Kiravi's Travelogue Ch. 08

Leotie carefully, so gently I barely noticed it, put a hand on Serina's back, "We both do, Kiravi. Every night. So, how do you do it?" Her voice was nearly as meek as Serina's, but there was a different tone to it. She wasn't seeking understanding as much as she was desperately trying to take whatever secret I possessed and apply it to her own guilty conscience.

I couldn't help but let out a single dry chuckle, so short and sharp it sounded like a cough, "You don't think I'm going to remember the exact look on Sata's face while I gutted him when I'm old and fat and lazy? Perhaps it's our curse, the way the gods remind us of the price of snuffing out another soul. How do I do it? I don't know. I do know it doesn't get easier. You just get used to it," I realized how bitter I sounded and tried to smile at Leotie, "You were ready to hunt and murder three mortals to avenge your family and honor your Blood Debt." Then, I looked to Serina, "Why do you think I killed Sata or those mongrels in Tebis?"

Serina shook her head. "Because they were going to kill you?" Serina offered.

I hesitated, fearful of giving away too much of my feelings in this dry and strange place. "Tell her. She needs to know," Leotie whispered, because she already knew.

"No," I said, staring into both of their eyes, "Because they wanted to kill you," I changed my mind, not caring what conclusions Serina drew from my declaration. Perhaps this was the moment when it would all come spilling out. Perhaps not. "It was because of you. Both of you. You're all I have, too." I rested my head again, "I won't go home; there's nothing for me there now. I'm hunted in my own lands, and now I'll be accused of murder as well. And it was all for you. And you. "I pointed at both of them in turn. "That's how I do it."

They nodded, the motion clipped and hesitant, but they didn't ask me anything more. We clambered up, aching bodies only temporarily relieved, and set off again. Leotie led us, taking us through the cactus and creosote and between the endless ridges. We stayed silent and pensive, dwelling on the convoluted insanity of the few weeks we'd known each other.

Leotie led the way with Niknik, Serina behind her, and I brought up the rear. The girl that picked her way between the rocks ahead of me, as light on her feet as a vicuña, barely seemed like the same person that had struggled from Wakh to Atala. Her feet moved on their own, it seemed, because she continuously scanned the dry forest around us. It was as if she was searching for something, or she'd heard a faint noise and now desperately searched for its source. I tried to feel for anything strange with my conduit but didn't feel any magic nearby other than the pendant she still wore.

We heard, before we saw, a brook splashing its way down through the maddening rocks. It came out of the west, tumbling from a group of hilltops between us and the sea and were swathed in more of the brilliantly green trees. Niknik pushed between us, eagerly lapping up the rushing water.

"We can follow this east, away from the sea, and then trace whatever river it feeds into further inland," Leotie said with a relieved sigh, nursing aching legs. "Finally, some luck in this cursedly overgrown place."

"Sounds alright to me," I painted, eagerly splashing some of the water onto my own face. "The Old Nobles probably own the coast as far as Gavic."

"No," Serina whispered, eyes blazing as she stared up towards the hilltops.

"No? To which part?" I blinked at her, exhausted and pained.

"No," she simply repeated, "we need to go up. Up there," she pointed at the green hills.

Leotie grunted, "Sweetie, no. No more climbing, and there's no reason to get closer to the ones chasing us. We've finally got a good way to get out of these hills."

"We have to go there," Serina's voice wasn't insistent or urgent, just level and calm. In other words, very unlike the emotional girl we knew.

"There's no point!" Leotie kicked a clod of dry clay into the stream, her voice wavering with exasperation, "We have to get somewhere we can make a decent camp, not some rock-choked hilltop!"

Serina just turned to look at me, "Kiravi, we need to go there. Please. Trust me."

I would've trusted Leotie's skill implicitly, no matter what land we found ourselves crossing, but there was an earnest need on Serina's face, "But, darling, why is it so important? Leotie's right; we need to go down, east, and north. Not up and west."

"Kiravi, my love, please. Trust me. There are...answers there." She stared at me, and I could see the magic swirling through her eyes. It went through every color I'd ever seen her use: red, orange-yellow, green, blue, and a dozen more, all in that single moment.

I sighed, relented after only a few moments under her pleading gaze, "I suppose spending a day heading up into the hills won't hurt? Leotie?"

The huntress scoffed angrily, "Answers? And you know it won't just be a day. We'll be stuck on that hill for a day, and then we'll just be headed back through here anyway. And for what? For what?" Leotie shook her head at us.

"I've promised you that I'd tell you what happened to me in Atala and Tebis." She pointed up at the hills, "The best way for me to do that is up there."

Leotie clenched her jaw, bunched her hands into tight fists, "Every day, we drift further from any sort of plan or sense of purpose. The one thing I can do for the three of us is find a good camp and keep us all warm and fed. I'm telling you right now, it's not up there."

Niknik chuffed and padded around behind Leotie's legs before forcefully pushing his head against her hand and leg. He snorted and looked up at his companion before starting upstream towards the hilltop.

"You too?" Leotie grumbled but closed her eyes and sighed in resignation. "I don't know why I expected anything different. Nothing the two of you have done has made sense since this whole mess started." She shrugged and flapped a hand at us. "Fine, go on, go. Before I think better of it. Go!"

Serina led the way now, faster and more nimble on the moss-slick rock than even Leotie had been. I struggled to keep up on my aching legs, and Leotie forced her way past me with an annoyed grumble. The air grew cooler, and not because of the thick canopy of bright leaves. I smelled the storm brewing at sea before I saw it in a gap in the trees and thought, perhaps, that there was a less esoteric benefit to seeking high ground on that night. By the begrudging acceptance on Leotie's face, I could tell she felt the same way.

It still took us until dusk to reach the stream's source, and the storm clouds were piling on top of one another over the coastal hills. I arrived an embarrassing amount of time after my lovers, wheezing and eager to soak my feet in some cool water. Leotie stood to one side, already tending a small fire and dragging their packs into the mouth of a small cave. Serina just stood at the edge of a surprisingly large pool, maybe 30 hands across and the same amount wide. Its waters spilled through the cracked sandstone to spill down the hill we'd just raced up.

The trees grew right up to the edge of the pool, their roots splitting the already broken rock even further. Rafts of bright green leaves drifted in the water, disturbed by the gentle flow of the spring seeping up into the pool. On three sides, the hilltop dropped away into rocks and scrub, but the northern edge held the large spur of sandstone with the shadowed mouth of the cave.

"She's just standing there!" Leotie called as soon as I climbed into sight. You may have been able to deduce this yourselves, dear readers, but her annoyance at the sudden change of plans hadn't dissipated.

Serina didn't respond, so I dropped my gear in the cave and took a blissfully long swig from a beerskin. Leotie'd placed the fire perfectly to fill the cave with heat but have the worst of the smoke curl back outside of it. Niknik, instead of curiously investigating the site or following his Master, stared just as intently at the waters as Serina did.

"Do you...feel anything?" I murmured to Leotie.

Before she could answer, Serina rushed into the pool.

Water splashed in every direction, disturbing the calm of the high glade. Leotie and I leaped forward, but the pool was deeper than it seemed, and Serina disappeared from sight. Our kit clattered to the lichen-covered rocks as we struggled out of it, and we leaped in the pool at nearly the same moment.

Fuck, but it was cold, even after a day of backbreaking climbing. My breeches and tattered shirt were sodden and leaden in an instant, but I managed to stroke out to the center of the pool in a few moments. The only sign of Serina was a trail of bubbles and ripple, so Leotie and I had to awkwardly dive into the gloom to search for her. I never was much of a swimmer, dear readers, but fearful need drove me deep into the frigid, clear water. The dark silhouette of Leotie moved beside me, twisting just as I did to search for our oracle.

There. A sudden flicker of light further down and a strange ripple in the water, and I saw Serina's glowing eyes staring up at us. We kicked down to her, hooking our arms under her armpits and desperately stroking upwards. By the gods! How had she gotten down there so far, and why did she feel so heavy?

Gasping, shivering, we broke the surface a few desperate moments later.

The skies had split open in the short moments we'd spent below the surface, and the fat raindrops lashed at our faces and churned the surface of the pool. Niknik paced back and forth uncomfortably, yowling his distress. The fire sputtered fitfully in the sudden deluge.

"Dammit girl, swim!" I spluttered, trying to haul her suddenly dense weight after me.

"Help me," she gasped, more excited than tired. "I found something. I found a god-stone. Help me with it."

"Well, whatever it is, at least kick your legs," Leotie snapped from the other side of her.

Barely, we made it to the rocky ledge surrounding the pool, hauling Serina back up to safety. Ever the lech, dear readers, I couldn't help but notice how her dress clung to every inch of her and was all but see-through. After hungrily taking in her curves, though, I saw the so-called god-stone she'd retrieved from the pool. It was small and angular, no bigger than Serina's head, but when I stooped to help her carry it into the cave, I could barely straighten up under its weight. How in the Akagi's hells had we managed to swim up with it?

We were too out of breath and too busy stoking the dying fire or collecting half-dry wood to ask Serina how she'd known the stone was there or why it was important. The storm raged worse, crashing into the hills and drenching the strange trees. The pool seethed as the rain slashed at it, and the stream churned violently down through the rocks.

"I suppose it's a good thing we came up here, isn't it, Leotie?" I asked finally when the blazing fire had made the spacious cave a bit more comfortable. Steam curled off of our sodden clothes, and we sat amongst our various furs, cloaks, and blankets. Serina wore just her traveling cloak, Leotie her bandeau and a thin breechcloth, and the only thing maintaining my thin shreds of modesty was an old hide stretched across my lap. Everything else was too wet.

Leotie just grunted her assent, and I suppose that was as much as we were going to get from her.

"What is it, Serina?" I asked after another long stretch of listening to the hissing rain. "What is a 'god-stone'?" Nothing. Nothing but the rain and crackling fire. "How did you know it was here?" I pushed.

"She showed me," Serina whispered, her eyes not leaving the black stone where it sat beside the fire, "My goddess."

"Goddess," Leotie muttered, but there was no conviction to her mumbled complaint. Instead, her eyes flicked nervously between stone and seeress.

"It's a piece," Serina whispered, still staring at it, "It's a piece of the dead god, the one that we all felt." She gingerly reached towards it, "And...and I can use it to show you." She looked, finally, at both of us. "I can show you everything."

I was too tired, too confused, too overwhelmed by weeks of flight and uncertainty to say anything else, "How?"

"For all of her arrogance, the priestess showed me that the god-stones can be used to show...things. I don't know how she did it, but I can try, can't I?" She smiled weakly, the rest of her face split between excitement and anxious trepidation.

"I don't know if that's the best idea, darling," I cooed to her, remembering how volatile her magic could be.

"I didn't know how to commune with the Kwarzi either," she said, her voice still low and level. "I'm going to try and speak to my goddess again, and I want you to be there with me." She looked over to Leotie, "And you too. We've shared so much. I want to show you everything I've seen. I need to. So," she put a hand on each of our thighs, "please. Help me. Be with me."

What could we say, dear readers, but yes? Our entire journey had been one insane gamble after another. Why stop now? We had nothing left to us in the world to risk but our lives.

Gingerly, she placed her hands on the dense stone that seemed to swallow every mote of the firelight. Magic throbbed in the cave, pulling at my conduit like a thumping headache after a night of too much drinking. The air rippled around her, shimmering without any exact color. Warily, I reached out and touched the stone as well, my fingers gently brushing against Serina's. Leotie sighed and resignedly covered the rest of the stone with her calloused hands.

"Ru-su-kur. Tutu-ubara. Eli sari shutu." Serina murmured, and I felt the magic pulse around us. Prickling heat ran up through my fingers, along my forearms. The air still rippled, but something wriggled in my mind, and I felt compelled to close my eyes.

"Sha naqba imuru," Leotie finished the chant for Serina.

"Sha naqba imuru," I added, our three voices blending together.

My conduit swirled, and I could only imagine that Leotie's was doing the same. We kept up the chant, the alien words rattling from us as if drawn out by something else. Serina's voice was loud, not in my ears but within my skull.

The air turned cold but tingled with promised lightning. Sudden heat bathed me, and sweat pricked all across my skin, but my blood was tacky winter ice in my veins. I tasted the coppery splash of blood in my mouth, but my tongue was swollen and parched with insane thirst.

Behind my tightly closed eyes, a swirled together fog from my mind and over-taxed conduit took some sort of coherent shape. I could feel Serina's hands shake with the effort and could sense the supreme but unfocused effort she put into this ritual. The magic tugged at me in every unreal way that it could.

I saw a tangled swirl of blue-black clouds riven with green lighting. A titanic clash between three shapes, with only one of them surviving the flood of magical fire. Voices shrieked and bellowed in my ears, speaking in sounds that couldn't possibly be words and that lanced pain through my skull. The things I saw I didn't and couldn't see with my eyes, but experienced deep in my conduit, forced there on a growing torrent of magic.

Fear flooded through me, seized my mind, and I tried to pull my hand from the stone in a fit of panic. My limbs were numb and useless, my hand was frozen in place; I was trapped in the spell. This was not how I understood or been taught magic; this was raw power, untempered by structure or discipline, the ken of the mages that came before we mortals rose from the tribes and bands of savage history.

The voices grew stronger, more precise, and more viscerally terrifying. Serina's voice started to cut through the cacophony of sound and sensation, but her words were muffled and blurred. Innumerable glowing figures swirled around us, hurling impossible blasts of power at churning not-shapes of void and darkness.

For a moment, I saw Serina amongst the chaos, lit from behind and within by blazing light that stung my eyes even though it wasn't real.

None of it made sense to me. My mind could almost resolve the images and feelings and sensations into a coherent narrative, but it was just beyond my ability. Instead, I felt the swirling ritual curl around my conduit, drawing my magic out, and there was nothing I could do but try and control its flow.

I could feel Leotie close by, and Serina too, their magic caressing my conduit like their warm breath when we all slept beside each other. We were all still trapped together, being pulled closer and tighter by her magic and the god-stone. My skin tingled with their touch, even though I knew none of us had moved since the ritual began.

The visions changed as our magic swirled in, and I froze with sudden panic.

Even as I panicked, my manhood throbbed insistently and grew to its full length in an instant. The vision was still muddled and unclear, but it was very obvious to me that the ritual now showed two figures locked in a passionate and tangled embrace. Leotie's and my moans and murmured words filled all of our ears. Our passion and lust filled all three of our minds. I wanted nothing more than to throw myself at both of my lovers in a fit of unbridled lust, but the ritual had to run its course. Nervous fear battled the blood-thundering desire inside me; Serina now knew I'd taken Leotie and made her mine.

I began to understand the ritual, at least a small part, even as lust and fear and then bloody rage filled me. The vision swirled and changed again, to the insane whirlwind of violence and hate when Leotie and I butchered the Old Nobles and their mob. Serina's magic was burrowing back through our time together, revealing her convoluted rituals in the Ettuku temple and more, swirling our emotions and memories together into a single torrent of raw experience.

We saw the muddled echo of the Ettuku ritual of lust and domination, felt Serina's uncontrollable and confusing ecstasy in reaction to it. I felt the barest glimmer of the meaning and intimate sharing the first time Serina helped Leotie commune with the Kwarzi. Leotie felt the impossible surge of magic that I'd shared with Serina that night beside the fire, and Serina and I felt the desperate lust and flickering ember of jealousy that had sent Leotie hurtling into her own climax.

Leotie experienced the otherworldly place Serina had transported us to in the Ketza. Both of my lovers felt the infinite, searing pain of Sata's magic ruining my arm. The ritual went back further and further, the strange magical narrative riven through with a slowly growing aura of golden light. Behind every blurred image in the vision, like a glowing shadow, I saw a statuesque, radiant woman wreathed in blinding fire.

Serina saw and felt Leotie and I angrily rutting in the dark alley, bodies smashing together as our anger and lust clashed. But, in the next insane moments, we saw Serina's impossible visit to a place that shouldn't exist. Her goddess burned herself into our vision, into our minds, perfect and glowing as she and Serina laid together as lovers. We relived her frantic vision as she flew from one strange world to another, ending at an all-swallowing sphere of pure void. My eyes fell on it, and I felt its oblivion inside of me.

We avoided annihilation, veering further back through the stormy currents of magic. Back. Back to my deflowering of Serina in the storm and her first -- or so I thought -- magical eruption. To the bloodbath at the springs. I saw more, Leotie screaming in the night as she swore her vengeance for a dead family. Her hate and emptiness bubbled inside me and Serina, and I felt fierce vindication in the way I'd slaughtered those bandits.