25 | Eternal Water
Against his best intentions, Eli sleeps for over a day.
His arm aches despite the lack of external wounds, and he is exhausted to his bones. In his youth, he knows he would not have been so weakened by such events, but such is the nature of his gained years. At first, he tries to push himself through it, to rise as soon as they next wake and try to get himself and the girl going, but doesn’t manage it.
They are low on food and sleep and have both had too much fear. They must not dwell here long, especially with the unfamiliarity of the tree they’re finding refuge beneath, but Eli knows not what else to do.
In truth, he knows not even a way out of this place.
For the most part, Klia seems to be sleeping alongside him. Once or twice, when he manages to wake fully and eat some of the berries he has decided shall not harm them, he sees her pacing the sandy shore in much the same frustrated way she paced the river stone back before they discovered the way down into these depths.
“Do not go where I cannot see you,” he calls to her once, and she looks at him over her shoulder, thin face reminding him too much of the people in his life he once knew and loved so well.
Often, when he sleeps, he dreams of Abner. Just as often, Lyra is alongside him, but his memories of her feel fuzzier, lost to the haze of age and grief he’s tried so long and hard to put from his mind.
Eventually, he wakes a little more fully and sits beside the fire that’s almost died. Klia doesn’t seem to have the wherewithal to feed it, and Eli supposed she is awfully young to consider it—and should not have to consider it, not with him around—as he places another of the scant pieces of dried wood upon it. Above him, the tree is as silent as ever.
Eli has been waiting for something to happen, for it to make him regret taking shelter beneath its mostly bare branches. So far, nothing unusual has presented itself.
“Do you grow differently down here?” he asks it, expecting and receiving no answer.
Klia is back down on the shore. Eli’s clothes are dry, and before he slept he had carefully pulled on a shirt not torn by the monster. His stomach gurgles, and he ignores it for the moment, heaving himself to his feet and swearing, not for the first time in the past day or so.
Picking his way down the shore, still barefoot on the strangely soft, dark sand, he comes to stand beside her. Her arms are folded, her eyes far away, a little furrow on her forehead as she thinks.
Eli checks for any changes in the magic.
Elijah Jyce
the Reaper, the Unknown, the Elder
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23/97 Buds | 2/10 Roots | 2/5 Filaments
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Stems
Bladewielder (15), Minddreamer (2)
It is concerning how low his Roots are, but he feels close enough to death it isn’t a surprise. It has at least risen a little higher than the bare minimum it was when he woke on this shore. Still, he is not precisely in optimum shape to be tracking down his grandson and taking on the monsters that have stolen them.
The more he thinks on it, the luckier he realizes he was to have even freed Klia and himself from that strange floating Unknown, let alone with so few injuries. Even Klia’s few cuts and scraps aren’t much, though he’s sure they seem much more to a child of her age.
“I’m sorry for sleeping so long,” he says, though he wishes to lie right back down and sleep for a few more weeks. “We will try to find a way out of this place, do you still hear him?”
She shakes her head. Eli doesn’t know if this means they are too far away, or something awful has happened. He does not wish to voice the second opinion.
“Is it like it was at the river? Do we need to get closer for you to find him?”
She nods, but there is still a frown on her features. She will not stop gazing out into the water. There is little to see. No matter how he looks, all Eli finds is the faint light reaching out for a small way into the calm of the lapping underground sea before disappearing into eternal darkness. Somewhere out there, the monster is beneath the water. Eli shutters to think how deep this place might be—the crushing, eternal darkness of frigid water, the caverns of water with no air which may run deeper and deeper below, into the center of their lands, where no true living things survive.
“What are you looking for, my dear?” he asks.
She makes the gesture he has come to associate with brother. Perhaps, it is a sign for Thistle's name.
Something occurs to him, and Eli works on making his voice as gentle as possible, when he says, “Do you see anything out there?”
Glancing sidelong up at him, he can see the consideration in her eyes. In many ways, she acts her age, in many others, he feels as if he is gazing into the soul of someone much older than her years. Perhaps this is what their world produces now: children who hear the strange magic and are not quite children in every way they should be.
Without breaking his gaze, she points out into the darkness.
Eli is slightly more certain of his idea. “Can you see in the dark, Klia?”
She blinks at him, and makes a series of gestures he realizes quite quickly are meant to tell him something. He feels his face scrunching into a frown, and before he can stop her, she pauses, looks irritated, and glances back at the fire. Her book is still drying beside it, hopefully not entirely ruined.
Frowning, she points at him, then at her eyes, then out at the endless water, open confusion in her expression.
“I can see nothing out there,” Eli provides.
She blinks as if this surprises her. She does see farther into the dark than he does, and not simply because her eyes are younger.
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“What do you see?”
Bending, she writes in the sand, Monsters.
Chills drag across Eli’s skin for a moment, but he asks, “Living monsters?”
They do not move.
More frozen giants, perhaps. Or shapes she is mistaking for monsters. “Do you see the creature that dragged us down here?”
She shakes her head. Went to bottom.
It sunk beneath the waters, as he anticipated. “Do you see anything else?”
Waterfall.
Eli squints, then cocks his head, listening as hard as his old ears will allow. He hears nothing that would indicate running water and the sound of such would travel far. In the back of his mind, he wonders if the girl even understands what she’s saying, if she is mistaking all of this, or if the trees down here do mess with the mind. Perhaps this giant tree they have been sleeping under is feeding her dreams.
Carefully, wary of the answer, he asks, “Do you think we’re supposed to go across the water?”
She pauses, glancing back out, then looks up at him with a frown.
“You don’t know?”
She shakes her head and looks close to tears. Eli knows of little ways to comfort her. She is too young to be in such a situation and doubly too young to have to be supplying Eli with solutions. Even if she were to say yes, yes we should go across the water, there is little way for Eli to get them across. It is deep and unending, and there is only a little wood fallen around this place, barely enough to keep up their little fire. He cannot cut branches from this tree, if not only because they are all far too high for him to reach, but because the Order has corrupted, and the idea terrifies him. Many trees still appear normal and harmless, unless provoked.
There is nothing he can say to comfort the girl, nothing that would not be a lie, but she is young enough to still be comforted by lies. Seating himself painfully on the sand beside her, he ruffles her hair.
“It will be alright. We have figured out our way so far, we will figure this out as well.”
She nods, then scoots up under his arm, her chin wobbling. Eli hugs her tight, unaccustomed to anyone wanting to be close to him but becoming quite fond of the girl’s cuddling nature. They sit this way until something shimmering catches Eli’s eye. It is washing up in the weak lapping of the water. Momentarily, he believes it a trick of his too-tired eyes, or some of the bees washing up he managed to lose.
Carefully, he leans over and reaches into the cool of the water.
Eli’s fingers brush across something oddly warm. It is smooth as glass and barely larger than a grape, perfectly round. Pulling it from the sand it was half-buried in, he lets it roll into his palm. A gentle blue, carved with little markings resembling tentacles, Eli rolls it between his fingers and attempts to figure out what in all the lands and below it is.
Momentarily, he wonders if it is an egg of sorts, but puts the thought aside when it tinks as glass when he taps his fingernail against it.
Klia reaches up, and Eli lets her take it. She inspects it in much the same manner and hands it back with a shrug. It is of some use as a light, Eli supposes, but not much more than the petrified bees he still has stuffed in his pockets.
“You do not know what it is?”
Klia shakes her head.
“Your father did not have anything like it?”
Another shake of the head.
Grunting at the oddity, Eli folds his fingers over it. He knows not what use it may be, but will not throw anything aside the Order has placed into his hand, no matter if he realizes the use of it or not. When he concentrates, his magic gives him no identifying information, but he is becoming used to its hesitation. Perhaps, it will eventually tell him. Perhaps Abner will know. Either way, he will keep it.
“Have you eaten anything this morning?” Eli asks. He has no idea if it is morning, but they were both sleeping, so it may as well be.
She shakes her head. For a child of her age, she doesn’t ask for much food, or complain. Eli will have to keep up on feeding her as best he can since she doesn’t bother to pester him for it.
With a groan that seems to be permanently fixed in his throat these days, he gets back to his feet and returns to the little fire. With the little pot he brought, he scoops up some of the clear water—they’ve been drinking it since they fell here, and it is quite fresher than anything Eli has come across in the lands above—and heats it over the little fire. It isn’t much of a soup, but between the dry mushrooms and salted meat they took from the store Eli has yet to dig into, it will be edible. Something hot to eat will do them well. He will have to collect as many of the fallen berries as possible, at least once they decide on a way out of this place.
And they must. There is not enough to live on down here if they are trapped.
We will find a way out.
“What would you be thinking up, Lyra?” he asks, wandering about the base of the tree as the water heats. With his thumb, he rubs into the muscles of his sore arm, avoiding the tender skin. He has nothing much he can do for this, and it is feeling every so slightly improved, as long as he does not move it too much.
“You would not get your sword arm injured by a monster thing of the ocean that’s taken to flying in the air, that’s what you’d be thinking,” he mumbles.
Not for the first time, he taps at the little dark stone of a necklace, wishing it would drag him back to his son. As always, it sits dead and useless against his chest, a remembrance and little else.
The tree is quite massive, a few dozen paces around. Still, Eli marvels at its ability to grow without sunlight. Very likely, its roots reach far down, drinking deeply from the water surrounding this little shore. On the opposite side of the tree, he finds no pathway out. More of the scraggly berry bushes carpet the sandy soil, and then there is nothing but a massive wall of a stone cavern. Up and up it goes until he loses sight of it in the dark. No carvings mark its walls suggesting there were once dwarves—or whatever else dwelled down here—making pathways to this underground sea.
Enough walking to the right or left takes him to more water and eternal darkness.
Returning to the tree, he finds Klia still safe beside the fire, wiggling her bare toes, watching the water heat to a boil. Berries are smeared around her lips, and she pops a few more into her mouth. At least they found something else nutritious to eat. She turns the pages of her damp book, getting more of the leaflets dry beside the fire.
Hand on his hip, Eli stares up at the tree. Something about it does not sit correct in his chest. Its dim light gives off the only sight in this eternal dark place, its trunk so massive it surely cannot survive down here. He knows it is quite foolish of him to insist upon things being too strange to exist, not after all these years with such strangeness, but something about it catches in his mind.
There must be a way out.
Even if there were a hole in the top of the cavern where the top of this tree reaches the barest scraps of its branches, it would not be much use to either of them. They cannot climb this giant with its branchless trunk going so high. Eli wanders about its base, again and again, tapping at it with his uninjured hand as if it will tell its secrets.
I have already found one hollow tree, why not this one as well?
“Klia?” he asks, not expecting much but never knowing. “Do you think there is anything interesting about this tree? Does your Order tell you anything?”
By the way she looks at him a little as if he’s an old man losing his mind, he supposes not.
Checking his magic once again, he wonders if Minddreamer would help clear his head in this situation, but is wary to use up his daily allowance. Besides, it is for clearheadedness in battle, not to help him in matters of calm thought. These are two very different situations, he knows from experience.
Waving at him, Klia gets his attention and points to the soup. If Eli lets it boil a little longer it may fuse the flavors better into the weak broth, but the girl seems to have remembered she is hungry, and she doesn’t much like those mushrooms anyhow. Taking his single cup from his pack, he scoops out some of the soup and hands it over to her.
“Don’t burn yourself,” he warns and nods when she blows on it, something nearing happiness in her expression. She certainly is an easy-to-please little thing.
Allowing his portion to continue cooking, Eli returns to gazing at the tree. He wanders to the water’s edge and splashes some onto his sore arm, inspecting the gash along his forearm that is not remotely healed but scabbed over enough a gentle wash will do it no harm. Still, he takes another strip of the old blanket—now dried beside the fire—to make a new bandage, and washes out the old one, hanging it alongside the fire to dry.
He watches the tree.
Using one of the little empty bags in his pack where he’s been storing his mushrooms, he collects as many fallen berries as he can stuff into it. He will have to set them into the top of the bag so they’re less likely to become crushed.
Watches the tree.
When his soup has simmered longer, he gives more to Klia then uses her empty cup to get some of his own, not burning himself on the too-hot little pot.
Watches the tree.
Turning the strange little orb around in his fingers, he puts it to his ear to see if it sings as the creature did and finds it silent.
Watches the tree.
“Klia?” he asks as she’s stuffing more berries into her mouth. “Do you see anything above us, in the dark where I cannot see?”
Up she looks, squints, cocks her head then shakes it at Eli, shrugging.
“Hmm,” he grunts, speaking to himself more than to her. “It must go somewhere. It cannot live in pure stone, and there is sand—”
Where do the roots go?
Eyeballing the massive root system running into the sand, Eli shoves himself to his feet and meanders around the base once more, toeing at the sand with his boot. Using a dead branch to spare the edge of his sickle, he pokes about the roots—
Until the sand shifts away.