Banon and Lonka walked in stride together towards the center of their village clearing, where the tree that held the circle of elders was. All around the clearing, bonfires burned and Ooura had begun to dance in celebration. It was the last night of the summer festival, and the dancing would only grow more frantic, even feral, as the night wore on.

Before they made it even half way, one of the same boys who had watched Banon test his staff when he first brought it back came running up to them carrying a mass of bone that must have weighed as much as him. He heaved the Orux skull headdress up, and only barely managed to balance it on his head with the help of both his hands steadying it. Banon chuckled and plucked the skull by the nostril holes, raised it and placed it atop his head.

“We took it to Tuliana and got the straps made for it!” the boy said giddily.

Banon cinched the woven straps around the back of his head and under his chin. “Thankyou,” he said.

“Can you tell me how you killed it?” the boy asked. “No one else has one that big. Did yours have some kind of deformity?”

Banon crouched down so they were eye level. “Plenty of time for stories later.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

The boy went on his way, skipping and occasionally grunting as he made a mock lunge as if attacking imaginary monsters with an imaginary living reed of his own.

As Banon and Lonka continued towards the Pyathen, who were trickling up the ladder into the chamber of rites like roaches, he and Lonka drew gazes from all over the clearing. Even those celebrating most vigorously paused their dancing to watch them.

He didn’t blame them, entirely. A dragon eagle was normally considered a once in a life time pursuit for a man, and usually reserved for the eve of a Kothai’s retirement–to prove that even in his more peaceful years, he would still be ready to defend his tribe at a moments notice. It wouldn’t surprise him if none of the Pyathen here had ever seen one up close. Even if they had, it probably would have been in the sense of a comrade falling prey to one. Adult Ooura were too large to be hunted by them, but Pyathan and Enka? Well, Banon knew of many such stories, and no doubt would know many more if he was Pyathen or Enka himself.

As they passed by a particularly bright burning bonfire surrounded by dancing Ooura humming discordant rhythms, the gem-bright, green and golden feathers of the huge bird he carried over his shoulder reflected a vibrant spray of colors across the mat around them. With a sigh, Banon adjusted his new Orux skull headdress with his free hand. It was big to the point of being somewhat cumbersome, even though it was not nearly so big as it had been when covered in flesh and fur. Even still, he felt a bit ridiculous.

Lonka side eyed him, which Banon tried to ignore.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to work. “That bird is almost as tall as you,” Lonka observed, and he wasn’t lying. Even slung over his shoulder as it was, the corpse dangled low enough that its beak occasionally caught on the mat. Thankfully, it weighed a lot less than it looked. Most of the bulk was due to thickly layered feathers, and the bones inside were hollow. “And that headdress is more of a headhut. You could fit a family and their three pet peacocks in there–”

“Alright alright,” Banon interrupted, then threw an arm around his older–but smaller–brother. “So, are jokes all you have for me? No words of congratulation? No pride for your brother?” Banon tried to sound serious, but he never quite had the same ability as Lonka did for goading while keeping a flat voice and a straight face.

Lonka made an exaggerated noise of consideration. “Is there a reason to congratulate the sun for rising.”

Banon let him go and gave him a playful shove.

After Lonka caught his stumble, he took an uncharacteristically long time to shoot a retort back. “I am proud of you,” Lonka said, remarkably without a caveat or a joke tied on at the end.

“Sincerity?” Banon asked, genuinely a bit taken aback.

Lonka rolled his eyes. “Even a blind owl hoots at the moon.”

Just then, another young boy from their village ran up to them. To his surprise, however, the boy was focused on Lonka.

“Kothai!” The boy said, pointing a boney finger at the fisherman. “Kothai! You saved the emperor, now you get to be a Kothai! What does that feel like?”

“Uh.” Lonka glanced around, face growing frantic.

“Hold on, what is this now? Kothai?” Banon asked.

Lonka scrunched up his face, avoiding Banon’s glare desperately. “Can I explain after the festival is over?”

Banon opened his mouth to demand and explanation now, but a flurry of shouting from the direction of the Pyathen drew his attention instead. Banon reluctantly left Lonka standing where he was, instead jogging over to the source of the disturbance.

There was a certain group of ceremonially painted individuals who seemed to be the source of the shouting. At the very least, the conflict wasn’t between Ooura and Pyathen. Though Banon could not understand the exact words that made up the aggravated exchange, it seemed pretty clear that the Pyathen commanding the bulk of the force was at odds with the eunuch torch bearers that surrounded the princess. There was a lot of pointing at the ladder and gesturing at their blue torches.

As soon as the guards noticed Banon approaching, the infighting faded out. Instead, tensions, and dozens of loaded crossbows, were now directed at him. Banon slowed down from his jog immediately and raised his free hand to placate them. Not much changed. In fact, some of the guards started shouting incomprehensible things at him, though there wasn’t much need to translate their meaning.

“Aysuri!” Banon heard the princess order, but it seemed not to have made it to the ears of the men shouting. He then saw her take the arm of the man he’d noticed before and, a moment later he relayed the same order, only much louder, loud enough for his men to hear it even over their own shouting. Silence descended.

Quickly, Banon noticed the Donai princess’s appearance had changed dramatically. She no longer wore the green dress, but instead a thicker one that looked stuck straight onto her skin, made from panels of leather colored with an interlocking pattern of dull blues broken up by smaller patterns of bright turquoise. And that was nothing to speak of her skin, which was now covered head to toe in the utter opposite of when he first saw her, being entirely white. Not natural white either. Even a pale skin tone would have natural deviations. No, she was most certainly painted with something again. This time the same ivory color of sun-bleached bone.

“What do you want?” the princess called, using Banon’s own language, her words now much more audible without all the other polluting sound.

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“You seem to be having trouble figuring out how to climb. I thought I might demonstrate.”

Though it was likely none of the Pyathen heard it, Banon–as and Ooura–had hearing crisp enough to make out her sharp, perhaps annoyed intake of breath. “We know how to climb just fine. The source of this trouble is of a more…” she seemed to be searching for a word, “... higher minded.”

Banon smiled, looking right at her overtop the heads of her guard. “I might be able to help with that as well.” Banon took a half step forward, but stopped when he noticed a particularly wide set of eyes attached to the elven man nearest him. The crossbow was quite literally shaking like a leaf in his hands. “May I approach?” Banon asked. He didn’t really need to in order to continue communicating, but he was curious what boundaries were set and which ones he could push. Regardless of her answer, putting them in an uneasy state was already guaranteed. And an enemy who was afraid was an enemy easier bargained with.

The princess said something in her own language to the man next to her and then he barked a few curt orders in their language. To Banon’s surprise, the three Pyathen standing most directly in his path stepped aside. It was not lost on him, however, that all crossbows remained pointed at him.

“Do not approach me directly. If you want to help, it is them that need it.” She gestured towards the painted eunuchs who had been previously in a yelling match with her and the man who relayed her orders.

Banon slowly strode closer to the odd men, fully shaven, even their eyebrows, completely naked but cut smooth, and painted entirely black with charcoal. He had a guess about what it was that troubled them from what he had seen while approaching, but he thought it better to ask regardless. “What do they need?”

“They refuse to part with their torches, but cannot climb without using both hands either.”

Banon almost asked why, but there were plenty of his own traditions of similar confusing purpose that he had never voiced opposition to. From the look of her face, she was waiting for just such a confrontational response. Instead, he frowned thoughtfully for a moment–though it was all for show, he already had an idea.

Banon pointed at the torch one of the eunuchs carried, then pointed to his own mouth, opened it, and slotted the finger between his teeth. The painted man blinked, then, slowly but surely, turned the torch horizontal and brought it up to his mouth and bit down on it. Banon responded with a smile and an encouraging gesture towards the ladder. The man nodded, eyes still unsure, but he did as he was told.

“Obvious enough,” the Donai princess said. “Yet I doubt they would have taken the indignity if it came from me, as strange as that sounds.”

Banon grunted. “A little intimidation goes a long way.”

Gradually, each of the torch bearers followed suit, and just like that there were six burning blue lights ascending up the ladder.

While he watched them climb, he found himself curious about something. The crossbows and swords could be fastened easily to their bodies during the climb, since they all already had leather slings and sheaths for that, but the acid launchers were still their greatest asset. “Tell me,” Banon began, nodding sideways at her, “how do you plan to get your acid launchers up there?”

“We don’t.”

“Are you not afraid of leaving yourselves weakened?”

“What choice do we have?”

Banon chuckled, then shot her a more accusatory look. “A very good question.”

The same question that had been stuck in Banon’s head since she initially agreed to Poh’s offer.

Why agree to treaty in such a compromising location?

He searched her features thoroughly, and those of the man who dolled out her orders, looking for signs of something, anything that would make this make sense.

Why were they so desperate to talk now, after all this time?

***

Lihtilyn tried to keep her mind working for her, rather than against her, as she climbed the ladder. It was emperor Poh’s opinion that since the first Pyathen and Ooura summit in decades came on the day of their summer rite, it only made sense for the Pyathen there to take part in something no Pyathen had ever seen before–the rite of Kotahi. It was her opinion, that life amounted, in its entirety, to a series of circumstances that all coelessed to prove to you just how pointless and chaotic your life really was. She knew this could be a trap. She was not stupid. She also knew that her staying back home in the palace meant being the lynch pin that facilitated selling off the Donai dynasty to the Enka. Part of it, anyway, but what matter was it? Human’s would use the inch given to take a mile. That was their way.

She would not be a pawn. It was not that she was set on marrying for love. She’d been raised with the understanding that her name and heirship to the Donai dynasty would be used as a bargaining chip to gain more.

The problem was, her mother–the queen–had only grown more unstable over time, and now it was bad enough that she would rather sell off their power than admit it was her fault in the first place that they had overextended their use of the soil killer so far. A unity with the Enka might mean access to some of the humans supply lines, some of their agricultural production, yes. But there were better options. All was not lost yet.

Or so she had to tell herself, to make pulling herself up to the next wrung worth it.

Above her, her torch bearers’ flames were beacons in the night. Seeing just how high that furthest blue light was above her made her sick. This was not a climb, it was a journey. An undertaking she was not physically prepared for.

And yet, she pulled herself up to the next rung.

Some panicked shouting below her suddenly gave her pause. She looked down, only to see that same Ooura–Poh’s son–climbing up the raw bark of the tree towards her. Before she could hardly think about reacting, he was already hanging from the bark alongside where she dangled on the ladder. “Don’t shoot at him!” she shouted back down at her people, who were only yelling even more frantically now. It had all happened so fast. It seemed impossible someone could climb that quick, which was probably why her men had hesitated. But now it was too late. She might get caught in the crossfire. With a pit forming in her gut, she realised that, if he wanted to, the orange haired Ooura could dispatch her, and it would be too late even if they did fire on him by then. Draped over his shoulder, and, it seemed, actually attached to him by a talon still dug into his hand, was the corpse of a dragon eagle. He seemed to climb just fine with only one free hand. And then there was that horned skull tied to his head.

Well, maybe she hadn’t woken up from the nightmares yet after all.

He hadn’t made a hostile move yet. Regardless, the Pyathen acid launcher and crossbowmen below were still screaming for him to get away from her. Even if it was in the wrong language for him to understand, there was no way he was oblivious to the nearness he was to death with all those bolts pointed at his back. And yet, he was smiling at her like a child. A child whose leg weighed perhaps double what she did.

She really would be relieved once this was all over.

When he spoke, he spoke just as easily as he had when they were on the mat before. “I don’t think they like me.”

She was reluctant to engage in an extensive conversation in a tongue that wasn’t native to her while dangling from a ladder a hundred feet from the ground, but she supposed, she had to say something now. “Your clansmen would rather see us cooked on those fires than even look at us while we climb. Yet you seem to relish in this, don’t you?”

“This is a once in generations event. Is it not worth a little embarrassment?”

“It’s more than embarrassing.”

“Then why agree to it? Why come here in the first place with such a small number?” When she didn't respond for several seconds he smiled even wider. “I knew you were desperate. I just don’t understand…” he paused with his mouth still open, as if he had more to say but thought better of it.

He then proceeded to continue on climbing, moving as fast vertically–with only the texture of the bark for purchase and one of his two hands to use–as she could likely run on flat ground. She let out a breath she only just realized she had been holding, and kept climbing, doing her best to ignore the startling surge of motion as the huge Ooura climbed above her, trailing a scent like he had only just emerged from bathing in frog guts within the hour.

Horrid.

The shouts below her died off as Gylig’s voice could be heard making stern examples of those who were panicking the most. After he was done with that, he called up to her. “Lithilyn!”

“I’m fine Gylig!” she called back down.

“Im fine,” she whispered, her face pressed against the creaking rope ladder.

I’m fine.