Note: It is assumed they are speaking another language, and it is translated to English — for the most part. A fairly small matter, but one of the biggest things would be song and poetry not rhyming. Every aspect is not religiously adhered to as coincidences do happen, but I do my best to be mindful. Words that have no direct or very similar translation will be the ones that appear different, as well as those from other languages than the 'core' one used. But do note words do not necessarily mean the literal Earthly beat — instead can be a semblance for our ease of recognition.
Áá Éé Íí Óó Úú = The 'sound out letter' long vowel; standard lettering does not mean it absolutely isn't the long vowel if it seems to naturally follow
Ââ = 'ah' as in 'father'
Êê = 'u' and particularly 'ur' as in 'after'
Îî = 'ee' as in 'police'
Ôô = 'uh' as in 'son'
Ûû = 'oo' as in 'flute'
Ȩȩ = normal 'eh' sound - used only at the end to omit 'silent' assumption
ý = pronounce between 'yee' and 'ee' (sound out/long e); essentially has a very soft y sound
Deros = DARE-OHS
yea = this is not 'yeah' without the 'h'; instead, it's the old school version, like 'yea or nay'
Three moons of Hamellion were on display in its pre-dawn sky, the reddish glow on the horizon fading in a gradient to the cool blue-gray, then the cold, dark void above. The meager stars interspersed within it seemed to wait in anticipation for the warm embrace that was slowly engulfing them, or so Deros imagined. Surely the 'spirits of the sky' felt the cold a hundredfold.
It was a fanciful thought he made up on the spot, as he often did during his meditations on the heavens. Wrapped in a heavy blanket atop the sandy slope of the canyon that was his home, he’d chosen the observation point mostly for the benefit of its glorious view. That morning it was all to see the ‘Three Seeking Sisters' in the sky at once.
As the old stories went, the Three Sister Moons Níamara, Derametra, and Genopia roamed the heavens in search of their two lost brothers — Caianîke and Ogessis — who wandered far into the Distant Skies beyond the North Sky that the Taldecca People lived under. Through the dark voids, through Keramus The Spiral, and through the domain of the Lightbringer Azrom they searched all across the shifting cosmos to their continual vain, as all the ‘godmoons’ and spirits they touched were not of their brood.
Such colorful tales were like phantasms of Deros’s youthful wonder. As much as he believed them then, he saw far different things looking to the sky past adolescence. Hamellion orbited its star Azrom, and all of its system orbited Keramus, their galaxy, which was full of stars — fiery orbs of matter rather than spirits. The Three Sisters weren’t gods but huge rocks, more or less, and the two lost brothers were orbiters the North Sky simply never hosted. Skies further south did, in fact, or so the claims went.
So the many pale fires played their game of worlds, whether gods, by their hands therein or neither none could say, though ever did those beneath try to divine. Perhaps to hope. Regardless, they ever did one thing in abundance: watch.
Níamara and Derametra could be seen just above the horizon, far apart south and west. They were small, irregular shapes cast with a reddish glow. High above them, the vague white disk of Genopia the Wandering Sister roamed the sky, as she would all day. Niamara was the rarest sister, only ever rising briefly — twenty minutes or so — before dipping back out of sight, bound for other skies. To have all three visible at once was an uncommon event, one well-recorded by the Observatorian.
All he knew of the cosmos, he’d learned from the Observatorian — old man Tepheus, most commonly known by the simple honorific Ahbra. Technically, nearly every Taldec learned from the Ahbra or his apprentices in their youth, but only a handful really took to it and few indeed as much as Deros did. As a child he’d been proud and adamant he was not ‘18 calendars’ or years old, but ‘21 orbitals of 189 days’. While cute enough at first, his continual corrections eventually became tiresome for his elders and enough to get him scolded for obstinance, particularly by his mother.
The threat of missing out on Feast Day as punishment, which had everything to do with the calendar and little to do with an orbital period, had changed his tune. Somewhat, anyway. He became ‘19 calendars or 21 orbitals old’. A reasonable compromise and one he’d continued to ‘37 or 42’ at last change — well into young adulthood.
Being a favorite of the Ahbra, Deros had been much inclined to become an apprentice. Though his father doubted the desire would persist, he’d merely said, ‘learn all you care to, son, of that and everything else.’ So he had tried, but his youthful energy had been interrupted — first by a terrible illness that gripped all of Miracle Springs Canyon and killed many, and then by the miracle all its own that blossomed well after his fortuitous recovery. That he was one of the ‘Blessed’. Though he was grateful for it all, he was still somehow pettily envious of those who’d become the Ahbra’s apprentices.
Mere human nature, he told himself as he watched Níamara die behind a dark and distant sandy slope. To pine after that which we cannot have.
No doubt Níamara would wish she could roam the sky higher than a finger’s width, or Genopia that she could finally bump into her brothers in her endless meandering. Azrom might wish to rise in the west. But they would all be flights of fancy, as were his musings about naming new cosmoids or having his nose in books with his eyes on the stars. Well. The last would always be true, and to the Hells with any who told him otherwise.
As his eyes shifted over to Derametra, he recalled a question he’d asked old Tepheus as a child. ‘Can we walk on the moons, Ahbra?’ he’d asked. To which the old stargazer had smiled patiently and wistfully replied, ‘I’m afraid the sand, rock, and soil of Hamellion is the only gravity either of us will bumble around in, my boy.’
One more dream dead to the cold, harsh reality, he thought in mock seriousness. To his child-self, it had been a crushing blow, but beyond that?
Shifting in his perch, he turned his head on its blanket-cushioned backing, to the east and the imminent rise of Azrom, presaged by the intensifying blend of colors emerging in the sky. He always found the colors of the dawn somehow indescribable. Beautiful. Perhaps the best way to wake up and begin one’s day, though in truth he’d awoken — if one could call it that — earlier out of a more comfortable bed and braved the cold to make the climb. Thankfully his mount did most of that work on four spirited legs motivated by his beloved treats, but it had unfortunately done little for Deros’s own wakefulness. He had almost dozed off a few times since waiting on the moons, with an occasional deeper bite of cold wind on his face being the difference.
The night and early morning were always cold as such, especially at altitude, but the winter had an extra bite to it. The winter was generally welcome, as it brought storms and rain, often the only seen for the year. The last was no exception, with a very rare and quite celebrated two large storms, which had flared the canyon, its slopes, and well beyond with life. The most recent storm had been but a week hence, enough that the sandy soils had thoroughly absorbed it, but the after-effects were well in evidence with uncommon green in every direction for that time of year. It was as if spring had arrived early, if one’s eyes weren’t keen for the differences — certain fruits such as the hairypod still green, for instance. It would all be ripe soon enough, though.
As the eastern glow intensified and light began to cast into the canyon valley and its many homes and structures, it was obvious to Deros’s sharp eyes that a large number of the populace had the same idea of enduring the cold to get the day going. That was no wonder as the canyon was significantly warmer, and — depending on the season — would get unbearable sometime after Azrom’s fall from its southerly crossing of east to west. ‘Shadetime’ or ‘Surrender’, as it was called. Around that time or before, most would be taking breaks and sleeping a bit before some variable burst of activity to finish out their work day.
In the winter, daylight was significantly reduced and Azrom’s height above the horizon the least, so more citizens tended to minimize or skip Surrender and further utilize the longer twilight periods to compensate. Deros saw the tiny figures of farmers in the distance tending crops, eelcatchers loading riverboats, and children fetching water, most with oil lanterns or torches for extra light. The excited squeals of aloga — mounts and beasts of burden to the Taldecca — echoed up the canyon faintly, as they were escorted around to graze at wild goba bug-mounds.
His own aloga up the slope seemed to stir and grunt occasionally about that, but mostly Enseres busied himself sniffing around for his own crawly morsels with his long, tapered snout, probably tonguing every rock on the slope once or twice in the process. Deros paid him no mind. He’d not wander far despite his inclinations, with the smell of the treat bag around his master. He’d begged a few times to no avail… but that was precisely because if given it, he’d start wandering for food, or complaining about being anchored to prevent it. The lure of a promise was truly the best compromise for Deros’s peace.
As opposed to laboring along the water, Deros Íýteron was one of the Azakan, the warriors, scouts, and hunters of the Taldecca that kept the canyon safe from raiding and predation. His mount was one of the many trappings of such status, as was his bow and spear. Being one of The Blessed had marked him for it, as inevitable as the light of Azrom, despite that his talents in such arenas without that advantage were average at best, to his mind. The Blessed were said to walk half in the world of the gods, half in the world of mortals. Deros wasn’t sure about that — from his perspective, they simply cheated reality in small ways.
His and most other Blessed variations were simply sensory improvements. All had the ‘farsense’, as it was called, which amounted to something vaguely like extending the sense of touch outward. It was starved of fine details, but shape, motion, and distance could be gleaned, often supplementing other senses strongly, particularly as it seemed to happen slightly faster. Though brain-bending and disorienting without training, eventually one’s reactions were improved while farsensing, which required conscious daug’makar, or opening oneself up to the supposed ‘hidden world’. The makar was like a flow spinning through all matter, tremendously heavier around others doing the same. It was also heavier around makar’osa — the intensification of makar until it touched the ephemeral realms and drew it in, ‘pulling’ wider senses closer, like gravity pulled at matter.
Deros could draw distant scenes closer to his eyes like a telescope, and draw sounds similarly, making them both essentially more acute. And so he, in essence, cheated the material realm and had advantages of information. On the other hand, it took years to make use of, and decades — if not a lifetime — to perfect. He had been accounted a rather quick study, but he was by no means an expert.
The children and heralds of Azrom, the ‘fireball’ planets Vramar and Charsus, rose shortly before the Lightbringer himself crested the horizon and brightly began the day. Having enjoyed the slew of rises, Deros finally rose with them out of the blankets and stretched… then shivered, even in his fur cloak. It would be some time before the temperature warmed much. He’d at least warm up a little on the way across the heights to Bloodbound Bluff, the mountainous feature that overlooked the heart of Miracle Springs. The Old Residences were carved out of its surface, mostly the lower half, and the top housed the fortress.
The latter was the general headquarters of the Azakan and his destination, though it was highly likely he’d quickly be sent out to hunt game solo and opportunistically. It was not a training day, which was two out of the fiveday, and he almost always came back with meat for the pots.
I could really use some spice-cider, he was thinking despairingly as he shook his blanket in the air and rolled it up tightly. The spices used were traded up from far south, and some building where it was made had burned down — according to rumor, anyway. The local brews were not a shadow as good to him and notoriously variable in their ‘punch’. The last thing he wanted in the bloody morning was to get drunk…
His head came up as he caught sight of something to the east, highlighted by the burgeoning light. Smoke, or… dust. At such a distance it was barely perceptible, even to his sharp eyes, but clearly filtering up from somewhere far below the slope he was on, possibly from the bottom of the canyon and the riverbed.
Well, that’s one way to wake up.
He activated daug’makar, like a flick, a blink, a jolt in his mind, and felt the ensuing rush of adrenaline spike through his body, making him more awake and alert almost instantly. As he did so he flared out the makar in arcs around him, making a loosely spherical radius of the farsense. He felt the flood of information take form like he was reaching out with many hands… felt the contours of the slope, the varying rocks and scattered vegetation, felt the vague form of Enseres above and behind him, felt the flow of the wind and the dust. It was a simple act for him, all the simpler where there was need — and particularly when there was alarm.
With his bearings achieved via makar, he formed the intense concentration of it that was makar’osa in front of his eyes and focused his vision on that distant point, then concentrated on ‘pulling’ it closer through the intricate manipulation of multitudinous, tight, energetic flows. He scarcely consciously focused on the minute movements, however — they were second nature to him, like the muscles of fingers working to pluck harp strings. Light subtly distorted in the air for a moment, blurred as he tuned it, then came into focus, all in the matter of a moment.
Dust was flowing up in a roughly horizontal line above the lip of the distant slope that blocked his view of the rest of the declination. He couldn’t see the riverbed — not even close — but the path of the line was following what he knew to be the dry sand of the lowest point. By all appearances, one or more riders were galloping at breakneck speed down that convenient path, if one were coming from the east. It was unlikely to be a threat, as the dust was not great, nor were there horns being blown. Nonetheless, a speeding rider was rather unusual.
A rider’s path would inevitably lead to the river’s end and less hospitable terrain for any approach to the community hub. It was usually overgrown with reed and cane, but was also bloated with water thanks to the storms and its deliberately-cultivated basin-like role for when waters rose. The best way was up a constructed path on the slope instead, but this was gated off at the highest point by a small fort and watchtower called simply ‘Easthold’, whose top Deros could just barely see from his vantage.
Change of plans! There was no way he wasn’t going to investigate.
Quickly releasing the makar’osa and tying the blanket roll with cord, he picked up the other he’d used as a headrest — as well as his spear — and darted up the slope toward Enseres. The aloga had his head up, dark, heavy-lidded eyes on his master and one foot pawing at the ground, with his long tongue flaring out, all in an anticipatory beggar’s show. He was ready for his treat-bag.
Deros make three clicking noises and then a sharp, short whistle, a signal the animal well understood. Enseres started in place and snorted with his ears piqued up, and his hair all over bristled in excitement, including his bushy tail that flicked erratically. Pursuit; run. If there was anything that could compete with eating to Enseres, it was running.
“Ready to run, boy? I know you are,” Deros cooed as he came around the side of the dancing furred beast and fended off the insistent nuzzles and grunts that might as well be saying, ‘get on already’ — at least long enough to tie his blanket rolls securely on the saddleback. With that he gave Enseres some vigorous pats and head scratches, to achieve some semblance of placation, but the results in that regard were dubious.
Inevitably, Deros had to whistle and bark a command for stillness, enough to put his boot in the stirrup and mount. He took firm grip of the reins initially, though Enseres was well-trained and didn’t break command — nonetheless he whined and tossed his head to show his anxiousness. Deros took all last-second precautions in preparing for speed, ensuring nothing was in danger of dropping off — such as his leather-encased hornbow — and securing his spear on his back with tight strapping. With that, he repeated his earlier command and squeezed his legs to reinforce it, while favoring one side to direct his mount in the right direction.
Enseres took off down the slope, a terrain of no particular danger for him that he’d been down thousands of times. He avoided the rocky bits, having memorized the locations. Deros kept hold of the reins, just in case, but the likelihood of needing the bitless mechanism was minimal. Despite that the animal had been called ‘spirited’ from an early age and rebellious against training headgear, Deros and he had quickly reached an understanding. He had never needed a bit — a bridle with a noseband down his long snout was enough, and usually leg and saddle pressure alone were sufficient.
Keeping hold of daug’makar to increase his immediate awareness, Deros focused mostly on the route ahead of him down multiple ridges and declinations while keeping Enseres from getting too reckless in his pace. A safe journey at haste would be fifteen or twenty minutes to the fort, most of it at tempered speeds. Only one small stretch on the latter half of the route was a straight, known as the Ridgeway — it sat between two slight ridges in a sandy dip and was frequently trafficked. Enseres could sprint to his heart’s content along it.
Chasing Azrom back behind the horizon as the elevation plunged, Deros led his eager companion down the slopes of rock, sand, and occasional patches of tough shrubbery, shivering occasionally from the bite of the cold wind. Twice they startled a bird into flight — an act they’d done before to test Deros’s archery at speed — and once Deros farsensed ground movement briefly, either a lizard or a solitary writher. The latter were not well-tolerated in the canyon, though a solitary one was fairly benign. Often the arm-length worms moved in packs of a dozen or more known as writhing masses. They were opportunistic scavengers of sometimes dangerous boldness and not adverse to attacking and devouring very small children when food was scarce.
Such an incident within the canyon a few years ago during a dry spell had terrified the community, and the Senate had issued a decree to the Azakan to kill them on sight and patrol for populations. It was a sore spot for many hunters, as the creatures were stealthy, tough, plentiful, and not appetizing. They only ate meat opportunistically and fed often on crawlervine, one of the only animals that did, as it was rather toxic to most. Writhers themselves were only barely edible, mostly of note for survival situations. In any case, while Deros might normally consider flushing whatever it was out and killing it either for food or custom, he had other matters of curiosity to see to.
As he crested a rise and caught sight of the Ridgeway, he also saw another rider kicking dust and speeding down the straight from the direction of Easthold. Sharpening his vision again with makar’osa, he quickly scanned through the indistinct tan blur of furs and wool to recognize the bared, pale-red face as that of Aeradea — the runner for Easthold — atop her tan and speckled-gray mount, Spitter. They were possibly the fastest combination in Miracle Springs.
Deros quickly had Enseres speed down the rise, angling toward the rider, though soon enough he could tell he wouldn’t actually be able to meet her. When he was close enough, he slowed and stood up in his stirrups to wave and call out within her field of vision, somewhat a feat of balance but child’s play, to his mind.
“Hail,” Deros shouted with his hands forming a cone around his mouth. “What’s the word, rider!” Immediately he formed makar’osa around an ear, amplifying sounds. The beat of tough aloga footpads on the sand, the creaks of leather, the distant dins of activity, the whistle of the wind all came rushing to his perception. He tuned and damped it down almost subconsciously.
“Injured Bluehand!” she shouted back as she raced by. “Getting a healer!” With that, Deros was approaching only the dust she left in her wake as she flew down the straight, which would carry her almost all the way to the city center. She’d have to slow for the hilly decline, but the Hospital which was her destination would be another straight shot until its walls at the base of Bloodbound Bluff.
A Bluehand? Deros sat back down in his saddle as he approached the straight, pondering the matter.
It was strange… while they were indubitably due east, it was maybe twelve days of travel to Many Sands. If the rider was injured and racing to Easthold, the incident would almost certainly be inside or near the canyon. If he had to guess, the most likely cause was a corsinid run-in. More commonly called downfeathers, netherbirds, or other regional variants outside hunter circles, they were flightless, feathered, bird-like reptiles that usually hunted in packs and could slay aloga, cattle like the fourhorn — even unwary Hamaleen such as himself — with ease.
He’d killed a starving one during the dry spell, chancing to hear it stalking him and successfully ambushing it from a height with a lucky loosing from his bow. It was possibly the feat of his life — he wore its teeth around his neck and its unique red-and-white tail feathers were tied in his hair. Its skin had been used for a belt and a few other elements, but these weren’t on his person to be worn daily. A few he’d made gifts of. A corsinid was no common kill, as they tended to shy away from large communities. Despite that, deaths from their predation happened at some date along every calendar, usually to those ranging afar for hunting, scouting, trade, and so on.
Travelers and caravaners were the most in danger, but those guards necessary to combat bandits would tend to be more than enough to dissuade corsinid attacks. But risky gambits or incompetence certainly occurred and claimed lives time and again. All he could do was withhold judgment until he could see the matter with his own eyes.
He leaned down closer to Enseres’s neck and applied pressure from his legs, forward to more or less tell the aloga to sprint. The animal was all too ready to do so, bounding down the Ridgeway as fast as his feet could carry him, head down and ears flat. The world sped by and Deros opted to drop his goggles down due to the dust Aeradea had whipped up. Though it was slightly too dark for the smoky lenses, he was at least riding toward the east and the brighter horizon.
Within minutes it was over and Deros had to give the reins a little flick to ease the beast out of his focused state. Enseres obeyed, if reluctantly, snorting sharply once in what Deros imagined was derision, but soon he slowed to a canter and Deros angled him off from the straight. Pushing his goggles back up on his head, Deros gradually slowed his mount down as the terrain grew rougher. Beyond a natural break in the ridge, Easthold’s brick-faced tower could be seen, though the walls of the fort were still obscured.
They traversed the final decline to the fort, which was suddenly steep and made for slow-going, with ridgelines once again to either side of the path. One of the ridges held some elevation even to the edge of the cliffs beyond it, and this was where the watchtower and its close-set walls were positioned. Sharply down one of its slopes was a walkable extension of the wall, which crossed over the only easily-traversed path up from the canyon and river bottom for many kilometers in either direction. The wall terminated across from it up another high cliff, affecting a sort of ‘cup’ shape for the wall over the path, which included a portcullis gate made of greatcane painted black.
A sentry atop the watchtower caught sight of him, and they exchanged waves silently. It was too far to try shouting out anything. Avoiding the path up to the watchtower entirely, Deros dismounted as he neared the open portcullis gate — he didn’t see the guard immediately so he just passed on through its wide interior, leading Enseres by the reins.
Soon after passing under it, he could see down the wide canyon slopes to the snaking river as it gradually thinned and died into muddy terrain some distance past the point where one would begin the zigzagging climb up the pass. Fortunately, the river was not so wide as to prevent access, and so on its banks, he could make out a man sprawled on the ground, seemingly unmoving, with a small crowd of Azakan huddled around him. They were clothed in swirls of tan, all well-camouflaged with the terrain, spoiled only by red faces and long hair of white or pale purple-gray. The vaeton and keeper of Easthold — Lecto — was there, talking to the others. A blood-soaked aloga was nearby them, legs and lowered snout in the water.
“Hail there, hunter.”
Deros and Enseres both jumped at the sound above and behind them. Deros turned to his left to see an Azakan warrior perched at the top of the wall between two merlons, legs dangling and also watching the scene at the bottom of the canyon. The position explained why he wasn’t visible upon approach. Deros certainly hadn’t expected him to be there… his farsense had subconsciously been minimized as was proper to training when not needed, and so the warrior had even been — annoyingly — outside its radius of detection.
The only thing that typically marked a warrior from other Azakan was their hard leather helms, dyed the ‘bloody’ purple known as godberry. Telalo — the young man Deros regarded above him — didn’t have his on his head but hanging back by his neck, which was quite typical. Mostly only training or war would see them donning such implements and wielding their shields. Deros had never seen war come to Miracle Springs, however.
Telalo wore a bored, sleepy expression — one he always did, to where Deros didn’t think the lids of his eyes could rise more than halfway. His skin was naturally, uncommonly stark red, rich in color, and almost bright. Deros knew this to be no deepening from Azrom, as the man liked to affect a sleeveless tunic when it wasn’t too cold, to ‘feel the wind on his skin’. It had always been uniform in color, even in his youth. He had a touch of that red in his other features — his eyes were like a faded red or pale pink and his hair was a very pale magenta, slowly fading more into grayish. They weren’t exactly friends, it was just that Deros observed and absorbed everything meticulously, and had a strong memory beside. Both things his father had complimented and instructed him to cultivate.
“Hail, warrior,” Deros replied. He glanced at the scene on the river, nodded his head to it, then looked back, squinting his eyes against Azrom as it once again peeked over the horizon. “That Bluehand doesn’t look well.”
Telalo yawned behind a hand and nodded at the same time. “That’s a way of putting it. Might’ve been dead on arrival. Maybe before. ‘Less his spirit speaks, we got a mystery going today.”
Deros arched an eyebrow. “Dead before arrival?”
Telalo flicked his head at the scene. “See the ropes? He tied himself down to his aloga — s’what the vaeton spied with his scope. Must’ve been going under on the way.”
Sure enough, Deros could just make out scattered bits nearby the fallen Bluehand that had to be the ropes. “He was out as he rode up? That’s incredible — can you imagine such a thing? Using the last of one’s strength to…” He trailed off shaking his head, not knowing exactly.
The red-eyed man exhaled in a show of self-doubt. “I think I’d eat sand a lot sooner, and never make it this far. Honestly. But who knows, really?”
Turning his head and regarding the warrior silently for a moment, Deros was not certain how to reply. He instead gestured to the sloping path with his chin and said, “Think I’ll make my way down and have a look.”
“Suit yourself. Gonna be good game today you reckon, hunter?”
Deros nodded. “Will be for a good while. If we get any more rain, we’ll have the best spring we’ve ever seen.”
“Works for me. May Explorer guide your path, hunter.”
Deros nodded one last time to the man before beginning down the path. “Take care, warrior.”
It was more to convention to invoke the gods in one’s partings, especially when one did so to you, but Deros found it increasingly awkward. Respecting ancestral beliefs was one thing, believing in and invoking them another. Especially when someone had just been so honest about something as core as their very mettle to survive. Deros’s father didn’t really encourage him toward honesty — whatever a person of politics said, presented, or even thought about themselves, they truly didn’t live such a life. That didn’t mean Deros didn’t consider honesty an admirable trait.
In appropriate moderation, anyway…
Note: It is assumed they are speaking another language, and it is translated to English — for the most part. A fairly small matter, but one of the biggest things would be song and poetry not rhyming. Every aspect is not religiously adhered to as coincidences do happen, but I do my best to be mindful. Words that have no direct or very similar translation will be the ones that appear different, as well as those from other languages than the 'core' one used. But do note words do not necessarily mean the literal Earthly beat — instead can be a semblance for our ease of recognition.
Áá Éé Íí Óó Úú = The 'sound out letter' long vowel; standard lettering does not mean it absolutely isn't the long vowel if it seems to naturally follow
Ââ = 'ah' as in 'father'
Êê = 'u' and particularly 'ur' as in 'after'
Îî = 'ee' as in 'police'
Ôô = 'uh' as in 'son'
Ûû = 'oo' as in 'flute'
Ȩȩ = normal 'eh' sound - used only at the end to omit 'silent' assumption
ý = pronounce between 'yee' and 'ee' (sound out/long e); essentially has a very soft y sound
Deros = DARE-OHS
yea = this is not 'yeah' without the 'h'; instead, it's the old school version, like 'yea or nay'
Three moons of Hamellion were on display in its pre-dawn sky, the reddish glow on the horizon fading in a gradient to the cool blue-gray, then the cold, dark void above. The meager stars interspersed within it seemed to wait in anticipation for the warm embrace that was slowly engulfing them, or so Deros imagined. Surely the 'spirits of the sky' felt the cold a hundredfold.
It was a fanciful thought he made up on the spot, as he often did during his meditations on the heavens. Wrapped in a heavy blanket atop the sandy slope of the canyon that was his home, he’d chosen the observation point mostly for the benefit of its glorious view. That morning it was all to see the ‘Three Seeking Sisters' in the sky at once.
As the old stories went, the Three Sister Moons Níamara, Derametra, and Genopia roamed the heavens in search of their two lost brothers — Caianîke and Ogessis — who wandered far into the Distant Skies beyond the North Sky that the Taldecca People lived under. Through the dark voids, through Keramus The Spiral, and through the domain of the Lightbringer Azrom they searched all across the shifting cosmos to their continual vain, as all the ‘godmoons’ and spirits they touched were not of their brood.
Such colorful tales were like phantasms of Deros’s youthful wonder. As much as he believed them then, he saw far different things looking to the sky past adolescence. Hamellion orbited its star Azrom, and all of its system orbited Keramus, their galaxy, which was full of stars — fiery orbs of matter rather than spirits. The Three Sisters weren’t gods but huge rocks, more or less, and the two lost brothers were orbiters the North Sky simply never hosted. Skies further south did, in fact, or so the claims went.
So the many pale fires played their game of worlds, whether gods, by their hands therein or neither none could say, though ever did those beneath try to divine. Perhaps to hope. Regardless, they ever did one thing in abundance: watch.
Níamara and Derametra could be seen just above the horizon, far apart south and west. They were small, irregular shapes cast with a reddish glow. High above them, the vague white disk of Genopia the Wandering Sister roamed the sky, as she would all day. Niamara was the rarest sister, only ever rising briefly — twenty minutes or so — before dipping back out of sight, bound for other skies. To have all three visible at once was an uncommon event, one well-recorded by the Observatorian.
All he knew of the cosmos, he’d learned from the Observatorian — old man Tepheus, most commonly known by the simple honorific Ahbra. Technically, nearly every Taldec learned from the Ahbra or his apprentices in their youth, but only a handful really took to it and few indeed as much as Deros did. As a child he’d been proud and adamant he was not ‘18 calendars’ or years old, but ‘21 orbitals of 189 days’. While cute enough at first, his continual corrections eventually became tiresome for his elders and enough to get him scolded for obstinance, particularly by his mother.
The threat of missing out on Feast Day as punishment, which had everything to do with the calendar and little to do with an orbital period, had changed his tune. Somewhat, anyway. He became ‘19 calendars or 21 orbitals old’. A reasonable compromise and one he’d continued to ‘37 or 42’ at last change — well into young adulthood.
Being a favorite of the Ahbra, Deros had been much inclined to become an apprentice. Though his father doubted the desire would persist, he’d merely said, ‘learn all you care to, son, of that and everything else.’ So he had tried, but his youthful energy had been interrupted — first by a terrible illness that gripped all of Miracle Springs Canyon and killed many, and then by the miracle all its own that blossomed well after his fortuitous recovery. That he was one of the ‘Blessed’. Though he was grateful for it all, he was still somehow pettily envious of those who’d become the Ahbra’s apprentices.
Mere human nature, he told himself as he watched Níamara die behind a dark and distant sandy slope. To pine after that which we cannot have.
No doubt Níamara would wish she could roam the sky higher than a finger’s width, or Genopia that she could finally bump into her brothers in her endless meandering. Azrom might wish to rise in the west. But they would all be flights of fancy, as were his musings about naming new cosmoids or having his nose in books with his eyes on the stars. Well. The last would always be true, and to the Hells with any who told him otherwise.
As his eyes shifted over to Derametra, he recalled a question he’d asked old Tepheus as a child. ‘Can we walk on the moons, Ahbra?’ he’d asked. To which the old stargazer had smiled patiently and wistfully replied, ‘I’m afraid the sand, rock, and soil of Hamellion is the only gravity either of us will bumble around in, my boy.’
One more dream dead to the cold, harsh reality, he thought in mock seriousness. To his child-self, it had been a crushing blow, but beyond that?
Shifting in his perch, he turned his head on its blanket-cushioned backing, to the east and the imminent rise of Azrom, presaged by the intensifying blend of colors emerging in the sky. He always found the colors of the dawn somehow indescribable. Beautiful. Perhaps the best way to wake up and begin one’s day, though in truth he’d awoken — if one could call it that — earlier out of a more comfortable bed and braved the cold to make the climb. Thankfully his mount did most of that work on four spirited legs motivated by his beloved treats, but it had unfortunately done little for Deros’s own wakefulness. He had almost dozed off a few times since waiting on the moons, with an occasional deeper bite of cold wind on his face being the difference.
The night and early morning were always cold as such, especially at altitude, but the winter had an extra bite to it. The winter was generally welcome, as it brought storms and rain, often the only seen for the year. The last was no exception, with a very rare and quite celebrated two large storms, which had flared the canyon, its slopes, and well beyond with life. The most recent storm had been but a week hence, enough that the sandy soils had thoroughly absorbed it, but the after-effects were well in evidence with uncommon green in every direction for that time of year. It was as if spring had arrived early, if one’s eyes weren’t keen for the differences — certain fruits such as the hairypod still green, for instance. It would all be ripe soon enough, though.
As the eastern glow intensified and light began to cast into the canyon valley and its many homes and structures, it was obvious to Deros’s sharp eyes that a large number of the populace had the same idea of enduring the cold to get the day going. That was no wonder as the canyon was significantly warmer, and — depending on the season — would get unbearable sometime after Azrom’s fall from its southerly crossing of east to west. ‘Shadetime’ or ‘Surrender’, as it was called. Around that time or before, most would be taking breaks and sleeping a bit before some variable burst of activity to finish out their work day.
In the winter, daylight was significantly reduced and Azrom’s height above the horizon the least, so more citizens tended to minimize or skip Surrender and further utilize the longer twilight periods to compensate. Deros saw the tiny figures of farmers in the distance tending crops, eelcatchers loading riverboats, and children fetching water, most with oil lanterns or torches for extra light. The excited squeals of aloga — mounts and beasts of burden to the Taldecca — echoed up the canyon faintly, as they were escorted around to graze at wild goba bug-mounds.
His own aloga up the slope seemed to stir and grunt occasionally about that, but mostly Enseres busied himself sniffing around for his own crawly morsels with his long, tapered snout, probably tonguing every rock on the slope once or twice in the process. Deros paid him no mind. He’d not wander far despite his inclinations, with the smell of the treat bag around his master. He’d begged a few times to no avail… but that was precisely because if given it, he’d start wandering for food, or complaining about being anchored to prevent it. The lure of a promise was truly the best compromise for Deros’s peace.
As opposed to laboring along the water, Deros Íýteron was one of the Azakan, the warriors, scouts, and hunters of the Taldecca that kept the canyon safe from raiding and predation. His mount was one of the many trappings of such status, as was his bow and spear. Being one of The Blessed had marked him for it, as inevitable as the light of Azrom, despite that his talents in such arenas without that advantage were average at best, to his mind. The Blessed were said to walk half in the world of the gods, half in the world of mortals. Deros wasn’t sure about that — from his perspective, they simply cheated reality in small ways.
His and most other Blessed variations were simply sensory improvements. All had the ‘farsense’, as it was called, which amounted to something vaguely like extending the sense of touch outward. It was starved of fine details, but shape, motion, and distance could be gleaned, often supplementing other senses strongly, particularly as it seemed to happen slightly faster. Though brain-bending and disorienting without training, eventually one’s reactions were improved while farsensing, which required conscious daug’makar, or opening oneself up to the supposed ‘hidden world’. The makar was like a flow spinning through all matter, tremendously heavier around others doing the same. It was also heavier around makar’osa — the intensification of makar until it touched the ephemeral realms and drew it in, ‘pulling’ wider senses closer, like gravity pulled at matter.
Deros could draw distant scenes closer to his eyes like a telescope, and draw sounds similarly, making them both essentially more acute. And so he, in essence, cheated the material realm and had advantages of information. On the other hand, it took years to make use of, and decades — if not a lifetime — to perfect. He had been accounted a rather quick study, but he was by no means an expert.
The children and heralds of Azrom, the ‘fireball’ planets Vramar and Charsus, rose shortly before the Lightbringer himself crested the horizon and brightly began the day. Having enjoyed the slew of rises, Deros finally rose with them out of the blankets and stretched… then shivered, even in his fur cloak. It would be some time before the temperature warmed much. He’d at least warm up a little on the way across the heights to Bloodbound Bluff, the mountainous feature that overlooked the heart of Miracle Springs. The Old Residences were carved out of its surface, mostly the lower half, and the top housed the fortress.
The latter was the general headquarters of the Azakan and his destination, though it was highly likely he’d quickly be sent out to hunt game solo and opportunistically. It was not a training day, which was two out of the fiveday, and he almost always came back with meat for the pots.
I could really use some spice-cider, he was thinking despairingly as he shook his blanket in the air and rolled it up tightly. The spices used were traded up from far south, and some building where it was made had burned down — according to rumor, anyway. The local brews were not a shadow as good to him and notoriously variable in their ‘punch’. The last thing he wanted in the bloody morning was to get drunk…
His head came up as he caught sight of something to the east, highlighted by the burgeoning light. Smoke, or… dust. At such a distance it was barely perceptible, even to his sharp eyes, but clearly filtering up from somewhere far below the slope he was on, possibly from the bottom of the canyon and the riverbed.
Well, that’s one way to wake up.
He activated daug’makar, like a flick, a blink, a jolt in his mind, and felt the ensuing rush of adrenaline spike through his body, making him more awake and alert almost instantly. As he did so he flared out the makar in arcs around him, making a loosely spherical radius of the farsense. He felt the flood of information take form like he was reaching out with many hands… felt the contours of the slope, the varying rocks and scattered vegetation, felt the vague form of Enseres above and behind him, felt the flow of the wind and the dust. It was a simple act for him, all the simpler where there was need — and particularly when there was alarm.
With his bearings achieved via makar, he formed the intense concentration of it that was makar’osa in front of his eyes and focused his vision on that distant point, then concentrated on ‘pulling’ it closer through the intricate manipulation of multitudinous, tight, energetic flows. He scarcely consciously focused on the minute movements, however — they were second nature to him, like the muscles of fingers working to pluck harp strings. Light subtly distorted in the air for a moment, blurred as he tuned it, then came into focus, all in the matter of a moment.
Dust was flowing up in a roughly horizontal line above the lip of the distant slope that blocked his view of the rest of the declination. He couldn’t see the riverbed — not even close — but the path of the line was following what he knew to be the dry sand of the lowest point. By all appearances, one or more riders were galloping at breakneck speed down that convenient path, if one were coming from the east. It was unlikely to be a threat, as the dust was not great, nor were there horns being blown. Nonetheless, a speeding rider was rather unusual.
A rider’s path would inevitably lead to the river’s end and less hospitable terrain for any approach to the community hub. It was usually overgrown with reed and cane, but was also bloated with water thanks to the storms and its deliberately-cultivated basin-like role for when waters rose. The best way was up a constructed path on the slope instead, but this was gated off at the highest point by a small fort and watchtower called simply ‘Easthold’, whose top Deros could just barely see from his vantage.
Change of plans! There was no way he wasn’t going to investigate.
Quickly releasing the makar’osa and tying the blanket roll with cord, he picked up the other he’d used as a headrest — as well as his spear — and darted up the slope toward Enseres. The aloga had his head up, dark, heavy-lidded eyes on his master and one foot pawing at the ground, with his long tongue flaring out, all in an anticipatory beggar’s show. He was ready for his treat-bag.
Deros make three clicking noises and then a sharp, short whistle, a signal the animal well understood. Enseres started in place and snorted with his ears piqued up, and his hair all over bristled in excitement, including his bushy tail that flicked erratically. Pursuit; run. If there was anything that could compete with eating to Enseres, it was running.
“Ready to run, boy? I know you are,” Deros cooed as he came around the side of the dancing furred beast and fended off the insistent nuzzles and grunts that might as well be saying, ‘get on already’ — at least long enough to tie his blanket rolls securely on the saddleback. With that he gave Enseres some vigorous pats and head scratches, to achieve some semblance of placation, but the results in that regard were dubious.
Inevitably, Deros had to whistle and bark a command for stillness, enough to put his boot in the stirrup and mount. He took firm grip of the reins initially, though Enseres was well-trained and didn’t break command — nonetheless he whined and tossed his head to show his anxiousness. Deros took all last-second precautions in preparing for speed, ensuring nothing was in danger of dropping off — such as his leather-encased hornbow — and securing his spear on his back with tight strapping. With that, he repeated his earlier command and squeezed his legs to reinforce it, while favoring one side to direct his mount in the right direction.
Enseres took off down the slope, a terrain of no particular danger for him that he’d been down thousands of times. He avoided the rocky bits, having memorized the locations. Deros kept hold of the reins, just in case, but the likelihood of needing the bitless mechanism was minimal. Despite that the animal had been called ‘spirited’ from an early age and rebellious against training headgear, Deros and he had quickly reached an understanding. He had never needed a bit — a bridle with a noseband down his long snout was enough, and usually leg and saddle pressure alone were sufficient.
Keeping hold of daug’makar to increase his immediate awareness, Deros focused mostly on the route ahead of him down multiple ridges and declinations while keeping Enseres from getting too reckless in his pace. A safe journey at haste would be fifteen or twenty minutes to the fort, most of it at tempered speeds. Only one small stretch on the latter half of the route was a straight, known as the Ridgeway — it sat between two slight ridges in a sandy dip and was frequently trafficked. Enseres could sprint to his heart’s content along it.
Chasing Azrom back behind the horizon as the elevation plunged, Deros led his eager companion down the slopes of rock, sand, and occasional patches of tough shrubbery, shivering occasionally from the bite of the cold wind. Twice they startled a bird into flight — an act they’d done before to test Deros’s archery at speed — and once Deros farsensed ground movement briefly, either a lizard or a solitary writher. The latter were not well-tolerated in the canyon, though a solitary one was fairly benign. Often the arm-length worms moved in packs of a dozen or more known as writhing masses. They were opportunistic scavengers of sometimes dangerous boldness and not adverse to attacking and devouring very small children when food was scarce.
Such an incident within the canyon a few years ago during a dry spell had terrified the community, and the Senate had issued a decree to the Azakan to kill them on sight and patrol for populations. It was a sore spot for many hunters, as the creatures were stealthy, tough, plentiful, and not appetizing. They only ate meat opportunistically and fed often on crawlervine, one of the only animals that did, as it was rather toxic to most. Writhers themselves were only barely edible, mostly of note for survival situations. In any case, while Deros might normally consider flushing whatever it was out and killing it either for food or custom, he had other matters of curiosity to see to.
As he crested a rise and caught sight of the Ridgeway, he also saw another rider kicking dust and speeding down the straight from the direction of Easthold. Sharpening his vision again with makar’osa, he quickly scanned through the indistinct tan blur of furs and wool to recognize the bared, pale-red face as that of Aeradea — the runner for Easthold — atop her tan and speckled-gray mount, Spitter. They were possibly the fastest combination in Miracle Springs.
Deros quickly had Enseres speed down the rise, angling toward the rider, though soon enough he could tell he wouldn’t actually be able to meet her. When he was close enough, he slowed and stood up in his stirrups to wave and call out within her field of vision, somewhat a feat of balance but child’s play, to his mind.
“Hail,” Deros shouted with his hands forming a cone around his mouth. “What’s the word, rider!” Immediately he formed makar’osa around an ear, amplifying sounds. The beat of tough aloga footpads on the sand, the creaks of leather, the distant dins of activity, the whistle of the wind all came rushing to his perception. He tuned and damped it down almost subconsciously.
“Injured Bluehand!” she shouted back as she raced by. “Getting a healer!” With that, Deros was approaching only the dust she left in her wake as she flew down the straight, which would carry her almost all the way to the city center. She’d have to slow for the hilly decline, but the Hospital which was her destination would be another straight shot until its walls at the base of Bloodbound Bluff.
A Bluehand? Deros sat back down in his saddle as he approached the straight, pondering the matter.
It was strange… while they were indubitably due east, it was maybe twelve days of travel to Many Sands. If the rider was injured and racing to Easthold, the incident would almost certainly be inside or near the canyon. If he had to guess, the most likely cause was a corsinid run-in. More commonly called downfeathers, netherbirds, or other regional variants outside hunter circles, they were flightless, feathered, bird-like reptiles that usually hunted in packs and could slay aloga, cattle like the fourhorn — even unwary Hamaleen such as himself — with ease.
He’d killed a starving one during the dry spell, chancing to hear it stalking him and successfully ambushing it from a height with a lucky loosing from his bow. It was possibly the feat of his life — he wore its teeth around his neck and its unique red-and-white tail feathers were tied in his hair. Its skin had been used for a belt and a few other elements, but these weren’t on his person to be worn daily. A few he’d made gifts of. A corsinid was no common kill, as they tended to shy away from large communities. Despite that, deaths from their predation happened at some date along every calendar, usually to those ranging afar for hunting, scouting, trade, and so on.
Travelers and caravaners were the most in danger, but those guards necessary to combat bandits would tend to be more than enough to dissuade corsinid attacks. But risky gambits or incompetence certainly occurred and claimed lives time and again. All he could do was withhold judgment until he could see the matter with his own eyes.
He leaned down closer to Enseres’s neck and applied pressure from his legs, forward to more or less tell the aloga to sprint. The animal was all too ready to do so, bounding down the Ridgeway as fast as his feet could carry him, head down and ears flat. The world sped by and Deros opted to drop his goggles down due to the dust Aeradea had whipped up. Though it was slightly too dark for the smoky lenses, he was at least riding toward the east and the brighter horizon.
Within minutes it was over and Deros had to give the reins a little flick to ease the beast out of his focused state. Enseres obeyed, if reluctantly, snorting sharply once in what Deros imagined was derision, but soon he slowed to a canter and Deros angled him off from the straight. Pushing his goggles back up on his head, Deros gradually slowed his mount down as the terrain grew rougher. Beyond a natural break in the ridge, Easthold’s brick-faced tower could be seen, though the walls of the fort were still obscured.
They traversed the final decline to the fort, which was suddenly steep and made for slow-going, with ridgelines once again to either side of the path. One of the ridges held some elevation even to the edge of the cliffs beyond it, and this was where the watchtower and its close-set walls were positioned. Sharply down one of its slopes was a walkable extension of the wall, which crossed over the only easily-traversed path up from the canyon and river bottom for many kilometers in either direction. The wall terminated across from it up another high cliff, affecting a sort of ‘cup’ shape for the wall over the path, which included a portcullis gate made of greatcane painted black.
A sentry atop the watchtower caught sight of him, and they exchanged waves silently. It was too far to try shouting out anything. Avoiding the path up to the watchtower entirely, Deros dismounted as he neared the open portcullis gate — he didn’t see the guard immediately so he just passed on through its wide interior, leading Enseres by the reins.
Soon after passing under it, he could see down the wide canyon slopes to the snaking river as it gradually thinned and died into muddy terrain some distance past the point where one would begin the zigzagging climb up the pass. Fortunately, the river was not so wide as to prevent access, and so on its banks, he could make out a man sprawled on the ground, seemingly unmoving, with a small crowd of Azakan huddled around him. They were clothed in swirls of tan, all well-camouflaged with the terrain, spoiled only by red faces and long hair of white or pale purple-gray. The vaeton and keeper of Easthold — Lecto — was there, talking to the others. A blood-soaked aloga was nearby them, legs and lowered snout in the water.
“Hail there, hunter.”
Deros and Enseres both jumped at the sound above and behind them. Deros turned to his left to see an Azakan warrior perched at the top of the wall between two merlons, legs dangling and also watching the scene at the bottom of the canyon. The position explained why he wasn’t visible upon approach. Deros certainly hadn’t expected him to be there… his farsense had subconsciously been minimized as was proper to training when not needed, and so the warrior had even been — annoyingly — outside its radius of detection.
The only thing that typically marked a warrior from other Azakan was their hard leather helms, dyed the ‘bloody’ purple known as godberry. Telalo — the young man Deros regarded above him — didn’t have his on his head but hanging back by his neck, which was quite typical. Mostly only training or war would see them donning such implements and wielding their shields. Deros had never seen war come to Miracle Springs, however.
Telalo wore a bored, sleepy expression — one he always did, to where Deros didn’t think the lids of his eyes could rise more than halfway. His skin was naturally, uncommonly stark red, rich in color, and almost bright. Deros knew this to be no deepening from Azrom, as the man liked to affect a sleeveless tunic when it wasn’t too cold, to ‘feel the wind on his skin’. It had always been uniform in color, even in his youth. He had a touch of that red in his other features — his eyes were like a faded red or pale pink and his hair was a very pale magenta, slowly fading more into grayish. They weren’t exactly friends, it was just that Deros observed and absorbed everything meticulously, and had a strong memory beside. Both things his father had complimented and instructed him to cultivate.
“Hail, warrior,” Deros replied. He glanced at the scene on the river, nodded his head to it, then looked back, squinting his eyes against Azrom as it once again peeked over the horizon. “That Bluehand doesn’t look well.”
Telalo yawned behind a hand and nodded at the same time. “That’s a way of putting it. Might’ve been dead on arrival. Maybe before. ‘Less his spirit speaks, we got a mystery going today.”
Deros arched an eyebrow. “Dead before arrival?”
Telalo flicked his head at the scene. “See the ropes? He tied himself down to his aloga — s’what the vaeton spied with his scope. Must’ve been going under on the way.”
Sure enough, Deros could just make out scattered bits nearby the fallen Bluehand that had to be the ropes. “He was out as he rode up? That’s incredible — can you imagine such a thing? Using the last of one’s strength to…” He trailed off shaking his head, not knowing exactly.
The red-eyed man exhaled in a show of self-doubt. “I think I’d eat sand a lot sooner, and never make it this far. Honestly. But who knows, really?”
Turning his head and regarding the warrior silently for a moment, Deros was not certain how to reply. He instead gestured to the sloping path with his chin and said, “Think I’ll make my way down and have a look.”
“Suit yourself. Gonna be good game today you reckon, hunter?”
Deros nodded. “Will be for a good while. If we get any more rain, we’ll have the best spring we’ve ever seen.”
“Works for me. May Explorer guide your path, hunter.”
Deros nodded one last time to the man before beginning down the path. “Take care, warrior.”
It was more to convention to invoke the gods in one’s partings, especially when one did so to you, but Deros found it increasingly awkward. Respecting ancestral beliefs was one thing, believing in and invoking them another. Especially when someone had just been so honest about something as core as their very mettle to survive. Deros’s father didn’t really encourage him toward honesty — whatever a person of politics said, presented, or even thought about themselves, they truly didn’t live such a life. That didn’t mean Deros didn’t consider honesty an admirable trait.
In appropriate moderation, anyway…
