
"Haverdash consider humans inferior because they can't endure feelings nearly as strong, but I've started to question that. Humans appear to be actually content with such little things, the grateful ones among them, at least. I wish I was more like that. I would love to not need this stuff, truly, but weak feelings to someone accustomed to much greater highs are worse than the pain, fear, anxiety, and confusion that this drink causes.
"Maybe one day I'll be able to see a sunrise and enjoy it, but I don't actually know. I try to drink as little of this stuff as I can each day, but someday I will run out. I don't have a source for more, and I fear that once I run out, I might go back to the Haverdash to get more. I hope I don't, but for all the talk Haverdash have on the greatness of our willpower, we seem awfully dependent on our poisons."
The spell of warmth ran out, and Andal immediately began shivering. He didn't mean to seem unfocused when the Haverdash was pouring his heart out like that, but the sudden cold had overwhelmed him.
The Haverdash understood, and got up. "Come on, let's go inside my cabin. I'll warm up some water for you."