Imprudent: Chapter 19: Wonders

Since it is such a normal part of life, most people do not question where this Rising Breath comes from, and in truth, I do not believe that anyone knows. But it is different than normal Breath in several telling ways that makes me believe that it comes from outside ourselves. The color, first and foremost: its greenish-yellow hue is different than the typical blue-white. Also, the fact that we feel no pain or exertion upon Breathing it out, unlike normal Breath, which always comes with a cost to our souls in the form of pain and discomfort.

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Oksyna Mykyetyav

Leaning on the side of the Lynx’s frame with one elbow braced on the wooden plank, Oksyna watched the endless white fields pass by. While this method of travel was certainly efficient, the sheer plainness of snow, snow, ice, and oh, more snow left something to be desired.

At the same time, there wasn’t much that she could do. Her reserves of Entropy were effectively empty at the moment. While she had a regular dribble—from the food she ate, she believed, based on the timing it came with—it was nowhere near enough to replenish her supply. And while there were some things she could do, her options were limited, unless she wanted to examine the precise wording of Fia’s Death Curse without her consent.

She eyed the tall pirate-turned-noblewoman as Fia stood by the mast; with the Lynx as packed as it was, they didn’t have a place for her to sit, so Fia had chosen to stand at her usual post. Thankfully her Curse rendered her effectively immune to muscle aches from standing too long. That Fia had the sort of build that made Oksyna think of wrestling matches, milkmaids, and cheerful displays of effortless strength was without question, but she was also feminine in a way that had Oksyna taking appreciative notes. Her hair was finely braided in the Kalltii style that Oksyna found beautiful, and she wore her dresses and skirts with an air of elegance, even though apparently they routinely faced mishaps and outright destruction in fights.

To be honest with herself, Oksyna was looking forward to seeing her in combat at some point. Raavi had told her of Fia’s entry into his town, and Oksyna found herself picturing it with some degree of enjoyment, despite the loss of the Gehtun oathwalkers in that skirmish. Hopefully whatever future conflict they ended up in would not have the moral quandaries of two innocent groups being forced to fight. Indeed, since they were on their way to the Dormelion Empire, it felt likely that she would get her wish in that regard.

“Deathspeaker, a question I have?”

Jolted out of her reverie, Oksyna turned to see Illgina looking at her with her head tilted curiously.

“Yes? What is it?”

Illgina shrugged. “A small question I have. For your hair, is the…” she snapped her fingers as her face scrunched up in thought, “the… beyazi… beyazi… yes, white from your bond?”

Oksyna’s sympathy for the bilingual difficulties of trying to remember the right word dampened her own flash of irritation at the question. “Yes. And everyone asks that question.” She glanced towards Raavi at the prow. Almost everyone, anyway. “It’s been like this since I made the bond.”

With a nod, Illgina made a considering hmm sound before continuing. “Young you are for such a bond having. From your parent inherit?”

Even knowing that the question was coming—it was one of the usual ones that people asked—Oksyna felt her throat tighten, and she shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh. Just wondering I was. Deathspeakers we have not, and the Death Lord calling many sacrifices we needed.”

Taking a deep breath, Oksyna considered her reply, but before she could say anything, Raavi spoke up. “Wait, sacrifices? Of what?”

“People not, worry not!” Illgina blurted. “Some blood from people yes, but not killing people for that we did not. Animals for that calling we did.”

Oksyna took a deep breath as the others digested that; Raavi looked shocked, in particular. “So you need to sacrifice living things to call one of those Death Lords?” he asked.

“What, did you think they’d come if you asked nicely?” Oksyna replied. “They rule over death. You call them with death.”

In the back of her mind, she saw that moment… torn and broken bodies everywhere, scattered about like the aftermath of a brutal child playing…

She swallowed and pushed the memory away before continuing. “They’re actually quite easy to summon, if you know what you’re doing. And that one back in the tower was one of the lower-ranked ones, and thus easier to call.”

Raavi considered that; even with most of his face obscured by a scarf and goggles, his eyebrows were impressively expressive, and she could practically hear the gears turning in his mind. “Where are they called from?”

“The realm of the dead,” Illgina said. “The place where souls go.” She shrugged. “The place it is where my ancestor journeyed, to petition for the scroll to have made, all of those centuries ago.”

“So how do you get there?” Raavi asked.

Zoy, her voice deadpan, commented from her seat at the back, “Obviously the easy way is to die.”

Yufemya snorted and replied, “I think Raavi was looking for a less… one-way option.”

“Just a bit, yeah,” Raavi replied. “Although, on the other hand… it’s not like I want to meet more of… whatever they are.” He shivered. “That…” He trailed off, and shrugged helplessly.

“I sympathize,” Oksyna said, and shook her head.

“I thought you worked for those things?” Raavi asked.

“Just because I work for them doesn’t mean they don’t scare me,” she said. “And I still can’t believe that you just went and did that, much less that you survived.”

“Uhhh…”

“If you’d stepped just a little bit over that line on the floor, or said the wrong thing to it… it would have killed you.” She shrugged helplessly. “Not because it would have necessarily wanted to kill you, but because that’s what they do. I and other necromancers work for them because they want to minimize the amount of damage that they do to the living, while at the same time cleaning up errors of mortality.”

There was a pause, and Yufemya said, in a choked voice, “That’s… that’s a turn of phrase and framing for revenants that I’ve never really considered before. ‘Errors of mortality’ for unkillable soldiers?”

With a sigh, Oksyna said, “Nightshade… I don’t know what her situation was, but I know that my contract doesn’t allow me to do the sorts of things that she did.”

Illgina cocked her head and squinted with curiosity. “Who?”

Everyone looked at her in surprise before Zoy barked a laugh. “Of course she doesn’t know! Why would she?”

“Well, she speaks our language…” Raavi said, only to trail off as Illgina shrugged.

“Your tongue I learned in order to read the texts for me my father in trade acquired.” Another shrug. “Mostly natural sciences and philosophy texts they were.”

“Quite the doting father,” Stylio observed. “Those could not have been easy to acquire, or cheap.”

“Very much me, my siblings, and my mother he loves,” Illgina confirmed. “But off topic getting we are. Who ‘Nightshade’ is?”

“‘Was’ is the more operative term,” Stylio said with an acknowledging nod. “She was a necromancer about five hundred years ago who managed to gain control over the Dormelion Empire, installing herself as Empress. She was a tyrant and ruled with an iron fist for nearly a century.” She gave a nod towards Raavi and then Oksyna. “When there was finally a revolt against her that managed to succeed, many of the provinces took advantage of the subsequent… confusion—”

“Fun way of describing ‘musical backstabbing over the throne,’” Yufemya said in a carrying whisper.

“—and rebelled as well, gaining their independence from the central imperial government,” Stylio said, barely missing a beat with Yufemya’s interjection. “Since then, she has become almost less of a historical figure and more of a bampooulaas.”

“A what?”

“A boemann,” Raavi supplied. “You know, those mythical monsters who you scare children with so they’ll eat their vegetables and behave?”

Oksyna had to grin as a light of understanding visibly blossomed in Illgina’s expression. “Oh! An Öcüo! Yes, I now understand.”

Stylio gave an amused sigh before patting Oksyna on the arm. “Historical digressions and cross-cultural comparisons aside, it will be an issue for us if Oksyna’s nature as a necromancer is discovered inside of the Empire. For obvious reasons, we Dormeli have longstanding issues with such people.”

“You don’t,” Oksyna pointed out.

“You didn’t know me twenty years ago,” Stylio said, even as she gave a nod. “I, and Zoy here, are general exceptions. Yufemya as well, presumably, as she hasn’t attempted to shoot Oksyna with an arrow in the back.”

Frowning, but not having a response to that, Oksyna leaned back in her seat, folding her arms as she did so. “Well, I still want to come along and help. I can be backup.”

“You can still stay here and help with the oath-walkers,” Fia offered.

“And do what, exactly? Their oaths aren’t the issue; they’re doing their best within their existing oath framework. And without another oath-gem handy, I can’t exactly sustain them out of my own resources.” She sighed. “So I appreciate the offer, but I’m coming along to help as much as I can.”

“You’re certain? This might end with you getting ripped apart by an angry and terrified mob,” Fia commented.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“I say that we can always use a hidden helper,” Yufemya commented from her seat. “And with all of the fearmongering and legends around necromancers back in the Empire, most people won’t actually know what she can do.”

Fia nodded. “Fair point. But keep it under wraps until and unless I tell you to take the gloves off.”

“Mixed metaphors aside, I think I can deal with that,” Oksyna said, and relaxed. She wasn’t going to be left alone again.

She wasn’t.

#

Lord Faalk ava Geroold of House Rechneesse

“Here you go, Chief,” Driies puffed as he carried in the stack of books with an awkward waddle; the stack was tall enough that the man had them tucked under his chin, with his arms at full extension to hold the stack from the bottom. “Those books you wanted. They just arrived with the mail.”

“Thanks. Put them over there,” Faalk said with an absent-minded wave towards the existing stack on the table. He’d barely looked up from the current text he was examining when the pirate came in; it was a travelogue from sixty-some years earlier written by an Endanchorian merchant, and it had a chapter on the Gehtun.

“Got it.” There was a soft thud a moment later, and Driies, sounding much less strained, asked, “Find anything handy, Chief?”

“I’m not sure,” Faalk said absently. “This entire series of attacks came out of nowhere.”

“Well, technically, they came out of the west, over the mountains,” Driies said innocently. Peering up from his text, Faalk gave Driies a flat look, making him snicker. “Nah, I get you, Chief. Why’d they start attacking all of a sudden?”

“That is the question on everyone’s minds… at least, those who aren’t thinking of some glorious victory on the battlefield, like my brother, and just see a bunch of straw-stuffed targets to practice their gunnery on.”

“So… you and… two other people? Three, tops?” Faalk gave him another flat look, adding a cocked eyebrow this time, which made Driies cackle. “Maybe four?”

Faalk sighed and rubbed at his eyes.

“Half a dozen, that’s my final offer!”

“As droll as your comments are,” Faalk said as he massaged his eyelids and temples with his fingers, “you’re not wrong. Most of the people in any position of authority seem to hear ‘grassland nomads’ and instantly assume that this will be a short, victorious war.” From what he’d been seeing, a number of the senior officers of the army were already imagining the ribbons and medals they’d earn in the coming conflict. There was still more than a month of winter to come, and the jockeying for command was already in high gear—accelerated by the sudden increase of communication speed brought on by the new iceboat mail.

“But not you?”

“I don’t know. I do know that Fia is out there, trying to make peace with them. So I’m digging up what I can.”

Driies cocked his head. “And that’ll help the Captain how?” He patted the pile of books he’d just brought in. “While all of this stuff is probably useful… I guess… even if you did find something, how would you get it to the Captain?”

Faalk slumped in his chair and let his head sag. “I don’t know,” he muttered into his chest. “I just feel like I need to do something. And I’m not a warrior, or anything martial. I’m a scholar and a noble. So this is what I can do.” He patted the notebooks he’d been steadily filling with tidbits of information, sorted according to topic. “I just wish that I felt like I was doing more than collating gossip from a bunch of long-dead merchants and intrepid explorers come to gawk and tell tales.”

Driies exhaled. “I got you, Chief. And I feel you on feeling useless. When the Captain disappeared… when they ambushed her and all that… yeah. We were all feeling that. And we want to get even.”

“Is that why Captain Joorgen has disappeared?” Faalk inquired. “Has he met with some accident in a corridor somewhere?”

With a negative shake of his head, Driies said, “No. He took one of these new iceboats out about a hundred hours ago. Something about preparing for the war.” He shrugged. “We didn’t do anything because we figured that having him gone would make our lives easier.”

Faalk blinked and swore. “He’s going after Fia—on my father’s orders, I’ll bet. Probably going to try to ambush her again.” He looked at Driies. “More of Fia’s crew is in the city overwintering, right? How do you think they’d feel about waking up early and stealing an iceboat?”

#

Raavi ava Laargan

“Pfennig for your thoughts?”

I looked up to see Oksyna standing over me, her arms crossed. I sighed and extended out the blanket over more of the stone ledge; she took my wordless invitation and sat down next to me. With our feet dangling over the edge, we looked down over the sweeping forests of my homeland below us. In the near distance, visible under the glow from the Night-Light, stood the silent tomb of the border fort, now empty of life and light.

“I’m just trying to figure out why.”

“Yeah. Like Stylio said, it doesn’t make sense for the Empire to try something like this—for conquest at least.”

“Exactly!” I motioned in the air. “Between the Empire and here, there are, what, three kingdoms?”

She grunted. “Depending on the route they take, and what you consider a ‘kingdom’. But I see your point. They’re not trying to invade. There’s a thousand-plus miles and three-ish other nations in the way. So what are they doing?”

I sighed and leaned against her. “I haven’t got a clue. The only thing I can really say is that it feels like an invasion—because the Gehtun will pull all of our troops to the north, and that would leave the south undefended, right?”

“Relatively, yeah,” she said. “But, again…”

“Those other kingdoms might have something to say about an army coming through their lands, even with the canals.”

“Exactly. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“But they’re still doing it!”

She sighed. “Maybe we’ll find something when we get to Kasmenarta that’ll make it clear. Because there’s clearly a plot at hand, and we’re not seeing all of it yet.” She patted me on the arm. “Your homeland might be in the middle of it all, but we’ll cut through it.”

“I hope so.”

We sat there in silence for a moment, watching the quiet forests below us. Then there was the sound of footsteps on fresh snow behind us.

“Hello?” came Illgina’s voice. “Join you can I?”

“Sure,” I said, and spread the blanket out more on my other side. Illgina plopped herself down next to me a moment later, and sighed happily.

“Beautiful, it is. So many trees there are,” she said after a few moments.

“Oh?”

“Yes. Some trees in my home there are, but mostly by the rivers they grow. Bigger forests read about I have, but never one I have seen.”

“These aren’t even the biggest,” I commented. “There are much bigger and grander forests down in the lowlands. There are also vast groves and orchards that we manage for harvests.”

“Some of those as well we have,” she said. “Those tribes whose lands them contain gain great riches from their groves. But trees wherever suits them growing? That is a sight seen I never have.”

I thought of some of the groves we’d passed on the canal; while certainly many of the trees we’d passed had been managed orchards and the like, I knew that there were still large areas of woodlands that were practically untouched within the kingdom. Although, now that I thought about it, most of those were away from the canals. For obvious reasons, most of the kingdom’s cities and settlements were along the canals, as they made transportation much faster.

“Well, hopefully we’ll get the chance to show you some,” I said. “But probably not on the trip out.”

“It’ll be winter anyway, so not much to see,” Oksyna pointed out. “Better to wait for the spring.”

“Good point. Come on, we probably have to get going soon.” With a grunt, I pulled myself up from the ledge, and helped the two of them up as well. Folding up the blanket, we started back to where the Lynx was waiting; we’d made a stop to eat, rest, and stretch our legs.

We were about halfway back when Zoy came up through the snow, practically cackling. “Oh, good! Come on, you’ve got to see this!” she said before turning around and heading back the way she’d come.

I shared a look with Oksyna and Illgina, both of whom looked just as curious as me, so, with a shrug, we turned around and followed after Zoy. Her footprints in the snow made it fairly easy to follow her—comparatively. We were still halfway up the side of a mountain, and the slope was moderately treacherous. The blanket ended up being stashed on top of a tree branch that was sticking out over the path so that we could retrieve it on the way back.

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

“No idea, but whatever it is, Yufemya’s there too,” Oksyna replied.

“How do you know?”

“Footprints. Look. There’s another set aside from Zoy’s, even though she’s tracked over them a bit by coming back and forth.”

I looked down, just in time to walk into a tree branch laden with snow. I yelped as it hit me in the face, which made both Oksyna and Illgina laugh a little.

“Watch yourself, Raavi,” Oksyna said between snickers.

Brushing the snow out of my eyes, I started to laugh with them. “Do you want to lead? That way you can get the next branch of snow!”

Oksyna giggled. “Sure. In fact…” Her eyes narrowed and she stroked her chin.

“What is she doing—” Illgina started to ask, just as a line of tree branches ahead of us all cracked in unison and fell to the ground, where they steamed and smoked for several seconds, melting the snow around them.

I gave her a long look. “And you couldn’t have done that before I got smacked with a face full of snow?”

“To be honest, I hadn’t really thought of it before now,” she said with a grin and a shrug.

Rolling my eyes, I feinted a light punch at her shoulder, which she mimed being hit by, and we both laughed.

“What… how?” Illgina asked, staring at the snowy path—which Oksyna had somehow managed to make gritted enough to give our boots traction.

“It’s her necromancer abilities,” I said, glancing at Oksyna, who shrugged and started walking. “She can control disorder and combustion with extreme precision. So she ignited the tree branches—” I motioned to one of the smoking stumps on the tree trunk as we passed it, which had burned clean through as if cut with a saw, “—and then used that heat to pack down the snow a bit.”

Illgina blinked, and said something in her language, before continuing in mine, “So she can make things burn?”

“And rot them, or make them crumble from old age. Raavi calls it Entropy, and I like that more than disorder or whatnot.”

“Oh, yes, this word I know,” Illgina said. “It is the measure how much work a machine can do, and how some of it is lost when the machine works, correct?”

I beamed at her. “Exactly!”

Illgina cocked her head, and then yelped as she almost slipped on the snow, grabbing onto me and Oksyna before she went sprawling on the sloped ground. We managed to keep from falling, but it was a close thing, and as we stood there, braced awkwardly against one of the trees, Oksyna said mildly, “Maybe save the natural science talk until we get back to the Lynx and don’t need to watch where we walk? Especially for the person who needs to translate in her head and get distracted that way?”

“Good idea,” Illgina wheezed from behind my ear, which was impressive as her arm was half around my chest.

“Seconded,” I said.

We got ourselves sorted out and continued quietly along the path that Zoy and Yufemya had beaten out. We’d been walking silently for a few minutes when a whiff of something rotten wafted past my nose, making me grimace.

“You smell that?”

“Yeah. There’s… something up ahead—”

“Shuuush,” Yufemya’s voice came from the side. “Quiet.”

“What is it?” I asked, spotting her behind a tree a moment later.

She grinned and motioned for us to follow.

“Someone’s enjoying being mysterious,” I grumped before plodding along after her. She didn’t say anything, but I got the feeling she was amused.

The smell grew stronger and stronger, until we came to a flat clearing on the side of the mountainside, with a set of odd huts in the center. Zoy was standing at the edge, grinning with glee. She motioned us over.

“What—”

Then one of the huts snorted, and I realized what we were seeing.

“Schildpadin?” I breathed, awed. “A whole herd of schildpadin?” I crouched down next to Zoy, with Oksyna and Illgina coming down next to me. Together, we stared at the massive animals, which were the size of small houses.

“Look, there’s the nest,” I said, pointing to the enormous mound of rotting vegetation in the center of the clearing—the source of the smell. The heat from the composting pile would incubate the eggs of the giant animals. I’d never seen one before, only drawings and sketches, but these could only be schildpadin. Smaller than the ones I’d heard about—not surprising, now that I thought about, given that we were most of the way up a mountainside—these were still massive.

“What do you think? Thirty, forty tons?” I breathed.

“Easily, for those bigger ones in the center. If not more,” Yufemya said. “I’ve counted half a dozen of that size, and at least another twenty smaller ones.” She motioned to the snow-covered ‘huts’ huddled together in the clearing; I could see that the giant reptiles had torn down trees to make their nest, and were now standing together against the wind. Their heads had retreated into their shells for the winter, leaving just their tree-trunk legs and tusks exposed as they stood underneath.

“Amazing,” I breathed. “Just amazing.”

“Worth coming to see?” Zoy asked.

“Definitely,” Oksyna said, awe clear in her voice. “I’ve seen, um… they’re called Cherypaykya in my tongue… um…” she motioned to indicate a smaller version. “They nest on the beach and lay eggs in pits, and then a month later, the babies hatch and rush to the sea. But those, when they get to adulthood, are maybe the size of a person. Maybe.” We all looked at the giants in the center of the clearing; while they were covered in snow now, in a little over a month, the sun would come, and these slumbering giants would wake, and the ground would shake as they walked. Each leg on even the smaller ones was bigger than I could wrap my arms around, and the giant green shell on their backs would repel arrows and claws. The males had tusks, and would attack anything that would try to hunt them.

I didn’t like animals that much, but they were magnificent.

We stood there in silence for a moment, Illgina staring—with a few tears coming down her cheeks, which I saw her wipe away as they froze—before we silently moved away. None of us wanted to wake them. Aside from the fact that it would be bad for them, none of us wanted to be trampled.

As we made our way back to the Lynx, I breathed out a blessing to the spirits, in thanks for letting me see such wonders in the world.

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