“Revin,” a voice whispered.

Revin sat up in surprise. Blinking his eyes. Who had woken him? He turned to look at Kaiato, but he was fast asleep.

“Outside,” the voice whispered. How could he hear that voice over the pounding rain?

Birdy was curled up on the side of Revin’s bed, also undisturbed by the voice. He had a moment’s hesitation, then decided to act. If he was going to hear voices, he was going to discover what they were.

Revin put on his cloak and boots as quietly as possible. Kaiato didn’t wake even as Revin opened the flap and looked out. He expected a person but found none. Just rain and darkness. He was about to return to his bed when he heard the voice again.

“Revin.”

It came from a few feet ahead, in the dark. His heart jumped. Was someone there? Standing a few feet away, unseen in the night? Lightning struck in the distance, casting a flash of light over the camp. No one was there.

Still, he heard the whispering voice. Beckoning him forward.

He froze at the door of his tent, unsure what to do. A feeling of calm came over him, and he stepped forward. As he stepped out, the rain hit him in icy cold spurts. He shivered, and the wind picked up, pushing on him, demanding he fall over.

He limped hard, cursing himself for forgetting his stick. Lightning flashed again, illuminating a small hill, covered in large white stones, smoothed over by time, rain, and wind. They covered the hill like bumps on a turtle’s shell.

The voice spoke again, this time from the hill.

He approached the foot of the hill, then glanced behind. He still saw the camp, faintly outlined in the dark. He reached the foot of the hill and found that the wind and rain were lessened.

He slipped on the first few rocks, but finally managed to grab hold of the cracks between the slick stones. As he ascended, the rain lessened further until it was only a trickle. He looked around, the storm was furious around the hill, but the top seemed to be dry. Rain drummed the stones at the base of the hill and lightning flashed, but at the top was a column of empty air, the stars visible high above.

At the top of the hill, massive white stones stood upright in a circle, like pillars with no ceiling to support. The grass at the top of the hill was dry. The storm wasn’t far, but it was quiet, muted as if a great wall stood between him and it.

A faint white light hovered in the air at the center of the circle. It glowed brighter as he grew closer, his eyes straining from the sudden change in light. Also, as he approached, he heard more than the muffled storm. Voices hummed, whispering, or muttering muffled words.

With pain in his knee he stood all the way upright. It was warm. Despite the brightness, it was comforting. As if it wanted him to reach out and touch it.

He looked around again, no one was nearby. Why hadn’t the sentries noticed the light? Wouldn’t they have investigated? And why hadn’t he noticed this hill the day before?

“Revin ,” a voice whispered distinctively.

He turned back to the light. The source of the voice. Caution urged him to turn away, but… something else drew him in. And that feeling had no fear. He reached out slowly, carefully, his hands trembling as he came close to the glowing, shifting light. Then, he touched it.

He came alert, as if he’d always been asleep. Every thought, feeling, and experience of his life passed through his mind, they appeared to be both one great whole and individual events. Growing up on the Hiriv. Learning his ceremonies. His mother’s kindness, his father’s patience. Mastering his first beast, a small bird. Serving as the prophet’s messenger in the Holy House. A growing curiosity. Finding and mastering Blackfire, rolling in the snow and hearing the snarls and growls. Coming to understand Blackfire. Mastering the serpent. Crossing the sea. His failures in Ateya. Losing Blackfire.

And just as the memories raced to the present moment, they shifted. More thoughts crossed his mind in a rush, but they were not his own. They came from… somewhere else… somewhere beyond himself. The closest sensation was when someone was mindspeaking to him, but this felt much deeper.

Do you have any idea how important you are?

Revin was silent. He could see nothing, yet his heart pounded with anticipation.

You are nothing. Yet you are everything to Father God. The words passed over Revin’s mind like the torrent of a waterfall.

You are my follower, a seeker of truth, the voice said, but you condemn those who follow my principles yet do not follow my ceremonies.

Revin breathed hard, shaking. When the voice said nothing, he finally gathered the courage to speak. “Why talk to me?”

Because you are the pebble that starts the avalanche, the rudder that turns the ship. The choices you make now will affect this world until its end.

That sounded ominous.

“What am I supposed to do?”

Check your pride.

Instantly Revin remembered what the verses said about pride. To humble himself. To not put himself above others. All are equally below Father God.

“What else do you want me to do?”

I want you to end this war.

“I don’t know how.”

You know how, the voice said .

Revin thought about the giganotos.

“I don’t know if that will help, even if I do master the giganotos, how can we stop Jebuthar and Narazoth?” His worry was tempered by the voice, but it was still there. Revin frowned. “They have armies, ships, and weapons I can’t understand… Narazoth enslaves the souls of saurians for his armies.”

Remember, he is also a child of Father God. But he is lost. Broken.

Was that… sympathy for Narazoth? After all, Narazoth had helped Jebuthar do? Anger welled up within him at the deaths of not just a great many soldiers and saurians, but especially at the deaths of Ismander and Blackfire.

Narazoth needs to be found. Find him, Revin.

“I don’t want to find him!” Revin said, tears welling up in his eyes, surprised at how he was speaking to God , “I want to stop him, I want to… to…”

Kill him?

Revin remembered Ismander and Blackfire. Seeing their bodies. Moving them. Hardened blood on his hands. Digging a shallow grave in the frozen earth, praying that no carnivore dug them up later.

A hand touched his shoulder. He jumped and looked, but no one was there. Despite seeing nothing, he still felt a hand.

I understand. But you must rise above your hate. I will show you the way. First, you must seek out the giganotos in the land. You must now succeed where before you failed.

Those failures came easily to mind along with a million other worries. He reached for the hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t see it, but he felt it. He gripped it, and comfort seemed to flow from it. His heart thundered. He fell to his knees before the light, still feeling the hand. The hand of God.

“What do I do once I’ve mastered them? Do I make them fight? Do I ask Omrai to be my Lord again? Do I go straight after Jebuthar?”

I will not provide the answers to all things. Revin sensed a feeling of trust from the voice. Go, now… Time runs short. The pathway will become clear to you, one stone at a time.

And just like that, the voice and its presence were gone, the sensation of the hand on his shoulder disappeared, and the glowing sphere collapsed; leaving Revin enveloped in the darkness of the night.

His eyes adjusted slowly to the loss of light, trying to find the source of the voice.

Sephitaro…

A drop of rain hit Revin’s head. He looked up. The stars shone down on him briefly before clouds filled the column of empty air, the wind howled, and rain came down in a rush.

Revin shivered with the cold rain and looked down the hill. He barely saw the camp beyond. He made his way down.

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Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. Revin jumped in surprise and slipped on the slick stones, landing on his back and tumbling down the hill. He struggled to regain his footing, but the rocks were too slippery. Before he could stop rolling, his head hit a flat stone near the bottom of the hill, and all went black.

✦✦✦

“Revin,” a voice said, “Revin?”

Revin blinked awake as someone shook him. Shifra and Kaiato stood above him, each frowning in concern. Shifra’s hair looked nice. What was he doing out here?

“Are you suicidal?” Kaiato said, “you could have died in a storm like that!”

Revin jerked upright and searched around him. The rock where he hit his head was nowhere in sight. Neither was the hill. He gasped.

“Wait a minute,” Revin said.

“You’ve got to be more-”

“Shh!” Revin said, cutting him off. “Where’s the hill? Did you move me?”

He looked around and tried to stand. His head spun and he stumbled back to the ground. He touched his forehead, feeling blood. Kaiato helped him up. Revin looked at his hand, but there was only a little blood. It must have been watered down by the rain.

They furrowed their brows and scowled in confusion.

“It looks like you hit your head a little hard,” Kaiato said, “By Kalt, I didn’t even hear you leave.”

“Let me see,” Shifra said. She reached out but Revin swatted her away.

“No, no,” Revin said, “You don’t understand. There was a stone-covered hill here, with a bunch of pillars and a glowing light on the top, didn’t you see it?”

They shook their heads.

“No,” Shifra said, “we’ve been looking for you all morning. You must have wandered out in the storm in the middle of the night. We just found you.”

Revin looked around. “None of you saw the light last night?” Revin said, “None of you heard…”

All the events of the night before flooding his mind as if they were happening again…

“I heard a voice calling my name…” With great effort and a good measure of pain, Revin stood. He stepped away from Kaiato and Shifra, whose looks were wide and filled with worry. But Revin felt much less dizzy than before.

“I came out here, to a hill, covered in stones,” Revin walked across the grass and pointed. “I climbed it, and I touched a light above in a circle of pillars…”

The memories of his conversation and what he’d decided to do flooded back. That voice… Find him…

He closed his eyes “I touched it… and I spoke with… with… Sephitaro.”

“Shevidaro no longer speaks to man,” Shifra said. She looked over her shoulder at the camp. He followed her gaze to the priests’ tent. “We have his words.”

He focused on the last words Sephitaro had spoken to him.

The pathway will become clear to you, one stone at a time…

“ I know what I have to do,” Revin turned and limped for his tent, soon helped by a very confused-looking Kaiato.

Shifra thought about what Revin said for a long time. Sephitaro? Speaking to him? Had the pain gotten to him, confused him?

But the way he’d looked at her.

“What am I doing?” she said to herself.

What do I feel? she thought as she sat in her tent.

Shifra thought about everything Revin had said the day before. Something about feelings, and how she supposedly knew what he felt even though his face showed something else. What was he implying?

She thought about now, how did she feel now? She cared about Revin. She thought he was intelligent, and funny, and she cared about his safety. She had wondered what she felt about them. This time a new idea came to her. She compared how she felt in and out of their presences. Her eyes widened as a burst of understanding came.

What she felt in their presence weren’t her own feelings at all, but theirs.

She wasn’t attracted to Revin. She was attracted to Kaiato. And she felt that attraction even when she wasn’t in his presence.

Maybe… maybe she wasn’t like everyone else. Maybe she could do something more. And Revin knew what it was.

She ran to Revin’s tent, but he wasn’t there. Neither Kaiato nor the sentries knew where he was. Nor was he out by the saurians, and one of the gallimais was gone.

Omrai held a map in his hands, resisting the temptation to crush it in his hands.

Beadoróf remained obstinate, refusing to address any other methods of defeating Jebuthar. Stating that “I have tried everything else. Neither gunpowder nor an army of a hundred thousand men or saurians can stop him. There is no version of this of us winning without the giganotos.”

He seemed to think the giganotos were somehow resistant to Jebuthar. Were they harder to master? Did they affect his technology? Beadoróf didn’t know, and Omrai wasn’t about to get his men killed trying to capture the most terrifying predator in the world.

Shifra entered his tent.

“Revin’s gone,” Shifra said.

Omrai frowned. “Decided to go off on his own, huh?” He huffed. “He was doing more damage than good.”

“More damage than good?” Shifra said, “He’s done more for winning this war than every other man combined. Even you.”

Omrai sighed. He didn’t want another fight. Not today.

“He also helped me figure out why we don’t get along.”

Omrai turned to her, “I don’t care what he thinks.”

“You can sense how people feel,” Shifra said, ignoring him, “can’t you?”

Omrai didn’t speak for a time. How could she know that?

“You’ve noticed that other people can’t, right?”

“I have,” Omrai said.

“Well, I can do it too,” Shifra said, “I can tell what people feel even if they don’t show it on their faces. It’s magic father, and you know it.”

Omrai blinked. This was something he knew, something he’d known for a long time. But now, here, his daughter was blurting it out. Something that could be considered insanity, or even blasphemy.

“I guess it doesn’t work between you and me,” Shifra said, “just with other people.”

Omrai didn’t say anything. He could only think of the confusion and frustration he felt at her presence.

“I know things fell apart,” Shifra said, “I know Revin isn’t perfect, but it’s harsh for you to expect him to be. He’s trying to do what’s right.”

Shifra turned toward the exit of the tent, she stopped at the door.

“Revin left, and I don’t know where to.”

Omrai tried not to respond.

“I hope you’re happy,” Shifra said, “He was our best hope of stopping Jebuthar.”

“We still have Beadoróf,” Omrai said.

“Well, good luck with him,” Shifra said, shaking her head. She turned to left, and then stopped. Turning back to him. “You know, you’ve always been able to win before. But it was on your own. You can feel what everyone else feels, yet you still don’t understand them.” She let out a bitter laugh. “You’re more like Revin than you think.”

With that, she left him to his thoughts.

✦✦✦

Kaiato went through Revin’s things, looking for clues. Revin had left the Sephitaron and several others of his belongings which must have been important to him.

After Kaiato had given up going through Revin’s things, he noticed a piece of paper sticking out of his own rifle case. He knelt, opened the case, and removed the note, unfolding it carefully. He could speak the Ateyan language well, but reading was harder. It took him a minute to decipher Revin’s even more foreign handwriting.

I’m going to get some reinforcements , tell the others not to worry; I’ll be back in a couple of days. Tell everyone to be patient. I’ll find the giganotos or die trying. A will beyond my own propels me. I know we don’t believe in the same things, but I hope you understand how I feel.

Trust me.

-Revin

p.s. Jebuthar had said something about a Koyejian failing to kill me. That, plus the notebook you took from the dead spy, makes me think someone in Koyeji is working for Jebuthar. Maybe even the guy who set you up. Whether openly or not, I think Koyeji might be in league with Jebuthar.

Kaiato paused. It made sense. If Staiwaki was working with Jebuthar… He was betraying their nation. Why should Kaiato believe that High Lord Siriyog died of natural causes? What if Staiwaki had set all of this up?

He gripped the note tighter. A traitor that high up… that was a disgrace. That merited revenge.

He grabbed the note and ran to tell the others.