The actual circle of elders was built far above the larger, fully enclosed rooms where the Kothai rites would take place at the end of tomorrow night, rooms that were held in the bowl-shaped lower canopy of this great and central Mew tree. It was, in fact, built even slightly higher than the tree’s very top. Banon and Lonka were within a hundred feet of the treetop now, and finally starting to slow down in their ascent, more for fear of being heard than falling. Ooura who were unsure of their selves among the trees were no Ooura at all, Kothai or not.
The circle’s construct itself was just a network of intertwining woven fiber cables suspending six individual platforms barely wide enough to sit on. One for each elder, laid out horizontally like a spider web, held up by connections to the highest branches that curled upwards beyond even the tip of the main tree stock. The seventh and final platform was at the very center, where the emperor would sit and address the six best men appointed from all corners of the Ooura empire. Corners that shrunk closer and withered with every passing day they didn’t come up with a solution to the Pyathen’s new weapons of war.
What it really felt like, when you were up there, was like you were standing on the shoulders of a god. It was the highest single point in the entire jungle. Even a hundred feet removed from the top as they were, it was still another hundred down to the next tallest Mew in sight. From up there, you could even see the distant wedge-shaped mountains from which the Enka to the south dug their stone, lit in the sunset like a great wave of dull orange fire.
The tips of the nearest Pyathen spire-palace were visible, also. The very same palace that housed the royal family who, apparently, were sending one of their own to visit the Ooura. Banon, however, intended to reign in whatever the old men were planning for them. Because he knew well their bitterness, he knew they would see only the opportunity at vengeance. One of them especially. Banon also knew that the elders were beginning to lose sight of the reality around them, primarily how precarious their position really was now. Their numbers had been gradually depleted for three decades, their blood draining slowly in one-sided battle after one-sided battle during the Pyathen scourge.
Things were more desperate now than ever, no matter what the old men's egos told them. If they had open hearts, Kimitrius would have already warned them as much. Perhaps he had, actually, and they just had refused to listen to reason, even when it came from the lips of God.
Banon and Lonka didn’t have to climb much further before they started hearing voices.
“...It cannot be anything else!” one elder was saying, projecting his voice to cover the space between the elder's suspended platforms. Banon always found it silly that they wouldn't simply build a closer-knit version so they didn't have to yell to one another. But, for their spying purposes today, it was quite ideal.
They continued inching their way as close up below the suspended platforms as they dared as another elder began responding.
“The Pyathen chose to come to us during the days of the summer festival intentionally, which is why we should meet them in force! They affront us because they know they can,” Tema’s voice said, causing Banon to scowl deeply as he crept upwards, holding on by the mere texture of the bark between his calloused fingertips and bare toes alone.
“No! They affront us because they think they know we will respond with everything we have left, and they know that is not much. And they would be right about that presumed attack if you were emperor alone. They still do not know our number accurately, but they will expect that if we meet them to fight at all, it will be in the closest we can muster to overwhelming force, given their march is headed straight for this very circle, our sacred heart. It is my opinion that this is a trap, that they must have some kind of hidden force shadowing their smaller visible one, perhaps using a new invention we have no knowledge of yet. As much as it pains me to say, even with their purported one hundred and forty men accompanying twenty fully mobile acid launchers, it would be far from a clean battle to say the least, even if we had time to rally the other tribes. And we don’t.” By the end of what he was saying, Banon was close enough that he was able to recognize the voice. Leikai, elder and representative from Bodastam, the same village Banon had used for bait to illicit a Pyathen bombing. Their bombs never fell, of course.
Only their torn-apart bodies.
“That is one way to put it,” boomed Benka, the deepest voice among the council, and most reasonable after his father, Banon thought. “It sounds to me more like some of our fellow eldermen view it better to send our army against a mere envoy because they are afraid to stand in front of the Pyathen face to face again after so long.”
Banon almost chuckled. He certainly agreed with that.
“How many of you have grown so weak…” Growled Tema, the elder who opposed Banon and his lack of care for battlefield tradition most among them. Hated him for it, even. “If we let the Pyathen walk into this very village, we have failed our ancestors! Failed our dead whose voices are not here to be heard because they respected the strength in acting along with what was right! We sit here… debating… while the enemy walks through our land un-resisted! If it is peace, negotiation you want, you will not have my vote.”
Next, the smoothest and quietest voice yet spoke, though it carried through the air just as clearly as Tema’s feral anger. The emperor himself. Banon’s father. “There are more options between outright peace and standing in the shield wall, my friend.”
No doubt as to which elder that was directed at.
“Your son is a coward who fights the coward's way!” Tema bellowed, though Banon caught a slight hint of desperation leaking through the anger. No doubt as to which son that was directed at, either, despite there being a dozen of them. “Hiding in the brush and shooting unsuspecting berry pickers is not our way! Besides, even if it was, he and his group of low-spirits are not enough to put a dent in a hundred and more Pyathen.”
“You are right,” the emperor agreed, sending a small pang of confusion through Banon until he listened to what was said next. “Even Banon and his men could not come up with a scheme where twenty Ooura could take on that many, with their mobile launchers, anyway. Regardless, my son is not a coward. He throws our enemies from their perches even before he is a named warrior. What have you done recently, Tema, besides sit up here with us and talk, and pray, and talk and pray and again Kimitrius will be silent to us? What more proof do you need of my son's path being right than the moon god speaking to him but not us.”
“He lies! Only you are too blinded by pride to see it!” Tema hissed so loudly it sounded like his throat was trying to pull itself out mid way through.
Lonka let out a barely audible whistle. “Great timing for us. Seems we skipped right to the juicy stuff,” Lonka whispered from where he sat on a particularly spindly branch, propping his back against the main tree, looking completely relaxed as his red hair and beard were blown about by a gust, despite the over a thousand-foot drop from here down to the mesa mat below them.
Another elder, Osaro, the often mediator, began speaking only to be cut off immediately. “I know you trust the boy but–”
“My son is boy only until the next night of the summer festival is over. And I believe in the capabilities of the group of like minded young he leads completely. He is our greatest asset in the new wars to come, wars that can no longer be fought by natural might alone. Wars that need the aid of our god for us to succeed. If you cannot see that much by now, Tema, you are stuck inside the ghosts of your dead friends, of our dead friends. The fact is, if my son were not undertaking his rite, I would have absolute faith in him to formulate a plan for the Pyathen and then to execute upon it.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A long silence held, one in which Banon was pretty sure he heard Tema grunt angrily. Which was as good of a response as anyone often got from him.
“Well, that’s your cue,” Lonka said, then whistled a piercing snake-owl call straight up towards the circle of suspended platforms spread out above their heads. Banon waved angrily at Lonka to quiet. He found it did not matter, however. They were given away.
“Banon,” the emperor called. “We know you must be listening in on this from somewhere. Come, show yourself.”
“I have smelled him for minutes now,” Tema agreed. “That call was too sharp, by the way!” Tema called loudly and disparagingly.
Banon sighed, glaring down at Lonka.
“What?” He held up his hands in mock innocence. “You were only going to wait for the right moment to make some dramatic entrance. It gets tired, you know. Make some room for a little humor in your life! Besides, I needed to get you back for vibrating my brain to pieces before.”
Banon just shook his head. He only took a moment to compose himself, closing his eyes and squeezing the bridge of his nose between two fingertips.
“So, my sons, are you just content with listening, then?” their father asked from above.
Banon and Lonka shared a glance.
How did he know? Lonka mouthed, then scowled when Banon imagined he realized the emperor had just invited the both of them. Banon knew exactly how his father knew, though. His father had a better sense of smell even than Tema, and Tema could tell an Orux’s age from one whiff of its scent, and tell many things about its health and size by tasting its dung.
Lonka just sank deeper into his slouch. “You go,” he whispered. “I stay.” He shook his head. “I’ll listen. It’s my best skill, besides fishing anyway.”
Banon couldn’t help but smirk. “Marika convinced you that’s what it is again? Not just a good excuse for you to take it when she yells at you for standing wrong.”
Lonka’s eyes rolled until they couldn’t roll any further.
Lonka was the emperor's son, yes, but also the only one of the twelve of them Banon had never seen a fragment of ambition creep into his heart for ruling, or much of anything, really. He hadn’t even attempted his rite at Kothai. Lonka simply liked… well, the simple. Content with listeneing. Content with taking what he was offered.
Banon wasn’t.
Banon lept for a nearby slimevine, then used the peak of its stretch under his bodyweight to propel himself upwards into a disproportionately high swing. He let go at the precise moment to generate the most upward momentum, and with his mightily proportioned body, that was quite the amount of momentum.
And then the air was flooding past his ears with the speed. He sailed entirely above the platforms, having enough time before he touched down to turn himself in the air until he was perfectly upright. He landed on the same larger central platform that his father sat on, without stumbling, then gave a small bow to his father.
The emperor returned it with a faint smile.
Banon glanced momentarily at each of the sunset-lit elders around them, sitting crosslegged on their individual smaller platforms.
“Banon,” the emperor said, his leaf-spread headdress shifting in the wind. “Have you downed an Orux yet?”
Banon shook his head, slamming his staff down with a sharp clack in front of him. “No, father. I have only just gotten my weapon. I wanted to wait until I found the one stronger than its brothers, the one capable of downing an older bull than then has ever been seen in a rite. A weapon worthy of an empire.”
“Oh course you did!” And his father chuckled in good nature. Banon imagined Pyathen and Enka royal families had strained relationships within themselves, given the exclusively hereditary nature of their power structures. Of course, Banon’s family had them too, if in less grave of a sense.
At least his father's death was not the only event that could shift the empire to a new leader. Ooura valued names, and bloodlines, yes. But no more than they valued the individual man. His father, needlessly supportive as he was, would likely smile with pride as Banon finally usurped him. To do that, however, he would need to earn the vote of each and every one of the gnarled faces around him, men so war-torn and weathered by the permanent scowls they wore; their faces exuded rage even when they were speaking as calmly as mothers to babes, Banon imagined, anyway. He rarely heard them speak so calmly.
He had about half of the elder’s support, now, so it was still a long road ahead yet. Those who opposed him did so in equal measure because of his new-aged tactics of small-scale ambush warfare as much because they resented his excelling in every way imagineable in his life. Whatever they thought of him, they could not ignore the speed and decisiveness through which he accomplished his goals. Not at least with pure of heart and good of faith, since one's mind would need to be blind to think his next brother lesser was hardly more than a bitter shadow of a need to be seen as the eldest brother and so the best.
Banon was proving him wrong each and every day he kept on living.
“If it pleases my father's elders, I will donate the best cuts of the prize bull I will win tonight to their mouths.” Banon did his best to sound casual, which wasn't easy. Even he knew his strategy was a bold one, and his time to complete it shrank rapidly. He just… needed to be seen as exceptional for his actions, not his name. He wanted to be able to return with a fully grown bull, one so full and mature it surpassed all his fellow tribesmen and every tribesman remembered from before him, for that matter. He simply couldn’t help himself, regardless of the risks.
“The recklessness of youth be upon us all!” Elder Brahman called from his place seated among the outer ring. Several chuckles followed him. Tema was not among them.
Banon could have ignored him, but power jibing the perceived lesser tended only to sting when the lesser viewed himself as much. “And I shall see that it is…” Some of the chuckles were still dying off, but Banon decided it was the moment anyway. “I shall see not only an Orux brought by my hand to feed the honored Ooura relishing in our festivals, those who your station would not exist without, but I will also see that for our Pyathen visitors, an even more special prize is brought.”
The chuckles had died. His father was leaning forward to listen, and Banon expected some of the elders were also. Those who weren't too shocked and affronted to allow themselves to react, anyway.
Banon smiled as their attentions fixated on him closer and closer, even Tema’s. “If the Orux is the forest spirit worthy of the passage of another generation of warriors, then there must be something more that is worthy of this once-in-generations meeting of peoples. I pledge, here and now, in front of you whose control it is to elect the next great emperor among us, that I will return by tomorrow night’s apex, the summer festivals end, with both an Orux skull and the corpse of a dragon eagle.”
Audible gasps and scoffs filled the air. Tema, oddly, was smiling. One elder was mumbling loudly to himself about it being out of breeding season, and that dragon eagles were impossible to catch by hand in the summer.
Banon would agree, normally. However, his staff's extra power was something he had planned for more than just to use as the extra might needed for an adult Orux kill.
He planned to use it to jump, to jump far further than a normal reed would have taken him… far enough to snatch the dragon eagle he had watched sunning itself for five days of the last seven on the same branch of a large Mew tree located along the opposite edge of the same lake he had found his living reed staff in.
There was a parallel tree top that ran just alongside the one the eagle liked to perch on. Too far to jump without the aid of a springy slimevine, but that would be too cumbersome and slow. The eagle would see it coming. Too far to jump even with a reed, normally. But Banon would bet this one he gripped comfortably in his hands was the only one that had a chance to clear that gap.
It was an outlandish promise to make, especially given it was against Ooura law to hunt dragon eagles with any ranged weapon, and this time of year, they were not nesting. A promise he hadn’t intended to make until he saw the sheer power of this new weapon he held. But, he also hoped, a promise so outlandish that when he kept it, he would only soar further notches into the realms of recognition. He knew his name was already beginning to be heard along with the accompanying sentiment of a new movement of warriors that were more capable against the modern Pyathen, with their liquid fire launchers and dry acid that killed entire water systems.
Dropping the corpse of the dragon eagle onto the plate of whatever ambassador the Pyathen himself would, well, push his name to the heights of praise on every lip in the jungle and even beyond into the Pyathen’s own world.
It would also get him one step closer to superseding his family's legacy and, more importantly, one step closer to proving himself a worthy successor beyond all doubt. The elders' shocked faces around him only confirmed it.
Before the night after next’s end, even Tema could not deny him.
“Skys and trees, Poh, what did you feed that boy to make him this way, eh?” Brahman asked with his hands held out widely.
Emperor Poh pondered on that for a moment. “After the tit, it was straight to Mew bark and Pyathen blood.”
Every elder besides Tema chuckled as the wind picked up, causing the elders’ platforms to shudder slightly.