Kiravi's Travelogue Ch. 10

Sorry everyone for the long delay. Characters and events that were supposed to be brief and relatively unimportant demand their own chapters and arcs, and we must oblige them for the sake of completeness! Real life has also been an absolute roller coaster, but we appreciate all of the interest thus far.

Please enjoy the beginning of the third act of this first large arc!

Leotie

For the second morning in a row, I greeted the sun somehow more exhausted than I'd been at sunset. This time, though, it wasn't because of wariness or distrust, but from an anguish-filled night watching over Serina as she whimpered and mumbled. Her episode had only lasted a few minutes, horrifying moments of restraining a thrashing girl as screams and raw magic tore their way out of her, but afterward, she remained in pain and catatonic. Kiravi and I had tended to her as best we could, always keeping one eye cast on the shadowed gloom around us.

She finally composed herself enough to sit up and speak just after sunrise. Supported on both sides by the two of us, she took a trembling sip of tepid beer before speaking, "I...saw him again. Just like in Fosuyu. Just like in Tebis."

"Saw who? Who is he? What does he want?" I growled, not at her but in a sudden surge of protective anger that took even me by surprise.

"It's...I don't...he's following us. I know that much. Or maybe he's just traveling the same direction as us? I don't... I don't... she panted, tears gathering and spilling from her eyes.

"Shhh," Kiravi wrapped her up tightly in his burly arms, "it's alright. It's alright," He looked at me over top of her head, the downturned corners of his mouth and his narrowed eyes telling me that it was anything but alright.

Whoever this 'he' was, I found myself wanting to throw myself into the wilderness to cut him to pieces. But I couldn't, not even if I'd slept in the last three days, so I held my tongue.

"Let me splash some water on my face," Serina whispered, unsteadily getting to her feet and petting Kiravi's arm with her slender hand, "it's okay, I can do it."

We watched her amble towards the small stream and through the unevenly spaced trees. "What in the Akagi's hells is going on?" I hissed.

Kiravi slowly shook his head, "I've never seen or felt magic like that before I met her. Never. She's connected to it somehow, but I don't know any more about her abilities than you do."

"She says she saw him in Tebis and that he was looking for something that wasn't her," I grumbled, swigging some beer before heaving the skin to Kiravi.

"We don't have anything valuable enough for someone to chase us all the way across Anghoret," a strange cloud crossed his face, and his eyes grew vacant. "Only her. And he doesn't want her. So, he must just be traveling in the same direction as us. So, what do we do?" He pinched his nose and groaned.

"We go to ground," I said with a sigh, "If he's traveling north, he'll probably go downriver and then follow the coast."

"So we climb. Again." The tired, pained look on his face reflected precisely what I felt.

I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of showing it, of course, "Yes," I muttered, my legs already seeming to ache. But then something else slithered into my mind.

South. See south. Fire.

Confused, my head whipped to the way we'd come, where Niknik's eyes already gazed. Unfortunately, the foliage shrouded my view, and all I could see was a smear of cloud. "What is it?" Kiravi said.

I stood up, limping towards the edge of the clearing to try and find a better sightline. Weaving between green-trunks, I finally clambered stop a moss-slick rock and peered through a narrow gap in the too-bright leaves. "Niknik, I don't understand. I don't see--"

But then I did, and I realized I wasn't looking at a smear of low clouds at all.

The ridgeline we'd just left was burning and had been for some time. Kiravi padded up beside me, his breath hitching when he noticed the same thing. "The tower..."

He was right. The bare patch that had held the tower was the center of the smoldering blaze, the structure itself a blackened pile of debris. Flames had stretched halfway down the face of the ridge, leaving twisted and blackened shrubs in its wake, but it seemed most of the blaze had spread down the southern slopes where the vegetation had grown thicker. Grayish haze shrouded the entire ridge, and a column of smoke twisted towards the sea until it was shredded by the wind coming off of the mountains.

"Do you think...it was him?" I murmured, clutching my atlatl.

"I don't know," Kiravi said, "going to ground sounds like a great idea."

We heard Serina of up behind us, "That was him. I could feel it...while it was happening." She shuddered and nearly collapsed, but Kiravi held her up, "I could feel him."

I hopped back down, crouching slightly in front of her, "What did you feel? Is he coming after us?"

She swallowed, shutting her eyes. "Just hate. That's all I felt. Hate," she took a deep breath and gently pulled away from Kiravi. "I don't think he's following us, but I still think we should listen to Leotie."

He worked his jaw back and forth, muscles pulsing in his temples, "Well, for once, we're all in agreement. We should go, then. Now."

***

We trekked north and east as fast as we could -- which, with Serina nursing headaches and an aching conduit, wasn't -- constantly looking over our shoulders at the sun-dappled low-lands. We marched from the moment the pre-dawn gloom let us see our feet until the darkness swallowed the Gavican wilderness, and we were forced to huddle amongst the ever-larger trees. Our flight and the endlessly repeating cycle of finding new paths, new food, and new campsites numbed my mind and body.

On the third day of flight, my attitude drew closer to Kiravi's glowering words from the last days in Anghoret. We always seemed to be running somewhere, ever since the Ketza, and the gnawing fatigue and anxiety was beginning to erode the glow of acceptance and happiness I'd felt since Tebis. Instead of despairing, I only wanted to turn and face this mysterious force and punch a dart through his heart.

But what could we do against a power that could level a building and set the world on fire?

On the fourth night, that question faded from our minds when faint thunder echoed across the slopes, and hollow purple light flared on a distant ridge. Serina, apparently, had been right, and our pursuer was not chasing us but instead merely traveling in the same general direction. Some other doomed guard post felt his wrath instead of us, and our bodies slumped with palpable relief. Even then, as we watched the purple flames transition and grow into a more mundane blaze, I heard Serina muttering a prayer under her breath. It was some simple platitude to the gods and Kwarzi, to look after and guide those recently dead, and a brief pang of shame cut through me at feeling such relief while others died.

As it came to be, ugh, 'dearest readers,' our relief was temporary and misplaced, and our shame was only to be compounded.

Still, we woke with something resembling expectant enthusiasm and set off again at a more sedate pace. The Kwarzi whispered to me in their foreign and cryptic phrases, and were fewer and more skittish than I was used to, but I understood them well enough to bring us onto a half-overgrown track in a high draw. It was too large to be the trail for any game I knew of, but if Men or any other mortals had used it, they'd been absent for months at best.

"What do you think, Leotie?" Kiravi panted, easing his pack off with a clink of bronze and leaning against a green-trunk.

"If some band hunts these hills, they haven't for a season at least," I picked through some of the brush tangled along the track, which had curiously shed most of its leaves in the crisp, winter air.

Serina peered up-trail, to the southeast where the draw arced towards the hills crowded at the foot of Yavlon, "Do we have to keep running up and away?" She muttered, running her hands along the trunk of a pine tree taller and more gnarled than anything I'd seen in Anghoret. She was turning one of the god-stone shards over and over in her hand, something I'd noticed her doing ever since this latest phase of our flight had begun.

Kiravi shook his head but glanced sidelong at me while he spoke, "He was at least two, maybe three valleys west of here, wasn't he?" I nodded, and he continued, "So, can't we head back down-slope and find a nice spot to finish out the winter?" His voice was level, cautious even, but his eyebrows went up with a hopeful arch.

I fought back an equally hopeful smile, excited to finally be able to rest and explore our new home: both my lovers and the land we stood in. "I suppose we can. If he's gone, he's gone."

"There's so much more I think I can learn from these god-stones," Serina said, her voice still low and soft, "You've seen the goddess now. She's out there, and these can help me reach her."

"So, what do you need?" Kiravi asked, taking in the lush growth around the trail before turning to her.

She smiled brilliantly, eyes flashing greenish for a moment. My heart quickened, despite myself, "Somewhere to try more rituals, somewhere to rest in between them. You know they can exhaust me."

"Us, too," Kiravi chuckled.

She smirked at him, "Not all the things I want to try involve...that."

I felt heat start to rise in my face even as I watched her blush, "So, we need a home. For the time being, anyway."

Kiravi chuckled again, "Again, somehow we all seem to agree."

"Truly an auspicious day," I scoffed at him good-naturedly and shoved him. He pushed back on my shoulder, sending me spinning away.

For all the teasing and ribbing and the aching fatigue that filled all of us, we truly felt as if some weighted shroud covering us had been lifted. We continued northwest and downhill, following the winding track through the twisting draw. For the first time -- because we weren't climbing and fleeing for our lives, I suppose -- I noticed the sharp chill in the high and thin air. It wasn't as cold as midnight in the highlands of Anghoret's deserts, perhaps being more comparable to that brief time right around sunrise when the desert swung from frigid cold to blistering heat.

Serina shivered worse than I did and paused long enough to pull on her tattered dress and for me to don the cotton shirt Kiravi had bought and my battered leather breeches. If I hadn't stopped to dress and brush a few strands of hair from my eyes just after, I wouldn't have noticed the strange shape at the track's edge. Thick scrub and wind-blown leaves blurred its edges, but it didn't seem natural at all.

I padded forward slowly, prodding whatever it was with a dart tip. It was hard and unyielding and, most importantly, didn't lunge at me when I approached. The others noticed it and walked over to help me clear away the worst of the brush. A nearly man-sized totem resolved from the thicket, constructed from carefully carved wooden boughs lashed together by dry vines and sinew.

"What is it?" Kiravi muttered, and I struggled to come up with an answer. It was clearly meant to represent some mortal being, but the features were unfamiliar.

"It's an Archian," Serina whispered, "the priest in Atala was one. The only one I've ever seen."

A flash of memory, imprinted onto us during the ritual, crossed my mind in a swirl of golden eyes and dark quills. Even at the edge of the Eastern Wastes where I'd grown up, I'd never seen a single one of their number.

"Odd," Kiravi muttered and picked at the sinews holding it together. "I thought they were all sent east."

"Who knows who or what lives here," I added, and a flush of anxious excitement flared through me. We'd find somewhere to settle, to give Serina time to hunt down her answers and let the forces threatening Kiravi dissipate and forget all about him, and that would give me time to learn this place and prove myself against its challenges. If Archians or their cousins lurked somewhere in these lush woods, so be it.

Serina clambered towards it and felt across its face, fingers testing its vacant and hollow eye sockets and the widely spread mouth. "I feel something. I don't know...Leotie?" She turned to me, blue flecks swirling through the red-orange of her eyes. "Can you speak to the Kwarzi?"

I nodded, frowning slightly at not thinking of it myself. Still, I focused my conduit on the swirling energy around me, feeling the flickering Kwarzi and shutting out any other distraction. Niknik curled around my ankles, focusing instead of distracting me.

Bones-in-Water was still there, somehow, but so were a handful of others. They twisted and swirled around the strange totem, some of them unfurling from inside the wood itself and stretching their nonexistent limbs. Obviously, they were drawn to it, and a faint aura of their magic suffused the wood.

Why are you here? I whispered to them through my conduit.

One paused its constant swirling, but the others shied away, retreating or slithering into the loamy ground. The Kroyu honor us here. One of them said.

My brow furrowed. Who are the Kroyu?

They shuddered and clung to the totem while the one speaking swirled close to me. We share...land with Kroyu. At times.

I focused, feeding them a tiny morsel of energy from my conduit. Where are they? When were they last here?

They shuddered again, and I felt an emotion was nothing so much as an incorporeal shrug. Away. Up and away. For the cold times. Maybe back with spring.

My shoulders relaxed, and a knot of anxiety left my guts. Thank you, grandmothers and grandfathers. I honor you and remember you. More energy trickled out of me, and the Kwarzi danced and twirled. Their happiness and surprise flooded back into me through our tenuous bond. Apparently, they never expected to be honored this time of the year and welcomed my gift with child-like glee.

I blinked and swayed back. Blue notes of energy winked out of existence all around me. My lovers watched me: Serina with a loving and proud smile and Kiravi with a curious look at odds with his brutish form and scarred face.

"What?"

"I saw all of it," Serina said, "The tribe that made this is gone, yes?"

"Gone? For good?" Kiravi said hopefully.

"No," I shook my head, still slightly lightheaded from my communion. "They may be back in the spring, but they might not."

Kiravi scowled, "May be back? Are they hostile?"

I scowled right back, of course, "This is a tribe we're talking about, Kiravi, not pampered city-folk like you. They have to go where the land will provide for them. And no, they didn't tell me if they were hostile."

"We were fine with the Bhakhuri on the Seleyo," Serina said, "I'm sure, if we meet them, that it will be alright," She looked at both of us, as innocent and serene as ever, "Yes?"

We nodded our agreement, focusing on the present instead of an uncertain future. "So we move down the track?" Kiravi asked.

"Yes," I grunted, hefting my pack again and scratching Niknik's ears. And so, 'dearest readers,' off we went, leisurely making our way down the brush-free track. Something approaching hope and excitement infected my steps, thinking about the home we could make there, even as I scanned trees and shrubs for plump game to take for our dinner.

As it was, my excitement was to be wholly founded, but should have been tempered with gnawing suspicion and worry.

***

Kiravi

A strange mood gripped our merry little band, dear readers, from the moment we realized our pursuer was not actually our pursuer. Leotie led us to some markers of the actual Gavican tribes that inhabited the lush hills, and Serina had thrown off the last of the strange maladies she'd experienced during the attack. In short, we were as relaxed and content as we'd been since, perhaps, that last night in the Ketza with Kapak.

We followed that track for another entire day, camping just off the route itself and stuffing ourselves with squirrels, junco birds, and more of Serina's ubiquitous potato cakes. My fiery, auburn-haired warrior woman had amazed me at the totem, by leading us this far, and by quickly bagging our dinner, and I realized just how right she'd been only a few days before that. I had no idea how to do any of the things she did, and I knew she was the one keeping us alive on this frantic journey.

In a moment of warm and well-fed weakness, dear readers, I told Leotie those feelings and was rewarded with a tackling embrace and a torrent of desperate kisses from my huntress. Of course, you know me quite well by this point and shouldn't be surprised when I tell you that those urgent kisses quickly turned into shed clothes and naked, sweating bodies. Serina just watched the two of us frantically enjoying each other for a few minutes before Leotie roughly but playfully dragged her into our tangle of warm and searching limbs. I curiously and happily noted how Leotie overpowered Serina and took control, even as I pinned the huntress down and rutted her with reckless abandon. Of course, by then, all of us were used to Serina's lust-driven bursts of magic, and we just let it wash over us as we panted and grunted our way to each release. I filled Serina with my seed that night, soothing Leotie's faintly pouting look by licking her to an extra orgasm.

Another day passed in calm, sun-dappled ease. More of the totems dotted the sides of the track, growing in number as we descended along the twisting draw. A trickle of a stream joined the path from the northeast, and Leotie told us that the stream would be a raging torrent come spring, based on the smooth rocks piled high along the banks. Game remained plentiful, with Niknik even taking a small deer and dragging it back into our midst with what I swore was a blood-soaked grin.

We encamped earlier so Leotie and Serina could process the beast into the night's meal and dozens of strips of pemmican. I tried to help, but apparently, my cuts were too wide or too thick, and Leotie banished me to fetching water with a few slaps and lighthearted jibes. Fragrant smoke and rich steam swirled around our small camp, and I stoked a second fire into a fierce blaze to keep away ant predators: all under Leotie's guidance, of course.

By the time I'd finished, sweating and blinking smoke from my eyes, I returned to our awning to find Leotie pinning Serina down and eagerly pulling her dress down around her waist. Serina mewled with surprise and happiness, writhing with barely contained lust. Bemused and surprised, I watched while casually undressing, and I settled down beside them. There was no reason for me to hurry, and I lazily stroked myself as Leotie used her eager tongue to bring the young seeress to her first release. They hungrily swapped places, completely forgetting about me in their tangle of beautiful and feminine bodies. My huntress screamed her release before she finally looked at me with half-lidded eyes. No words passed between us, but I knew to slide behind Serina and smash myself into her while her face remained pressed against Leotie's wetness. I took both of them that way, from behind while they pleased our other lover, until I made Leotie's night by feeding her my magic-infused seed.

The following day we found something that, although we had no way of knowing it at the time, was going to change the rest of our tumultuous lives.

Around noontide, the track and the stream it followed turned sharply to the west. Fire had burned through the area a few seasons before, clearing out much of the brush but merely scorching the trunks of the towering pines and oak trees all around the track. With long, clear sightlines, we saw the village long before we reached it.