The many days after the ambush had not been kind to Ryza and her party. They did catch up to the Sylmex and obtained some bullets, as well as six elite braves for reinforcement. Unfortunately, they all but stumbled into an altercation with the demons soon thereafter, surprised that they’d continued pursuit so far and so effectively. They survived it to flee again, with too much wasted ammo and a casualty inflicted.
They made their way through the broken, rough terrain southeast of that original path, losing their pursuers but stuck traversing an unknown wilderness with scant resources. Speed was painstaking. Worse, after a five-day, they caught sight of a familiar bird above. They well understood what it meant from their own encounter as well as from the Sylmex with their spies. Kelekos had tried to shoot it down once and failed, but he had not had the superior rifle at the time, nor familiarity.
Ryza’s first shot missed, but as the flyer tried to climb up higher, Ryza’s second shot ended such efforts. It careened down out of the sky, to cheers from the others. She thanked the other sharpshooter in the bunch, the Sylmex Azakan Teshmako Eyepiercer, for his tips related to cleaning the rifle ‘barrel’ of residual gunk every so often, without which the shot would not have been possible due to reduced accuracy.
In the ensuing days, however, they found themselves running from one pocket of pursuers into another, as they had apparently been located and entrapped, swarmed from all sides, what had to be hundreds to cover enough ground. A bloody affair commenced as a fight was unavoidable to charge through one side and get out of it. Two Sylmex fell and another was gravely injured in the attempt, as well as a bullet taken in the leg by Daexo — another grievous wound. But they broke through and escaped the trap.
Daexo claimed to have felt makar’osa use, and with some suspicion on how they’d been tracked, Ryza banned all similar use from her husband or Aerion. The conditions worsening for the two injured, they chanced to find a cave with water and took their chances hiding within it to recover. Fortunately, the Ironbloods failed to find them.
It took seven days alone for both Daexo and the Sylmex to recover enough to continue, though Ryza and others were able to forage, hunt, and scout during the period extensively. The Ironbloods were not seen at all after a few days, finally abandoning their vendetta.
It took everything within Ryza to convince Aerion not to go off on his own — in the end, he had to make his own decision about what his priorities were, and he chose to stay. It left him inconsolable and morose, but he finally accepted that any rescue would be a long-term ordeal and that their people came first. It was no less than Ryza had to accept with her brother. They’d never stop fighting, but it would be step by logical step.
They finally continued their harrowing journey through increasingly harsh, dry lands, eventually finding their way back to the trail of their quarry thanks to Aerion’s keen nose. Nonetheless, they kept an agonizingly slow pace due to a complete inability to face another big altercation after losing most of their already meager ammunition. It couldn’t be risked.
Water was solved at least, by coming to an abandoned fortress surrounding a well. By all appearances, massive numbers had passed through, though they left virtually nothing behind other than tracks and refuse. They encountered no sentries. Why was it so important to vacate literally every soldier? Even a few left would’ve made the place one to avoid…
Painstakingly, they pressed on, uncertain what they’d find ahead, but day after day, it was the dust left in the wake of an army’s withdrawal.
They did finally encounter a singular demon scout coming back down the path, but they were far more ready for him than vice-versa. Needing his supplies, Ryza sniped him dead from range, then put down the rekas that lingered in confusion around its fallen master as well. The beasts were unpredictable at best… some ferocious and others cowardly or timid.
An additional gun and splatgun were welcome, but the ammunition was like gold to Ryza — fortunately, the rifles and cavalry guns used the same conical bullets and even detachable cylinders, one just had a longer barrel and various improved qualities such as the trigger and sights. The scout had some spare bullets as well, which they loaded into empty cylinders along with gunpowder, packing them down at just the right firmness of pressure to seat them before snapping the plate back into place. They were always stored bullet-side up, to have gravity help keep things reasonably packed despite jostling.
They scavenged what else they could before moving on. The armor was well-known as a no-go based on prior Sylmex experimentation — it was alive but seized up stiff instead of cooperating for Hamaleen if put on, and the inside guts would sting and irritate the skin. Plates could be removed and stayed incredibly hard even dead, at least for a few impacts, but it was a painstaking process to cut them out. So they left the suits where they were, possibly to die with their owners.
Uncertain if the death would eventually be investigated, they did bury the bodies in sand, then went very wide of the tracks and associated path, doing their best to hide their own tracks and confuse them in case of any attempt to follow.
The land continued to be hard and barren up a very gradual incline, until it finally ended in a drop-off, revealing them to have been on a massive plateau. It had an irregular end that curved off far east and west, with the western side eventually stretching northwest with signs of higher elevations. Across an equally vast, flat plain extending to the horizon northeast, a dark mountain with a flat top could be seen. Some distance before it, another fortress could also just be made out a bit further east, something they suspected was another well from the exact-same structure to it that they’d seen before.
They kept hidden and observed from a distance for an entire day — capably, thanks to a pair of scavenged, powerful demontech binoculars. During this time, they saw sparse but present signs of movement: up and down the base of the mountain where a pass seemed to exist, to and from the fortress, as well as back west to the probable route of theirs. Daexo and to a lesser extent Aerion also reported feeling some sort of powerful makar’osa use at the top of the mountain, making it clear something important was there.
At this point, Teshmako insisted on heading back, so he could report the location and everything else they’d learned. They bid their farewells and he headed out, while the other two Sylmex planned to continue, for any additional information that they’d glean.
Everyone was quite intent on making a try up the mountain and seeing what the horned demons could possibly have up there. The others assumed some sort of portal straight down into the hells. Ryza… she had only really started thinking of them as ‘demons’ after the collective consensus of others. She thought of the concept as a placeholder and reserved judgment. If one wanted to go down, though, a mountain seemed a poor place to start.
The next day saw a similar exodus as seen from the prior withdrawal from the well-housing fortress, all of them up the mountain with seemingly no man left behind.
Under the cover of night, they made their way over to the fortress, always on the lookout for any sign of response, movement, or light. But it was clearly abandoned, and they had no trouble proceeding right up to the walls. Ryza used a grapple to climb over and open one of the gates for the others to access. They filled up their various waterskins and Ryza called for a brief rest, but soon set off for the ever-looming mountain with Azrom just rising.
At the base of the mountain, they saw some meager signs of decayed ruins and the look of some shallow, long-dry canal snaking perhaps all the way around. The pass, however, looked like a rather fresh and new raw gutting of the stone and seemed to shoot up one side and curl around, ever upward. It looked quite wagon-traversable, which made sense from what they’d seen.
Despite an eagerness possessing them to press on, Ryza enforced caution and insisted on scouting ahead progressively. She really didn’t want anyone else getting shot due to some sentry or straggler. They walked their aloga up through the heat of the day, though it cooled progressively with the altitude.
Daexo reported frequent makar’osa use, and he had no words to describe what it actually was. Aerion merely called it ‘a confusing mix,’ but they were both quite disturbed by it, its intensity increasing as they neared it. They maintained it was ‘it’ rather than some person doing it. Aerion eventually began calling it ‘the portal,’ certain in his suspicions. Ryza could only just feel it like a tickle at the back of her head, but the feeling was indeed more noticeable as they ascended.
When it became dark, they were still climbing, and Ryza began to worry about how cold it would get, so she called for an increased pace. The boys had not reported any activity with the portal for a couple of hours, when soon after they began riding their aloga, the flare of makar’osa started again, and so close and powerful was it, even Ryza could feel its strangeness acutely. She did not like it one bit.
Shortly after the ‘activation,’ it became even stranger, as the flare went up and down, on and off chaotically. Daexo was withdrawn about it, clearly disturbed and muttering to himself. Ryza assumed her husband would mention when something relevant was noticed, so she let him be.
In the freezing cold and high wind, everyone having donned their heaviest night clothes, they approached the lip of the pass. They dismounted and crouched their way up, finally looking out on their bellies. Thankfully, Keramus was out and bright enough to provide some light to see by.
There was another walled encampment, huge and filled with actual buildings, with three very high-walled fortresses within it. As soon as Ryza began sweeping the binoculars around its contours, she made a brief amazed noise. Abandoned.
“Abandoned again, boys,” she muttered, taking a deep breath and then passing the telescopic device to Daexo. “Or tell me I am blind, husband.”
Daexo took a look and cursed. “No. So it looks. But where to? Down the other side, maybe…” He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.
“Come on, Daexo,” Aerion said in derision. “They went through the hell portal.” He thumped his friend on the shoulder. “Now give me the binoculars.”
Her husband scowled sourly but did so, and Aerion took his own long look.
“So,” Ryza began as she shifted over close to Daexo’s ear, practically on top of him. “Are you going to say what is eating at you or is it truly irrelevant?”
He turned to her, making them practically nose-to-nose, and gave a brief shake of his head. “It’s bizarre and I hate it. I don’t think it has been shutting off at all. It gets close, then flares back up.”
Ryza pulled her scarf down briefly to kiss his nose, which annoyed him slightly and made her smile. “We won’t know anything until we go. We can’t stay here, regardless.”
Aerion passed the binoculars to the Sylmex at his right, Illités, then said, “Well, it's obvious which fortress houses the portal. The right-most one.”
“I see no activity, either,” young Illités offered, then passed the binoculars back down the line.
Ryza offered them to the other Sylmex to her left, the middle-aged scout Merias, but he declined, so she took another look for a spell, eying watchtowers, walls, and what she could see of buildings, looking for movement or light. There was some evidence of light coming from the fortress Aerion had targeted, but it was indirect.
“To have much to report,” Merias said, “we have to go down and see. I think they’re heedless of spies, dismissive any could make it this far. They’re religious to their own ways and arrogant when it comes to us. Only a small number have been taught otherwise, so it still remains our advantage.”
None disagreed. In fact, Ryza and he almost never did, and they had practically been one mind with Teshmako as well. They’d been a great support against the brasher Aerion of many five-days past. Illités was much more impatient and firebrand as well, but thankfully fully deferred to his elders.
In general, Ryza had been surprised by the similarities between Sylmex and Taldecca culture. The influences of the Observatories they shared, and the connection to Alnaseria were a prominent and powerful parallel, she figured. Ryza knew it was not the same as Alnaserian culture itself, which was a good thing, because she despised them and their haughty, inaccessible ways. She was not optimistic about them getting involved in the wars. She knew they wouldn’t, not until it was literally threatening their precious, precious city.
They all retreated back to their aloga and began the trek down the remaining kilometers to the wall without incident, out across incredibly flat terrain that reminded her of a road more than a natural environment. Oddly, their ears popped again, as though the pressure began changing. It became increasingly easier to breathe, and the wind became more and more gentle. Perhaps slightly warmer. The whole of it — and the feel of the air itself — was eerie.
Ryza once again jumped the wall and opened the gates up for the others to take the aloga through. They stayed as stealthy as possible, but the place was barren of traffic. Promising signs were evident for being able to survive the freeze of the night if they needed — accessible facilities with chimneys… and she marveled that they even had a tint-glassed house for plants. That alone would be a heat-retaining location. She hadn’t seen one in a long, long time…
Aerion suddenly exclaimed in a way that made Ryza flinch, and she was ready to scold him when she caught sight of him turning to meet her eye, his bared face a mix of shock and joy that gave her pause.
“Ryza!” he called, voice almost breaking as if to cry with emotion. “It’s Deros — his scent! He’s been here just, I-I don’t know, only hours ago, I think!”
“What?” She stared incredulously. They had to have been at least ten days behind the pace of the caravan he was on… “Are you sure?”
Instead of replying, Aerion leapt off of his aloga and dropped to the paved ground, sniffing at it furiously, and progressively crawling further toward a nondescript, open doorway to some building. That he did such a thing, as someone well-known for not caring to be seen animalistically in his arts, said something about his eagerness for some sign of hope. That or his broken-down state of mind.
He came to a crouch as he got to the doorway, then gestured with a hand. “Definitively Deros. Off to the east. I’ll track it on foot…”
They all followed, and it readily became apparent it was to the fortress that was their destination anyway. Instead of up to the massive, dark gate, it led off right further around the wall, and to a small, tidy cluster of gear, along with a long trail of demontech cord leading to a poorly-designed, makeshift grappling hook that was possibly damaged by a fall.
Ryza dismounted to inspect the gear along with Aerion — a walking staff, pouches, ceramic water vessels. Items for survival on a hike. “Well,” Ryza said, looking at Aerion expectantly, “did he make it or did he leave from here?”
Daexo made an elaborate sigh. “He scaled this recently? He was free. Bloody bâvâ. Figures that little dunghead would get out of trouble then jump right back into it.”
Aerion shook his head, looking up at the window. “He made it. This is a one-way trail. He didn’t just leave all this and go back the way he came…” He had a perturbed frown on his face.
“What is it?” Ryza asked.
“Ah… it’s nothing. I just… his scent. It’s a bit…” He seemed to struggle with how to put it. “Off.”
“You’d be off too, if you’d been alone and on foot for all of this. Perhaps for a long time, depending on when he escaped.” She strode over to the grappling hook end and picked it up, inspecting it. Hastily made with rope and knots. She muttered a dark curse in the dead tongue of the far South. “Damn it, Deros, I could slap you for this travesty. I taught you better…”
Still, she felt a significant measure of pride for her brother. You made it, after all. You escaped and lived to tell the tale, and now I want to hear it! We’re coming, Deros. Help is coming…
“I know this means much to you,” Merias said as he trundled his aloga over to her, “but we need to get into this fortress ourselves soon, before the cold gets much worse.”
Ryza nodded simply to the correction as she dropped the grapple and proceeded back to her aloga’s saddlebags to retrieve her own grappling hook, then found her way to the other end of the rope, at the bottom of a pile of it. She tied it in a secure knot to the end of the hook and moved into position, looking up at the window to decide on a trajectory for the toss.
“What I don’t get,” Daexo said casually as he corralled everyone out of the way to give Ryza space, “is why his gear is still here. Could have opened the gate and come back for it.”
“Perhaps something happened,” Aerion mused. “Maybe it wasn’t unoccupied? Or the gate isn’t easily opened…”
“Only one way to find out.” Ryza began whirling the grapple for her throw, summoning daug’makar and saturating her body with adrenaline. Unlike the farsense, she sensed nothing outside of her mind and body, couldn’t ‘focus’ on anything else, everything curving back into her own little world.
When she intensified it, the flows threaded and coiled around her brain, down her spine, and wrapped around every nerve fiber, enhancing and expanding it to a new level. More intense than anywhere, it flowed to and became her eyes, became a brand new translation of the information spinning back more directly to the center, and the ‘slower’ senses became mere anchors and verification of abstract, somehow both higher and more simplified predictions. And that was all it was, all any sensory information was: predictions of the future positioning of reality.
None other than the Slowseers understood why they called themselves seers at all, and it was impossible to explain. It was new code, new symbology in a language no one else had an ear or tongue for, explaining the giant illusion of the material world to the brain in a more efficient way. Everyone else had just the one, bumbling around two steps behind, and their actions were less carefully-reasoned or intuitive for the lack of time and cross-reference.
The net effect was the world moving slower, all of its points of info broken down, processed, and considered split-moment by split-moment with pure reasoning. She knew the grapple was spinning rapidly, yet she saw it and intuitively felt it as though it were doing so leisurely. She knew precisely when to release, and how the muscles should flex to make the throw, tiny adjustments conducted even up to the follow-through.
She made the adrenaline-fueled throw, and the four-pronged hook soared up through the window. When she began pulling it back to snag it, however, it slipped free and down the long distance to the ground.
It figures.
As she reeled back in the grappling hook, she became aware of Daexo saying something, and she dropped down out of the second sight to focus on it better. Spoken words were annoying, otherwise.
“Smoothly done,” Daexo teased in sarcasm, his face freed of wrappings seemingly just to make an expression at her.
“Contrary to popular belief, husband,” Ryza answered, “I’m not perfect.”
“At least you look it while not being.” He grinned shamelessly.
She did not mean to, but she smirked all the same while shaking her head at him.
“Please,” Aerion begged with longsuffering tones, “no more foreplay… not now…”
Ryza barked a laugh. “You misjudge. My husband is just trying to warm me up to this task.”
With that, Ryza summoned forth the slowing sight again and made another throw, almost a clone of the first. She pulled the hook over to the left corner before slowing her efforts carefully: pulling it, lowering, pulling, until it snagged the way she liked. Then she pulled hard and began jerking it. It was caught soundly.
She grinned over at Aerion and said, “See?” but he just rolled his eyes without comment.
Keeping it taut, Ryza made the climb smoothly, though halfway up she paused with the cord wrapped around and under her arms to give her hands a rest, in particular. The rest of the way she cleared with the aid of a flood of adrenaline. It was certainly harder than it had looked.
Perhaps you’re getting soft, old girl. We’ve made such a climb before. Higher.
She sat at the window a while, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness within as she pulled out her longknife, then proceeded from the little room to immediate stairs down from the battlements.
She slowed in her descent as she caught sight of a great twisted spherical thing floating in midair inside of a big ring, atop an equally bizarre platform positioned in the center of a kind of courtyard. It was all well-lit by lanterns. Her skin prickled with the feel of makar’osa use, more intense than she’d ever felt.
Focusing on the task at hand, she made her way to the gate. Built into the wall was a heavy winch-and-chain system to open it. It used a metal pole lever, and still it was incredibly laborious for her, requiring a break between each link. After she got the gate up enough to crawl under, Daexo and Aerion came through to take over and get it high enough for the aloga to pass.
Sweating from exertion, they all proceeded slowly inward toward the platform, each walking their increasingly audibly-protesting aloga, who all did not like it one bit. Even Ryza’s stoic Selephael seemed disturbed. The strange spherical vortex had perhaps reduced slightly in size since Ryza had first observed it. There was a slight flow of air coming from it, as if from a breeze, carrying a faint musty smell. And warmth, rising upward. When Ryza looked up, she noticed that the underside of the pavilion above the ring had a thin layer of dew.
Moist air coming out… but somehow not a storm…
No one seemed to want to speak for a long spell, so Ryza took a deep breath and forced herself to ask, “Well? Any further insights from your farsense?”
Daexo shook his head slightly as he peered at it with a sour expression. “That space is here, but also somewhere else… Much like it looks, though, everything is jumbled. And… wrong. There is a wrongness.”
“A portal to a hell,” Aerion declared. He was crouched down, sniffing once more. “It stinks of alien things I can’t name or place, but I recognize some as that of the demons. And I smell blood and fear and battle not long past staining the air and ground. And… Deros. His trail leads right to it. He’s gone through… three, four, five hours ago, maybe.”
A spike of worry rose up in Ryza at the news. What had he walked into, exactly? And then she noticed the sphere reducing slightly in size, the air subtly shifting around them as it did.
Ryza swiftly began removing things from her aloga’s saddlebags. “We cannot wait around for it to close on us, get your gear secured on you!”
“We’re not taking the aloga?” Aerion asked as he stood.
“I’d even be fighting Selephael to go into that insanity — the others might be impossible. And I’m not sure it's right to. Are you? We don’t know what’s beyond. There’s more respect to aloga to slaughter and eat than to drag to hell. This is our folly to play.”
“Guess it’s time to pay the price and sate our greed,” Daexo muttered as he dismounted and began getting geared up. It was some reference that tickled the back of Ryza’s mind, but she dismissed it in her haste.
When she saw the Sylmex preparing as well, Ryza forestalled them. “You two should stay with the aloga. Someone has to.”
Illités scowled and said, “Our people are taken through there, too! I’m coming with you. Merias can stay. Two would be cowardly.”
Ryza regarded him levelly. “Azakan, you’ve lived through hell already and survived, something you deserve a name for and not one to be thrown away. Illités Fearless Charger, who faced the demon giants screaming in rage instead of terror. So I say; what say you?”
The young man was struck with awe, because a name and those words from a renowned hero were practically undeniable, Sylmex or no. She’d just named him. Flustered, Illités sputtered, “I-... Thank you, Ryza Rainfeather… I say you speak true and I accept…”
“Good. Then heed your name-giver and stay put.”
In some amusement, Merias added, “You’ll have your day to charge again, I’m sure.”
Nodding in agreement, Ryza said, “Our quarrels with our enemies are just beginning. We’re simply conducting this scenario logically. We’ll test the waters beyond and go from there. If we don’t contact you soon, find a place to fortify for the night. We’ll blow a horn if we come through and you aren’t here. I’d leave to report, otherwise. Once the heat returns.”
Though Illités still seemed unsatisfied, he could hardly argue honorably after what Ryza did. Merias, for his part, touched Ryza on the shoulder and said, “Explorer guide you, Blessed Miracleman Azakan.”
Returning the gesture, Ryza said, “And you, Sylmex Azakan. Take good care of our animals.”
Turning away, Ryza felt a horrible sinking in her gut as she laid eyes on Selephael. The regal beast was eyeing her right back with an air of trepidation as if sensing the dreadful parting at hand. Ryza petted his snout and patted his neck, receiving nuzzles in return.
“Stay healthy, old friend,” she whispered to him. “You belong here, body and spirit, dead or alive. So do we, but this is something we have to do… we will return.”
“We’re ready, Ryza,” Aerion called gently.
She gave a last little kiss on her mighty beast’s snout, then turned to go, briefly touching the snout of Enseres too, who grunted and pawed at the ground as if complaining.
She did not shed any tears despite her emotions. Since childhood, she’d only cried for her lost mother, not even summoning it for Gerasinon, her mentor and adopted father, nor even for her beloved older brothers. And only once, during the first of her grief. It was a grief for someone who should not have loved her at all, she felt, much less so absolutely. It was an unreasonable love, and for it she cried because she’d never be able to return or repay something that had transformed and saved her.
Because of it, she could love Deros so unreasonably, to try and fill a hole in him that she’d had and could never fill just the same. She knew she couldn’t, but by trying, she changed him, and hopefully for the better.
I’m not the greatest nurturer and I’ll never be an actual mother. But I will look after my family such as it is. Everyone that comes under my wing. Just as you made a daughter out of a spiteful little screaming devil carved of every hatred, I’ll see to the good of my people.
The spherical portal seemed to have receded a bit more, so she approached it with her rifle at the ready with her boys to either side and said, “Let’s get a little taste of hell, then, Hamaleen! For the Taldecca Atateri — for Hamellion!”
They gave their cries and walked in together, into a bewildering kaleidoscope.
The many days after the ambush had not been kind to Ryza and her party. They did catch up to the Sylmex and obtained some bullets, as well as six elite braves for reinforcement. Unfortunately, they all but stumbled into an altercation with the demons soon thereafter, surprised that they’d continued pursuit so far and so effectively. They survived it to flee again, with too much wasted ammo and a casualty inflicted.
They made their way through the broken, rough terrain southeast of that original path, losing their pursuers but stuck traversing an unknown wilderness with scant resources. Speed was painstaking. Worse, after a five-day, they caught sight of a familiar bird above. They well understood what it meant from their own encounter as well as from the Sylmex with their spies. Kelekos had tried to shoot it down once and failed, but he had not had the superior rifle at the time, nor familiarity.
Ryza’s first shot missed, but as the flyer tried to climb up higher, Ryza’s second shot ended such efforts. It careened down out of the sky, to cheers from the others. She thanked the other sharpshooter in the bunch, the Sylmex Azakan Teshmako Eyepiercer, for his tips related to cleaning the rifle ‘barrel’ of residual gunk every so often, without which the shot would not have been possible due to reduced accuracy.
In the ensuing days, however, they found themselves running from one pocket of pursuers into another, as they had apparently been located and entrapped, swarmed from all sides, what had to be hundreds to cover enough ground. A bloody affair commenced as a fight was unavoidable to charge through one side and get out of it. Two Sylmex fell and another was gravely injured in the attempt, as well as a bullet taken in the leg by Daexo — another grievous wound. But they broke through and escaped the trap.
Daexo claimed to have felt makar’osa use, and with some suspicion on how they’d been tracked, Ryza banned all similar use from her husband or Aerion. The conditions worsening for the two injured, they chanced to find a cave with water and took their chances hiding within it to recover. Fortunately, the Ironbloods failed to find them.
It took seven days alone for both Daexo and the Sylmex to recover enough to continue, though Ryza and others were able to forage, hunt, and scout during the period extensively. The Ironbloods were not seen at all after a few days, finally abandoning their vendetta.
It took everything within Ryza to convince Aerion not to go off on his own — in the end, he had to make his own decision about what his priorities were, and he chose to stay. It left him inconsolable and morose, but he finally accepted that any rescue would be a long-term ordeal and that their people came first. It was no less than Ryza had to accept with her brother. They’d never stop fighting, but it would be step by logical step.
They finally continued their harrowing journey through increasingly harsh, dry lands, eventually finding their way back to the trail of their quarry thanks to Aerion’s keen nose. Nonetheless, they kept an agonizingly slow pace due to a complete inability to face another big altercation after losing most of their already meager ammunition. It couldn’t be risked.
Water was solved at least, by coming to an abandoned fortress surrounding a well. By all appearances, massive numbers had passed through, though they left virtually nothing behind other than tracks and refuse. They encountered no sentries. Why was it so important to vacate literally every soldier? Even a few left would’ve made the place one to avoid…
Painstakingly, they pressed on, uncertain what they’d find ahead, but day after day, it was the dust left in the wake of an army’s withdrawal.
They did finally encounter a singular demon scout coming back down the path, but they were far more ready for him than vice-versa. Needing his supplies, Ryza sniped him dead from range, then put down the rekas that lingered in confusion around its fallen master as well. The beasts were unpredictable at best… some ferocious and others cowardly or timid.
An additional gun and splatgun were welcome, but the ammunition was like gold to Ryza — fortunately, the rifles and cavalry guns used the same conical bullets and even detachable cylinders, one just had a longer barrel and various improved qualities such as the trigger and sights. The scout had some spare bullets as well, which they loaded into empty cylinders along with gunpowder, packing them down at just the right firmness of pressure to seat them before snapping the plate back into place. They were always stored bullet-side up, to have gravity help keep things reasonably packed despite jostling.
They scavenged what else they could before moving on. The armor was well-known as a no-go based on prior Sylmex experimentation — it was alive but seized up stiff instead of cooperating for Hamaleen if put on, and the inside guts would sting and irritate the skin. Plates could be removed and stayed incredibly hard even dead, at least for a few impacts, but it was a painstaking process to cut them out. So they left the suits where they were, possibly to die with their owners.
Uncertain if the death would eventually be investigated, they did bury the bodies in sand, then went very wide of the tracks and associated path, doing their best to hide their own tracks and confuse them in case of any attempt to follow.
The land continued to be hard and barren up a very gradual incline, until it finally ended in a drop-off, revealing them to have been on a massive plateau. It had an irregular end that curved off far east and west, with the western side eventually stretching northwest with signs of higher elevations. Across an equally vast, flat plain extending to the horizon northeast, a dark mountain with a flat top could be seen. Some distance before it, another fortress could also just be made out a bit further east, something they suspected was another well from the exact-same structure to it that they’d seen before.
They kept hidden and observed from a distance for an entire day — capably, thanks to a pair of scavenged, powerful demontech binoculars. During this time, they saw sparse but present signs of movement: up and down the base of the mountain where a pass seemed to exist, to and from the fortress, as well as back west to the probable route of theirs. Daexo and to a lesser extent Aerion also reported feeling some sort of powerful makar’osa use at the top of the mountain, making it clear something important was there.
At this point, Teshmako insisted on heading back, so he could report the location and everything else they’d learned. They bid their farewells and he headed out, while the other two Sylmex planned to continue, for any additional information that they’d glean.
Everyone was quite intent on making a try up the mountain and seeing what the horned demons could possibly have up there. The others assumed some sort of portal straight down into the hells. Ryza… she had only really started thinking of them as ‘demons’ after the collective consensus of others. She thought of the concept as a placeholder and reserved judgment. If one wanted to go down, though, a mountain seemed a poor place to start.
The next day saw a similar exodus as seen from the prior withdrawal from the well-housing fortress, all of them up the mountain with seemingly no man left behind.
Under the cover of night, they made their way over to the fortress, always on the lookout for any sign of response, movement, or light. But it was clearly abandoned, and they had no trouble proceeding right up to the walls. Ryza used a grapple to climb over and open one of the gates for the others to access. They filled up their various waterskins and Ryza called for a brief rest, but soon set off for the ever-looming mountain with Azrom just rising.
At the base of the mountain, they saw some meager signs of decayed ruins and the look of some shallow, long-dry canal snaking perhaps all the way around. The pass, however, looked like a rather fresh and new raw gutting of the stone and seemed to shoot up one side and curl around, ever upward. It looked quite wagon-traversable, which made sense from what they’d seen.
Despite an eagerness possessing them to press on, Ryza enforced caution and insisted on scouting ahead progressively. She really didn’t want anyone else getting shot due to some sentry or straggler. They walked their aloga up through the heat of the day, though it cooled progressively with the altitude.
Daexo reported frequent makar’osa use, and he had no words to describe what it actually was. Aerion merely called it ‘a confusing mix,’ but they were both quite disturbed by it, its intensity increasing as they neared it. They maintained it was ‘it’ rather than some person doing it. Aerion eventually began calling it ‘the portal,’ certain in his suspicions. Ryza could only just feel it like a tickle at the back of her head, but the feeling was indeed more noticeable as they ascended.
When it became dark, they were still climbing, and Ryza began to worry about how cold it would get, so she called for an increased pace. The boys had not reported any activity with the portal for a couple of hours, when soon after they began riding their aloga, the flare of makar’osa started again, and so close and powerful was it, even Ryza could feel its strangeness acutely. She did not like it one bit.
Shortly after the ‘activation,’ it became even stranger, as the flare went up and down, on and off chaotically. Daexo was withdrawn about it, clearly disturbed and muttering to himself. Ryza assumed her husband would mention when something relevant was noticed, so she let him be.
In the freezing cold and high wind, everyone having donned their heaviest night clothes, they approached the lip of the pass. They dismounted and crouched their way up, finally looking out on their bellies. Thankfully, Keramus was out and bright enough to provide some light to see by.
There was another walled encampment, huge and filled with actual buildings, with three very high-walled fortresses within it. As soon as Ryza began sweeping the binoculars around its contours, she made a brief amazed noise. Abandoned.
“Abandoned again, boys,” she muttered, taking a deep breath and then passing the telescopic device to Daexo. “Or tell me I am blind, husband.”
Daexo took a look and cursed. “No. So it looks. But where to? Down the other side, maybe…” He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.
“Come on, Daexo,” Aerion said in derision. “They went through the hell portal.” He thumped his friend on the shoulder. “Now give me the binoculars.”
Her husband scowled sourly but did so, and Aerion took his own long look.
“So,” Ryza began as she shifted over close to Daexo’s ear, practically on top of him. “Are you going to say what is eating at you or is it truly irrelevant?”
He turned to her, making them practically nose-to-nose, and gave a brief shake of his head. “It’s bizarre and I hate it. I don’t think it has been shutting off at all. It gets close, then flares back up.”
Ryza pulled her scarf down briefly to kiss his nose, which annoyed him slightly and made her smile. “We won’t know anything until we go. We can’t stay here, regardless.”
Aerion passed the binoculars to the Sylmex at his right, Illités, then said, “Well, it's obvious which fortress houses the portal. The right-most one.”
“I see no activity, either,” young Illités offered, then passed the binoculars back down the line.
Ryza offered them to the other Sylmex to her left, the middle-aged scout Merias, but he declined, so she took another look for a spell, eying watchtowers, walls, and what she could see of buildings, looking for movement or light. There was some evidence of light coming from the fortress Aerion had targeted, but it was indirect.
“To have much to report,” Merias said, “we have to go down and see. I think they’re heedless of spies, dismissive any could make it this far. They’re religious to their own ways and arrogant when it comes to us. Only a small number have been taught otherwise, so it still remains our advantage.”
None disagreed. In fact, Ryza and he almost never did, and they had practically been one mind with Teshmako as well. They’d been a great support against the brasher Aerion of many five-days past. Illités was much more impatient and firebrand as well, but thankfully fully deferred to his elders.
In general, Ryza had been surprised by the similarities between Sylmex and Taldecca culture. The influences of the Observatories they shared, and the connection to Alnaseria were a prominent and powerful parallel, she figured. Ryza knew it was not the same as Alnaserian culture itself, which was a good thing, because she despised them and their haughty, inaccessible ways. She was not optimistic about them getting involved in the wars. She knew they wouldn’t, not until it was literally threatening their precious, precious city.
They all retreated back to their aloga and began the trek down the remaining kilometers to the wall without incident, out across incredibly flat terrain that reminded her of a road more than a natural environment. Oddly, their ears popped again, as though the pressure began changing. It became increasingly easier to breathe, and the wind became more and more gentle. Perhaps slightly warmer. The whole of it — and the feel of the air itself — was eerie.
Ryza once again jumped the wall and opened the gates up for the others to take the aloga through. They stayed as stealthy as possible, but the place was barren of traffic. Promising signs were evident for being able to survive the freeze of the night if they needed — accessible facilities with chimneys… and she marveled that they even had a tint-glassed house for plants. That alone would be a heat-retaining location. She hadn’t seen one in a long, long time…
Aerion suddenly exclaimed in a way that made Ryza flinch, and she was ready to scold him when she caught sight of him turning to meet her eye, his bared face a mix of shock and joy that gave her pause.
“Ryza!” he called, voice almost breaking as if to cry with emotion. “It’s Deros — his scent! He’s been here just, I-I don’t know, only hours ago, I think!”
“What?” She stared incredulously. They had to have been at least ten days behind the pace of the caravan he was on… “Are you sure?”
Instead of replying, Aerion leapt off of his aloga and dropped to the paved ground, sniffing at it furiously, and progressively crawling further toward a nondescript, open doorway to some building. That he did such a thing, as someone well-known for not caring to be seen animalistically in his arts, said something about his eagerness for some sign of hope. That or his broken-down state of mind.
He came to a crouch as he got to the doorway, then gestured with a hand. “Definitively Deros. Off to the east. I’ll track it on foot…”
They all followed, and it readily became apparent it was to the fortress that was their destination anyway. Instead of up to the massive, dark gate, it led off right further around the wall, and to a small, tidy cluster of gear, along with a long trail of demontech cord leading to a poorly-designed, makeshift grappling hook that was possibly damaged by a fall.
Ryza dismounted to inspect the gear along with Aerion — a walking staff, pouches, ceramic water vessels. Items for survival on a hike. “Well,” Ryza said, looking at Aerion expectantly, “did he make it or did he leave from here?”
Daexo made an elaborate sigh. “He scaled this recently? He was free. Bloody bâvâ. Figures that little dunghead would get out of trouble then jump right back into it.”
Aerion shook his head, looking up at the window. “He made it. This is a one-way trail. He didn’t just leave all this and go back the way he came…” He had a perturbed frown on his face.
“What is it?” Ryza asked.
“Ah… it’s nothing. I just… his scent. It’s a bit…” He seemed to struggle with how to put it. “Off.”
“You’d be off too, if you’d been alone and on foot for all of this. Perhaps for a long time, depending on when he escaped.” She strode over to the grappling hook end and picked it up, inspecting it. Hastily made with rope and knots. She muttered a dark curse in the dead tongue of the far South. “Damn it, Deros, I could slap you for this travesty. I taught you better…”
Still, she felt a significant measure of pride for her brother. You made it, after all. You escaped and lived to tell the tale, and now I want to hear it! We’re coming, Deros. Help is coming…
“I know this means much to you,” Merias said as he trundled his aloga over to her, “but we need to get into this fortress ourselves soon, before the cold gets much worse.”
Ryza nodded simply to the correction as she dropped the grapple and proceeded back to her aloga’s saddlebags to retrieve her own grappling hook, then found her way to the other end of the rope, at the bottom of a pile of it. She tied it in a secure knot to the end of the hook and moved into position, looking up at the window to decide on a trajectory for the toss.
“What I don’t get,” Daexo said casually as he corralled everyone out of the way to give Ryza space, “is why his gear is still here. Could have opened the gate and come back for it.”
“Perhaps something happened,” Aerion mused. “Maybe it wasn’t unoccupied? Or the gate isn’t easily opened…”
“Only one way to find out.” Ryza began whirling the grapple for her throw, summoning daug’makar and saturating her body with adrenaline. Unlike the farsense, she sensed nothing outside of her mind and body, couldn’t ‘focus’ on anything else, everything curving back into her own little world.
When she intensified it, the flows threaded and coiled around her brain, down her spine, and wrapped around every nerve fiber, enhancing and expanding it to a new level. More intense than anywhere, it flowed to and became her eyes, became a brand new translation of the information spinning back more directly to the center, and the ‘slower’ senses became mere anchors and verification of abstract, somehow both higher and more simplified predictions. And that was all it was, all any sensory information was: predictions of the future positioning of reality.
None other than the Slowseers understood why they called themselves seers at all, and it was impossible to explain. It was new code, new symbology in a language no one else had an ear or tongue for, explaining the giant illusion of the material world to the brain in a more efficient way. Everyone else had just the one, bumbling around two steps behind, and their actions were less carefully-reasoned or intuitive for the lack of time and cross-reference.
The net effect was the world moving slower, all of its points of info broken down, processed, and considered split-moment by split-moment with pure reasoning. She knew the grapple was spinning rapidly, yet she saw it and intuitively felt it as though it were doing so leisurely. She knew precisely when to release, and how the muscles should flex to make the throw, tiny adjustments conducted even up to the follow-through.
She made the adrenaline-fueled throw, and the four-pronged hook soared up through the window. When she began pulling it back to snag it, however, it slipped free and down the long distance to the ground.
It figures.
As she reeled back in the grappling hook, she became aware of Daexo saying something, and she dropped down out of the second sight to focus on it better. Spoken words were annoying, otherwise.
“Smoothly done,” Daexo teased in sarcasm, his face freed of wrappings seemingly just to make an expression at her.
“Contrary to popular belief, husband,” Ryza answered, “I’m not perfect.”
“At least you look it while not being.” He grinned shamelessly.
She did not mean to, but she smirked all the same while shaking her head at him.
“Please,” Aerion begged with longsuffering tones, “no more foreplay… not now…”
Ryza barked a laugh. “You misjudge. My husband is just trying to warm me up to this task.”
With that, Ryza summoned forth the slowing sight again and made another throw, almost a clone of the first. She pulled the hook over to the left corner before slowing her efforts carefully: pulling it, lowering, pulling, until it snagged the way she liked. Then she pulled hard and began jerking it. It was caught soundly.
She grinned over at Aerion and said, “See?” but he just rolled his eyes without comment.
Keeping it taut, Ryza made the climb smoothly, though halfway up she paused with the cord wrapped around and under her arms to give her hands a rest, in particular. The rest of the way she cleared with the aid of a flood of adrenaline. It was certainly harder than it had looked.
Perhaps you’re getting soft, old girl. We’ve made such a climb before. Higher.
She sat at the window a while, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness within as she pulled out her longknife, then proceeded from the little room to immediate stairs down from the battlements.
She slowed in her descent as she caught sight of a great twisted spherical thing floating in midair inside of a big ring, atop an equally bizarre platform positioned in the center of a kind of courtyard. It was all well-lit by lanterns. Her skin prickled with the feel of makar’osa use, more intense than she’d ever felt.
Focusing on the task at hand, she made her way to the gate. Built into the wall was a heavy winch-and-chain system to open it. It used a metal pole lever, and still it was incredibly laborious for her, requiring a break between each link. After she got the gate up enough to crawl under, Daexo and Aerion came through to take over and get it high enough for the aloga to pass.
Sweating from exertion, they all proceeded slowly inward toward the platform, each walking their increasingly audibly-protesting aloga, who all did not like it one bit. Even Ryza’s stoic Selephael seemed disturbed. The strange spherical vortex had perhaps reduced slightly in size since Ryza had first observed it. There was a slight flow of air coming from it, as if from a breeze, carrying a faint musty smell. And warmth, rising upward. When Ryza looked up, she noticed that the underside of the pavilion above the ring had a thin layer of dew.
Moist air coming out… but somehow not a storm…
No one seemed to want to speak for a long spell, so Ryza took a deep breath and forced herself to ask, “Well? Any further insights from your farsense?”
Daexo shook his head slightly as he peered at it with a sour expression. “That space is here, but also somewhere else… Much like it looks, though, everything is jumbled. And… wrong. There is a wrongness.”
“A portal to a hell,” Aerion declared. He was crouched down, sniffing once more. “It stinks of alien things I can’t name or place, but I recognize some as that of the demons. And I smell blood and fear and battle not long past staining the air and ground. And… Deros. His trail leads right to it. He’s gone through… three, four, five hours ago, maybe.”
A spike of worry rose up in Ryza at the news. What had he walked into, exactly? And then she noticed the sphere reducing slightly in size, the air subtly shifting around them as it did.
Ryza swiftly began removing things from her aloga’s saddlebags. “We cannot wait around for it to close on us, get your gear secured on you!”
“We’re not taking the aloga?” Aerion asked as he stood.
“I’d even be fighting Selephael to go into that insanity — the others might be impossible. And I’m not sure it's right to. Are you? We don’t know what’s beyond. There’s more respect to aloga to slaughter and eat than to drag to hell. This is our folly to play.”
“Guess it’s time to pay the price and sate our greed,” Daexo muttered as he dismounted and began getting geared up. It was some reference that tickled the back of Ryza’s mind, but she dismissed it in her haste.
When she saw the Sylmex preparing as well, Ryza forestalled them. “You two should stay with the aloga. Someone has to.”
Illités scowled and said, “Our people are taken through there, too! I’m coming with you. Merias can stay. Two would be cowardly.”
Ryza regarded him levelly. “Azakan, you’ve lived through hell already and survived, something you deserve a name for and not one to be thrown away. Illités Fearless Charger, who faced the demon giants screaming in rage instead of terror. So I say; what say you?”
The young man was struck with awe, because a name and those words from a renowned hero were practically undeniable, Sylmex or no. She’d just named him. Flustered, Illités sputtered, “I-... Thank you, Ryza Rainfeather… I say you speak true and I accept…”
“Good. Then heed your name-giver and stay put.”
In some amusement, Merias added, “You’ll have your day to charge again, I’m sure.”
Nodding in agreement, Ryza said, “Our quarrels with our enemies are just beginning. We’re simply conducting this scenario logically. We’ll test the waters beyond and go from there. If we don’t contact you soon, find a place to fortify for the night. We’ll blow a horn if we come through and you aren’t here. I’d leave to report, otherwise. Once the heat returns.”
Though Illités still seemed unsatisfied, he could hardly argue honorably after what Ryza did. Merias, for his part, touched Ryza on the shoulder and said, “Explorer guide you, Blessed Miracleman Azakan.”
Returning the gesture, Ryza said, “And you, Sylmex Azakan. Take good care of our animals.”
Turning away, Ryza felt a horrible sinking in her gut as she laid eyes on Selephael. The regal beast was eyeing her right back with an air of trepidation as if sensing the dreadful parting at hand. Ryza petted his snout and patted his neck, receiving nuzzles in return.
“Stay healthy, old friend,” she whispered to him. “You belong here, body and spirit, dead or alive. So do we, but this is something we have to do… we will return.”
“We’re ready, Ryza,” Aerion called gently.
She gave a last little kiss on her mighty beast’s snout, then turned to go, briefly touching the snout of Enseres too, who grunted and pawed at the ground as if complaining.
She did not shed any tears despite her emotions. Since childhood, she’d only cried for her lost mother, not even summoning it for Gerasinon, her mentor and adopted father, nor even for her beloved older brothers. And only once, during the first of her grief. It was a grief for someone who should not have loved her at all, she felt, much less so absolutely. It was an unreasonable love, and for it she cried because she’d never be able to return or repay something that had transformed and saved her.
Because of it, she could love Deros so unreasonably, to try and fill a hole in him that she’d had and could never fill just the same. She knew she couldn’t, but by trying, she changed him, and hopefully for the better.
I’m not the greatest nurturer and I’ll never be an actual mother. But I will look after my family such as it is. Everyone that comes under my wing. Just as you made a daughter out of a spiteful little screaming devil carved of every hatred, I’ll see to the good of my people.
The spherical portal seemed to have receded a bit more, so she approached it with her rifle at the ready with her boys to either side and said, “Let’s get a little taste of hell, then, Hamaleen! For the Taldecca Atateri — for Hamellion!”
They gave their cries and walked in together, into a bewildering kaleidoscope.
