The yon-placed cavern detour routed Yaro farther south than she’d anticipated. Not so far as to make a nominal sink in time, but enough that she had to head more westward. She took a deep breath, it was better than if she’d gotten completely turned around. Any moments lost would mean her Atho could get further away, or worse.
She dreaded the month or so of travel crossing the borders of Driv, a Kexeli nation situated in the center of the long continent. She could guess the general trajectory, based on the sayk path and zuyk constellations, but she did have to land for food. When ground-bound, she spent that time productively and asked, politely, for directions. Every few days she had to land, for rest as well. It was mildly irritating, but so was living.
She refused to spend nights in the wild after the first. Upon exiting the underground, she thought she’d had both enough of civilized areas trying to kill her and how her time in the wild left her with, albeit fleeting, wealth. She had to learn the hard way, as always. A gorgon, of all creatures, snuck up on her while she slept. It was within striking range when her sixth sense noticed the hungry intent. She wrapped it in her flames and whirled it around before bashing into the ground, killing it instantly. It wasn’t the best meat she’d eaten, but it beat garbage or even ghrepul. It was tough, not in any kind of good way, and stringy.
Back to the relative safety of cities, she decided. There, if she didn’t wake up in time, she’d be more likely to be taken to a jail cell she could escape from again, or just be beaten half to death. People who lived in civilized areas were so soft, they might never kill something larger than a rat in their entire lives. Smaller towns that didn’t have intermediaries to defend them from the wild were tougher, they might actually end her quest before she found her Atho. They were also more likely to notice missing jerky.
And, the easier it was for anonymity -any place with a larger population- meant information would be easier to get. No one would ask her who she was if she asked for directions, unless that person knew everyone within six blocks because that’s the entire town. Therefore, on her trip, she would fly, land to steal some money and/or food, ask which direction Driv was, and sleep near the homeless. She thought to sleep near the nomadic encampments, but she thought better of it.
Her cloak became ratty, that was an unavoidable eventuality. She kept her mask as clean as she could, but stains claimed the edges and would not vacate their new home. The dirtier it got, the more anxious she was around people. If they saw through her charade, well, she didn’t want to think about that.
Two weeks later, she stole enough to buy a new, empty mask. As tradition, it was up to her family to paint her eye. She used natural pigmentation of berries and beetles to, as delicately as she could, form the eye; those berries and beetles that stained her hands and tongue were perfect.
Asking people to point was great for a while, but as she got closer she needed to be more granular. Some shops had brochures of maps, but most were of the immediate area and not helpful. And besides, those kinds of maps were slightly illegible to her. She could read them, maps weren’t difficult, but she never actually learned what all the symbols in the legend meant. She was plenty familiar with blueprints and how to read those –quite useful during a heist–, but geographical maps were less absolute in their angles. And, the maps that actually were helpful that had the grand scale of nations, it looked slightly different on cloth than from up in the clouds. That ridge should be over there, but what if the map was older and a landslide changed things. She didn’t have time to be sent the wrong way. She wanted maps to be an exact correlation to the world, not a memory. But, it was all she had.
The ruined City of Sornata became sparsely populated, desert took over the landscape. Towns became less frequent, just like sources of water. She crossed the border of Driv, the ruined city, a whisper of stumps on the green dusty landscape. Trees no longer grew, just shrubs and water-swelled plants. Days went by. Then periods. Then an entire season.
---
Finally, she saw it far in the distance, Miraul. It was as true what she'd heard: it was a backwater city with barely any water. Nearly everyone who she’d asked either didn’t know of the city –more people did the closer she got– or rebounded and asked her why she would go to such a nothing place. Her answer, always, was that it wasn’t any of their business before promptly walking the other direction. If you acted crazy, people tended to not want to look in your direction.
If it wasn’t for the speck of dense golden-foliage in an otherwise barren dust-green mesa, she might have flown over it. Lonely, the town slept on a not-tall-enough-to-be-a-mountain hill. It looked like a newborn cradling its mother’s teat, if you were that kind of creature. The town looked so tired, the closer she got, she might have thought it would slide down the mountain. It was a wonder other things hadn’t slid down on to it already, crushing it into another ruin.
Of all the things people said about the town, she got the impression that the spire at the top was the only thing of note, the only reason people knew of it at all. The holy building, something so special it deserved a name, Ascended Uhnwi stabbed the otherwise flat and creviced landscape; it was known to those uncaring of its religious significance as Uhnwi’s Needle. That religious significance, what the zealot had taught her: Uhnwi was said to have bestowed this small patch with fertility to help hide those who had escaped from Yon. With its babe-like imagery on the landscape and the flourishing plant-life with a tiny lake in the face of dry death made the analogy more boring. She almost hoped it could have been more subtle.
Yaro had never believed any of those religious stories of the Kanulu faith, nor in any god of any faith. What kind of demented god would allow a thing like her to exist in the first place? Okay, so Ah specifically would allow her to exist, its chaotic nature allowing far worse things on the other side of the world. Plenty of other faiths had deities of good, wanting to bring peace to a world unfit for it.
She’d been indoctrinated, brainwashed at a young age to follow blindly. It had been so thorough a cleansing by one of Natrai’s fellows that, even after she opened her eyes to the emptiness of everything, she still found herself believing. Maybe she didn’t exactly, it was more a coping mechanism for her mortal mind to comprehend such uncaringness.
Her family member, for all that term could and couldn't be applicable, recited orally passed stories every night. He didn’t read them to directly convert her, it was just a part of his life to share with the young. He’d get so enraptured by his own voice he’d go into a trance, spouting opinions, beliefs, stories, and manipulations all at once. It was because of this that others tended to ‘disperse’ when he got into things, Yaro the sacrificial witness to his zealotry. He didn’t even like her, probably morally conflicted with reading to her and trying to be as far from her as possible. He found a happy medium by implying she belonged in Yon and that her soul was evil from birth. She believed him for a while. Then, after the torrent left, she’d settle into reality. She’d often chuckle to herself. What kind of morally good person lived as a professional thief that routinely backstabbed the fellow tenants of Natrai’s little conglomerate?
Then she left; that was the easiest way of putting it. She was on her own, witness to the cruelties of the world that extended far beyond herself. Murder, filth, degeneracy, it was not exclusively bestowed upon her, though she had her fair share. The world was ugly and all those stories about soldiers waiting for the end times to fight for good just didn’t make sense; the army of Yon would be far larger.
Then she met her Atho. He too was religious, but not near to the extent she’d bared. And, in a way, he was like her. He too didn’t fully believe in what he spoke, but there was still part of himself that did. He believed in Ah, but not in all the hoopla of miracles and ghost armies. And to her, his mere existence kindled what little religious fervor she had inside herself. Yon’s armies might be large, but Tukk’s will be mighty. Then she learned more, and that fire became a smolder. Not just the Kanulu faith she’d been taught, but the Dreulbe faith she postured and all other faiths were just outright wrong. All the teachings couldn’t apply to the aspects of reality that were hidden to all. There was no Tukk nor Yon to return to once dead. The soul wasn’t what everyone thought it to be. Or maybe, everything was true. Her head spun, she still couldn’t fit the round peg in the closed hole.
She’d let her mind wander too much recently. There wasn’t anything else she could distract herself with while in the air. Now --that was enough random thoughts-- that she’d arrived, she descended from the thermals gently, giving the town plenty of breadth between it and herself. It wasn’t conducive to her safety to land close, luckily there was a road leading to --or was it from-- it. It was the only road she saw from above, tracks laid down for land vehicles. Tracks were outdated, she rarely saw them. Why have wheeled vehicles on a set path when beings like drake, muzoval, tsohtsi, and herself could fly? Laziness and comfort afforded to those wealthy enough to either pay for the service or own it. Heavy stones would make air travel stupid and there was no water for boats anywhere near. Better for her since land vehicles tended to make a ruckus, so she’d know if any were coming.
She wrapped herself in the robe and fastened the buttons that ran down the front slightly off center. She poked her horns through the holes at the top, then fastened the glorified blanket until she looked like a green tent. She didn’t like this cloak as much, it didn’t sport sleeves for any limbs. So she used her ethereal hand to take hold of the mask when it materialized from her holder. Probably for the best, the paint was still wet; things kept their state in the holder she had. This was a fancy addition that helped protect against the wearing of age but also made situations like this a hassle. She found it useful all the same.
From her view up high, she saw the tracks went right under Uhnwi’s Thimble at the top of the town. She guessed the market must be there, a tourist trap, perfect for cursory information on the town. And, if this Egra was as good as the sight-broker said she was, she should be famous enough for the townspeople to know her by name.
She took her time walking up to the town.
People flocked en masse to the holy site, buzzing about like many little gnats around a carcass. The din of the place was typical, a confidant of idiocy. She entered the mouth of a cave above ground, the sudden increase in moisture and pressure hurt her ears. She didn’t know why anyone would want to make a cave if they didn't need to. Buildings were already cave-like enough, they didn’t need to place it on top of the street.
The entrance to the church, ostentatious doors all along one side of the street with stained glass and metal embarrassments of ruby and citrus had dozens of people leaving and entering. She wondered if they could ever close. Holding up the tower were pillars of grey-green stone, just like everything else. These pillars were imported and crafted, a needless thing when they could have just carved out of the mountainside. The opposite side was the market, windows into vendors and tunnels to streets.
They must hate the sayk here; It must be because of this predominantly Humi-inhabited town. The drake surely wouldn’t mind. They were the ones who probably begged for the roofing of the streets, largely porous stone that let in a little amount of natural light.
She decided the best place would be the most likely to allow tourists, the needle itself. She waited for an opening, then dashed through the door. The other side was cool, she hadn’t realized how much she’d been sweating until it became her bitter-cold enemy. Like every religious site, the main area was open, full of chairs to observe rituals, and iconography of Tukk’s soldiers everywhere. Some even had names.
She passed by people, trying to find a towns-person dedicated to welcoming visitors. There were a lot more outsiders than she expected, people who looked around like they’d never seen the place. She ducked away from a small caravan of Drulbe nomads. She couldn’t bother people who stopped with closed eyes. She passed a larger-than-average wyvern with strings falling out of their backpack.
She paused. Did she know him? His aura, almost lost in the haze of people, was achingly familiar. She looked at his face, he wouldn’t notice her staring from behind a mask. It was clear they’d never met. Maybe he’d be one of the many she’d robbed in her life, travelers the easiest since they didn’t have a rapport with anyone near who could help. Also, travelers tended to be more likely to keep money on them, in preparation for whatever expenses they hadn’t foreseen. That was probably it. A traveler.
After asking a humi who handed out pamphlets about the glories of fighting for Tukk, she made her way down the slope of a town. From busy streets down towards the farmland by the lake. She asked along the way, annoyed that no one seemed to know who she was talking about. Some of them seemed genuinely puzzled. Those who were rude would later find they were missing some fuur.
Further down town she flowed, from crisply dressed to the ratty to the underdressed. People thought clothes were a sign of status and it would be better to have a torn cape than none at all. It made sense, for the working class, non-protective clothes got in the way and were just dangerous at times. She breathed a sigh of relief when she asked a young urchin with just a dirty hat. He told her the twins would know where she is, they were probably down by the lake swimming, like usual. Yaro thanked him and gave him a glint of Fuur.
The town went from rocky and rich to wet and worn in a hurry. Houses became overgrown with grasses and vines, losing the fight for stability. Distance between homes became wider, gardens of edibles being the buffers. There was no way, even if all these people farmed, they grew enough for the entire town.
By the river, almost hidden in reeds, sat a small drake child, no bigger than her head. If it weren’t so brightly colored in blue, it might have blended in with the golden grass easier. Since there was no else around the designated area, she assumed this was her quarry. She asked, “I was told I could find the twins here.”
“You can, but Sister isn’t here right now,” the young one chirped, “what do you want, old man?”
Yaro kept her distance, “might you know where Egra lives?”
“Old Lady Egra?” The way they phrased it, perking up and stepping closer made Yaro feel like they were talking about their grandmother. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
Yaro sighed. At least children were easy to incentivise. She took out a plume of about three fuur with her ethereal hand, holding it a little distance in front of her. Maybe it’s the young one’s father’s money, she mused.
“Oh, that Old Lady Egra,” they said, jumping and biting the Fuur. Children were so filthy, not that she was one for talking. Egra lived in a cottage down by the river. “To get there, follow the lake and make a left at Dauny’s place, that’s the one with the red roof. Keep going until you get to the eye-rock, then follow the path into the glade and that’s where she lives.” The directions held an almost fairy-tale-like quality in the way the child described it. They ended their tale with a warning, “do anything to Old Lady Egra and you’ll regret it.”
That was painless enough, she bowed and turned to follow the lakeside. The trip proved far less fairy-tale and more grimy reality with more hot and much more muck to it when she made it to the glade herself; a glade which was more of a fen.
Her cottage was nothing special, a bored out tree with a door. If she weren’t looking for it, she might have missed it. The only signs someone actually inhabited it was a tiny window dim with light.
She didn’t move forward. Something about the aura of the place unsettled her. Or, maybe it was trepidation about learning the fate of her Atho? The previous broker couldn’t help whatsoever, so why would she think this one could? There was still something, deep in the recess of her mind: a question that she didn’t want so much as to touch the tip of her tongue. If she learned the fate of her Atho, one of those outcomes she might not be able to bear. She pushed it back down, she needed to find him.
She stepped towards the cottage, her feet squelching in the grassy mud.
