(27 turns)

The wizard Genraz razed the armies of Ulm with fire.

Slightly over four thousand.

Naeris pinched her fingers together, bringing them almost to the point of touching but not quite. She imagined every bit of space between them, focused on the empty air and the feel of not-quite-there. In the dark, she sunk further into the bed and thought to herself, they are gigantic, I am enormous. She felt the pads of her fingers graze each other, press together, and in the pre-dawn thought, I didn’t move my hands.

Light filtered in through the windows, and Naeris realized, no that’s not true, as well as I’m the same size as always. The bed seemed to rise beneath her, and she rolled to face the mirror where her sight, as always, confirmed that the laws of reality still held firm.

Now some twenty seven turns the Crag girl stood just past three spans. Her skin had settled to a light gray, her eyes and horns golden, her rock pattern delicate and swirling, and her hands unmarked. Naeris looked at the mirror, watched herself raise her own hand, turned it back and forth, and imagined streaks of red. Her gray skin stayed the same, unmarked, and she shuttered. She threw back the bed sheets, and though the dawn had just arrived, moved to greet the day.

As the Farken heir left her room there was a servant standing outside the door. They jolted upright, and she regarded them coolly.

“Apologies M’am Farken. Got a bit turned around,” they nearly scraped the floor as they bowed, “just resting my eyes ‘fore heading home.”

Nearis squinted, her eyes always slow to pick out details, especially this early in the morning. She didn’t recognize the other Crag, and she wasn’t in the mood for farce. She huffed, “Y’can watch my door without pretending not ta.”

The servant winced. She wasn't sure what exactly for. Too direct? Lack of formal address? Not proper in her speech? Had Naeris known this person and forgotten who they were?

She let out a huff of air, and began to amble away, “I’m goin’ counting.” She rumbled. There would be someone else in the cellar when she got there. Another Farken servant, less proper than her own folk, who just happened to want to peruse the casks in the early dawn.

When the capital of Nej’tal fell, it did so literally. Every other brick in the city vanished at once. There was little doubt as to the cause, only magik being capable of such a thing.

The exact death toll remains unknown.

Naeris shuffled up from the cellar when it was a more acceptable time of day. She found her mother in their central hall, sorting papers. The Crag girl’s bones creaked as they always had, and she felt the way they rubbed together as she moved to sit. More servants brought out plates.

“You were up early,” her mother remarked, shuffling the papers away now that proper folk had joined her.

Naeris grunted in response, and moved to pick at the cold porridge which had been placed in front of her.

“You were in the cellar?” Her mother led, and Naeris grunted again. The older Crag nodded amicably, “Ecan actually took the count last night.”

Of course he had.

“It’s good to double check.” Naeris moved on from the porridge to the fruits that had been brought out with it.

“Of course,” Her mother’s voice was warm, “What count did you get?”

“Hundred and thirty seven.”

Her mother winced, “You know… these sorts of things might go easier if you wore your spectacles.”

Ah, so Ecan had gotten a different number. She’d messed up the count.

“They don’t work,” Naeris grunted.

“They do work,” her mother began, and Naeris began ignoring her. Predictably, as the lecture commenced, her brother arrived. The older boy came with greetings for the breakfast servants.

Names, smiles, hugs, warm porridge.

“What doesn’t work?” His inflection was perfect, inquisitive, warm.

“Your sister is refusing to wear her spectacles again.” An act of mercy then, her mother hadn’t mentioned that Naeris messed up the count.

“Still convinced you know better than the medicars?” His smile was friendly, his tone was joking, and he directed the question more to his porridge than to her.

Bastard.

“They don’t work,” Naeris grunted over fruit, “my eyesight’s shit.”

Ecan glanced at their mother, the two having a silent conversation which Naeris wasn’t privy to, “That’s what the spectacles are for Ris.”

She grunted again, and it was finally enough to move the topic on. Conversation shifted to different things, her mother and brother discussing shipping and harvest. Her dad came in later, sat down silently next to her. Warm porridge for him as well. The two of them sat in silence for some time as the others talked.

Midway through breakfast the man looked over at Naeris picking through her food, “best not be late.”

And Naeris, with all the decorum such a statement necessitated, grunted in reply. Best not indeed.

The curse of Aetroll was the final cruelty of the wizard Helena Visgrace. It remains active within the kingdoms of men, claiming another soul at random each day.

As of INSERT DATE HERE the death count stands at 36,428.

Naeris got dizzy every time she left the mountain, had ever since the first time her parents had dragged her out. Traditionally, Crag leave the mountain after ten turns, when they’re old enough to sit down and have a long conversation, old enough to walk the road. But they’d been in a hurry, so her dad had carried Naeris, and he’d squeezed her a little too tight. The sky was a giant, and the air tore at her ears.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Normally it was pomp and ceremony when the world was revealed to be this big bright beautiful thing. Congratulations, explanation, a big wide beautiful world. No one congratulated her, no one explained the sky. They just rushed her into it, revealing this secret other thing that she’d been kept from for her entire life (short as it may have been at that point.) The small Crag had been rather frustrated to feel in her heart that she knew the entire world and then to learn that it in its entirety was not what she thought.

Now everytime Naeris left the Farken door she felt her heart in her throat, had to concentrate on the veins of thin black in the marble steps as she traversed the sheer cliffside.

Bestat, home of the Crag, was a city in three parts. The Mountain, the City, the Road. Part one, the first, was the mountain. It was Known officially as Crag Cadferg, or colloquially and more commonly as The Doorframe. This was where the Crag called home.

The Doorframe was a half-done thing of nature. On one side it sloped as one would expect, covered in gravel, rock, and scrub brush. There was also one particular old ruined wall, about a quarter of the way up the mountain. From beneath the wall flowed a seemingly never ending river of sand. That was the sort of thing that did not bear thinking about in Naeris mind. Further up The Doorframe, around its sloping peak, lay the halls of Authority, which sprawled out across the ridge of the half peak.

Walls and halls aside, The Doorframe was a fairly standard mountain on the windward side. The leeward side of the Mountain was strange and sheer. Unnaturally formed, it was as if someone had taken a cleaver to the whole heap of rock and chunked off one side. It was this side of the mountain which gave Cadferg its nickname. Here stood the doorframe’s doors, ornate and beautiful, arrayed across the mountain face, extending from the Wasteland grounds up to nearly the peak of the mountain. Crisscrossing between them carved the stone folk’s steps, upon which no Other had ever trod.

That last part was a saying more than a truth, as to be certain there had been instances in the past where some young Crag had snuck some Ulm or human lover into the mountain. But it was frowned upon.

Nearis thought that it would have been quite considerate of her people to have built handrails or some such thing when they carved the steps and doors, but alas, no such luck. Crag life, where folk lived in tunnels behind beautifully carved doors in the mountain, was marked by constant perilous step climbing. When Naeris went to visit the Authority, as she did now, she faced a steep, handrail-less walk up the steps to the top of the too tall mountain.

Once, there was neither mortality nor blood. It was a Crag wizard who decreed that swords and stones and such could cut away at essence, that such a thing would flow through veins and trickle out in years. Blood and death were their creation, and no count could ever encapsulate the death toll.

It took two hours to climb all the way up. When Naeris did reach the top, where the stairs faded out to packed grass and gravel, she was clammy. Here, as always, she found herself facing down the monstrous stone door of the first corridor, which swayed lightly in the winds atop the Doorframe.

She scowled at the damned thing, silently cursing it and all past architects of the Crag as whoresons. The wind howled back in response and she opted to curse that too.

The door was some ten span tall, not too big for some of the other taller ancestries, but too large by far for the Crag, and Naeris was short for Crag to boot. She had to grunt, sweat, and curse as she pushed the damned open to enter the mountaintop offices. On the other side the entry corridor greeted her, a long empty stone hallway which wound up and down over the curves of the mountaintop on its natural side.

Today Naeris was, as she did on the first red noon of every month, visiting labyrinthine offices of Central Authors. Elders who wrote the story of the Crag, oversaw the spiritual workings, and mediated the mountain. Authors in the mountain, Guards in the cities, and Watchers for the road. Of the three pillars of Crag Authority, Naeris found Authors to be, by far, the most unpleasant to deal with.

Of course, a large part of that irritation was to do with how frustrating their offices were. She had heard that some humans built palaces which grew vertically, as buildings did. Not the Authors. Their halls held no second story, no shortcuts or stops, only labyrinth corridors curving up and down, following the heavenly architecture.

Naeris scuffed her knees as she slid down a too steep corridor. That part, she knew from experience, would be a bitch to climb up later- even with the hand pockets for holding onto the wall.

Ecan would be at the market right now, overseeing the family stall and making the right sort of deals with the right sort of folks while she took the too damned long trek up here and through here to get to Oleth for him to tell her the same damn thing he always did after asking the same damn questions he always did.

Elder Oleth was one of the Authors maintained Supervision for Crag with counterintuitive tendencies. More specifically, he was the one who oversaw her check ins. A perfunctory thing he would say, after so many years without incidence, but a ‘necessary’ thing nonetheless.

A necessary thing that meant climbing countless flights of stairs carved into the cliffside, before trudging through swooping spiraling empty corridors with only the sound of the howling winds for company.

Naeris did not buy into the idea of meditative walks. Personally, she found long pointless walking to be absolutely infuriating. At the end of this monthly journey she always found herself in the same mood.

Seething mad.

She practically slammed open Elder Oleths door when she reached it. A mistake, and one she made often. Rage gave way quickly to the immediate fear that gripped her whenever she entered the man's office.

The Author's offices were open air. The walls of the corridor were gone, and there were stone bricks enough only to lead down to the mountainside grasses. Elder Oleths office was a large marbled boulder beside the mountaintop, where he sat on the edge looking up at the full red sun.

She shuddered at the sight.

“Aft’noon young Farken.” He greeted her with a small smile, patting the stone next to him in indication that she should join him. Naeris scowled, shivering, and stomping over to seat herself next to the man, a foot away from the cliff's edge. She refused to dangle her feet over the cliffside like the older madman.

There were elders whose offices were less extreme. They had grass plateaus which gave way to a gentle sloping downhill. Elder Oleth was crazy. Sure, he looked, acted, and talked like a regular well pressed Crag Authority. But Naeris knew the man was cracked through and through. He swung his feet back and forth as he dangled them over the steep drop below.

Oleth smiled at her as she sat down and wrinkled his nose, Naeris always wreaked a fear of sweat by the time she reached him.

The man shook his head, at her shaking form, “A Crag afraid of heights, that, if anything, is cause for concern.”

Naeris rolled her eyes in return, “We can’t damn well fly, seems t’me I’m the only one bein’ sensible bout it.”

Oleth raised an eyebrow and Naeris recanted, “Apologies Elder, didn’t mean t’curse in front of you.”

He shook his head, “I do not much think your parents would approve of such egregious abbreviation either, but I will let it slide.” he smiled at her warmly if not a little condescendingly, “it is your own business if you wish to go about speaking as someone far less proper than your own self.”

She scowled, “Someone far less proper wouldn’t have to spend so much time walkin’ up her once every d-” She stopped herself abruptly from cursing again, “every month.”

“Of course,” Oleth nodded solemnly, “the walk up does give those gifted in propriety ample time for reflection.”

Naeris slumped backward, “Elder, based on the hours I’ve spent walking up and down here ‘reflecting’ I should be a damned monk.”

“Naeris Farken!”

She winced, “Apologies Elder. I just…” Naeris hesitated, “It seems like we spend a lot of time together with me answering the same questions the same ways. “

She ticked them off on her hands, “No I have not ventured into magicks since last we spoke, no I have not felt inclined to do so. My mind remains clear, the laws of the universe remain immutable. I am not making new friends, I am staying true to my folk. I have not been filled by thoughts of grandeur, or revenge, or illustrious curiosity.”

Oleth chuckled, “As always, I find that some of those answers may not be entirely true. However…” He gazed out at the red sky, “I believe you are right.”

Nearis shot upright, then regretted taking such a fast movement so close to the cliff's edge.

Oleth smiled, softly, “Naeris, it has been some seventeen turns since you displayed any traces of unnaturality. I think perhaps, it is time to accept that the time of danger has passed.”

She found herself wetting chapped lips, unable to speak as Elder Oleth held the two of them in a moment of silent suspense.

“Naeris Farken,” Elder Oleth stood up, too close to the edge and backlit by the red of the sky, “I would like to call to a close your time of watching, and extend to you your formal invitation to walk the road as one of the Crag.”

She found herself dropping to her knees, her head touching stone in supplication. If asked , Naeris would deny that she was crying.

She felt Elder Oleths hand on the back of her head.

“Welcome back to your people dearheart.”