Several groups of rats later, they came to a pair of stately-looking doors flanked by a pair of knight statues. Each of the statues had a flickering torch in one hand and a shield with a coat of arms of skulls and crossbones in the other. Follow the bones, Guin thought and exchanged a look with BronzePaw behind her. The garule woman nodded and pushed the doors open.

Inside was a large, long hall with high vaulted ceilings—but that wasn’t what really stood out. From one end of the hall to another ran a path of cobblestone lined with pale, ethereal statues of monks, hoods drawn over their heads, all standing on a sea of fluorescent blue. Each monk held out a black braiser that crackled with dancing purple flames that lent a pinkish hue to the room.

Looking down and around at her clothes, she could see that the flames acted as UV lights, skewing the colors of the world around them. Guin shivered as she looked at the archway in the distance, perhaps fifty statues down. Somehow, she felt like they wouldn’t be getting out of this room without a fight—and she wasn’t sure she would like what they would be fighting.

“Moss,” BronzePaw murmured in wonder, pointing at the bottoms of the statues. Following her finger, Guin saw that the glowing blue around the floor of the statues was, in fact, a solid, fluffy cloud moss creeping up the base of the statue as it grew, swallowing the robes of the marble monks. “Is that what we need?”

Shaking her head, Guin could only answer, “I don’t know,” but knelt by the nearest path to inspect it. [Herbology] was not her highest skill, but as it was connected to a quest, she assumed she didn’t need to worry about that too much. Though there was no visual indicator, she and Guin shifted around the plant, only to find that the moss wasn’t growing on the ground or through the stones but rather on a bed of black water gently lapping at the path containing it. Guin cut a bit of the moss with her knife and put it into her bag. Checking to see if it counted, she answered, “Looks like it's what we're looking for. Did it count for you, too?”

“It did,” BronzePaw nodded. Guin nearly fell into the water as she looked up to see that BronzePaw’s normally reddish-brown feathers had turned black while her teeth were glowing white. The garule laughed. “You aren’t so normal looking yourself, you know,” she pointed out, then turned. “The moss is so pretty. I wonder why it’s called ‘Death Moss’...”

Taking the cuttings was quite easy but time-consuming. Twenty minutes later, they had fifty between them. It seemed that the cuttings needed to be at least a certain size in order to count, and Bahena had skimped a bit. “Sorry,” she apologized with a miserable tone. “I’ve never been with great plants. That’s always been my brothers’ thing.”

“You talk about your brothers a lot,” Guin chuckled. “You guys must be close.”

“We are, and we aren’t,” BronzePaw told her with a shrug. “I mean, you’ve met Sathuren—it’s a bit complicated.”

“How so?”

“Mmm,” she started. “Most of it has to do with garuli culture. I assume you don’t know too much about that.” Guin shook her head, and the garule continued: “Males and females are raised quite differently, you see. While I was taught to hunt and fight, my brothers were taught to cook, clean, and mend. While I was taught to lead a tribe, my brothers were taught to tend to the children and other needs. That is simply the way it was and was always expected to be.”

Guin looked over her shoulder to see the garule woman staring at a sprig of glowing moss. “...That wasn’t what you wanted?” she asked.

BronzePaw laughed. “Not really,” she admitted. “It was lonely. All we wanted was to play with each other as we had when we were hatchlings, but such a thing wasn’t really allowed. I grew into it, I suppose, but... Sav was always the stronger one between us; he was forced to lead a different kind of life, though,” her voice trailed off a bit. “It still shows.”

“Sathuren?”

“Yeah.”

“Why him in particular?”

“Oh. Well...” BronzePaw answered, starting to cut the moss again. “He’s also the one we were talking about earlier—Sathuren.”

“You mean you’re hiding the fact you’ve taken a magic path from Sathuren?”

“I’m not hiding from him,” she answered sourly.

Guin chuckled, then bit her lip. “You know, despite Sathuren being the only one of your brother’s I’ve met, you seem a bit off about it,” she said, turning to her own work again. “Is everything all right?”

Stolen novel; please report.

BronzePaw looked back up, her eyes wider than Guin had seen them before. She tilted her head. “Everything is fine, really,” her tail flickered a bit as she spoke. Then she chuckled. “I didn’t realize that I had been acting that way.”

“Stella and I were wondering, but we weren’t really sure...”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” the garule woman shook her head. “Sav and I... Our relationship is...” BronzePaw sighed heavily before sitting fully cross-legged. “Our relationship isn’t what I wanted it to be,” she admitted. “And it’s hard to explain. Our culture is so... old-fashioned? Archaic? Compared to many of the other races, and Sav and my relationship was a victim of that. A large part of it is my fault—I can’t help but treat him the way I was taught to, but it’s always a bit... muddled.”

“I don’t really understand, but,” Guin said, pulling her legs up to her chest as she faced BronzePaw. “I don’t talk about it much, but I have a sister,” she said. BronzePaw tilted her head. “Back on earth. I don’t think it’s comparable to yours, but our relationship was always a bit... awkward.” Guin laughed. “I was an English major who was destined to not amount to much, and she was a scientist, always ready to save the world. I was always a bit jealous of her,” Guin said. “She was just better at life than I was. I still loved her, even if I didn’t always know what to say. It’s nice when I’m not being compared to her. Gods, I don’t know what I’d do if I ran into people who knew her here.” Guin hadn’t thought of her sister much since she had arrived on the Iceberg City. Could think of your parents every once in a while, too, she scolded herself.

“There is that, too,” BronzePaw laughed. “More than you might think—with some added drama, though. And... Expectations.”

“I hate expectations,” Guin winced.

“Cheers to that,” the garule woman nodded, causing them both to burst out laughing. “It’s hard. Humans and valkyrian especially don’t struggle as much with such problems these days—though, I have read quite a bit of older literature that suggests that your kind at least had similar ideals to the garuli in earlier centuries. Your kind’s role expectations were quite the reverse of ours—if more flexible. Garuli are quite extreme.”

“Yeah,” Guin affirmed cautiously, thinking back on Earth’s history. “People fought long and hard to get where we see them today.”

BronzePaw looked down. “Such a struggle would never happen on our planet,” she said. “That’s why we went to Yidar in the first place.”

“Why not?”

“To put it in a way you might understand,” she started, taking a deep breath. “Take Sathuren. If my brother were a character in an Earthian novel, he would have all the makings of a hero to save us all,” Bahena said, her head hanging. “After all he did, all he went through to earn a place in our world, they all still shunned him, and all because he was different from the image they had in their small minds; he looked different. Spoke different. Acted different. And, at that point, instead of becoming the villain, he simply left. Left to find a place that would let him be. And after a while, so did we—for how could we stay in the world that rejected him for such petty reasons?”

Baffled, Guin asked, “But... Why?”

“Sutak law,” BronzePaw spat, then shot an apologetic glance as if she hadn’t meant that to come out quite the way that it did.

“Sutak...” Guin repeated. “What about the Sutak...?”

The garule woman’s eyes flickered with such immense pain and sadness that Guin dared not press her for answers. “...How much more of this moss do we need?” she started mumbling.

“Twenty-five,” Guin answered quickly, happy to change the subject. “Let’s finish up here quickly and move on. We still need to find the Spectral Essences.”

“At least it looks like we’ve made a certain amount of progress,” BronzePaw said, looking around the room. “This place looks like a checkpoint.”

Nodding in agreement, they went about cutting the remaining moss in a somewhat awkward silence. Though Guin wanted to know more about what that was all about, she understood that whatever it was was a sensitive topic.

It didn’t take them long to add up the remaining moss, and with that part of the quest checked off, the two were left to look down the quiet purple hall. In silence, they stood together, listening to the gentle lapping of the dark water against the stone, and Guin liked to think that neither of them knew what to say to the other so that it wasn’t just her perpetuating the awkward silence.

BronzePaw nodded at her before she took the first step, breaking the uneasy uncertainty that had enveloped them. The garule woman’s graceful power lent her silent steps and ease of movement as she began stalking forward. There was a certain cautious awareness to her motion that Guin envied—and yet, with each step, Guin’s instincts pulled her back.

BronzePaw passed the first statue, and then the next, and then the third. Breathing a sigh of relief, Guin started forward. There were plenty of shadows in the room when could have shadow stepped to, but she wasn’t sure how much she could trust that.

A rustling of wind caused Guin’s ears to go up in alarm. The feeling of moving air brushed against her cheek, and she turned expecting to see Liorax, but there was no cat that stood behind her. There was nothing. Backing up with slow, steady steps, her eyes darted around the room. The moving air turned into a cold breeze that rippled over her skin.

“BronzePaw—” Guin started, turning quickly to alert her of the danger, but her eyes went wide as she saw a massive, shadowy figure descend upon them.