Lonka sat on the bare mat, his back leaning against the inside wall of his favorite fishing hut, fiddling with his new fishing rod with the energy of an ocelot toying with prey it knew couldn’t run fast enough to escape nor put up enough of a fight to be a challenge. In other words, he was bored and resentful, all his usual fervor for his lifelong hobby an afterthought in the face of his new title and the life that would come along with it.

He stared out the wide open doorway that he hadn’t the heart to close, watching nothing in particular. Shadow was creeping its way across the village clearing, and the festivities were starting to begin. Fires burning, Orux meat being sliced into smaller pieces fit for cooking, even a few dancers preempting the massive throng that would fill the center around the Mew tree that held the circle of elders soon. There might have been less than a thousand Ooura gathered here in total, a fragment of the scale these festivals had once been. Now it was practically a wasteland, a hollow imitation of something that was once been so overwhelmingly great. All because of the very same creatures that set up camp on the edge of their sacred place now. He spat down the mat hole into the exposed water, brushing away the memory, and the bitterness at the way he was tricked into his new life of responsibility. Actually, he only tried to brush away the second one.

And it did not work.

There were still several hours until Banon would lose his chance at his rite for being so arrogant…

Or that was what Lonka would have thought, anyway, if he was talking about anyone else. Honestly, Lonka half expected the brute was doing it intentionally. If he showed up at the very last moment, it would only build his name even further in the collective unconscious. Lonka made a farting noise. It wouldn’t even cause him much pause if he saw Banon dragging a live Orux back to the festival area just so he could fight it in front of the whole crowd.

Lonka’s eyes glazed over, continuing to watch nothing in particular…

Until some time later a very particular silhouette and recognizable tone of bright orange caught his eye as it emerged from the jungle.

Lonka blinked, wondering if he was dreaming. That was Banon, yes, but trailed by… trailed by dozens of other much smaller forms. As all of them emerged into the fire-light of the many scattered bonfires, Lonka realized what they actually were.

They were Yubuou.

Dozens of Yubuou pulling make-shift sleds, or if not that, carrying meat packs on their backs like they were as intelligent and refined in group think as Ooura were.

Lonka burst out laughing.

Why couldn’t it have just been the live Orux?

As shock and awe sounded out from all directions and practically all the Ooura in the entire clearing began rushing towards the inexplicable sight, Lonka smiled like a child. His worries had been unfounded. Of course Banon would do this, find a way to one up even the fisherman who became Kothai and saved his emperor in the same day.

Lonka gazed up at the sky and actually found himself seeing what was in front of his eyes for the first time since Poh had pronounced him with that wretched title. Orange and pink light glazed the tops of sparse clouds, a glowing painting above the dim jungle, blanketed in shadow. With a mischievous twist of his lips, Lonka finally picked up his fishing rod and found the motivation to drop his line down the hole. From the look of Banon during the brief glimpse Lonka got of him before the crowds surrounded him, in his state he wouldn’t be ready to see anybody but the healers for some time. They would have plenty of time to share stories later.

But for now, a dangled lure under the mat was where his focus belonged.

Lonka pulled the hut’s door shut and slipped a pouch of dew grass into his bottom lip. And so the world is not completely over.

***

Lithilyn was tired. So, so tired. And she had slept. Badly, and interrupted by the strangest of dreams, but she had slept. Her men, on the other hand, had remained vigilant throughout the night and into the day on her own word. Some of them hadn’t seen sleep in more than two days. She almost felt bad about that.

Almost.

There hadn’t been any more mysterious losses, so her decision had been right. Her priorities in coming here were likely seen as questionable even by those that agreed to follow her here, and blatantly insane by her mother’s supporters, but there was one priority she would not compromise on. She would not risk the lives of these men–Gylig’s most loyal–for nothing, even if it meant pushing them until they hated her.

She looked up at the tree that dwarfed even the Donai spire. It held fare few buildings among its branches, though they were appropriately massive in proportion to the tree itself, if somewhat dubious in their structure. It was hard to keep the anxiety from eating away at her resolve. She was going to go up there. Climb into one of those chambers and witness the Ooura go about their ceremonies, all so she could have just a chance at negotiating with them. Every step she took, the last seemed to have been propelled by notions that seemed more faulty before her next foot even fell.

Peace.

Was a fanciful notion. But an agreement?

At this point, it was necessity, whether her mother and queen was blind to that reality or not. It was a real fact of their lives now that the jungle nearby to their spire city no longer produced remotely the same yield of edible fauna, and their farms and agriculture could only supplement so much. Her people were starving, and it was all their own fault for poisoning too much of the overall water supply. Even if they had maintained a strict border, inside which they never used their soil and water killer, the more shrewd minds among them were beginning to untangle the facts, even if they were forced to do so in the shadows thus far. The simple truth of it was that the jungle was more like a single organism than a series of calculable assets. Even if their own corner of things still appeared an oasis, they had kicked out the legs from the support structure that propped things up.

Birds, beasts, reptiles. They all migrated in some way, whether over distances large or small. But with more and more land outside of their borders left barren, the creatures the Pyathen relied on for hunting were rarer and rarer by the passing years, paradoxically forcing her own people to venture their hunting parties into the deeper, more dangerous–and tainted–jungle.

She was forced into acting by the ignorance of those above her. Of that much, her conviction hadn’t faltered even slightly since sneaking away from the palace in the dead of night.

But her methods?

Those were what she grew more and more unsure of.

She closed her eyes, pressed them shut, but it only made the fear prickling in the back of her skull more apparent.

Until she was broken out of her brief reprieve by distant shouting.

She scanned far away at first, but then noticed the eyes of most of the Ooura were facing a spot more nearby to her camp. When she followed their stares, she saw him. The same Ooura she had first spoken with, she could tell, since none of them had hair quite so bright of an orange tone. He was covered in dried blood from what seemed like dozens of separate wounds, the worst of which in his mid section. There was some kind of massive bird slung over his shoulder that draped down until its beak almost reached the ground. A dragon eagle. It had to be, with those golden feathers, and one almost as large in height as the Ooura carrying it. If the state of him wasn’t already bad enough, he almost immediately fell flat on his face, instantly unconscious by the look of it.

She thought all the Ooura rushing towards him were just so shocked due to what he was carrying and his apparent injuries since he was clearly a well known person in their society, until she saw what emerged from the jungle behind him.

Yibu.

Towing sleds stacked high with meat…

As she watched the Yibu disappear back into the jungle almost as quickly as they appeared, leaving the sleds filled with Orux meat next to the unconscious body, she almost questioned her eyesight. From there, all the young Ooura boys practically fell over themselves, eager in seeing if they could each pull a single sled themselves. With quite the varying levels of struggle, the boys began towing sections of meat off to the scattered cookfires that now burned all over the clearing. The adult Ooura, on the other hand, lingered, appearing much more concerned about his state than who got the eat which cut first.

The crowd of Ooura there also seemed to be just as shocked by the presence of the Yibu as she was, shooting frequent gape-mouthed glances after the creatures as they disappeared back into the jungle, which oddly made her feel a bit less out of sorts with herself. Yibu were not the kind that interfered with… well, anything like this. They weren’t anything but wanderers, and hardly ever seen outside of the deeper sections of the jungle that her people rarely visited. And yet, they were here. Helping the son of the Ooura emperor.

She watched as a group of Ooura women approached who stood out from the rest by their extravagant garb, led by a man that wore too many furs for how hot it was out and carrying a smouldering bundle of some kind of incense in one hand. The women following him must have been special in some way, because their fibrous clothes were interwoven with tassels of dyed fur and hundred of dangling trinkets made from carved bone that made a tinkling sound as they brushed against each other while they walked. The man who led them had a face shrouded in the shadow of a hood that was quite literally just the head of some kind of huge jungle cat that had all the flesh and bone carved out of it, while the women’s faces were all exposed and painted with symbols–or perhaps they were tattoos.

Without acknowledging the gathered onlookers, the strange women hefted the unconscious one up onto their shoulders and carried him off, dragon eagle and all, trailing the shadowy faced man back towards the center. The smoke trail from his incense burning covered the bone-adorned women as they walked, adding even further to the otherworldly feel of what she was seeing. Not a single one of the gathered crowd even tried to speak to them as they carried the man away. They looked afraid to even look at the strange women and the man covered in furs.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Lithilyn would consider herself poised. She had been groomed to rule tens of thousands for her entire life. But watching these women draped in fur and bone carrying an Ooura man perhaps doubling her in height like he was almost weightless, she found her sense returning to her.

The jungle was not so vibrant and inviting from the inside.

***

Banon was being carried. He hardly remembered why, or how he got here, besides vague memories of trudging through the jungle alongside Ugtang’s tribe. Before that, there were flashes of gold, and a pain in his hand, and before that an Orux and a mighty battle and… and more that was even harder to acknowledge. But had he really done all of that? A half centurian Orux… A dragon eagle…

And he had returned to tell the tale.

Had he?

He tried to open his eyes, but found no strength for it. Tried to speak, but it came out barely a mumble. Was he dead again? Inside the eye of Kimitrius, bathed in the well of souls?

His mind faded, and when he woke up again, he was no longer being jostled by the bodies carrying him. He was laid flat on his back, on something fairly solid. There were fingers running over him, fingers lathering all his cuts, nicks, and deeper wounds, with a wet paste. The substance burned where it touched the raw exposed flesh underneath, but a strangely cold kind of burn, one that he felt was healing him. Something told him he knew where he was, but his mind was still too slow to make the logical leap.

Frantic to find out what was happening to him, he tried to open his eyes, but found he could see only darkness. He tried to move, hoping to remove whatever covered his eyes, but found himself restrained. He finally managed to get a hold of one of the knots binding him, but stopped the moment he heard a voice.

“Wait.” A woman’s voice that he recognized.

Banon immediately relaxed. No one was supposed to witness the spirit women working their magic besides shamans and of course their own kind.

Shortly, a voice thankfully relieved him of the suspense.

“Our work is done. Open his eyes.”

Banon’s eye covered was pulled off, letting the brightness in and the face above him. Dosha, one of the eldest of the spirit women, draped in her colored furs and bone ornaments. He tried to blink through the brightness, but if anything, his eyes only hurt more and more. The room wasn’t even well lit, and yet he found everything around him hard to look at. It was then he realized he had probably been given a large helping of one of their medicines and it was likely the culprit of his sensitivities to light.

Besides the three spirit women who had healed him and the shaman overseeing from a dim corner of the room, Banon also noticed Iala. She was the daughter of Icosa, a spirit woman, and likely here to witness their work as a kind of training before she herself was allowed to participate in the heavy duties the life of a spirit woman held.

Banon tried not to linger too long on her while the women undid his bindings and the shaman said a closing prayer. During the upcoming second stage of the rite, he was fairly certain Iala was one of the three Poh would pick to accompany him during the trial. As much as he had qualms with the way the second stage of the rite was interwoven with the expectation to select a wife, he wasn’t stupid. The daughter of a spirit woman and soon to become one herself held the most prestige besides that of the reclusive order Banon’s mother came from. Both orders were much like Kothai, all consuming. Once walking that path, there was no leaving it.

Something was itching in the back of his mind, a presence… or perhaps many. Banon winced, feeling a wave of nausea pass over him. He raised up a hand to cover his mouth but the hand stopped dead halfway there.

Had he just seen what he thought he had?

Banon waved his hand out in front of him.

His arm, his hand, he was leaving a faint afterimage. Like a second phantom body trailed the movements of his own, lagging behind by a fraction of a second, but mimicking him perfectly. So perfectly that when he made his arm stay still, the afterimage merged with it completely, and only his own body was there. Banon frowned deeply before shaking his head. Perhaps an after effect of the spirit womens healing? Something told him not, something that felt distinctly familiar to him, but he could not spare the thought for it at this moment.

It was slow to find his bearings again as he rose from the bed they had placed him on. He collected up the corpse of the dragon eagle under one arm–they had thankfully not separated it from him, as was tradition. He found himself glancing one more time, curious what Iala thought of all this. To his surprise, she looked as invested in what she was seeing as Banon was in his own path. There was something he could respect in another one, even younger than him if he remembered correctly, who was already so certain of their path. Healer, warrior, fisherman–Banon smirked–whatever the profession, Banon understood the sacrifice of dedication, and he saw it in this young girl's eyes now. She wanted this, to heal people. It was plain on her face.

And yet, as he found his balance and walked towards the entrance to this chamber, he had no more glances to share. There was too much to do, too many problems to solve to worry about that part of his future just yet.

“Wait!” one of the spirit women called from behind him, Iala’s mother from the sound of her voice. “You must stay with us until the venom has worn off.”

Banon turned his head just enough to be heard, but did not look back. “I thank you for everything.”

With a small smile, he stepped off the ledge and dropped twice his own height to the next branch, fell into a crouch with the impact and then let himself bounce backwards out of the crouch, caught the branch in his free hand as he fell and swung to the next, and again, and again, until he was down on the mat, looking back up at the chamber of healing built into one of the smaller trees in the clearing. Banon thought he noticed the faint silhouette of a face peering out from the shadows behind the doorway, but he turned and went about his way regardless, taking a brief moment to run his fingers along the newly placed salves on his many wounds. No cracking or peeling. Good. If they couldn’t stay plastered onto him while he moved, they would be no use at all.

Just before Banon was about to go over to the fishing shack he was betting he would find Lonka in, the Donai princess caught his eye. She was staring at him. All of the sudden, the realization caught up with him that she had most certainly witnessed his entrance, and the companions he had brought back with him. For all their lacking in some areas, the Yubuou did have the mightiest of talents for remaining unnoticed. And yet, he had exposed them to her notice. To Pyathen notice.

She quickly made herself busy with another task, talking to some Pyathen man Banon expected was the defensive commander of their group. Banon only hoped the revelation of Yubuou helping him did not result in some kind of new campaign of theirs.

He suddenly found himself gritting his teeth at the possibility of it. If he had just exposed the Yubuou to outside pressures they could not content with, he would never forgive himself. The Yubuou at least had the protection of being a race that stayed mostly in the deepest jungle, but still. An emperor needed to be far more careful, and thoughtful than that as well.

While he untangled how much he really must be pushing himself for him not to have thought of that yet, he forced himself to focus on other things, taking in the world around him. It appeared, he had in fact woken from his healing after the ceremony had already begun, clearly visible by the hundreds of Ooura dancing in a circle around the Mew trunk in the center of his village, but thankfully the second stage of his rite was starting officially at midnight. So he had plenty of hours. Two, anyway, from his judging of the darkness of the sky. Two hours. The difference between success, or the beginnings of it, and utter failure. He had gambled, and he had won. But not by much. He flat out would have failed if not for Ugtang and his people.

Two hours to consider so many things, and so much luck.

Banon found he did not have the energy to make it all the way to the fishing shack he knew Lonka enjoyed most. Instead, he found a nearby one and slumped down inside of it. Despite the warnings part of his mind was screaming, he couldn’t help allowing himself to relax a little. If he didn’t deserve it by now, he never would…

Somehow, it was only hitting him now, just how much of a mental tole this had taken on him. Days without sleep and more pressure than all the years of his life combined. How had he not noticed this weight on his mind until right now?

Good, another monster to slay, or befriend, in any case.

Banon fondly thought of Ugtang, swinging through the jungle with his village, ambivalent to the turmoils of Banon's own life and the plight of the Ooura in general. There was a shocking amount of comfort in that, thinking of Ugtang completely oblivious to anything but the health of his tribe. No war. No trials and no rites. No mess. Just wandering the jungle, building mud huts and picking flowers.

Banon sagged into himself, leaning back and straining the integrity of the fishing shack, a profound weight settling into his mind that could only be released by sleep.

Two hours…

His eyelids were so heavy, his mind so ready to just give in.

Banon, who had slain the mighty Orux, the dragon eagle, could not help but give into the comfort of sleep.

The relief of finally letting go was like standing under a waterfall of pure warmth.

Perhaps he should have listened to the spirit women…

As he drifted away, there was a distinct feeling that something resentful was watching him.

***

Thankfully less than two hours later he awoke. Banon knew it was less than two hours because Lonka, though yelling in his face over and over again, wasn’t near as frantic sounding as he would have been if Banon had missed the second stage of his rite.

“Wake up! Wake up you unbelievable idiot! Are those eyes opening yet? They better be! If I hadn’t found you, you would have missed it!” Lonka trailed off talking, favoring a guttural snort of annoyance instead. “You idiot!”

Banon rocked up and sprung to his feet, hit his head on the roof of the shack, wobbled and caught himself on the wall. “You have woken me in time, though?”

Lonka made an inane expression. “In time? Yes, but you still shouldn't have been asleep! And without telling me where you were at that!”

“So I have not missed it?” Banon asked again, for some reason suddenly terrified he had partially dreamed what Lonka had said at first.

“You haven’t, you big hunk of wood.” Lonka knocked on Banon’s head twice, imitating a hollow noise by clicking his tongue. “You’re actually awake for the best part! The Pyathen are ascending the ladder father had built for them.”

After slinging his eagle over his shoulder, he and Lonka made their way around the fishing shack and off towards all the commotion at the center of their village where the Pyathen were currently clustered around the central Mew that held the chamber of rites. One at a time, their men trickled up the ladder, covered by crossbowmen on the ground set up in a wide circular formation, obviously expecting the Ooura to possibly be planning some kind of ambush. Banon blinked his bleary eyes clear as they approached the elves, who were terribly pathetic climbers, even after taking off their armor.

For a once in generations event, it was a disappointing sight so far. Or so he thought, until his eyes finally cleared enough to see it.

The princess herself was just about to get on the ladder.